Thank you guys! I think that this forum thread helped a lot to get this very cool article First, I'd like to thank you for your interest! Your idea is really interesting but I think that it would go too far in the opposite direction and be too much of a disadvantage for the offensive player, considering the game's current shape anyway The gif and trailer are obviously simple examples to show the game's mechanics but it's in fact quite a challenge to cut a tile off its king and get bonus moves against a good opponent. Getting the first bonus move is quite the fulcrum of the game, and while it's true that it can end up steamrolling after that (again, depends on the situation some nifty fortifications could still save you), it also gives a nice change in pace and a way to conclude the game, which I think are both important. As the tagline says, it's a medieval board game from the 21st century, and immediate fun and replayability are important objectives for us. What we've seen so far is that people really like playing Kingdoms for those reasons and they can't stop saying "another quick one?" But don't worry, we're also aiming to ship a game that provides strategic depth for more experienced players too! We just don't want Kingdoms to be too much of a game of slow back-and-forth. Anyway, we're aware of the potential steamrolling and we have a couple ideas that we're going to test in the next few days/weeks to see how it goes, and we'll update you guys with the conclusions I hope that this reply sheds some light on the matter. I'm really enjoying reading feedback and ideas from you guys and I can't wait to have more people like you playing the game!
Perhaps it is simply the case that the promo video is a poor example, as the use of fortifications shown was completely pointless. That may be contributing to my perception of things. At any rate, any chance of developing an AI?
Yes, I agree that it was a very simple example to show the fortifications, not the best way to use them! Fortifications become really important against more experienced players, in more complex situations. Regarding the AI, the plan is to ship the game with one, so that you can play on your own, if you don't have any friends nearby or you're not connected to the internet! We have implemented a very basic one so that the framework is in place and we can focus on the logic to make it more interesting.
Hi guys, Time flies and I realise that it's been a few weeks already since the last post so I'd like to give you an update on a few things! First, we're super close to having a proper AI working! Max has been hard at work on its implementation and he's almost done. Here's how it works. The AI creates a logical tree of the different possibilities and weights moves in order to pick the best one depending on the board situation and adapts to what the player is doing. The AI knows the basic actions (placing a tile and fortifying) but we are also defining specific patterns in several categories (starting, mid-game, finish) so that the AI knows what is the most interesting category to browse depending on the state of the game and can pull out cool moves. If you guys are interested in this topic, we could probably write a more detailed post on our blog! Next, the gameplay. We've been playing and showing the game a lot lately and we've had super interesting feedback on the gameplay from fellow game designers and experienced board games players. We were focused on tweaking the gameplay to fix the potential steamrolling and more globally increase the tactical depth. We think that the game has reached a state where it plays better than ever before. It's also simpler to understand! Now you only get a single bonus move per group of tiles cut off their king. The max is still 2 though, so if you manage to cut two different groups of tiles off their king, you can take a really big advantage. But that's super rare and if it happens, it probably means that you'd better be finishing this game quick to play another one. It obviously still needs testing to make sure that there's nothing deeply broken that we don't see yet, but I wanted to discuss it with you regardless as we're excited by what we've experienced in our playtests so far! As you can see in today's Screenshot Saturday, we also removed the outer tiles which were not used anymore. The board is now smaller (5*5) but also larger on the screen so it is a lot better to play on an iPhone. And with the gameplay tweak discussed above, the game feels tactically deeper than before. I actually succeeded to come back from a very difficult situation against Max during a playtest session yesterday, where he cut me off and got 3 moves for his next turn. A well positioned fortification stopped him to get another bonus move, letting me come back and eventually win the game! I wish you'd see that! It brings us to the topic of sharing replays of your games. We've been looking at implementing Everyplay but as it turns out, it is not compatible with how we develop the game if you're interested in the technical details, we're not using Unity nor OpenGL but a native iOS framework called UIKit, which is a lot less usual for games but very good for what we do with Kingdoms. Anyway, we'll have a look again at potential solutions when we're done with AI and the last few things we plan to polish before shipping. Ok, last one I promise I've written a blog post about constraints and creativity in game design, which also talks about the genesis of Kingdoms. People seem to have enjoyed it so far and I'd love to have your feedback! And as a little gift for your interest and patience guys, the latest mockup for the new tutorial design that I'm working on: Bold text will indicate the gesture/action, and the coloured bold text will indicate the tiles you need to interact with.
