Yo_serjio is an indie game developer working on low-poly city building game with survival elements called «Make Your Kingdom». Right now you can already try a free demo of the game and leave your opinion on it.
Despite its simple and cute visuals the game can get quite hardcore and challenging - try to fight back an orc pack, survive the harsh winter or manage the needs of your people without letting the settlement get completely destroyed.
Developer Diary 1 (Part 2)
Home, sweet home
When you develop a city builder you have to think up all kinds of different resources. The materials for the construction and food for people gotta come from somewhere. I decided to keep the resource system pretty classic. You have wood, stone, berries. meat, wool, coal, wheat, fabric etc. Production of some of the resources depends on having the other resources. For example, you can’t get coal without wood or fabric without wool, which seems pretty logical.
The game has different types of building and structures. The system is pretty standard too: the main building, a basic house, an architect house, a butcher’s house, a textile factory, a coal burner, a forester’s house, etc.
Here is an important thing: the more satisfied your people with the living conditions, the more places you have for them in the house. These conditions include: having food, water, coal, etc. It depends on the house’s surroundings - if you don’t have a well near the house, there won’t be any water. A residential building can also get a second floor if a lot of people are happy with their life there. The player can choose which buildings to destroy, but don’t get too carried away with it if you don’t want to set your whole city on fire. ;)
In the beginning was…
Make Your Kingdom: Prologue, which is an alpha demo of the game, has recently been released, and as you could notice, it has some bugs, restrictions and a lot of experimental stuff. But, I mean, what else did you expect from an alpha demo? :)
You can test all the basic mechanics in the demo: play as a head of the city and see the life of your people up close, fight orcs, try to survive the harsh winter, build all the different structures (there will be a lot more buildings in the full game though) and unlock some achievements!
Putting the free demo out on Steam was a really important step and a right one too. It let me see the game through the players’ eyes. You also helped me test the existing game mechanics, discover a lot of bugs and issues and all the reviews you left has already put an impact on the development of the full game.
The idea of releasing a prologue came to me because I always want to try out the certain game myself before actually buying it. But not every game these days has a demo. Or the demo just lets you play through the small section of the already finished game. I find this kinda boring. MYK Prologue is a different story - it’s a place for us all to experiment and I’m glad that so many people decided to be a part of it.
Per aspera ad astra
Even though Make Your Kingdom has been in development for several years already, I know that there is still a lot to do. The prologue already showed me all the things that needs to be changed or added.
Actually, I was really eager to see your feedback. Some may say that if there is no criticism or suggestions then everything about your game is perfect. But that’s not true. There is always room for improvement. If people don’t critique your game and leave no suggestions or questions, it means that barely anyone cares about your project. And when you put your heart, soul and time into something, lack of people’s interest in it is literally the worst.
When you develop a game by yourself, you just can’t find all the bugs or test every mechanic properly or optimize it to be playable on every PC. That’s why you need actual players trying it out.
So if you like games and especially good games, try to leave your feedback every now and then, it really helps the devs out. But try to keep it constructive too. Sure, you can take your frustration out in the comments or in the review without letting the developer know about the actual issues with the game, but is it really gonna help anyone? I don’t think so. That’s why I hope that you’re giving me constructive criticism and feedback. :)
Something ends, something begins
And finally I want to thank all of you for reading the first diary, I hope it was somewhat entertaining. And if you’d like to see more of these - let me know. I hope you are having fun playing the demo and don’t forget to follow Make Your Kingdom on social media if you want to see exclusive content that’s not on Steam. ;) As they say, «Keep calm and stay tuned». Bye everyone! :)
P.S. All the screenshots used in these diaries were made during the earlier stages of development.
yo_serjio