Shardwars:Bendaria has been a pet project since a long time. It was in my mind and on several notes since years, but only recently I found time to invest into actual programming the pet.
What the game wants to achieve is to combine several of the interesting pieces of old school RPGs with pieces of rogue-alikes with a twist of simple-but-hard-to-master rules.
What I liked from the roguelikes is that it plays most of the time different and nobody can really predict what will happen next. Another nice move is that the time to play till the end (if you survive) is moderate but still in a range to develop your character. The side effect of this is, that you can stay away a longer period from the game, start a new game and develop your knowledge of the game during playing it without having the feeling to lost all the former achievements.
What does this mean for Bendaria:
- Random generated world each time you start a different game.
- I aim currently for a single playthrough time of ~10 -15h (if you survive). This should give enough time to learn more about the current world and develop your characters, but short enough to start a new game if something goes wrong based on your decisions
- Optional hardcore mode (will be finally decided later)
Two key factors: Party-based & Turn-based. In a lot of games you had a party of different characters to manage and develop and only if you successfully use their strength you could beat the game. And together with turn-based combat, its getting far more tactical then beeing a click-fest or rely on the players reflexes. Another aspect I really enjoyed where when the developers tried an open-world - long before the word became its own genre (e.g. Ultima) and in some games even went already that far that the enviroment reacts on your actions. Another part was the 3D stepper movement - which is on one hand more graphical resource demanding but has an certain charm.
What does this mean for Bendaria:
- Party based (4 different characters based on 6 races and 8 classes)
- 3D Stepper
- Several different options to react in the current situation which will influence the gameplay
- Turn based tactical combat - take your time to think
During the next series of articles I will provide more information, but here I want to give some topics which will be important for the game.
First of all I dislike linear progress by leveling up and increasing stats all the time or highly increase them by finding the next better item. Character stats will play a role for 15% of the character development (mainly as a starting value provider for the skills) during creation, items will be accounted for maximal 25% of how you play your character and the rest will be based on developing the different skills. This means, the character will define himself during the progress based on his skill and not on finding the best item or automatically be leveling up. This should give alot of flexibility to play as you like and not as it is meant to play. Additionally, with this system it is more easily to continously add options to the game without changing the whole experience.
But more on that one in another article.
As I'm an hobby indie developer (more with programming skills than anything else) the part of the graphics is a bit limited. As I want to achieve at least an certain level, I have outsourced the current artwork and have enough resources for the different aspects of the game to test them. The benefit of the limitation (e.g. no real 3D) is that it should be easy to port the game to all the different plattforms. Currently I develop the core part for PC and Android in parallel. Additional plattforms will be available as soon as the game gets into an stable stage and I will have the development enviroment.
The GUI engine is finalized
The core skills for combat / crafting / adventuring are defined and included
The character creation is done
The world creation is functional - ammendments like implementation of riddles, etc are on the roadmap
Moving around in the world,looting and equipment code is implemented.
programming the combat engine and test it.
Hope you enjoined my wall of text and till next time.
Wylaryzel
