update We've been hard at work on Galactic Keep, making a lot of progress. On the narrative front, we have been adding a new set of enemies into the game and thought we'd share some information about them. If you look back to the post we made a couple weeks back, you'll see a piece of art depicting a 'Raklen'. From their character description (pulled from several different in-game descriptions): The raklen are a vile race of sentient creatures that have spread across the galaxy like a plague. They travel on dilapidated spacecraft that would be more apt to explode than fly. The holds and passages of their (usually stolen) ships are filled with a mixture of soil and waste into which they build networks of tunnels. The raklen have not developed technology above metal smelting themselves but they commonly plunder technology from other species. The shrieks and screams of these rancid creatures are said to sound like crying human babies. Here's a set of portraits depicting some of the 'standard' raklen. Depicted are the 'brute', 'wretch', 'knave' and 'elder'. Another creature we've been developing for the game is the 'trill'. The trill is a parasitic creature that enters thier host as a microscopic spore. As it slowly matures, the trill gains control of the mind of their host. Hosts are genetically modified to grow an unsightly external feeding apparatus, the trill has but one desire...to feed. Here's an image depicting a raklen who is under the influence of a trill parasite.
Wow. I love the hand drawn art! The cards look great and gives an individualised feel to each playable character. Very well done indeed! If you need a beta tester or help with ideas, give me a shout. What you showed in your Kickstarter video already looks better than some of the current dungoeon crawling boardgames.
Very glad to see an update. Honestly, every time I see the thread hit the sidebar, my heart jumps a little.
Looks like a very interesting approach to the Gamebook style, and I admire the dev's dedication. Off to the watchlist you go
progress Hey, thanks. If we're anything, we're tenaciously dedicated to this project. It has been interesting to see the ranks of gamebooks and boardgames filling up on iOS. Makes a lot of sense, the iPhone and iPad are prefect devices to display books and to play boardgame-like games! Early on, we thought that Galactic Keep was going to be much more of a gamebook experience, but as the game has developed (through several design iterations) we've moved towards something different. There's still heavy focus on making choices and a twisting story but we folded a lot more into the game with our most recent design iteration. Here's a screen showing some of the (new) components we're working on. There are now token health bars, there are specific damage types (the PC is currently poisoned, noted by the icon on his portrait), the PC just made a critical hit (this was a broad system to implement, taking into consideration the weapon that was used for both the PC and the enemy as well as the enemy type).
This game looks and sounds more incredible with each post the developers throw up here. I have a feeling this is going to the top of my favorites list without much effort.
Am still waiting for the mother of all boardgames and hopefully this will be it. As it is still in development, hopefully players can help with creating a better game. Some suggestions: 1) Character level - if there are level for playable characters, scrap it! Levels essentially mean players will hit a wall and become dissatisfied with not being able to progress anymore unless you keep raising the level cap but that renders older campaign maps obsolete because your character is too high level for that map 2) Character progression - can be handled with 'lore'. The more places you explore, npcs you meet, monsters you fight, items you use, the more your 'lore book' fills up and you get to know more about the world. Can also be implemented by giving bonuses to your character, e.g. weapon proficiency is translated to +1 to die roll with said weapon. I only see d10 in your videos. Add in other dice? 3) Tile size - each tile on the board has a 'capacity'. Cap of 1 means only one mob can stand on that tile, 2 means that tile can fit two mob etc. Weapons with area of effect, e.g flamethrowers, grenades can also utilise this feature 4) Mob size - expanding on point no. 2, each mob has a size thus bigger mobs might not be able to move onto a tile with cap 1 (narrow passage) 5) Vehicles - as everything is hand drawn, it is pretty simple to put this in, and it can utilise points 3 and 4 6) Map creator tool - design a map creator and release to public. Let players make their own map and story or campaign. The public can vote for best map and developer can incorporate those maps or campaigns in future update (modifying it to keep with cannon). This will keep players glued to your game and enhance replayability 7) Persistent world - there is no reloading saved games. Death or unconsciousness is handled with a penalty. This can be in the form of transient loss of max health, lost items, temporary conditions like 'fatigue' (less movement points per turn), 'shaky hands' (-1 to die roll) etc. This adds an element of excitement and danger to every game 8) Companions - choose a companion to tackle maps together. Async multiplayer?
