Hello there! Looks like, as usual with a game launch, we have a lot of new players to our games. Welcome! I think you'll find Arcen is a bit... unusual... when it comes to our development process, though, and this may come as a bit of a surprise.
Two Different Software Development Philosophies
I used to have a boss who liked to say something to the effect of "a piece of software stops changing only when it's dead." This was in the business software services arena, so that aphorism was pretty universally practiced in that industry. How many of you use Gmail? They're always fiddling with that thing and adding improvements and changes, right?
In the games industry, there's more of a "dump em" sort of model that most game developers use. A new Mario game comes out, and it is what it is. That game isn't going to see any patches, period. But... the game isn't "dead," either. It's only just come to life in fact, as far as the public is concerned, and it will live on in the annals of gaming history, with some players fondly revisiting it, forevermore. I still crack open Mario 2 from the original NES every year or so.
The Benefits of Constant Iteration
Needless to say, given my background, I am not overly thrilled with the "here this game is, bye" sort of model. I mean for games that I make, to clarify -- it doesn't bother me at all that Nintendo does it.
I think a lot of other indies feel the same way about the games that they make. Terraria and Minecraft see tons of updates all the time (well, Terraria used to), and Don't Starve and others update almost weekly as I understand it. How many updates has Team Fortress had again? And they aren't even indie. Etc.
The constant-iteration approach is really cool because it allows for a constant dialogue back and forth between players and the developers. Once players have their hands on a game, they inevitably have opinions. Things they would like to see improved, things they would like to see added just for the fun of it, and bugs they find that none of the testers found prior to release.
None of that is possible if the developer isn't listening to you, and doesn't keep doing updates.
The Downsides of Constant Iteration
I'm not going to pretend that it's all glory on the iteration side, of course. There's something to be said for having a perfectly-polished game that never changes. It's an icon, something immutable that players can enjoy and remember forever. I come back to Mario 2 all these years later, and it's the same. That's actually pretty cool.
But more than that, sometimes during an iteration, we make a misstep -- we change something that people freak out about (like the mountains/lakes thing in Skyward Collapse, and the bandit keeps against mythologicals thing in the same). Sometimes new bugs get added. Sometimes Herobrine keeps getting added and removed, over and over. ;)
What mitigates the downside of fixes like that is the developer actually listening to players when they freak out about a change or find a new bug. Players talk, the developer listens, the developer makes a change, and people are happy -- and the game has still evolved despite a temporary speed bump.
Update Frequency
I think the biggest thing that freaks out some people new to Arcen is just how frequently we update our games. Most workdays in the week, we put out at least one update to at least one of our games. It is extremely rare that an entire week goes by without an update, and that's generally just happening when we are all knee-deep in working on a new game behind closed doors. And even then, if we're in a private alpha with players, the updates are pretty much daily.
Why all the rushing around? Well, it's not really that we're rushing, honestly; we work every day of the week, same as any other game developer. However, thanks both to our own internal updaters for our games and to the update model in Steam, updates take very little time. Actually pushing out the code and assets for a new update takes me literally 5-8 minutes. I've timed it. It takes me longer to write up the post about the release than it does to actually push out the release.
In other words, the barrier to us actually doing releases at this frequency is basically nil. So just because we can, does that mean we should? I obviously think the answer is yes, since that's how we do things. My reasoning is that there are fewer risks of big incidents (huge bugs or players really hating something) if we do our updates frequently. And with this frequency, if players do find a new critical bug or really have a giant backlash against a change, we can have a fix out often within hours.
How many times have you been frustrated by a developer who knows about a bug, and takes 6+ months to issue a patch for it, if ever? Man, I start getting heartburn when it goes 24 hours, no joke. Maybe I have a tiny bit of OCD or something, but I just don't like things hanging out there like that if I know about them.
But What's With All The Fixes Right After Release?
Day One Patches are a Bad Thing, right? Well... I don't know about that.
AAA Developers
First off, let me talk about AAA developers (which we are not) just to set the stage here. Those guys have to get a build ready and "go gold" with it a month or months in advance of when you actually get the game. It has to go through the process of manufacturing and all that good stuff, right? That takes time, and once the discs are printed that's it for the 1.0 version.
But what are those same developers doing during the months between when they finish the gold master and when you first get your hands on it? Twiddling their thumbs? I don't think so. They're still working, testing, tweaking, etc. I'm sure the dev leads are often slapping their heads and going "oh my god, how did we miss this one with 200 testers looking at it?" But that sort of thing is inevitable in a game of sufficient complexity.
So what they do is dutifully fix, then test, all the things they find during this time period. They're doing a good job! They'd call back the discs and apply said fixes to them if they could, but they can't. So day one when you get your disc, there's a patch waiting for you, and the AAA dev team is feeling happy about that. You're feeling mad at them about releasing something buggy in the first place. I understand the sentiment, and I've felt that from the player end of things as well, but I don't think that's really justified.
Indie Developers
As with AAA developers, we never stop working and just sit around twiddling our thumbs. However, every indie developer has a massive disadvantage compared to their AAA counterparts: a tiny staff and no giant QA staff. Most new indie developers are going to do all their QA testing themselves, plus roping in friends and family as much as they can. An indie developer new to the market is going to have some launch bugs, and so long as they fix those pronto they should be cut some slack in my opinion.
But that's not talking about Arcen -- at this point we've been around for four years, and this last release is our sixth full game on Steam. So none of what I just said about indie developers who are new to the market applies to us. We have the benefit of an existing fanbase, and we use them to do QA testing for us in exchange for a free copy of the game. And we also keep using ourselves and friends and family, of course.
In the private alpha for Skyward Collapse, which lasted almost a month, we had around 35ish testers banging on it as frequently as they could. We had around 10ish testers who went just crazy above and beyond and were banging on it daily. Holy cow are we indebted to those folks.
By the time any of our games launch, we've fixed all materially-significant bugs in them, and the testers are happy. Same as with the AAA developers when they "go gold" for manufacturing. Yay celebrations!
What Happens Right After Launch
This is the same for both indies and AAA developers: suddenly there are massively more people looking at your game. Skyward has sold more than 15,000 copies in less than a week. A large AAA game might sell hundreds of thousands, or even a million copies in its first week.
How can thirty testers, or two hundred, or pick your number, ever compete with that many players in terms of finding bugs, exploits, and things that are confusing? So as soon as that many new eyeballs are on a game, there's this whirlwind of sudden feedback. This is great, and I love how engaged players get -- and how clever they are. The important thing is that whatever they find that is a problem is addressed quickly, because I think it's pretty impossible that they will find nothing unless the game has been through an insanely high-budget QA process that only a few companies (like Nintendo) can afford to do.
There's also the issues of complexity: Nintendo does not make games with procedural generation, for instance. They make closed game worlds where they control your experience minutely. For a game with any procedural component to it, there's always going to be new things that crop up unexpectedly. You put a bucket on the head of a guy, and then that lets you rob him blind. Oops, how did nobody find that? Well, the game was just that complex, and none of the testers happened to think of taking that specific action. Like I said, players are clever and will think of all sorts of things, particularly in a game with a high degree of complexity and randomization.
