I just handed in what should hopefully be the last pieces of artwork needed for Kendrickstone the other day. Barring a few more marketing things, “The Hero of Kendrickstone” is basically finished.
As you may have noticed, I’ve finally put up a new page for it under interactive fiction. There will also likely be a few Q&A posts coming up within the next few weeks as well.
Mecha Ace is now available for purchase and download on Steam!
This is kind of a huge deal for me, because I’m mostly a PC gamer, as are most of my friends: Steam is the “big one” when it comes to digital distribution platforms for me, and it’s really cool to see something I’ve made up there.
That being said, for those of you out there who don’t have Mecha Ace yet, now would be the perfect time to pick it up: it’s currently 34% off on Steam and will remain on sale until the 12th.
For millennia, humanity has lived in the shadow of the Flowering Court, a powerful empire ruled by strange magics. They claimed the forests and plains as their own, leaving stunted human kingdoms to develop along the hardscrabble coast.
Then, one day, they disappeared.
Two hundred years have passed since then, and humanity has flourished, driving deep inland into what had once been the rich lands of the Flowering Court’s vast realms. Over the crumbling ruins of their once-superiors, humanity has built outposts, fortresses, cities, creating new kingdoms and empires. It is a glorious time, where a man or woman who is brave enough, determined enough, or clever enough can become a figure of power and legend. Where fortunes are made and lives are lost in the wild hinterlands of frontier provinces and far-flung outposts.
It is the golden age of the adventurer, and there is no place better for an aspiring hero like you to make your name than in the shadow of the blood-red keep of the great city: Kendrickstone. Founded by one of the first adventurers, it is the gateway between civilisation and the wild frontier, and home to traders, mages, knights, and criminals. It is here, with little more than your wits, a few coins, and what scarce skills you have, that you will hone your abilities, assemble your equipment, and carve out the first words of your adventurer’s legacy.
Will you find a mentor, or stand alone? Will you fight with sword, staff, sling, or spell? Will you lay down the law, or walk free? Will you seek to help others, or only yourself?
Will you become the Hero of Kendrickstone, or will you die trying?
In The Hero of Kendrickstone, my new project for Choice of Games, you will play a young man or woman who leaves your frontier village to seek your fortune as an adventurer in the great city of Kendrickstone. There, you will face the challenges of living costs, organised crime, and finding a mentor willing to teach the skills needed to become a great hero.
Oh yes, and adventure! The sort that leaves you facing terrible beasts, scheming nobles, and an insidious army of bandits, bent on seeing your new home destroyed.
“Save the villagers, become a hero, make rent.”
Not too bad of a tagline, eh?
Expect a page coming up as soon as I actually get the cover art scanned in.
Here it is: another look at the gameplay from Master of Fortresses 2. This time, I show off a new map, “Alte Veste”, based on the battle of the same name which took place during the Thirty Years’ War. I also show off new gameplay features like the Barracks/Population Cap system, as well as the Redeployment system, which was developed in direct response to one of the largest complaints about Master of Fortresses 1: the inability to move units after they were placed.
More video updates in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned.
As the title might suggest, I’ve got all sorts of news today.
The bad news first, I suppose: It turns out Armor Games’ HTML5 portal isn’t quite set up yet, and won’t be for a few more months. That means that’s possible Master of Fortresses 2 might not see a release until early 2015. That being said, I’m still working on it. Almost all the maps are complete, and I’ll likely be uploading a video update sometime tomorrow to show off some new mechanics which tackle some of the glaring issues with Master of Fortresses 1.
The good news: this delay not only means that I have more time to polish and bugfix, but also that I can start work on new projects ahead of schedule. The most prominent of which is Guns of Infinity, a direct sequel to last years’ Sabres of Infinity, picking up right where the first part of the story left off. As the months go by, I’ll post a few snippets of what I’m working on up here, and maybe discuss a few of the themes and bits of lore, if that ends up being a popular draw.
Lastly, I am also working on another project as a writer-for-hire for CoG. I’ve already got about a third of the text done. I look forward to revealing more information about that in the future as well.
Here it is, at long last: gameplay footage from Master of Fortresses 2. This clip shows the redesigned menu system, some of the sound and music already implemented, the new graphics, as well some new features which promise to deliver deeper and smoother gameplay.
There’s still a lot more about this game that I’d like to share with everyone, so stay tuned for more videos like this one in the near future.
It’s now been little more than five weeks after the release of Mecha Ace, and I’m proud to say that it appears to be doing really well. Despite a few pesky bugs on release, Mecha Ace has gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews on all three of its release platforms, and I’m almost certain that Choice of Games has recouped every single dollar of their investment into this interactive fiction of mine.
Updates are still ongoing, and I will continue to work on new bugfix patches for as long as new bugs are being reported. That being said, the bugfixing process is only taking up a miniscule fraction of my time.
