Due to how frequently games are hyped up, and fail to deliver, or even fail to release, I think it’s important not oversell my game. My goal is to keep the messaging very small, because as a solo developer I am limited in what I can create in a given time frame.
I’ve been programming for 40 years now, and have made quite a lot of software, and a few games before, but every project has it’s own issues, and in All Hail Temos, that issue is having an enormous scope.
This is part of the world I am building.
A Small start to a Long Journey
To me, to be a “Scrolls-like” game, you must have:
- A focus on world simulation. Areas are seamlessly connected directly or logically together.
- A focus on object simulation. The objects in this world are not scenery.
- A focus on character simulation. The people in the world have names, and their own behaviors. Most of them will have unique responses to you, or situational responses.
- Non-directed narrative play. You can go almost anywhere you want, almost any time you want, and engage with the narrative that exists with the characters there.
- There are many different abilities the player can use, but can’t use them all at once.
- Different types of play: combat, riding animals, crafting, decorating your house
I will go into a full list important elements and more detail in a later post, but I think this gives a good overview.
There is a reason there are not a lot of Scrolls-like games, and that’s because creating the above software, and then making a fun game on top of that is an enormous endeavor and so only a few companies have done it.
So, how to approach such a endeavor?
Chapon Town
Starting with One Town: Chapon
Even though I have made all the terrain showed in the first map, set up the rivers, lakes, set up different climate zones, marked out the forests, and the major roads, set up the initial cities, villages and towns, it was still going to be an empty world narratively if I tried to release it at-scale.
So I changed my goal to focus on a single town, Chapon. This would be a mining town in the mountains, so it is fairly isolated and doesn’t do caravan commerce as it is not on a road, and is fairly far away from other settlements.
This allows intense focus to be on just this town to start, so I can work through all the core features and getting the narrative system working well in a smaller area, that is still a part of the bigger world. All the complexity of a spread out game, but in a single area.
Chapon’s location in the over world
Reducing the Initial Features
There are many things I want to be in the game, as I think the Scrolls-like genre has the ability to hold all kinds of different gameplay in a single game, due to it’s comprehensive format.
But, to start, I have to hold off on many things I want to add, such as:
- Traveling the overworld. Constraining to 1 area means no fun overworld exploration.
- Riding animals. A faster and sometimes more fun way to travel the overworld.
- Flying. I specifically designed All Hail Temos to be able to allow flying in the game, which would normally break many games mechanics, and their world topology.
- Lots of different fighting styles and abilities, more detailed crafting.
- Base building. Personalizing.
Trying to do all of these things at once would result in a game that never releases, so I will balance out what I can get out initially, the core of the game that can’t be removed, from anything that can be cut to be deferred to a later release.
Features Planned for After Initial Release
Even with features that I am cutting for the initial release, the work has been done to put those features in place. Such as all the interiors of the buildings are already built using the base building feature, but making that usable in the game takes much longer than building it enough so that it’s working, but not yet usable in-game.
Example of interior build with in-game admin base building tool
One reason I spent 8 years working on this game’s development was create all the different sub-components, like riding animals, flying, and base building, so that I could get them all into the game. Often, if software is not created with large features in mind early on, it is hard to get them in properly later. So all of this difficult long-term stuff was done first as a prototype, then figuring out how to integrate them all together, to a slimmed down release where the features exist inside, but aren’t playable yet.
This allows them to be more rapidly added on, and keep them integrated with all the other features, because they were all designed to exist at the start.
What are the benefits?
Not getting things that are fun isn’t very exciting though. Any benefits? Yes!
Actually, by focusing all my attention to this single town, I can make it very detailed in terms of the characters and adventures that take place there.
When making 50 small towns at once, the pattern will follow with something like making 3 small quests per town, and add it as a pit-stop for 2 larger quests that travel through multiple towns. Having a pattern like this is necessary for repetitive work.
When focusing on only a single town at a time, the adventures present in that specific time and place can be explored. Each character can be explored to see what interesting things can come from them. It allows depth over breadth, which is something I would like All Hail Temos to keep as a tradition. Over time, I will add breadth, but I want each area to start with depth.
When this town is complete, I can start on a new town, and really fill out the characters and adventures in that town. And repeating 1 area at a time, connecting them together with new and continuing adventures as I go.
Conclusion
Cutting features and content is a necessity for releasing software, and games are one of the most complex and content heavy types of software that exist, and a Scrolls-like game is also heavy for a game on features and content.
So I will keep working hard to cut things back as much as I can, to focus on making the first release of content really comprehensive, but as minimally comprehensive as I can. I expect that these initial adventures will be less sophisticated than later adventures will be, once I get in the flow of putting them together and get more experience structuring them. But, that is all a part of the journey.
It is said “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and unfortunately I can’t get in everything I want into my initial release. But, if there is a reasonable audience for the initial release, then I can continue to just keep putting in content and features to build out what my vision is: A magical world full of mystery and adventure.
If you would like to learn more about All Hail Temos and get notified when the demo is released, please Wishlist and Follow.
