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[sec32]

Fantastic! Will try this out for sure when you have a demo.

[JonKeller]

Thank you. I wrote a new little devlog about losing!

DevLog #1 - Death & Magic

There are two ways to lose in Arclands - either your main building gets destroyed or your citizens grow so unhappy that they leave. In a regular city building game you'd have nothing to carry over to your new city - that always struck me as a little disappointing. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to give Arclands more RPG elements - mainly a main character that grows stronger with you. This mechanic obviously has been popularized by modern roguelikes which make failing part of the fun - but Arclands is similarily inspired by older hero driven RTS games like Warlords Battlecry and Spellforce.


Uh oh.


Depending on how well you did (like how big your city was, how many rare artefacts you've found...), you get benefits for your next try. You can carry over some of your most loyal citizens, salvage rare resources and get EXP for leveling up. This serves two functions: the early game becomes shorter, so you don't have to invest a lot of time to get to where you once were, and you become stronger, so you can progress even further.





Character growth is very important to Arclands - I really want to capture the feeling of getting stronger with each try. That's why I'm also implementing a diverse list of spells you can learn to defend your city better and be more likely to survive exploring dangerous places. Some may be learned by simply leveling up and choosing on a skill tree, others can only be found hidden in the wilderness. Here's a cute little meteor spell for you:





Well, that's it for now. Hope this was interesting to you - see ya'll next time.

If you want to stay up to date consider subscribing to my mailing list here. Thank you!

[JobLeonard]

Looks great! Have you considered locking the controls to the wizard, similar to Factorio?

I have thought a lot about this because It's important to me that you feel a connection to your main player character. But since you need to be able to take control of your other units too, that idea fell flat pretty fast. Selecting your wizard is only a shortcut away though.

You could make it that you can control your units remotely if your wizard is in the wizard tower (like they're using some kind of Palantir thing) but controls are locked to them Factorio style otherwise.

Of course, that leads to the question of why would you ever leave your Wizard tower, but that could be a fun thing to play with in and of itself.

[JonKeller]

You could make it that you can control your units remotely if your wizard is in the wizard tower (like they're using some kind of Palantir thing) but controls are locked to them Factorio style otherwise.

Of course, that leads to the question of why would you ever leave your Wizard tower, but that could be a fun thing to play with in and of itself.

That's an interesting idea, but that would mean you'd have to go back to the tower everytime you would want to select another unit. I've decided on a system where you can select anything anytime, but If you have 'nothing' selected you are controlling the wizard. Makes the most sense to me and is the quickest to navigate.

[JonKeller]

Still hard at work making Arclands a reality... finally found some time to write up a new Devlog. This time it's about interfacing with your village. This should clear up if the control scheme is more SIM-like or RTS-like.

Read it on itch.io if you like: https://jonkeller.itch.io/arclands/devlog/62210/devlog-2-buildings-citizens

Thank you!

[JobLeonard]

On first glance the resource chain seems simple - you may grow wheat on a field, which gets ground to flour in a windmill, which gets converted to organic artisan bread by the local bakery. I am not a fan of set-and-forget type buildings in SIM games though - that's why I decided to give most buildings more options. Generally you can define both input and output for a goods producing building: With which flour is your bakery going to bake which goods? Which kind of ore is your smith going to use to produce which weapons?

I hope you're not throwing shade on The Settlers here, because that game is amazingz :p

But this sounds really interesting! Can't wait to see how this develops further!

[JonKeller]

I hope you're not throwing shade on The Settlers here, because that game is amazingz :p

But this sounds really interesting! Can't wait to see how this develops further!

Oh, I would never! Settlers is one of the many inspirations for this game for sure. And thank you for your kind words!

[JonKeller]

Oh wow, haven't posted here in AGES. Arclands has come quite far since the last update - rather then spending more words on this, I want to encourage you to take a look at the trailer! Oooor maybe at the Kickstarter page since Arclands has launched there today! You could also join the Discord if you have specific questions.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonkellerdev/arclands
https://www.discord.gg/arclands

[JobLeonard]

Backed! Please remember to crosspost devlog updates though

[JonKeller]

Backed! Please remember to crosspost devlog updates though

Thank you so much for backing! Yes, I've been really bad with keeping this space up-to-date, haha. Like REALLY bad.
I've just announced my collaboration with the amazing Adam Bow (Swordcery, Death and Taxes) on Kickstarter - he's gonna provide Arclands with all the beautiful music it needs.

Ya'll can listen to the two tracks right on the Kickstarter page or on his Soundcloud:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonkellerdev/arclands/

https://soundcloud.com/bowadam

[qMopey]

Very cute! Posting for follow

[JonKeller]

Hello peeps - we’ve surpassed 650 Backers! That is already amazing - thanks to everyone who pledged and shared around the campaign. In this post I want to talk a little about what originally planted the seed for this game. What games inspired Arclands? What games can Arclands be compared with? Buckle in, this is a wordy one!



This is it. The secret formula. Well, not really, but you get the point.