Unfortunately no, the release is slipping from August to mid/late September. We still have a few things to finish and polish as you can tell, and we're also in the middle of creating the company, which is required to submit the app to the App Store under the name "Space Bears". It's not as fun as working on the game itself and it takes a lot of time and concentration to do it right but we're progressing! Anyway, we don't want to keep pushing back the release unless it's really worth it and makes the game much better. As you can tell from the update above, we're getting there so we'll let you know as soon as we have a more precise date
I feel like such a fool... I was loved what you showed in the original post that I went straight to iTunes to try to buy it... couldn't find it and of course finally realized I was in the coming soon section of the forum. So... what I'm saying is I can't wait for this game! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks guys, we're glad you liked it Haha thank you very much! If you want to hear from us when the game's released, you can follow us on twitter or subscribe to our newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/spacebears
Hi Pedroapan! September is indeed closing in on us! Unfortunately we cannot give you any precise release date yet. I wish we could and be sure that we'll announce it as soon as we can. We're definitely getting closer to shipping but there's still some work to do in order to deliver the best possible experience. We're currently contacting translators to have as many localised versions of the game as possible for launch, finishing the paperwork to create the company (which will allow us to finalise the Game Center integration we need to have our App Store developer account to use the Game Center developer environment), and polishing a few things that remain on our to-do list. Meeting with banks and writing legal documents isn't the most fun and it takes time that we'd rather spend developing the game. But it's also very important that we do it right. It's a weird and sometimes frustrating situation to be in. We have a game that looks quite ready when we play together but still we know that there's a ton of little things to take care of before being able to ship it. Anyway, we'd like to thank you for your patience and interest, it means a lot to us and we really can't wait to put the game in your hands!
You don't have to meet banks, you can have my dollar (or equivalent tier 1 currency) any day! Now, get back and finish up this baby! ;-) Pedroapan
Haha, your calendar is right! Unfortunately Kingdoms won’t release on Thursday. But it will be an exciting week anyway, as we’ll be showcasing the game in the Leftfield Collection at EGX London this weekend! We hope to get a ton of new players to discover the game and give us meaningful feedback! It will be the first time that we show the AI Because yes, it's done!!! It has taken an awful lot of time and hard work, but we finally did it. We have an interesting AI with 3 difficulty levels! The Hard one deserves its name, as it’s taken me quite some time to figure out how to win! We think that it is a really cool mode and we can’t wait to hear what people think of it. Here's a gif showing the flow to create a game: I fought as hard as I could… There's something really exciting about losing against something you've developed I'll try to record a video of a game against the AI soon. Here's what also happened this month: Gameplay We've added a new gameplay rule: playing the same tiles your opponent just played now gives him a bonus move! It avoids stalemate situations and adds a very interesting way to put your opponents in difficult situations. If you really played the best tiles and your opponent has to get them back, you still keep an advantage on your next turn. Localization The game is now fully localized in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and we’re waiting for Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Arabic translations any day now. It’s very exciting to see Kingdoms running in so many languages thanks to the hard work of friends and future players! Paperwork Definitely not the most fun topic but we’re finally moving forward on this again. We’ve been waiting three weeks for a document from the bank but we got it last thursday! Next As soon as we get the paperwork stuff done, we’ll be able to implement Game Center! The last piece of the puzzle It should be pretty straightforward but I’ll keep you updated anyway! Cheers!!
Hi guys, I wanted to let you know that we survived EGX We wish you were there! The game worked REALLY well and we were glad to see people enjoying it that much. We're even more excited than ever before to release Kingdoms. We can't wait for you to get your hands on it and share your opinion and experience with us. Basically every little gameplay issues which were still bothering me a few weeks ago seem gone for good. I played my most intense game so far against a great opponent who had access to the beta for some time. Long story short, it seems that the latest version of the game played by two experienced players can lead to a great, intense battle. Here's what he had to say about it. I've posted more about our EGX experience on our blog. You can read it here. I'm unfortunately unable to make gifs at the moment as the software I was using doesn't work anymore. And after spending a few days trying to figure out why, I'm still clueless. Anyway, I'll try to find a workaround for the time being since you like them Well, that's it for today! Thanks for reading and please feel free to ask me anything you'd like to know, except for the release date
Awesome! Just watched a the youtubevideo with some new gameplay and can't wait to try it out my self! As I understood all that is left gc-integration. Since you can't say anything about releasedate maybe you could tell us all the dates you're not releasing the game? # Good luck and keep us posted! Pedroapan
