Monthly Archives: July 2018

Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown

I would like to announce a new game I’m working on. It’s a classic, old-school, party-based RPG for PC.

Inspiration:
The game is a classic western RPG inspired by the games from the 90s. Basically, it’s the kind of game I personally find missing nowadays. Light, fairy tale, epic, heroic and slightly humorous. One that does not take tons of hours to complete or require endless grind to progress. Something that caters to players like me who don’t have 40 hours to beat one game but still like to play and have a sort of nostalgia for the way games were made in the old days.

It was inspired by Dungeon Master, Eye of The Beholder 2, Might & Magic 3-5, Crystals of Arborea (a not so well known prequel to Ishar series), GoldBox series (Champions of Krynn, Dark Queen of Krynn, etc).

Core design choices:
1) Classic, 90 degree rotation, FPP, turn-based, tile movement RPG.
2) Party-based (7 party members assembled upon start).
3) Open world with a big overworld to explore.
4) Fast paced combat. Quick travel. Easy inventory management. No grind.
5) Light, fairy tale like fantasy, epic story about heroes on a noble quest.

Mechanics:
Mechanically it’s 100% turn based (so you can go and make tea in the middle of a fight) with grid movement and 90 degree rotation. All this very fast paced, both combat and travel is really fast. The goal was to cut down the boring parts and flesh out the fun parts. Also, there is no loading screen when changing locations or other slowdowns 🙂
Overall, the mechanics are pretty traditional and straightforward with modern additions like equipment encumbrance system.

World and Storyline:
Storyline is a fairy tale, mythical heroic fantasy. You are the good guys on a quest to fight the forces of evil (no moral choices). The world is non linear, with very few locked areas. You basically can go anywhere and do things in different order. In addition you can choose a different set of quests to finish the game (but those are not mutually exclusive, so you can finish all quests if you like). It’s more like a world driven than a story driven. The priority was to make the world feel alive and let you explore it as you wish than follow a linear list of quests.

The game starts when the royal wizard finds out about an old crown that belonged to the royal family since generations. Yet, strangely no one ever heard about the crown and there was just a single mention of it in the royal annals. Upon further study he discovered that there has been cast a powerful spell of forgetfulness of unknown origin which caused everyone in the whole land to forget the crown ever existed. Without knowing who or why went into such trouble to conceal the existence of the crown he decided to investigate it. He summoned a party of noble heroes and tasked them with finding whereabouts of the mysterious crown and the origin of the spell.

Release date:
The game is planned to be released around 2018 – 2019.

Stellar Monarch version 1.25

Version 1.25 released

July version includes a lot of behind the scenes work, most of it won’t be noticeable since it affects small & rare glitches and make internal mechanics more logical and consistent. In addition a bunch of interface improvements, especially the long requested sorted battle reports.

– [misc] Automated fleets now behave more like manual ones in terms on when those make decisions and move. So those will enter the battle instantly (like manual ones) but will react slower to the operational situation (like retaking planets) since they no longer can see what AI will do next.

– [interface] List of battles sorted. At the top space battles you lost, then stalemates, then won space battles. At the very bottom ground battles (sorted by invasion progress).
– [interface] ESCAPE key closes the current screen, only when nothing is open it opens/closes quick menu.
– [interface] Tractor Beams explanation added to Fleet/Shipyard context help.
– [interface] Ships in reserve count added to Fleet/Squadrons.
– [interface] Minerals used for ships production added to Industry report.

– [fix] Excess industrial facilities on some planets. Also improved the facilities building algorithm to make it a bit more intelligent.

Automobile Tycoon version 0.24

Version 0.24 released (BETA)

Standardization of Office and Design rooms list of cars. Several people got confused how it works, and indeed, listing all the cars, not only the ones under design, makes more sense. So, it was changed. Translation finished (now the game supports fully EN, DE, FR, RU, PL).

– [feature] Added list of existing cars (not under development) to the Design room list of cars. Also added “Archive car” button to Design screen. This was made to avoid confusion and to standardize Office and Design rooms behaviour.

– [translation] Added DE language.
– [translation] DE manual translated.
– [translation] FR manual translated.

– [fix] Not exactly a fix, but the code was reviewed and several vulnerabilities were patched.

NOTE: All save files before v0.24 will have weird “Archive car” button behavior, for cars finished before v0.24 the archive button will work from the Office screen only. Do not report it as a bug 🙂