Whatever you do please make sure it's deeper and more interesting than Mighty Dungeons. For all our sake
You might want to be more specific. What do you mean by deeper? More levels? More weapons? More stats? Longer playtime? What? That will help give the developer more ideas.
Game suggestion responses! I'll start by saying that Galactic Keep has been in solid development, following very clearly defined documentation, for a good deal of time. Like...a long time. It's not that we can't make changes, it's that (depending on the type of change) it can take a good deal of effort to deviate from the existing plan. Anyway, there are a lot of good ideas here. We'll take them all in and digest them. The more suggestions, the better! Capped characters are at the peak of human/alien capability, 'heroes'. As with classic tabletop games, there will likely be more modules with higher caps if you want to play them. At some point, inevitably, you will have to start a new character. A 'realistic' solution could be that if you didn't play with a very high level character for a time they would 'atrophy'. After a pause in playing with a character, they temporarily receive an attribute penalty (they're rusty). Isn't this like collecting experience without a gameplay payoff? A character should experience the world, gaining knowledge...and show an improvement in some way within the game world. If you are experiencing, just obtaining lore and not improving something that will make a change in how the game is played then there's no real motivation to play (or at least do that thing). Weapon skill leveling (per character) is a pretty great idea that could fit our system. The more you use something, the better you are at using it. Makes sense. That will probably have to be capped or it will break things too. Use the same sword for years and gain +25 to that sword...not 'realistic' and could break the game. You run into the same issue. Characters are finite 'vessels'. They can take body-altering meds and nano-enhancers but in the end, they are physical beings (most of them) with limits to how mutated or augmented they can become before returns are diminished (see: bodybuilders). The true goal of the game isn't just to 'level to the cap', it's to save the galaxy, to walk a group of characters through a story and to have an experience Our current rules involve a system using only a d10. Compared to a d20, it can make battles quick and brutal. Rolls are made more malleable through the use of modifiers, percentages and points (even decimals) that change a d10 roll into an infinitely more variable die. Fewer mods let chance take over, more mods help to solidify the outcome. For example, an attack is: d10 + STRENGTH + (weapon) = damage The first d10 roll in the equation adds chance, strength mods it a bit but it's the weapon that adds the variety. A weapon that adds +10 to damage is a lot more dependable than a weapon that adds another 1d10. Right now there are +150 or so unique weapons, each with their own specific equations. Effects range wildly: Missed enemy turns, adding to attributes, reducing enemy attributes, multiplied damage, healing self, future damage (damage in x turns) and much more. In this game, it's not about having more dice, it's about how the d10 is used and modified. Not to say that it wouldn't be more fun to add other die, it could (and may) happen but we have a lot of randomization and variety already. Interesting. Right now, tiles represent real area. One tile = 8 feet (roughly, give or take), that's how the game maps are built. We imagine that, on a game tile, a person has a comfortable space around them of 8-10 feet. If a creature invades that space, it's an attack. Changing this system to one where we have character size rankings would most certainly break the game and all the maps we've created! Makes more sense for a limited-space board game. We will have weapons with area attacks like flamethrowers, grenades, explosive (hidden) traps that can be placed by the PC etc. that utilize the tile system. I like the idea of a physically narrow passage looking like...a narrow passage the map! We're talking maps in Galactic Keep, not 'boards'. The game is built more like a traditional RPG in that respect. Vehicles are a great idea. We have them on an early bullet-point list of features somewhere. The maps would have to accommodate them (and be large). In our case, a vehicle would have a very large move bonus meaning that in a turn you could move a great distance in one. Physically large vehicles couldn't fit into small spaces (a car might be two tiles wide, it couldn't drive through a passage that was one tile wide). Think of a dungeon and riding a vehicle through it: You can ride a motorcycle through a shopping mall, but would you want to? Very good idea. Our tool that we use to make maps and build missions is very robust and