There's also the issue of platform: Nintendo makes their own hardware, and don't have to support a variety of operating systems and an even wider variety of hardware. Holy heck is the PC the wild west compared to any console. I don't think even Nintendo could avoid some patches if they released PC games.
Finally, there's the issue of player cleverness in certain genres. Specifically, the kinds of genres that Arcen serves. For a Mario game, this problem doesn't exist: you can only be so clever, because the levels are controlled very tightly and the abilities all have very specific functions. There is not more than one way to solve a Mario level unless the developers specifically designed it to have multiple ways to solve it. This is just fine, but this very different from the sort of games we make.
With any strategy game, really, or with any game where there is crafting or procedural loot or a vast world with lots of interlocking rules... players are going to figure out some funky stuff. Some of them on day one. Some players are going to find a crazy shotgun-reloading exploit, and then the normal game balance falls to pieces when they use it. Why wasn't it found? Complexity and open-endedness of the game world.
What's the next step when an exploit is found? For Arcen: trying to work out a fix with the community that stops the exploit without stepping on normal gameplay, and then implementing that as swiftly as possible. If you complain about how AAA developers don't fix the exploits, or just resort to banning people who use the exploits, then this should be a welcome thing. But you can't have it both ways: in the process of fixing the exploit, sometimes we're going to make a misstep and change things that pisses off other players. At that point we roll back that change and discuss it more with players.
Conclusion (TLDR)
The Arcen way of doing things is unusual, to be sure. Possibly singular in the sheer frequency of how we do updates (weekly is not uncommon with some other developers, but I don't know about daily). But the way that we do things lets us better connect with our player community, lets us be more proactive on changes and fixes, and lets players see the fruits of said changes and fixes faster.
I think it's a good system, but like everything it has its pros and cons. We're specifically making some changes to our process lately in order to try to minimize the cons: rather than immediately implementing a fix to an exploit that we think is a good solution, we're instead taking it to our forums and inviting feedback and discussion. Players are experts at poking holes in our ideas, and so we now wind up going through some lengthy discussion before we actually make a change.
What that leads to is slower fixes to exploits or certain tricky balance issues, but less "flailing" in the sense of "let's try this and see what the players think" and then "oops, revert." That process of flailing is something that is a byproduct of being prototypers by nature ("let's try this thing and see how it feels in action" works great in an alpha or beta -- it's a fast, effective, and visceral way to form opinions on a possible change -- but it's not a good idea in a released game).
Overall I think our new process of talking out substantial changes before implementing them is the way to go; and that doesn't impact our ability to make small tweaks and fixes and improvements on a daily or near-daily basis. I think that's a win for everyone, frankly.
Thanks for reading, and for your support of our company in general!
Arcen Games Forums
Arcen Games Idea Tracker (Mantis)
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Nick Trujillo Presents: Skyward Collapse Comic (Complete Collection)
The entire collection of Nick Trujillo's comic is here for your enjoyment! Skyward Collapse comes out later today on Steam, Green Man Gaming, GamersGate, and our own site.
About The Collaboration
I became aware of Nick Trujillo through the Strip Search reality show that Penny Arcade has been running. Nick was my personal favorite to win, so I was surprised to see him eliminated when he was. Bad days happen to everyone, though.
I have a huge love of comics in general, and so had been looking at the art that all the SS cartoonists had been doing on their websites. Hugely awesome stuff across the board. But when Nick was eliminated, I knew immediately I wanted to reach out and do a sort of PA Presents style of comic to help explain our newest game in a humorous fashion.
It's always a challenge to get our message across clearly and concisely, but I also felt like Nick could create a work that would be funny and interesting on its own merits. And boy did he!
About The Collaboration
I became aware of Nick Trujillo through the Strip Search reality show that Penny Arcade has been running. Nick was my personal favorite to win, so I was surprised to see him eliminated when he was. Bad days happen to everyone, though.
I have a huge love of comics in general, and so had been looking at the art that all the SS cartoonists had been doing on their websites. Hugely awesome stuff across the board. But when Nick was eliminated, I knew immediately I wanted to reach out and do a sort of PA Presents style of comic to help explain our newest game in a humorous fashion.
It's always a challenge to get our message across clearly and concisely, but I also felt like Nick could create a work that would be funny and interesting on its own merits. And boy did he!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Skyward Collapse Official Trailer
How do you balance -- and indeed encourage -- a war between factions without letting either side obliterate the other? How do you rule over gods, creatures, and men who refuse to obey you? How do you build a landscape of villages when bandits and mythology are conspiring to tear it down? Skyward Collapse places you into the role of The Creator, and frees you to tackle these problems your own way. Brought to you by the developer of the modern strategy classic AI War: Fleet Command, Arcen's second full strategy title is equally unique (but far easier to learn): a turn-based 4x strategic god-game.
Your task is to build and populate the floating continent of Luminith. You create -- but cannot control -- gods, creatures, and artifacts from both Greek and Norse mythology. The power you wield with these is immense: Heimdall's horn causes everyone outdoors to drop dead, for crying out loud. Your task is to keep both factions alive and fighting until The Master calls you home -- but this is harder than it sounds. Bandit Keeps pop up periodically, as do Woes such as floods, serial killers, guild strikes, and vegetarian uprisings. Every game plays out differently, and you'll need even the craziest of your powers in order to survive what lies in store for you.
Game Features
* A turn-based strategic god-game where you control neither faction, but instead strive to maintain the balance of power.
* Make towns and war as the boardgame-like floating continent continues to construct itself around you.
* Persuade your minions into doing what you want by controlling the circumstances of their (brief) lives.
* 16 gods, each with unique passive abilities and three active powers, help you further your goals as you pass into the Age of Monsters.
* Level up your player profile by winning games. Twelve unlockable buildings in all!
* Straightforward controls paired with an intuitive and helpful interface make this an easy title to pick up... but the strategy runs deep.
* Multiple difficulty levels let you play a very relaxed game up to a nail-bitingly difficult one. There's no one best way to win!
* Co-op multiplayer for up to 8 players.
More Stuff!
Official Game Page, With Screenshots
Free wallpaper
Lengthy Q&A
Nick Trujillo Presents (comic)
Available May 23rd on Steam, our site, and other distributors!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Nick Trujillo Presents: Skyward Collapse Comic Page 3
The third page of Nick Trujillo's comic is now up! Here are page one and page two if you missed them. Two more pages are in the works, which will be released periodically leading up to the release of Skyward Collapse on the 23rd -- that's this Thursday. Enjoy!
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Nick Trujillo Presents: Skyward Collapse Comic Page 2
The second page of Nick Trujillo's comic is now up! Here's page one if you missed it. Three more pages are in the works, which will be released periodically leading up to the release of Skyward Collapse on the 23rd. Enjoy!
