Naturally I’ve been playing the game in bits and pieces as I develop it, but this time I set up a scenario and set out play it till the climax. No stopping to fix a bug here or tweak a UI there. And you know what, I’m happy to say it played really well.
Sandbox
I started out by creating a Sandbox game with a ‘climax battle’. The goal was to prepare my dwarves for a goblin invasion in one years time. A year was a pretty quick timescale for an climax invasion but as with most fool errands I began with confidence and bluster.
Workshops & Crafts
I started by gathering wood and other resources followed by building some basic workshops. There are many workshops that allow crafting of tools, cooked food, arms, armor, and many other things my dwarves would need to prepare for an impending goblin invasion. I even had time to plant a nice grove of trees (note: I did not have time to plant a grove of trees. I should have been crafting swords. This was foolish).
Underground Living Space
Dwarves prefer to sleep underground rather than on the surface where – as every good dwarf knows – they risk falling up into the stars. As such I dug a staircase down a few layers and mined out a living space for my dwarves complete with kitchen and brewery. No dwarf should be forced into battle without a good ale in his hand.
Mining
Once the living space was dug out I had my miners dig deeper to find stone and eventually tin ore. I envisioned using the stone to build a castle wall around my village. And the tin I would use to craft armor that my warriors would need to survive the coming invasion. I was sure the acquisition of tin or would more than make up for the loss of a few miners to giant underground spiders.
Castle Wall & Farming
I started building the castle wall to protect my village. Meanwhile my farmers were hard at work setting up crops as a long term food source. Mean-meanwhile the deer were helpfully eating those crops that my dwarves probably didn’t need anyway.
Abbreviated Castle Wall
I imagined a tall castle wall with a archer tower on each corner. Back in reality my one year dead line was quickly approaching and I had to “abbreviate” my castle. One or two blocks high is just as good as 7 or 8, right?
Goblin Invasion
Once the goblin invasion started I quickly ordered my archers to the north tower with a reserve of arrows ready to go. Did I forget to install a front door?
That’s a lot of Goblins
I didn’t recall how many goblins I programmed to be involved in a climax battle. It turns out that I programmed one crap load (see picture). That’s a crap load of goblins coming at my small force of dwarven defenders. I’m sure it will be alright.
That’s a crap load of goblins
Chaos
It was not alright. The dwarves put up a good fight but in the end there were just too many goblins. Next time I’ll build a better wall. Next time I’ll craft some better equipment for my soldiers. Next time I’ll have fixed that bug where my archers walk all the way to the south tower to refill on arrows when there were plenty of arrows right there!
Back to Work
We all wish for features that never make it into the games we play. One of the nice things about playing your own game is that you can just go change it! Over the course of playing this scenario I took notes about things I would like to improve – balance changes, features, UI, etc. In all I wrote down 53 notes to myself from this one play through! Time to get back to work.
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Can we direct controls one of the dwarfs ? :)