feature rich...but it's also very rough around the edges. To make a consumer-usable version would take us a while to do. We'd like to, though. I'm very much into having more content in the game...as much as you are. We're playing with these ideas. A degrading world is a very interesting and variable-laden idea. Current thinking involves permadeath, one save file and a lot of playable character choices. Each playable character has a different special attack (or a choice of one of three to pick from when you roll the character). All characters have a base stat set that you add a dice roll to (in each attribute). Some weapons and most special attacks are restricted to one species and/or class. You start the game with a 'stable' of x characters and as you play you unlock more. The focus is on switching characters, using some for specific tasks (or complete missions). If you want to play with one character that's fine...but there's a whole world of variation and a lot of species and weapons to try. So if someone on your 'team' dies, their stuff is left behind on their dead body. Another team member must traverse back to their death spot to retrieve their stuff (kind of similar to Diablo II except it's not you going back to get your stuff, someone from your team has to...because you're dead). If you run out of characters to use, you start the game over (keeping items, weapons and specials you had stored in a big, shared inventory). There is time travel technology in this universe and we're thinking about how to work that into PC death. Could you go back and save yourself? Seems like a no-brainer. We'd want this to happen in the future...live multiplayer would be better than async in my opinion. Mission-based rushes and loot grabs could be fun. Something like: A mode where you finish 5 short missions as a multiplayer team and gain good loot and exp. This is a ton of work but probably worth it, considering the iOS platform. Not for launch but it is something we are considering implementing in updates. Hirelings are in the rollout too, a lower hanging fruit as they could be implemented into our current system without much upheaval.
Gilded Skull, would you be willing/able to release perhaps a free single level, lite version of the game? Leave the players wanting more. I know TouchArcade would cover its release, possibly generating more publicity for your game. Once even more interest is stirred, a Kickstarter might work a second time.
My reasons for wanting to remove traditional leveling is:- 1) Map replayability - If you look at all the MMORPG out there, they have maps designed for players of different levels. You won't find high level players in beginner areas anymore and as the game ages, you have players concentrated in a small area and the starter areas look very empty. I feel that is just poor game design as the maps where i had the most fun are usually beginner level maps. That beginner experience diminishes drastically when you revisit that mission with a much higher level team (hence my suggestion to remove character level) 2) Character replayability - We can use Diablo1 as an example. What makes the game so ridiculously fun is that there is no end game. You don't stop playing a character because you have 'peaked' because there is no 'peak' in that game. You begin the game at level 1 and hunt for items. When you are at level 50, you are still hunting for items and it is because of this that players can play the same character over and over without getting bored. The level is there just to act as additional time sink. I highly doubt anyone will complain if Blizzard let them start their character at max level, the reason being the game really only starts at max level and the items you collect at the end is the ones worth keeping. Guildwars is probably the game closest to what i suggested (in terms of level) No one really wants to retire a character they have spent so much time on. They start a new character because they hit a wall. I feel that shouldn't be. Perhaps that is just me as i am the type that feels attached to my characters, even after playing that one character for years. The worst ever gameplay design is implementing aging to characters! If you remember Darklands for PC, that game was fun but your character ages and retires eventually...bad game design! 