Monday, May 13, 2013
Skyward Collapse OST Breakdown
The Skyward Collapse OST is very different from other soundtracks that I've composed for our games. To start with, this is the first soundtrack that I've co-composed with someone else. Ted Hardin is a good friend of mine, an incredibly talented guitarist, and a master of melody in my humble opinion. By that I mean that with even the most simple chord progression, he can wield some unbelievable themes and melodic lines. Collaborating on this album was a lot of fun, and also opened up my eyes to a genre of music that I haven't delved in too much. Because the game is focused around building, we wanted the music to emulate a very relaxed and calm environment. Much like the music of Sim City or even Sword & Sworcery, we wanted a laid back atmosphere for our players as they create their realms. In order to accomplish this, we decided to have a lot of the music based around the acoustic guitar (a fantastic suggestion from Mr. Arcen himself, Chris Park).
Along with that acoustic, relaxed feel, Ted and I also wanted to relate the music back to the basic themes of the game (it is a game soundtrack after all). So, as you can see from the titles, and from hearing the music, we brought in the Norse and Greek elements throughout the soundtrack and fused those themes with our relaxed, acoustic genre.
The Arrival
For the last few years, I've had an intern from the local high school Durham Academy. After the seniors at DA finish their AP Exams, they have a week or two to do an internship in a field that they're interested in pursuing. This year my intern was Austin Mack, who will be attending Northeastern University in Boston to get his to degree in music composition and technology. He also happens to be a talented violinist, so we recorded the main melody of this piece with him on the violin. (Last year my intern was Jared Anderson, who is now at Berklee College of Music getting a degree in music technology. He recorded the electric guitar on the A Valley Without Wind 2 OST).
The Arrival is supposed to be the player's introduction in to the world of the game. The feel for this intro was inspired by the amazing wallpaper art for the game created by Daniette "Blue" Wood. That same wallpaper is on the cover of the OST.
Stages Of The Day Tracks
The next four tracks are based around different times of the day in the game world. From morning until late at night, we wanted to compose pieces to paint a picture of these various time stages. These tracks introduce the main feel of the game, with the focus around the acoustic guitar, and our relaxed building-game music genre. Ted really outdoes himself with the guitar-play.
Rise And Shine - We start the piece with some bells to represent the disappearing of stars. The strings that kick in represent the rising sun and the start of the new day. The guitar adds the rhythm to the track and creates the feel of waking up to a sunny day overlooking rolling fields.
High Noon - The guitar does most of the magic in this piece, creating an almost "western" sound. The synth pad in the intro and throughout also adds depth and helps create that feel of the midday hot sun beaming down.
Afternoon Stroll - The laid back guitar in this creates that "afternoon stroll through the fields" feel, along with the bongos playing quietly in the background to add a little motion. The bells creeping in represent the sun going down and the reintroduction of the stars.
Late Night - This piece was our homage to midnight, quite possibly the most creative time of day for any musician. So, we found our tempo, hit record, and let the late night creative juices take over. Most of this was improvised on the spot, with a few things tweaked here and there and overdubbed. This is one of my favorite pieces of the whole soundtrack.
Norse Summer, Greek Winter
In any realm of composition, opposing themes are always a cool idea. In this case, since the game is the Norse vs. the Greeks, what better way to pay homage to that then to have opposing themes from both sides. The Norse Summer theme is basically all Ted on the guitar. We recorded the background guitar first, and then overdubbed him on the melody on top.
Along with that acoustic, relaxed feel, Ted and I also wanted to relate the music back to the basic themes of the game (it is a game soundtrack after all). So, as you can see from the titles, and from hearing the music, we brought in the Norse and Greek elements throughout the soundtrack and fused those themes with our relaxed, acoustic genre.
Track List:
1) Skyward Collapse Theme
2) The Arrival
3) Rise And Shine
4) High Noon
5) Afternoon Stroll
6) Late Night
7) Norse Summer
8) Greek Winter
9) The Architect
10) Running In The Sun
11) The Earth And The Sky
12) Follow Me Down
Skyward Collapse Theme
The main theme of the game is based around text from the "Hávamál", a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking age. The poems are said to be the words of Odin, presenting his people with advice for living, proper conduct, and wisdom. The particular passage that I chose is one of the more famous passages from the collection:
- Deyr fé, Cattle Die,
- deyja frændr, kinsmen die,
- deyr sjálfr et sama; you yourself die;
- ek veit einn, I know one thing
- at aldri deyr: which never dies:
- dómr um dauðan hvern. the fate of the honored dead.
The Arrival
For the last few years, I've had an intern from the local high school Durham Academy. After the seniors at DA finish their AP Exams, they have a week or two to do an internship in a field that they're interested in pursuing. This year my intern was Austin Mack, who will be attending Northeastern University in Boston to get his to degree in music composition and technology. He also happens to be a talented violinist, so we recorded the main melody of this piece with him on the violin. (Last year my intern was Jared Anderson, who is now at Berklee College of Music getting a degree in music technology. He recorded the electric guitar on the A Valley Without Wind 2 OST).
The Arrival is supposed to be the player's introduction in to the world of the game. The feel for this intro was inspired by the amazing wallpaper art for the game created by Daniette "Blue" Wood. That same wallpaper is on the cover of the OST.
Stages Of The Day Tracks
The next four tracks are based around different times of the day in the game world. From morning until late at night, we wanted to compose pieces to paint a picture of these various time stages. These tracks introduce the main feel of the game, with the focus around the acoustic guitar, and our relaxed building-game music genre. Ted really outdoes himself with the guitar-play.
Rise And Shine - We start the piece with some bells to represent the disappearing of stars. The strings that kick in represent the rising sun and the start of the new day. The guitar adds the rhythm to the track and creates the feel of waking up to a sunny day overlooking rolling fields.
High Noon - The guitar does most of the magic in this piece, creating an almost "western" sound. The synth pad in the intro and throughout also adds depth and helps create that feel of the midday hot sun beaming down.
Afternoon Stroll - The laid back guitar in this creates that "afternoon stroll through the fields" feel, along with the bongos playing quietly in the background to add a little motion. The bells creeping in represent the sun going down and the reintroduction of the stars.
Late Night - This piece was our homage to midnight, quite possibly the most creative time of day for any musician. So, we found our tempo, hit record, and let the late night creative juices take over. Most of this was improvised on the spot, with a few things tweaked here and there and overdubbed. This is one of my favorite pieces of the whole soundtrack.
Norse Summer, Greek Winter
In any realm of composition, opposing themes are always a cool idea. In this case, since the game is the Norse vs. the Greeks, what better way to pay homage to that then to have opposing themes from both sides. The Norse Summer theme is basically all Ted on the guitar. We recorded the background guitar first, and then overdubbed him on the melody on top.
