#turn-based game

[aserrated-druid57]

[twincitiesgeek]

Monster Hunter Stories 2 Is Yet Another Great Game in the Series

Monster Hunter Stories 2 gets high marks for playability, from its variety of weapon and armor choices to its customizable animation speeds.

First things first: if you’re already a fan of the Monster Hunter series, and you don’t despise turn-based games, you should check this out. If you’re new to this wonderful series, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is the second game in Capcom’s spinoff of its popular Monster Hunter series. While the main games are all action, the Stories games are closer to Pokémon or a classic JPRG, than…

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[vpottsgames]

Dragon Labyrinth Final Game

(My art! ^^^)

Posting the final product before the concepts because I CAN (actually, it’s because the photos are more easily accessible but I digress...)

Dragon Labyrinth is a game I created earlier this year during my second-year at AIE. We had to create a game for a “client” (and by “client” I mean our teacher and whichever poor soul he managed to drag into pretending to be a client for us). When it came to be my turn, he had gathered some volunteers from graduate students who like to pop in from time to time to see how the next generations of game students are going. (Okay they’re actually more 3rd-year students, but they just don’t get taught in the building, they work in a building about a street over and get mentored rather than actually have classes like us, but we call them graduates anyway because they've technically graduated. The third year is a “graduate program” and I am getting off topic...)

As I was saying, it was my turn to talk to my clients. Before the meeting, we all picked from a list of prompts and created a game idea to pitch. They would act like real clients, asking us questions and testing us on how well we spoke with them. Checking the scope of our games and seeing just how well we are able to say “no” because if they start asking for more and more, you need to know your limits and when to tell your client no.

From the list of ideas, I chose to create a Turn-Base Game. This morphed into a Dungeon Crawler/Multiplayer digital and board game. I decided to create a digital version, and a board game version because I didn’t have strong hopes in my programming abilities. We only had 5 weeks to create the game (same time span as the Happy Haunts game I created previously to this), and I struggled to get the programming in that game working let alone this multiplayer/turn-based game I came up with. But I knew I could finish a board game.

I did really well in my pitch meeting, I had a strong idea of what the game and it’s finished product would look like, I told my clients that I doubted I would be able to finish the digital version of the game, and would probably focus my efforts on the board game, and they were eager to see what I would do. I spoke clearly and didn’t fall into the trap of saying yes to the client all the time. Things were looking good :D

I’ll go more into the creation of the game another time, but for now, enjoy some pictures of the finished product and a link to the instructions. I wasn’t able to test the game as much as I would have liked (I still haven’t even finished playing through the game completely yet), so the instructions are likely to change if I ever continued this game in the future. But aside from that, I hope you enjoy!  (All the art was done by me this time (except the boss/enemy drawings, those two were my twin’s))

(link to the instructions)

[sglabs]

Jam Week as a Long-Term Investment

Post by Francisco Souki, Advanced Game Designer

Why We Jam

Back in 2012, Principal Engineer Ryan Hipple had an idea - a vision he had been holding onto since he was a kid. It looked like this:

Back then he pitched it to me and shortly after that I played FTL and broke the bad news: someone else already made your game, and it’s amazing. Maybe one Jam Week we could give it a try, though.

Ryan, John Kolencheryl and I have jammed together five years in a row, aka every single Jam Week ever. Along the way we joined forces with Josh Hendryx, Rebecca Cordingley and Michal Ksiazkiewicz. To us, the week represents the only chance to work together again since our first years at Schell Games. Ryan pitched the game to our team, but it didn’t catch on.

Jamming Through the Ages

In 2012, we made a game called Jump the Shark. For Jam Week 2013, we worked on Monstrosity, an overly ambitious networked multiplayer fast-choice combat simulator monstrosity. The following year we worked on Get Off My Planet, a twitchy action game for the tablet, which approached the look and feel of a full game much more than any of our previous Jam Week projects.

Jam Week as a standalone idea sounds deceivingly simple - it’s attractive and sounds super cool. It might even generate successful IP for the company. What’s hard to convey (and predict) is how much better you get at jamming every year. Better at estimating, evolving, developing, scoping and executing your project.

In 2013, the first time Ryan pitched his siege tower idea to our small Jam Week group, the verdict was 1) out of scope! and 2) this sounds exactly like FTL. In 2015, he pitched it again and the verdict changed to 1) if we do same-screen multiplayer, we can make it work and 2) it sounds amazing, let’s do it.

What changed? In 2012, Jump the Shark showed that we had the ability to make something really fun in a week. Monstrosity, in 2013, helped us understand the challenges of making a multiplayer Jam Week game. Get Off My Planet, our 2014 game, gave us the confidence to aim for a product that looked finished and polished.

It was the same team, but this time we had the experience and know-how to identify the value in the idea and the path towards scoping the game correctly to fit Jam Week’s constraints.

5 years in the making

All of the above means that this project could have never happened before. We needed several consecutive Jam Weeks working together to accrue enough experience to scope and develop the project properly.

This longevity speaks to the sustainability of Jam Week as an idea. Jam Week is a long-term investment in prototyping expertise as well as a team morale boosting effort.

What did we make?

Something we’re immensely proud of.

The game called Siege Force 5 pivoted during our initial brainstorming from tablet turn-based resource management, to a real-time tablet tap-to-give-orders, before finally settling at real time PC RTS platformer. We came in on Monday ready to build that version and by Tuesday we had a playable.

We spent the rest of the week iterating and refining. We know our strengths and understand how to make the most of our five days, so by the end of the week the project had evolved into a 2v2 local multiplayer extravaganza. On Friday afternoon, coworkers were cheering and awwwing as their gnomes attempted to impale each other with pencil ballistas. The project was a success and we believe it can be much more. Perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of it in the near future!

It took 5 years to be able to make this game in one week. And it was worth it.

[everydayagame]

Tile Removal Game

There's a lot of games involving adding tiles to the board (Carcassone), but it might be interesting to have a game (tabletop or video) where you strategically have to remove tiles from the board to dwindle your opponents resources and cut off their supplies and try and cut off their army. It could be a missile launch game where the players take turns setting up troops and moving and attacking, but also launching missiles to remove tiles from the board. Tiles provide space to move and breathe, but also resources, and if troops lose connection to mainland they get lost automatically. So the game forces you to read your opponents' needs, but also adjust to dwindling resources increasing frequency of conflict.

[totally-not-guilty]

Launching of the Graywalkers

Hey guys, yeah, I've been gone for a long time. And this is one of the reasons why... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dreamlordsdigital/graywalkers-purgatory?ref=recently_launched I'm part of the team developing a tactical turn-based strategy game called Graywalkers: Purgatory, it's set in a supernatural, post-apocalyptic world where the gates of Heaven and Hell were torn apart. We are looking for backers, I hope you guys help us spread the word!