So what’s next?
Before I’m able to direct my full attention to any other projects, I need to tie up the remaining loose ends I’ve accumulated over the years. First among these is Master of Fortresses 2. Development slowed down dramatically while I was writing Mecha Ace, but I’ve been able to put a great deal more time and effort into it since Mecha Ace’s release. So far, I’ve made exceptional progress, and over the past week or so, I’ve been opening up what I have right now to a small group of testers.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to put up some long-awaited gameplay footage from a thoroughly tested and balanced version of the first level, sometime this week.
Well, the day’s finally here: Mecha Ace is out in the iOS app store, Google Play store and the Chrome Webstore.
Clocking in at 230 000 words, this interactive fiction is pretty much the largest and most ambitious project I’ve ever done. I hope that everyone enjoys the story, setting, and characters I’ve put together over these past few months.
You can get Mecha Ace for your Android device here, for your iPhone or iPad here, and for Google Chrome here*
With Mecha Ace’s release imminent, it’s time for me to post the third, and final section of my Q&A thread on the Choice of Games forums. I hope these sections have answered any questions you might have about my upcoming interactive fiction.
Sneaks asks:
Precisely what caused CoDEC to rebel?
A:
There’s no one real reason, but there are a few major causes. Foremost is the Imperial government’s moratorium on new colonies, preventing those living on the frontier from expanding in search of new resources. Almost as important was the Imperial government’s refusal to allow colonial governments to field their own armed starships, meaning that any piracy on the frontier could only be answered by armed industrial armatures based from space colonies (which would have very limited range), or pleas to the Imperial military for aid, which could take weeks, or even months to arrive, if at all. In addition, there was the Imperial government’s insistence on favouring corporations based in Sol or its core systems, which obviously did not sit well with corporations based in the frontier, which had become very powerful during the initial colonisation of the outer worlds (who were also straining against the moratorium). Lastly, there was the fact that while most major colonies had instantaneous FTL communications via very large and expensive ansible facilities, the comm channels were all-but monopolised by the Imperial government (never mind that the ansibles themselves were funded and built at the Empire’s expense), mostly to micromanage the various Planetary Assemblies, which had nominal power, but whose authority could be overridden by any member of the Empress’ court.
On top of that, there are already been minor rebellions and civil unrest. Generally, the Imperial response has been demanding that the “traitors” (who are often not even aware that they’ve been labeled such) to surrender, publicly executing the ones who do surrender, and saturation-bombing the areas where any suspected rebel holdouts are hiding.
Needless to say, this has not made them very popular.
Nocturnal_Stillness asks:
Will there be a chance to sacrifice one of your squad to take down a particularly tough foe? For example shooting through them to lower the chances the enemy can dodge?
A:
Yes, and unless you can convince the others that it was necessary, the survivors *will* call you out on it afterwards.
WulfyK asks:
How old will the [player character] be?
A:
The player character will start the game at an indeterminate age, but hints in the text imply that the player character is somewhere in his or her late 20s.
Ramidel asks:
You mean that we aren’t random teenagers who just fall into the cockpit and proceed to become the best pilot in the history of war?
Heresy.
A:
That was actually something I took a look at when I started writing Mecha Ace: I came to the conclusion that with a teenaged protagonist in this sort of setting, the player’s agency would either be heavily curtailed, or the setting would have to bend over backwards to accommodate things that a fifteen year old kid couldn’t get away with. In short, it’d be a story about growing up, and that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in: watching someone else grow up through the traumatic stresses of the battlefield can be a rewarding experience, playing through that process would cut off a lot of options.
That being said, there are characters in those same series who do have more unrestricted freedom to act, and often drive the plot by acting more than reacting, ones with a lot more power and responsibility over the lives of their fellow pilots than the teenage protagonist does. In short, I came to the conclusion that while it’s fun to watch Amuro, it’d be more fun to play Char, so to speak.
Mecha Ace releases the day after tomorrow.
As Mecha Ace rushes courageously towards its release on the 13th, I’d like to take a second to update you on one of my other projects.
Rocket Corps (formerly Rocket Age, but unfortunately, we found out that name was taken) is a character-centered board game with card-based gameplay in a setting best described as 50s space opera, altered for modern sensibilities. Working together as the crew of one of Earth’s first starships, two to four players must face unexplored sectors and mysterious alien threats as members of the eponymous Rocket Corps.
I’ve been part of the development team as lead writer for nearly a year now, and we all feel that the project is starting to come together into something worth showing to the world.
For more info, take a look at Turtle Ship Games’ latest post, complete with some art of one of Rocket Corps’ characters, Captain Jadwiga Zielinska, by one of our artists, the ridiculously talented Eva Toker.
Paul Wang 