The Greek Winter track is the complete opposite of the Norse Summer. As opposed to having a lot of motion in the backgrounds with a fluid melody, the piece is stagnant (almost cold sounding). We added the drone in the background to represent emptiness and almost a chill that passes slowly throughout. The guitar on top is based on Greek bouzouki music. Very free-form, devoid of tempo, and almost haunting in spirit.
The Architect
The Architect was my version of the city-building music you hear in games like "Sim City" (hence the name). Simply put, it's just feel good music that grooves and gets you excited about creating your realm. It's very happy in nature and a good addition to a laid back soundtrack.
Motion Tracks
The last three tracks were all composed based around the idea of motion.
Running In the Sun - Starts with a fun, in-your-face percussion, almost like the ticking of an old clock. Ted's rhythm guitar really gets the idea of motion going, and then the introduction of a moving percussion helps solidify it. This track was a lot of fun to put together!
The Earth And The Sky - While the earth is our rock, it is in constant motion. The way it moves with the sky was a really cool notion to play with. So for this piece, the interweaving of the background guitar with the melody represents this idea of the earth constantly moving, counter to the motion of the stars, the sun, the moon, the clouds, and sky.
Follow Me Down - For this piece, we thought about motion in terms of gravitational pull, but on a more human level. The earth's gravity pulls us down, but people also gravitate towards each other. We tried to represent that by having the guitar being the "instigator" in the music, and having the piano counter its melodies. This track is probably my favorite as Ted and I really got to play around with the push and pull of the music. Much like how people pull each other in, music can ebb and flow in a similar fashion.
Be sure to check out the soundtrack on BandCamp, or pick up a copy of the game to get the music in real time. As always, thank you for your continued support!
Pablo Vega
Composer & Lead Sound Designer, Arcen Games
Friday, May 10, 2013
Skyward Collapse Teaser Mini-Trailer
How do you balance a war between towns without letting either side obliterate the other? How do you rule over gods, creatures, and men who refuse to obey you? How do you build a thriving landscape of villages against the threat of bandits and mythological powers? Skyward Collapse places you into the role of The Creator, and frees you to tackle these problems your own way. Brought to you by the developer of the modern strategy classic AI War: Fleet Command, Arcen's second full strategy title is equally unique (but far easier to learn): a turn-based 4x strategic god-game.
Your task is to build and populate the floating continent of Luminith. You can create -- but not control -- gods, creatures, and artifacts from both Greek and Norse mythology. The power you wield with these is immense. (As one example, Heimdall's horn causes everyone standing outside to drop dead.) Your task is to keep both factions alive until The Master calls you home -- but this is harder than it sounds. Bandits, along with periodic Woes add to the variety of challenges that you'll face in any given game. Every game plays out completely differently, and you'll need even the craziest of your powers in order to survive what lies in store for you.
Game Features
* A turn-based strategic god-game where you control neither faction, but instead strive to maintain the balance of power.
* Make towns, trade, diplomacy, and war as the boardgame-like floating continent continues to construct itself around you.
* Persuade your minions into doing what you want through incentives as well as controlling what buildings and resources they have access to.
* 16 gods, each with unique passive abilities and three active powers, help you further your goals as you pass into the Age of Monsters.
* Level up your player profile by winning games. Twelve related unlockable buildings in all!
* Straightforward controls paired with an intuitive and helpful interface make this an easy title to pick up... but the strategy runs deep.
* Multiple difficulty tiers let you play a very relaxed game up to a nail-bitingly difficult one. There's no one best way to win!
* Co-op multiplayer planned for 1.0 (but not available from the start of beta).
More Stuff!
Original teaser
Free wallpaper
Lengthy Q&A
Nick Trujillo Presents (comic)
Launches on Steam on May 23rd!
Monday, May 6, 2013
Nick Trujillo Presents: Skyward Collapse Comic Page 1
I became aware of Nick Trujillo through the Strip Search reality show that Penny Arcade has been running. Nick was my personal favorite to win, so I was surprised to see him eliminated when he was. Bad days happen to everyone, though.
I have a huge love of comics in general, and so had been looking at the art that all the SS cartoonists had been doing on their websites. Hugely awesome stuff across the board. But when Nick was eliminated, I knew immediately I wanted to reach out and do a sort of PA Presents style of comic to help explain our newest game in a humorous fashion. It's always a challenge to get our message across clearly and concisely, but I also felt like Nick could create a work that would be funny and interesting on its own merits.
So here we are! This is the first of five pages, which will be released periodically leading up to the release of Skyward Collapse later this month. Enjoy!
I have a huge love of comics in general, and so had been looking at the art that all the SS cartoonists had been doing on their websites. Hugely awesome stuff across the board. But when Nick was eliminated, I knew immediately I wanted to reach out and do a sort of PA Presents style of comic to help explain our newest game in a humorous fashion. It's always a challenge to get our message across clearly and concisely, but I also felt like Nick could create a work that would be funny and interesting on its own merits.
So here we are! This is the first of five pages, which will be released periodically leading up to the release of Skyward Collapse later this month. Enjoy!
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Q&A For Skyward Collapse (Plus New Screenshots!)
Even with a recent detailed interview that we did about our upcoming game Skyward Collapse, there have been a lot of questions about the game from our players in the forums. Rather than make you hunt through forum threads for the answers we've provided, we've collected them here!
Note: these are all taken out of context, and were originally comments where we are soliciting criticism of our marketing copy. None of these questions were asked in an antagonistic spirit.
Q: You've mentioned "Villages," which sounds kind of tiny and small scale, like I'm giving Bob the farmer a pitchfork to go stab Cletus on his donkey.
Well... this is a good point in some ways, but in other ways you've about got the right of it. Maybe "towns" instead of villages would give a better impression. This is not an all-out war on the scale of something like AI War, where there are vast armies going around. You are training professional military units, it's true, along with mythological creatures that do great harm. And it's also true that there are bandits that pop out to get you, etc. That said, this isn't army-on-army battle. It's about individual units running around and doing stuff for the short while that they survive, generally. ;)
In other words, the combat is consistent and potentially intense, but the scale of the units never gets too huge (that would also get tedious). In some respects that makes this a bit like a tactics game, except you can't control the tactics and you're using strategy to make the tactics play out (most likely) how you want. But I've drifted off point: what I originally was trying to say that the combat tends to stay small-scale because guys don't live very long. They're all bloodthirsty, and you can't tell them not to fight, so only one of two things are going to happen: a) they are going to go ravage the other side's towns while you do nothing; b) you're going to help the other side raise a counter-force and thus that first bloodthirsty dude is going to die. And back and forth from there.
Anyhow, there's also a distinct town-on-town flavor here. You can build multiple towns per faction (and in longer games, will need to), and each town pretty much just wars (or tries for diplomacy) with its nearest neighbor. If one town falls then it flips allegiances, and the balance of power swings pretty heavily. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you're going to wield your god powers. At any rate, it makes the town-on-town aspect pretty important.
Q: You've mentioned "artifacts" a few times, but what really are those?
