it's been 1 year and 10 months since my last update and it's likely that many considered this game yet another vaporware. At some point that was almost true because the development has been on hold since June 2024, but things are different now!
I restarted the development at the beginning of October and things are moving forward fast and steady, also a lot has changed since my last update, so let me show you what's going on.
A new beginning
If you used to follow my dev logs you might remember that this game was a RTS called Virtueror, but that's no more.
After a lot of thinking and planning I decided to turn this game into a Turn-Based Strategy game which also comes with a new name: VIRTUALORD.
Why?
The main reason behind the change of genre is that my vision for this game (ex.: RPG elements, slow pace action, limited amount of units you can control, etc...) suits better a TBS than a RTS.
Another reason is that I was afraid that a polished RTS would take me forever to make and it wouldn't be good enough for most gamers anyway. I am a solo developer with very limited resources after all!
The name change is mostly because I wanted to break with the past, but also because many complained that "Virtueror" was hard/weird to pronounce and I think that's fair.
Current status
Obviously things changed and evolved a lot since last dev log and I am happy to announce that Virtualord just hit version 0.3.0 which is also the first alpha build.
In the meantime let me show you the main new features of this upcoming release:
Turn based system
This obviously is the biggest change for this release as it transforms the game a lot.
As you might expect, each unit/structure has a certain amount of energy that can spend every turn, but on top of that there's a team energy that stops all your actions when exhausted.
Both energies are recharged at the beginning of each new turn, but only the team one is fully recharged, whereas units and structures recharge their energy based on their attributes and level.
Multiple mission goals
Now every map has multiple primary and secondary goals that are listed in a dialog accessible from your base.
When you complete a goal you can collect its rewards that depend on the current map and the difficulty level.
Once you complete all primary goals, you can decide if you want to leave the current map with an immediate win or if you want to keep playing to complete all secondary ones too.
In my opinion, this is a big improvement over the old design based on a single goal.
Tutorial
A game tutorial is already fully implemented, even if it doesn't cover all aspects of gameplay and it doesn't have dedicated maps yet. This will change in the future, but what's in place now is already enough to teach you all the basic concepts you need to play Virtualord.
New structures
There are 4 new structures that extend and support a richer gameplay.
1) Trading post:
this is going to be your marketplace where you can buy and sell resources using a dedicated dialog.
Buy/sell prices are dynamic as they depend on actual resources of the map you're playing.
2) Barracks:
barracks allow you create all soldier units.
3) Hospital:
this structure can heal nearby units, but it can also create medics, a special unit that can heal others.
4) Research center:
in the future this structure will allow you to generate research points and to access the tech tree.
Other changes
I put a lot of work in this release and listing all changes and new features would take too long here, but these are some notable ones:
A new panel becomes visible when you select one of your units or structures. It shows you its current status and some basic stats and it allows to open a dialog that shows all sort of stats and attributes.
Units and structures gain experience while doing something, this will allow to upgrade them in the future.
The AI is fully adapted to the new turn system and it can also perform new actions like building structures, collecting objects and shooting trees.
There's also a lot of UI improvements and bug fixes as usual.
Join the alpha testing
Last, but not least, I am happy to announce that the first alpha build of Virtualord will be available in a few days.
To take part in the alpha testing simply join the Discord server of the game. There you will get access to a Windows and a Linux build from the 3rd of November until the end of the month.
People who will take part in alpha testing and will provide useful feedback will be rewarded with a Discord role and a mention in the game credits.