3) Realism without breaking the game - Take any protagonist in a movie as an example. The lowlife gangster that they shot dead at the start of the movie posed the same threat at the end of the movie. The hero didn't magically become so powerful that they can just ignore that lowlife from scene 1. The protagonist do however come to know which lowlife poses the bigger threat. Translate this into the gaming world and you have a) no traditional levelling and b) character has grown wiser because they are more knowledgable about the world in which they find themselves (lore) The lore i suggested is a substitute for collecting experience and leveling up. If a player spends time to explore a game environment, the reward is that their character 'grows' in terms of being more knowledgable about the universe you created. This can be translated to having extra modifiers when encountering alien species. My character would probably shake in their boots when fighting an unknown species the first time (e.g. -1 to hit) but as i fight more of them, i lose this penalty. Players therefore have two options 1) enjoy the game and take time to explore and reap the rewards or 2) breeze through the game by avoiding as many encounters as possible. Those picking option 2 won't feel they have lost out as the benefits for scouring a map in its entirety are not game changing and those that do take the time to explore are rewarded for their effort. I agree that there should be more transparent rewards to chart character progression and other players can probably come up with better suggestions. I wouldn't propose the Ultima way of skill progression where you become a Grandmaster after chopping the 1000th piece of wood. I would probably stop at +1 to die roll, a significant improvement but not game breaking no matter how many times you fired the gun. You can expand on this and include a die re-roll for yourself (you are proficient with said weapon) or force opponent to re-roll their die (you are more skillful and cause your enemy to make more mistakes). Ugh, please make permadeath as an option. Nothing worse than your star player being killed by a freak die roll (adds realism but player experience suffers, acceptable in team management games like Blood Bowl i suppose ). I like the idea of switching out for a teammate that is more suited to a task. Can this be done mid mission or do you have to restart a mission? Final suggestion: No +1/2/3... items please - I have long held the belief that this system should be done away with. Yes it harks back to the D&D of old but honestly, if an item is magical, that should be the end of it. Don't make items obsolete by making a type of magic item more magical than another of the same type. One of the best item system i have come across is from the Greyhawk world. In that world, magic was extremely rare and items are classified as rusty, normal, fine, exceptional and mastercrafted. Magic item was so rare that finding a +1 knife was an achievement. This meant that there were no ridiculous +10 modifiers and fights were a lot more balanced. To put this into context, rusty items do less dmg (-x to max dmg etc.), normal items could have the standard misfire rolls (weapon becomes overheated, jammed, chance to blow up), exceptional items have lower % to jam, overheat or blow up (in case of laser rifles or flamethrowers etc.) and mastercrafted items have +1 to die roll, as examples. Thus, a normal quality item works just as well as a mastercrafted one. You won't feel that your character was somehow weaker because he/she was wielding a rusty knife instead of that shiny mastercrafted one that everyone was using as the difference is not that much. The idea here is to limit the strength of weapons and give players a real sense of accomplishment when finding a top notch weapon. I don't like how in Diablo, white items were absolutely useless past lvl 2 and in the newer Diablo3, if it was not a legendary or unique item, you'd just leave it on the ground. As you can see, i am not a big fan of overpowered characters or items. Yes, having a +5 longsword is great, but this means the +1 swords are of little value. Don't dilute the value of items or make insignifcant the effort of finding a special item because that special item happened to be the weakest in that series of special item!
sbxsat: Well spoken, points taken. Thanks a lot for taking the time to make your thoughts known. We're not going to promise anything but we're certainly open to making changes. GK will require a lot of play testing, revisions and tuning based on the feedback of playtesters...so there's that too. I have a feeling that there's going to be back and forth on these issues, many opinions. One thing we're keeping in mind while we design is that this is a mobile game, usually played in short bursts/chunks. There's a very different play style compared to a PC or console game. That doesn't mean a mobile game can't be deep (many are!) but it's almost a requirement for the core game loop to be short, tight. We'd like to have a mid-mission character switch. There will be some restrictions on it, a checkpoint system or specific teleport locations (or you could keep switching between characters forever and cheat death).
If you start with the premise that all of the MMOs out there are poorly designed, including the most successful ones, then I think it's more likely that they know something that you don't.