1. Mythological Tokens (Global Effect): These are kind of like "global enchantments" in MTG. Basically, you place one of these for a faction (at a hefty specialized resource cost), and then something happens to all your dudes (or all the enemy dudes, or all buildings of a certain sort, or whatever) for X number of turns. Typically something substantial changes for 3-5 turns.
2. Mythological Tokens (Unit Pickups): These are kind of like "enchant creatures" in MTG. You place one of these for a faction (again at a hefty specialized resource cost)... and then various units vie for it. Typically the first 5 units of either side (or bandits) to reach it will get whatever the bonus is. Some of them are limited to only ranged units or only mythological creatures or whatever, so everyone else ignores it. But these things confer a permanent status effect of some sort onto the units that pick them up, making them more powerful in some unique way.
3. Ruins (Unit Pickups): Sometimes you can control these, a lot of times (depending on the map type) they just pop up themselves. These work basically like mythological tokens in that they give status bonuses to the first 5 dudes to reach them. Anybody but a god can go visit these, and will, of their own accord. There's a set list of more generic bonuses here, rather than the faction-specific stuff from the mythological tokens. But these upgrades can still swing the normal balance of power around in a moderate fashion for a short while.
Thus far, the first three things we've talked about are all "moderate effects" for the most part. These have a sizable effect on the game, but it's not nuclear-warhead levels of drastic.
4. God Tokens: Each god has 3 of these, so there are 48 of them in all. There are a very small number of duplicates between gods (maybe 6-8 out of 48, I've not counted it up), but the gods themselves are all unique. These god tokens range from "very serious" in consequences to "cataclysmic." Holy moly are these OP. That's not exploitable, that's actually a problem for you since you're trying to maintain balance. But if you want to really do well, you need to use these things... and then figure out how to recover from what you just did to yourself. ;) The mechanic is that the god related to the token immediately seeks it out once you place it, and then when they reach it the effect immediately happens.
A few example god tokens:
Mjolnir (Thor): When he reaches Mjolnir, he immediately destroys the entire nearest enemy town, including the town center. This token cannot be placed on a building.
Reginnaglar (Njord): All allied buildings that currently exist get a permanent 100% bonus to their health based on their base health.
Skadi's Skis (Skadi): All allied units currently on the board gain the power to cross mountains at no movement penalty.
Gjallarhorn (Heimdall): All non-god units on the map, allied, enemy, and bandit -- all get killed at once, and his faction gets the destruction points for all of them. (This is the horn he blows at the start of the end of the world, in mythology).
Bow (Apollo): All allied archery range units on the board at the time become invulnerable for 10 turns. (Um... ow. Archery units are already really intense as it is, since they can attack from range without taking damage).
Necklace of Harmonia (Athena): Every unit on her faction is killed, however your resources are increased by 4x the number of resources required to create each unit.
Serpent (Ares): All bandits on the board join your faction.
And so on and so forth. So when it comes to "artifacts," I was referring to these various kinds of tokens. These aren't things that just come out of the woodwork to mess with you (ruins aside, and those don't have an enormous impact most of the time). They are things that you willingly, intentionally, do to yourself. "Bring me the whipping switch, boy." In order to to win, these are things you have to inflict on yourself. And then once you've inflicted one thing on yourself, that kind of sets of a chain reaction of things you have to do in order to continuously try to maintain that balance of power.
Round 1 of the game is comparably tame because you don't have any gods or god tokens yet. It's all positioning and setting up your towns, and other moderate effects like the mythological creatures and mythological tokens. You can rack up a lot of success there, and it's an important part of the game, but you're not likely to completely blow your leg off by accident in that round. Once the gods come out... watch out.
Q: I get the impression that a town is a single-tiled object that contained a list of building, and units will spawn from these building. Do they instead sprawl and visibly grow as you develop then?
Yeah, that's a good point -- our screenshots thus far have not shown that, or even the units, for that matter! Will have to rectify that soon. At any rate, town centers are a single tile, and then there are two rings of town buildings possible around them (for a total of 24 buildings that can be ringed around a single TC). We started out with just one ring, aiming for smaller (more specialized) towns, but with just 8 slots for buildings it's impossible to fit everything in. Towns need a variety of buildings to stay healthy and not succumb to bandits or the other faction.
All of the raw-resource producers (as opposed to "finished goods" producers) are also located in town. The raw resources generated by these can be used in any town, but the finished goods require a producer in a specific town for when it comes to military units that are auto-produced there, though. So your store of pigs and sheep from outlying pig farms is universal, but your supply of bacon or mutton at a single town depends on the presence of a butcher. Same with the need for fletchers, carpenters, stone masons, and so on and so forth. As you unlock further things, you get into stuff like wells and breweries.
Q: It's clear that there is no doctrine of total-war intrinsic to the people, but they fight and many of the example artifacts boost that rather than work on towns themselves. There also does not seem to be an over-arching empire with each town doing their own thing with every other town (i.e. not killing their allies).
Right. It's a collection of independent towns. There's no organization of the units at all, they all pursue their own independent agendas. The agendas are fairly predictable (except when things get complicated), so you can guide your folks by guiding the circumstances. That's a big part of how you "trick" your guys to doing what you want: give them few options in a given circumstance, or put them into a situation where you can predict their reactions with some fairly high degree of accuracy.
Q: How many god tokens are there versus mythological tokens?
Overall there are 64 tokens, and 48 of them come from the gods. 8 mythological tokens are available to each faction throughout each game, and then a further 3 god tokens are available to each faction per each god they choose (so by round 3, if both your gods are still living at a given faction, you've got 14 tokens total available to you). So it depends on how you look at it: in the course of a given game, the larger number of tokens are actually the mythological ones. But overall the god tokens vastly outnumber the mythological ones.
Q: Whenever I'm describing AI War to people, the part I always talk about is the attack on the AI Home Fortress: my fleet of thousands upon thousands of ships, firing everything they've got at this massive, impenetrable shield while the AI's gigantic guns hammer back. Dozens or hundreds of ships dying with every blast of the fortress's cannons. That, for me, is the defining moment of that game: the experience it offers that no other game does. Is there a similar defining moment for Skyward Collapse, and if so, what is it?
It's hard to say, honestly. Even with AI War, it's hard to say to some extent -- that's the defining moment for you when it comes to AI War, but to me that's just kind of the last formality. It's not that victory at the end of a long game is a formality, as you know (unlike other RTS games), but what I mean is that it's just not that exciting for me. What I love most in AI War is split between the early and middle game: a) I really love the expansion into nearby planets, and the sense of that "gold rush" to set up an early empire based on what I find before the AI can really react; and b) I absolutely love the back-and-forth in the middle of the game, when I am overreaching myself a bit and the AI and I are trading control (militarily speaking) of a central planet or two while I look for further targets to jump off to.
