VR Designs

In this post I would like to share 5 games with you that I really liked as a younger player and that have elements that are still driving my design.

1. Empire Deluxe


The thing that I am taking from this game is exploration. If you ask me there is something magical in sending out that Destroyer and exploring the coastlines of unknown continents. And then later on follow it up with a cargoship dropping of troops to take hold of the continent and explore its interior.

2. Advance Wars


The thing that I am trying to take from this game is ease of play while retaining depth. I want Workname Empire to be playable and a pleasure to move units around, do combat or just look around the map.

3. Romance of the Three Kingdoms


The thing that I like here is that leaders play such an important role. What I am trying to do in Workname Empire is to have real bonding between the player and the leaders he has available. They will have stats and skills and be able to develop as the game continues and they gain more experience. Probably wandering leaders will also be recruitable or will join you from one of your cities.

4. Warlords


Next to the artwork done by Steve Ford (who also did AT and ATG artwork) I loved the heroes in this game. It really got it right in my opinion. The ability to chose to use them in the frontline or as wandering explorers searching out the treasures of the temples was very cleverly done. Expect to see the same kind of dual use leaders in Workname Empire.

5. The whole wargame tradition


There is a zillion games in the SSI and Matrix catalogue I played a lot. I group them together here because in a way I love them for the same reasons. I love frontlines, lines of supply, combined arms, concentric attacks, manouvre and lots of tables of modifications. What I am trying to do with Workname Empire is to keep the essential rules of most wargames in, but making them as streamlined and accessible as possible.

Hope you all enjoyed this little flash to the past and will have some more news soon.

Kind regards,
Vic

Doesn’t time just fly by? Well in game development it defenitely seems to do so. In June I mostly worked on the “new mystery project”. We are currently in the phase that I have started recruiting an art director and will probably commence work on the final GUI soon. The whole plan is fleshed out, all mechanics are already working in alpha state, now it just needs to be made easy to play and tested, played and tested again. Also the writing of the campaign story is something I am really enjoying.

I still cannot say much due to various reasons but I can say something about the mechanics: I am working on giving the player 3 seperate play modes: a campaign game, random world games and stand-alone scenarios. The random world game will be playable with simple rules and advanced rules to be enjoyable by both veteran wargamers and less hardcore players at the same time. Since this blog is mostly read by the first category of gamers I can disclose as well that this game in advanced mode will feature quite an intricate supply and logistics system. For example it will be possible to cut of enemy strongholds and starve the troops there to dead or for troops beyond your supply network to run out of ammunition. As always I conclude with saying I really hope to tell a bit more next month :)

Furthermore I am putting quite some effort in to getting the DC3 new simple and intermediate editors up and running and stable. Its proving quite a headache to make things easier to design games with the DC engine and allow modular design, but I am defenitely making progress. All the editors are up and running and I am working on debugging them now and making them easier to use.

That about wraps it up. Happy gaming all!

Kind regards,
Vic