Greetings to the IndieDB community! I hope this message finds you well!
Today, I would like to do a good deed for a creature that I feel has been underserved
and given ill representation in Videogamedom...
Surely, all here are familiar with the turtle members of the criminal underground, who spend their time plotting endlessly against a certain royal family, undoubtedly for some nefarious political reasons...and because of the wide-spread familiarity of this small group of miscreants, the image of turtles becomes one of villainy. But what of the rest of this considerable demographic? Are they all so sinister?
Many members of what was once The Testudinate Republic are indeed quite friendly, even noble, and it is their story that I wish to share with all of you over the course of this little project I am working on.
Siege of Turtle Enclave is a 4X turn based strategy game with quite a few familiar ingredients often to be found within the genre, and a few extra bits thrown in for good measure. Players will begin in a small settlement with a few resources and workers, and then slowly fight their way across the
map using everyone's favorite formula:
Train more soldiers to gain more land to gather more resources to train more soldiers...
Yes, a fairly simple concept, but I hope that my implementation of said mechanic will be considered, by the independent gaming community at large, to be an enjoyable game to kill a few hours on. I'm still in the early stages of development at the time so the 'extra bits' are still few in number, but I shall be adding more as the game progresses and gets more fleshed out, it's kind of just an empty shell at the moment...
(... ... ... ... *someone coughs*)
Anyway the game ultimately will feature some of the following elements, with still more on top of those as I think them up:
First would be ‘time' as a dynamic resource. Usually, in turn based games, time is measured by how many turns a building takes to complete, how long it takes for an enemy stack-of-doom to reach your capital after a declaration of war, etc... But in SoTE time is a little different; Tasks such as mobilizing armies and building structures are broken down into how many 'hours' each of these tasks take, allowing players to prioritize their workforce-hours each turn depending on the changing conditions of the campaign.
Second among the unusual, would be heavy use of special (almost RPG-like) abilities during the real time battles. Over the course of the game, the player will fight a staggering number of ruthless battles against an unforgiving, unrelenting, and probably unthinking adversary (I hope my AI
skills will be up to the task at hand...). During these battles the player must deploy a variety of different turtles into battle, and employ a similarly diverse set of abilities to come out on top. An example of this would be 'Barrage', a ranged ability allowing a turtle to hit the 'support' ranks behind
the enemy's frontline to undermine reinforcements or take out a glass cannon from behind a sturdy tank. Another would be "Restore", a magical ability that heals a wounded unit during combat. Such abilities will have 'cooldowns' and some will even require 'mana' or 'ammo' in an attempt at making battles deeper, more diverse, and more engaging.
And next is the not-quite-so-unusual element of Hero Units, special named characters, often not even turtles (among others there will definitely be frogs, possibly lizards as well), these units will have unique skins and models and will gain levels, have extra powerful abilities, and provide benefits to the troops they command. Heroes are going to be located at random locations on the map, usually guarded by a dangerous force of enemies, and will join your faction after you 'liberate' them.
fall in line over there..."
Thus far I've rigged up a bit of 'Pre-Alpha' functionality, nothing I can release for public testing yet, when I deem the project ready however I intend to launch a Public Alpha which can be purchased at a price lower than that of the final Release, (since that's what all the cool developers are doing these days) so that I can garner feedback, squash early bugs, and maybe even earn enough money to buy a pizza, haven't had one of those in a while. Alongside this release I'm going to include a generous (in my opinion) demo to allow the 'try before you buy' crowd a fair glimpse at the game before purchasing, I know this model has sold me on quite a few games I would have passed on over the years and I'm sure I'm not alone (actually I'm doing it to minimize piracy, but I thought a 'one-of-the-guys' explanation would be, you know, more professional sounding).
Anyway that's it for now, as I sign off I leave you with a dramatic Announcement Trailer (to make-believe that I'm AAA) and the promise of more news to come in the following months, most of it will probably come a bit slow as I am ‘soloing' the project, but it will come, never fear.
Youtu.be
( I haven't learned how to embed a Youtube Video into a news post yet, until I upload the video to IndieDB this is the best I can do at the moment, so much for pretending to be AAA ;) )
Thanks for reading and I look forward to your feedback and comments,
~Heftig