In other words, I think that the defining aspect of the AI War experience is that it makes you feel like an awesome space commander, based on what most people have said and how I myself feel. But what evokes that feeling most varies from person to person. I think that some people get that feeling most just from the mere fact of playing 10/10 difficulty games and being in a constant struggle with the AI. So in other words, I think that the defining feature is more of an emotion, more of an abstract feeling, rather than a specific event -- when you're talking about general people, not a specific individual.
Speaking of Skyward itself... I think that the emotion (to me) boils down to a few things:
1. Building a really pretty and satisfyingly functional landscape.
2. Having the godlike power to really smash up anything I feel like. If bandits are really giving me problems, I have some pretty huge things I can use against them if I've played it smart up until that point. In other words, really feeling somewhat all-powerful despite the challenges and constraints that are put on you.
3. Figuring out ways to kick myself in the teeth as hard as I can, and then get back up and use that as an actual advantage. Most of the god powers, in some senses, are a kick in the teeth. Josh has actually been a bit worried that people won't use the more powerful ones, some of which I detailed above. Those things are devastating to whatever you were doing. But the thing is, if you want to win and win well, there's so much cleverness you can exercise with those god powers. Which gods you choose matters, and which god powers you activate when matters, and how you set up your towns prior, during, and after that matters. You can do all sorts of (for lack of a better term) combos with those pieces, to get desired effects. To me this sort of thing is fun, because I'm setting the bar higher and higher for myself, and then struggling to reach it. The difficulty levels set minimum bars, and those bars can be insanely high, but there's also a certain "what awesomeness can I pull off today" aspect to the game, which gets expressed as a high score. Normally I'm not the sort to care about scores, but I think it's more interesting here.
4. Speaking of emotions, this game is mostly pretty chill. Like Sim City or Pharaoh or Civilization, I find all those games pretty relaxed. They are turn-based, the music isn't trying to freak you out, and the pace and scale is such that you can understand things from the starting small scale and then all along as the scale grows. It's really different from AI War where it's hugely intimidating from the start, both in terms of complexity (as a new player) and in terms of the scenario (in terms of your odds of winning even if you are extremely experienced). That is in no way saying that Skyward is an easy game (heck, SimCity and Civilization are both extremely difficult, or can be), but I think that being fairly chill is common to most simulation games and god games. Sure there are times when you are ripping your hair out or screaming at the screen, but it's different from being on a clock or being David vs Goliath. I don't think I expressed myself very well on this point, but hopefully that makes some semblance of sense.
Q: Just to clarify. Are you actually building the continent? Or are you just building on it?
Yes, you are building the continent itself. You can't place buildings on existing land, for instance. Instead, you place pieces of land that have buildings on them, making the continent bigger. You can also directly place land pieces yourself, or smite them and replace them (which sometimes you want or do not want a mountain range, or want to use some marshes to your advantage, or whatever).
Q: At the moment, I don't quite see how the replayability will be extended beyond the number of woes I choose to take and the units I can set loose. Does the creator controls almost every variable in the eponymous creation of the island? Where are the potential sources of randomization?
In terms of controlling every variable: no, you don't. Most of the land tiles that pop up are not by your choosing, and the bandits popping in are also not by your choosing. We also have some other stuff that we probably won't introduce before profiles reach a few levels in (to give players a bit of breathing room at the start). Josh and I have talked about a "suggestions" mechanic from The Master, but lately I've been thinking a "propositions" (not in that sense) mechanic from units themselves might be more interesting.
There's also randomization in a very butterfly-effect sort of fashion. In other words, just having a few tiles different, or a guy making a random roll slightly differently, means that the outcomes are different. For instance, I had a scenario that I was testing just last night to make sure something worked: Adamantine, a mythological token. It gives the one dude who picks it up 100x his normal health and attack -- holy heck, right!? But it also spawns 20 bandits at the end of that turn. In one outing of this, he killed all the bandits within a few turns and had 65% of his health remaining. In another 14/20 of the bandits were remaining after he died. The difference there was both in which bandits appeared, and where.
Anyhow, there are already a triumvirate of goals in any game as it stands:
1. Make it to the end without failing your goals or having one side obliterated.
2. Make the highest score possible... because, come on, it shows you're awesome. ;)
3. Survive all the crazy Woes the game throws at you. Between the bandit keeps and the Woes, you'll definitely have to be pretty reactionary in some respects each game. You only partly get to set the tempo.
In other words, for $5 the replay value is completely off the hook. I wouldn't say that it has AI War levels of replayability by any stretch, but neither did AI War when AI War first came out. If Skyward takes off, I hope to do with this what we've done with AI War, in terms of the combination of free DLC and paid DLC to keep it growing for a long time
Q: When I create the island, do I play a game of Carcassone with all the tiles in my hand?
It's funny you mention the randomization of what you can place in Carcassone-like fashion. That's exactly how this game started and was conceived. And oh MAN was it not fun.
Q: Or do I play whatever is available to me at the time so I can't easily do things like place village on hill -> make killzone with marsh -> stock archers -> village become invincible to melee units.
Bear in mind that everything costs resources, and you are pursuing multiple objectives at once. It's like trying to balance an equation, and constantly having a remainder. You put in minotaurs to save one village, then have to save the other side from the minotaurs. If you had no outside stressors, like the Woes and bandit keeps, then sure you could just set up a stalemate in various ways and everyone would be safe and happy. However, if you don't create military units then your cities crumble before bandits and Woes pretty fast. And your military units won't stay still if they have access to enemy towns or enemies in general: they will run off and attack. So that archery stronghold you mentioned would instead be a breeding ground for archers running around the map, not staying where you wanted them to. If those archers prove TOO effective, you're going to be struggling against yourself on the other side to fix what you just wrought.
On the other hand, if you block off your archers so that they can't reach the enemies directly but can just shoot at them, that actually would work... for a little while, until you die. ;) See, the military units won't actually move unless they have an enemy in their sight range or an enemy town center that they can path to. So if you make the enemy fortifications perfect, you'll get a backup blockage of guys in your "perfectly safe" town. That sounds fine, until you learn that more than one unit can't stand on a tile. And that military production facilities can't produce units while someone is standing on them. And then there's bandits and woes, which can strike in unpredictable places. It's not a good idea to leave any part of your empire just absolutely exposed.
The whole "do I do whatever I want" sort of argument is kind of like saying the same thing in any any strategy game. And I know the next argument in that: "but you're playing against a (human or AI) opponent there, rather than playing both sides." Which is true, but here you are playing against an equally challenging... let's call it "environmental situation." If you just doodle around, the game kills you.
Q: I can bring into being any god in every game?
Nope, the gods get randomly rolled for you. So depending on the gods you get dealt, and the Woes, and the other environmental things that happen, there's a lot of randomization there.
Q: I foresee complaints along the lines of "I buffed the Greek archers with invincibility, but they didn't go on the attack!" Free-will is a fickle thing.