 Video games are, among other things, escapism. Growing up I loved getting lost in RPGs and I’m sure many of you did as well. One thing that always felt special to me, were all the little towns scattered across the vast, dangerous lands I was exploring. Do you remember the feeling of finding Kakariko Village on your way to Goronia? Do you remember walking from Prontera to Payon because you couldn’t afford the Kafka fee? Looping back to Firelink Shrine after exploring the Undead Burg? This feeling of finally reaching a safe, lively place is something that stuck with me. These little towns and spaces have always fascinated me - which is why I also developed a taste for city building / strategy games like Stronghold, Settlers and Warcraft. These games captured my imagination like no other - but one element was missing. While it was fun building castles and towns, you were never really anchored in the world you were building in. You could explore the map but there never were any surprises hidden. There were no little storylines unfolding. There were no boss fights you could stumble upon. There was no life - Maps in these games always just were a thinly veiled abstract canvas, nothing more. I want Arclands to feel more like a space that promotes wonder and curiosity. So much for the wishy washy stuff - I’ll get concrete now and list some games that inspired Arclands.



Take Warlords Battlecry IIIs RPG Elements and add a pinch of Strongholds beautiful castle building. Let them simmer for 2 years. Medium heat.

Let me start with my two favorite RTS games. Warlords Battlecry is one of the rare RPG/RTS hybrids - it did a lot of things that Arclands aims to do. The game allowed you to level up your hero in an almost rogue-like fashion. It also hid little temples on its maps which you could get quests from - completing these quests would either yield experience or special units that you could recruit into your army. You could even hire these special units in subsequent plays! Stronghold has a very special place in my heart: it was the first game I ever played which let you build actually beautiful castles - something that is really important to me in Arclands. I want the player to look at their creation and think: "Yeah, this is my little town. I like being here.".





Mix Link's awakenings atmosphere with some good ol' ARPG Combat and character-progression and stir until it feels like Arclands.

I looked into my past to find out which RPGs influenced Arclands design decisions the most. Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening was an easy pick - its weird yet cozy atmosphere is something that I decided to reflect in Arclands early on. It seems super cute on the outside - something doesn't feel right though. Under the cheery exterior l a very weird darkness. When I was deciding how the combat of Arclands should work, I took a good look at all kinds of action RPGs. Their combat mechanics most often aren't far off from real time strategy games. Since Arclands focuses more on spell casting and controlling your main unit than most other strategy games, feeling out ARPGs like Torchlight was a natural fit.

Of course I focused on games that are a little past their prime here. It goes without saying that contemporaries like Banished, Northgard and Kingdoms and Castles all have injected themselves a little into the DNA that makes up Arclands.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope this was interesting to some of you. If so, why not check Arclands out on Kickstarter? See you next time!

[JobLeonard]

Congrats!

BTW, your bb code link is broken, let me help:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonkellerdev/arclands

[JonKeller]

Congrats!

BTW, your bb code link is broken, let me help:



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonkellerdev/arclands

Thank you! I fixed it.



Updating ya'll to let you know that the official Arclands Fan Art Contest is starting now!

The contest ends at the 15th of November at 24:00 CET. All creative works and media are allowed here, as long as it is an original creation and has something to do with Arclands. Drawing? Sure. Song? Yes! Cosplay? Go for it! I will choose three winners and announce them at the 16th of November 18:00 CET. The winners will be contacted on the social media account they submitted the entry with. Go to this update page to find out more!

[buto]

Looks fantastic! Fingers crossed that you'll reach your kickstarter goal!

[JonKeller]

Something ya'll might find interesting:

If the Arclands Kickstarter is successful I will release all graphical assets I made for the game under a CC BY 4.0 license. That means that you can distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format with credit, even for commercial purposes.



One of the most rewarding experiences of running the Arclands Kickstarter so far has been seeing the creativity in the Arclands community. People sharing what they are working on, asking for advice or just expressing their love for Arclands art style - it's all great. I still vividly remember getting into making art digitally and searching for pixel art inspiration on the internet - and being super stoked to find helpful communities and interesting pieces of art I could learn from and build upon. It's time to give back to the community and enable other people to do the same. I discussed this early on with backers and active members of the community, and it is finally time to announce this decision:

I know I wouldn't be running this Kickstarter if people didn't share their work when I was getting started with pixel art. It is my greatest hope that Arclands assets help people to learn more about this medium and get more people into making pixel art themselves.

So here's the plan: I will release Arclands sprites after the project is completed in themed collections - There will be a Nature, Buildings and Enemies pack for example. A small sampler of all these packs will be released immediately after the Kickstarter is funded - the first full collection will be released when the Arclands Beta starts (approximately Q3 2022), and the last one 3 months after release of the full game. I adopted this tiered release schedule to prevent spoilers - all the secret bosses will be in the last pack of course.



Stay safe, stay healthy and have a great day. See you soon!

[JobLeonard]

 

all the secret bosses will be in the last pack of course.

Oh boy

Also, do you have plans for some kind of mod support? Because I bet this would greatly benefit a hypothetical mod scene

[JonKeller]

Also, do you have plans for some kind of mod support? Because I bet this would greatly benefit a hypothetical mod scene

There is currently no mod support planned, but you are right, it would fit pretty well.

[Matdu]

The game looks amazing! Am really looking forward to it. Great work!