Hello all!
First off, I would like to thank everyone that has taken an interest in the development of Clockwork Dawn so far. I wanted to take some time to talk about the game itself, the goals for this project, and me - the developer.
What is Clockwork Dawn?
Clockwork Dawn is a Grand Strategy game that takes places during the time period of the Industrial Revolution, except instead of a historical Industrial Revolution occurring, the world transforms into a Steampunk inspired setting with accompanying fantastical technologies, events, and units. Players will need to balance their countries' economy, keep social unrest quelled, and compete against other countries both on the European continent and abroad. The game starts out in a normal historical setting, but quickly develops into a race to outcompete other countries that are also embracing increasingly enigmatic technologies such as automaton soldiers, undersea colonies, and flying fortresses.
What inspired Clockwork Dawn
The inspiration for Clockwork Dawn came from always loving historical grand strategy games, but then realizing how awesome it would be to tap into the genre of historical fiction in a grand strategy setting. Traditional grand strategy games are always at least somewhat locked into the historical setting they are a part of and what can plausibly occur during that time period. By having the game be in a fictional retelling of history from the start, there is a much larger range of creative freedom that can be taken to create an engaging playing experience and rich story.
Clockwork Dawn Development
I started creating Clockwork Dawn about 6 months ago. Since that time, the game has come from nothing to being a fully playable prototype. All of the basics you would see in a grand strategy game have been implemented including wars, events, economy, research, diplomacy, and more. There is definitely much tweaking of the mechanics that needs to be done, but building the core infrastructure of the game is complete. Most of what needs to be done now is AI balancing, world building, and implementing features that make the game fun and unique.
I'm hoping to be confident enough in what has been created to place Clockwork Dawn in Early Access within the next month or two. Once that is done, development will continue until I feel that the game is in a state where it can stand on its own within the grand strategy genre. I expect this will be at least 6 more months in Early Access, if not more. The step of putting Clockwork Dawn in Early Access I feel is important in order to get player feedback on what is enjoyed and what can be improved. While I can play and develop the game myself, getting input from a larger group of people will help to streamline where focus can be placed.
About the Creator
I'm an independent software developer creating this game as a passion project. I've always loved the Grand Strategy genre and have been playing strategy games for over a decade. After years of experience as a traditional software developer, I started to play around with game development as a hobby. I have in the past created some basic mods for Civilization IV, but nothing on the level of Clockwork Dawn. I'm hoping to create something that I have technical and creative direction over that I would love to play myself, and hopefully others would love to play too.