Your archers will never just sit around if they have any route to enemies. If they are sitting around, it's your fault. The complaints would come in the form of "argh, you made small decision X instead of Y, and now my larger schemes need some adjusting." That's part of what Josh and I both were adamant the game needed somewhat predictable AI in the units. If you have archers, and they have somewhere to go, you can be 100% sure they will start heading out. Which exact place they go, or who they meet and how they fight along the way... that's a different matter. But since this plays out over turns, you can kind of see how things are developing and airdrop minotaurs or whatever where needed. ;)
The free will here isn't terribly fickle: it's where the rand() you're looking for comes from.
Q: The AI is sounding a lot like Dwarf Fortress'. The potential for carnage is unlimited!
DF is a lot more complex in that you can set rules for individual dwarves, whereas here the rules are built into the unit type from the get-go. But otherwise, yeah; I think there's some similarity there.
Note: these are all taken out of context, and were originally comments where we are soliciting criticism of our marketing copy. None of these questions were asked in an antagonistic spirit.
Q: You've mentioned "Villages," which sounds kind of tiny and small scale, like I'm giving Bob the farmer a pitchfork to go stab Cletus on his donkey.
Well... this is a good point in some ways, but in other ways you've about got the right of it. Maybe "towns" instead of villages would give a better impression. This is not an all-out war on the scale of something like AI War, where there are vast armies going around. You are training professional military units, it's true, along with mythological creatures that do great harm. And it's also true that there are bandits that pop out to get you, etc. That said, this isn't army-on-army battle. It's about individual units running around and doing stuff for the short while that they survive, generally. ;)
In other words, the combat is consistent and potentially intense, but the scale of the units never gets too huge (that would also get tedious). In some respects that makes this a bit like a tactics game, except you can't control the tactics and you're using strategy to make the tactics play out (most likely) how you want. But I've drifted off point: what I originally was trying to say that the combat tends to stay small-scale because guys don't live very long. They're all bloodthirsty, and you can't tell them not to fight, so only one of two things are going to happen: a) they are going to go ravage the other side's towns while you do nothing; b) you're going to help the other side raise a counter-force and thus that first bloodthirsty dude is going to die. And back and forth from there.
Anyhow, there's also a distinct town-on-town flavor here. You can build multiple towns per faction (and in longer games, will need to), and each town pretty much just wars (or tries for diplomacy) with its nearest neighbor. If one town falls then it flips allegiances, and the balance of power swings pretty heavily. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you're going to wield your god powers. At any rate, it makes the town-on-town aspect pretty important.
Q: You've mentioned "artifacts" a few times, but what really are those?
1. Mythological Tokens (Global Effect): These are kind of like "global enchantments" in MTG. Basically, you place one of these for a faction (at a hefty specialized resource cost), and then something happens to all your dudes (or all the enemy dudes, or all buildings of a certain sort, or whatever) for X number of turns. Typically something substantial changes for 3-5 turns.
2. Mythological Tokens (Unit Pickups): These are kind of like "enchant creatures" in MTG. You place one of these for a faction (again at a hefty specialized resource cost)... and then various units vie for it. Typically the first 5 units of either side (or bandits) to reach it will get whatever the bonus is. Some of them are limited to only ranged units or only mythological creatures or whatever, so everyone else ignores it. But these things confer a permanent status effect of some sort onto the units that pick them up, making them more powerful in some unique way.
3. Ruins (Unit Pickups): Sometimes you can control these, a lot of times (depending on the map type) they just pop up themselves. These work basically like mythological tokens in that they give status bonuses to the first 5 dudes to reach them. Anybody but a god can go visit these, and will, of their own accord. There's a set list of more generic bonuses here, rather than the faction-specific stuff from the mythological tokens. But these upgrades can still swing the normal balance of power around in a moderate fashion for a short while.
Thus far, the first three things we've talked about are all "moderate effects" for the most part. These have a sizable effect on the game, but it's not nuclear-warhead levels of drastic.
4. God Tokens: Each god has 3 of these, so there are 48 of them in all. There are a very small number of duplicates between gods (maybe 6-8 out of 48, I've not counted it up), but the gods themselves are all unique. These god tokens range from "very serious" in consequences to "cataclysmic." Holy moly are these OP. That's not exploitable, that's actually a problem for you since you're trying to maintain balance. But if you want to really do well, you need to use these things... and then figure out how to recover from what you just did to yourself. ;) The mechanic is that the god related to the token immediately seeks it out once you place it, and then when they reach it the effect immediately happens.
A few example god tokens:
Mjolnir (Thor): When he reaches Mjolnir, he immediately destroys the entire nearest enemy town, including the town center. This token cannot be placed on a building.
Reginnaglar (Njord): All allied buildings that currently exist get a permanent 100% bonus to their health based on their base health.
Skadi's Skis (Skadi): All allied units currently on the board gain the power to cross mountains at no movement penalty.
Gjallarhorn (Heimdall): All non-god units on the map, allied, enemy, and bandit -- all get killed at once, and his faction gets the destruction points for all of them. (This is the horn he blows at the start of the end of the world, in mythology).
Bow (Apollo): All allied archery range units on the board at the time become invulnerable for 10 turns. (Um... ow. Archery units are already really intense as it is, since they can attack from range without taking damage).
Necklace of Harmonia (Athena): Every unit on her faction is killed, however your resources are increased by 4x the number of resources required to create each unit.
Serpent (Ares): All bandits on the board join your faction.
And so on and so forth. So when it comes to "artifacts," I was referring to these various kinds of tokens. These aren't things that just come out of the woodwork to mess with you (ruins aside, and those don't have an enormous impact most of the time). They are things that you willingly, intentionally, do to yourself. "Bring me the whipping switch, boy." In order to to win, these are things you have to inflict on yourself. And then once you've inflicted one thing on yourself, that kind of sets of a chain reaction of things you have to do in order to continuously try to maintain that balance of power.
Round 1 of the game is comparably tame because you don't have any gods or god tokens yet. It's all positioning and setting up your towns, and other moderate effects like the mythological creatures and mythological tokens. You can rack up a lot of success there, and it's an important part of the game, but you're not likely to completely blow your leg off by accident in that round. Once the gods come out... watch out.
Q: I get the impression that a town is a single-tiled object that contained a list of building, and units will spawn from these building. Do they instead sprawl and visibly grow as you develop then?
Yeah, that's a good point -- our screenshots thus far have not shown that, or even the units, for that matter! Will have to rectify that soon. At any rate, town centers are a single tile, and then there are two rings of town buildings possible around them (for a total of 24 buildings that can be ringed around a single TC). We started out with just one ring, aiming for smaller (more specialized) towns, but with just 8 slots for buildings it's impossible to fit everything in. Towns need a variety of buildings to stay healthy and not succumb to bandits or the other faction.
All of the raw-resource producers (as opposed to "finished goods" producers) are also located in town. The raw resources generated by these can be used in any town, but the finished goods require a producer in a specific town for when it comes to military units that are auto-produced there, though. So your store of pigs and sheep from outlying pig farms is universal, but your supply of bacon or mutton at a single town depends on the presence of a butcher. Same with the need for fletchers, carpenters, stone masons, and so on and so forth. As you unlock further things, you get into stuff like wells and breweries.
