Hello and welcome to Kickstarter 2014. Today I present to you, Apparent Horizon. A game created specifically for you, specifically by me. Now who am I?
n Myself and Giblet Games
For starters, I am the founder and head game developer at Giblet Games. What is Giblet Games you might ask, well in short it’s a freshly started indie developer founded by me. Back to me and why I am here today. I am, at my core an avid gamer. Now I’m not talking Flappy birds and Candy Crunch, I’m talking SNES until I needed glasses and gaming until my eyes are twitching. Since I could walk I’ve been dwindling precious hours of sun and moonlight away with my thumb training exercises. Through the years I have trained my thumbs, my wrists and hopefully soon my neck. Yes rift I am looking at you. So one thing I know when I play it, is a good game. These standards I set for other games are the standards I will hold myself to while I code until I can’t think straight.
Which brings me to my main goal of KickStarting Apparent Horizon, I am no artist. This leaves me at a point in development where I have most of my features implemented but not complete. This allows me to direct an artist towards modeling what I need without having to change it later on for rigging purposes. I have my self modeled primitive objects and rigged them how I need them to be rigged to make sure it was possible. With this knowledge in mind I believe it is time to start working on the other major component of Apparent Horizon, the Art.
So here we have today is my first project I am going to release for all of you, Apparent Horizon. I’d like to start with the genre by saying this game is a hybrid. I feel all the latest and greatest games today are heading in at least someway into hybrid genre territory. This allows our core gameplay to be expanded and bring fresh ideas to the table which past generations have not provided. As with all hybrids it can be hard to denote their exact genre so as with mine it will be a mix. Apparent Horizon stands in the Space-Sim / RTS genre providing frantic action like X-Wing and fleet control like Sins of a Solar Empire. Couple this with ship upgrades, exploration, team work and awesome weapons and you’ve got Apparent Horizon at its core.
Now you’re probably wondering what features the game brings to the table, well there’s a few. First we have a billion different system combination possibilities coupled with a randomly generated ship creator so no system will ever be the same when created. Initially I am going to release with a multiplayer mode that can also be played alone where the players are pitted against all factions whilst building up and protecting their mobile base. This mobile base allows players to upgrade, research and build new ships / turrets and store resources for later use. The Mobile base will only be part of the multiplayer environment as it is needed for the Co-op Mode. Players will face waves of at first increasingly numerous enemies then will begin to face stronger enemies until there’s just no possible way to fight any longer.
This is where team work comes into play heavily, each faction has numerous ships that hold different capabilities that are better for different applications than one another. While one player may be able to buffer shields another may be able to super cool weapons and increase their firing rates. What this allows is numerous hours of gameplay where players can attempt to find the best balance of upgrades and ships to fight off the enemies as long as possible.
Research paths are key to unlocking extra ships however exploration can also grant some major advantages early on with the inclusion of Uber player only ships. These are ancient ships or prototype weapons discovered by exploring the systems you travel to. Once found you can reverse engineer them and begin to construct them for you or your fleets use. These ships will not be found via researching ship types as those are limited to other factions models.
Now onto the heart and soul of researching and upgrades: resources. In between your fighting or even during with the proper drone you can harvest asteroids or absorb fuel from the star in the system you are in. These resources are stored and then can be used to upgrade or create new ships, turrets and research traits. Without resources you will not be able to repair your hull or craft new stuff so it’s important to manage your resources while defending against those whom wish to do you harm.
n Modding and Multiplayer
As for the multiplayer component I will initially be testing a four player + A.I. fleet setup to balance the game, I may allow for more unofficially but will not guarantee performance or connectivity. As for other unofficial content I have from the beginning have made modding new ships, weapons and techs a priority and will have complete documentation on how to create, compile and implement mods! This is important to me as a gamer because without mods games are limited to the lore / style of game they are set in. With mods - worlds and ideas can be expanded for years to come and this allows me to begin work on a new project instead of worrying about making DLC. This also allows me to focus on patching any bugs you may come across that I myself didn’t catch. So yes you can Mod!
This brings me to the final and most important part of this kick starter. I want this game to be fun and challenging, to work not only your mind but your reflexes alike. In the upcoming weeks I will be finishing some of the final features, tweaking them and showcasing them for the world to see. With that in mind I am going to attempt to greenlight / early access on steam as more and more ships become available for use in game. As of now I have no concrete release date in mind however I am hoping for a Q3 2014 full release. If you are on my kickstarter page off to the side you can see what tiers of funding I have offered and below you can check out the full transcript of this video + challenge funding levels I have offered for fun. These apply only to PC and if all goes to plan the game will release at $14.99 on Steam this year.
Thank you for watching and I hope I have piqued your interest. You can follow the development blog over at apparenthorizondev.tumblr.com or twitter.com/horizonapparent.
