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A free-roaming squad based RPG. Focusing on open-ended gameplay features rather than a linear story. Be a trader, a thief, a rebel, a mercenary, a business owner, a doctor, a bandit... the list goes on. Aid or oppose the various factions in the world while striving for the strength and wealth necessary to simply survive in the harsh desert. Purchase and upgrade your own buildings to use as safe fortified havens when things go bad, or use them to start up a business. Train your men up from puny victims to master warriors. Carry your wounded squad mates to safety and get them all home alive.

Post news Report RSS About game balance

At the start of the game, just about every NPC and enemy in the game is stronger than you. Your starting strength is that of a weak civilian. You have one character and a rusty sword and no money.

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The game balance I would like to aim for, in terms of levelling, would be something similar to Gothic 2, if you've ever played it. There is no level-scaling in kenshi, as it goes against my tenets as a game developer and ruins an RPG. So everything and everybody in the whole world is at a fixed level and does not change as your own characters level up. The player must avoid the stronger enemies until he is ready to take them on. This can be done by being careful not to make certain enemies in the first place, and avoiding the most dangerous map areas. Likewise when you are stronger and find things are getting easy, you can always find something more dangerous to do.

PLAY SAFE

For a game like this you need to reconfigure the way you think about it a little, as all games seem to follow the same fundamental conventions and have given players bad habits. Most notably the fact that players are always more powerful than every single enemy, and the player is always made to feel like the world revolves around him.

Imagine you have been put in this situation in real life. Its not recommended for anybody to wander the dangerous desert alone, let alone someone with no skills. You need to join a trader caravan or something where you can travel safely in a group, and it will earn you money too. When you get into fights the other guards will back you up and do most of the work, set your character to focus on defence and he should stay alive. His defence skill will go up rapidly until he can hold his own and start hitting back.

Early wandering trader with bodyguards
Trader caravan, early development stages still

Once you have a little money you can start recruiting some more characters. Use your stronger ones to protect the weaker ones until they can hold their own. Give them first aid when they go down and keep them alive. Be cautious and grow. You don't have to win all the time, if a character looses a fight, he actually gains more experience from it. After all you never forget a lesson if it involves getting stabbed.

RECRUITING

Recruiting new characters will be relatively easy, but just increasing your numbers won't solve all your problems. You have to feed and equip all these people, pay for accomodation when they need a safe place to rest and heal. Its all about striking the balance and doing it the way you like. You can nuture a small elite group, or maybe just throw a large group of people into battles and just keep the survivors.

Freedom to the player.

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Renegade2
Renegade2

Sounds awesome

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GrimSheeper
GrimSheeper

Sounds all the more logical. So is there some sort of permanent damage like lost limbs in this or will every damage be healable eventually?

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captain_deathbeard Author
captain_deathbeard

Yeah, lost limbs will need to be replaced by expensive yet cool-looking robotics, but this is a feature that won't be in the game for a long time.

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GrimSheeper
GrimSheeper

Oooh, Robotics. I was not completely sure if this was a wasteland in a medieval setting or if this is like Fallout or the titular Wasteland, which is a really good thing.

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RaGod
RaGod

Haha thats awesome, I look forward to my "main character" being a bad *** cyborg commander

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captain_deathbeard Author
captain_deathbeard

I also plan eventually to have cannibals and man-eating creatures that kidnap people and eat them one limb at a time until you rescue them.

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insectus
insectus

OH my god, that's so sick and at the same time absolutely AWESOME!!!!

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RaGod
RaGod

Ohh I just noticed, is that a rifle in the leaders hand in that picture? :D

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Baconation
Baconation

It would be cool if you could get the feel of fallout 3 in this game. Like walking around every corner and finding something scary or interesting. Fallout 3 has many strange things that make exploration very fun, i hope you could add something like that.

I'm not sure what kind of enemies you will be adding to this game but I would recommend some sort of mutated creatures or lurking monsters.

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hate4uall
hate4uall

What a great idea looking good

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hjjo
hjjo

man wat the hell tht is the worst pic i have ever seen

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captain_deathbeard Author
captain_deathbeard

Thats because you don't know what "early development stage" means

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Renegade2
Renegade2

what an idiot C.C

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nemonumbers
nemonumbers

Greatly anticipating this one. :D

Just wondering some stuff, though; will we be able to make buildings of our own? Like found towns and stuff? Or just buy what's already there?
Also, wondering about how detailed the interactions and interpersonal relations will be.
Also also, you mentioned that buildings won't churn out faceless grunts, and that everyone starts out basically on an even playing field, barring their level and such. How will new npcs coming into play be handled? Like will there be a building for that, or people being born, or travelers from distant lands, or what? Or a finite number of people and eventually you can kill everyone else in the world and be alone?

Sorry if that's too many questions. XP

..also when can I preorder? :P

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captain_deathbeard Author
captain_deathbeard

You will be able to build your own buildings and outposts. Birth and immigration will be the source of new people, though it will be a very slow rate and the population can thin out badly in times of major war, entire factions can be wiped out too, creatures made extinct.

You can buy the game after first release in august.

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nemonumbers
nemonumbers

Oh, that sounds very cool. Does that mean aging will be a factor? Will our character eventually die of old age, and have to be succeeded by his child? Or is it just for new births/npcs?

The thinning things sounds neat, though.

And that's sooner than I expected, to be honest. Sweet deal.

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Mavis130
Mavis130

Sounds great, being weak always makes things interesting

Also, the map looks absolutely massive, but how dense will the stuff in it be?

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Shoelip
Shoelip

Hey wait. You have a ModDB page? When did this happen? :p

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