Q: It's clear that there is no doctrine of total-war intrinsic to the people, but they fight and many of the example artifacts boost that rather than work on towns themselves. There also does not seem to be an over-arching empire with each town doing their own thing with every other town (i.e. not killing their allies).
Right. It's a collection of independent towns. There's no organization of the units at all, they all pursue their own independent agendas. The agendas are fairly predictable (except when things get complicated), so you can guide your folks by guiding the circumstances. That's a big part of how you "trick" your guys to doing what you want: give them few options in a given circumstance, or put them into a situation where you can predict their reactions with some fairly high degree of accuracy.
Q: How many god tokens are there versus mythological tokens?
Overall there are 64 tokens, and 48 of them come from the gods. 8 mythological tokens are available to each faction throughout each game, and then a further 3 god tokens are available to each faction per each god they choose (so by round 3, if both your gods are still living at a given faction, you've got 14 tokens total available to you). So it depends on how you look at it: in the course of a given game, the larger number of tokens are actually the mythological ones. But overall the god tokens vastly outnumber the mythological ones.
Q: Whenever I'm describing AI War to people, the part I always talk about is the attack on the AI Home Fortress: my fleet of thousands upon thousands of ships, firing everything they've got at this massive, impenetrable shield while the AI's gigantic guns hammer back. Dozens or hundreds of ships dying with every blast of the fortress's cannons. That, for me, is the defining moment of that game: the experience it offers that no other game does. Is there a similar defining moment for Skyward Collapse, and if so, what is it?
It's hard to say, honestly. Even with AI War, it's hard to say to some extent -- that's the defining moment for you when it comes to AI War, but to me that's just kind of the last formality. It's not that victory at the end of a long game is a formality, as you know (unlike other RTS games), but what I mean is that it's just not that exciting for me. What I love most in AI War is split between the early and middle game: a) I really love the expansion into nearby planets, and the sense of that "gold rush" to set up an early empire based on what I find before the AI can really react; and b) I absolutely love the back-and-forth in the middle of the game, when I am overreaching myself a bit and the AI and I are trading control (militarily speaking) of a central planet or two while I look for further targets to jump off to.
In other words, I think that the defining aspect of the AI War experience is that it makes you feel like an awesome space commander, based on what most people have said and how I myself feel. But what evokes that feeling most varies from person to person. I think that some people get that feeling most just from the mere fact of playing 10/10 difficulty games and being in a constant struggle with the AI. So in other words, I think that the defining feature is more of an emotion, more of an abstract feeling, rather than a specific event -- when you're talking about general people, not a specific individual.
Speaking of Skyward itself... I think that the emotion (to me) boils down to a few things:
1. Building a really pretty and satisfyingly functional landscape.
2. Having the godlike power to really smash up anything I feel like. If bandits are really giving me problems, I have some pretty huge things I can use against them if I've played it smart up until that point. In other words, really feeling somewhat all-powerful despite the challenges and constraints that are put on you.
3. Figuring out ways to kick myself in the teeth as hard as I can, and then get back up and use that as an actual advantage. Most of the god powers, in some senses, are a kick in the teeth. Josh has actually been a bit worried that people won't use the more powerful ones, some of which I detailed above. Those things are devastating to whatever you were doing. But the thing is, if you want to win and win well, there's so much cleverness you can exercise with those god powers. Which gods you choose matters, and which god powers you activate when matters, and how you set up your towns prior, during, and after that matters. You can do all sorts of (for lack of a better term) combos with those pieces, to get desired effects. To me this sort of thing is fun, because I'm setting the bar higher and higher for myself, and then struggling to reach it. The difficulty levels set minimum bars, and those bars can be insanely high, but there's also a certain "what awesomeness can I pull off today" aspect to the game, which gets expressed as a high score. Normally I'm not the sort to care about scores, but I think it's more interesting here.
4. Speaking of emotions, this game is mostly pretty chill. Like Sim City or Pharaoh or Civilization, I find all those games pretty relaxed. They are turn-based, the music isn't trying to freak you out, and the pace and scale is such that you can understand things from the starting small scale and then all along as the scale grows. It's really different from AI War where it's hugely intimidating from the start, both in terms of complexity (as a new player) and in terms of the scenario (in terms of your odds of winning even if you are extremely experienced). That is in no way saying that Skyward is an easy game (heck, SimCity and Civilization are both extremely difficult, or can be), but I think that being fairly chill is common to most simulation games and god games. Sure there are times when you are ripping your hair out or screaming at the screen, but it's different from being on a clock or being David vs Goliath. I don't think I expressed myself very well on this point, but hopefully that makes some semblance of sense.
Q: Just to clarify. Are you actually building the continent? Or are you just building on it?
Yes, you are building the continent itself. You can't place buildings on existing land, for instance. Instead, you place pieces of land that have buildings on them, making the continent bigger. You can also directly place land pieces yourself, or smite them and replace them (which sometimes you want or do not want a mountain range, or want to use some marshes to your advantage, or whatever).
Q: At the moment, I don't quite see how the replayability will be extended beyond the number of woes I choose to take and the units I can set loose. Does the creator controls almost every variable in the eponymous creation of the island? Where are the potential sources of randomization?
In terms of controlling every variable: no, you don't. Most of the land tiles that pop up are not by your choosing, and the bandits popping in are also not by your choosing. We also have some other stuff that we probably won't introduce before profiles reach a few levels in (to give players a bit of breathing room at the start). Josh and I have talked about a "suggestions" mechanic from The Master, but lately I've been thinking a "propositions" (not in that sense) mechanic from units themselves might be more interesting.
There's also randomization in a very butterfly-effect sort of fashion. In other words, just having a few tiles different, or a guy making a random roll slightly differently, means that the outcomes are different. For instance, I had a scenario that I was testing just last night to make sure something worked: Adamantine, a mythological token. It gives the one dude who picks it up 100x his normal health and attack -- holy heck, right!? But it also spawns 20 bandits at the end of that turn. In one outing of this, he killed all the bandits within a few turns and had 65% of his health remaining. In another 14/20 of the bandits were remaining after he died. The difference there was both in which bandits appeared, and where.
Anyhow, there are already a triumvirate of goals in any game as it stands:
1. Make it to the end without failing your goals or having one side obliterated.
2. Make the highest score possible... because, come on, it shows you're awesome. ;)
3. Survive all the crazy Woes the game throws at you. Between the bandit keeps and the Woes, you'll definitely have to be pretty reactionary in some respects each game. You only partly get to set the tempo.
In other words, for $5 the replay value is completely off the hook. I wouldn't say that it has AI War levels of replayability by any stretch, but neither did AI War when AI War first came out. If Skyward takes off, I hope to do with this what we've done with AI War, in terms of the combination of free DLC and paid DLC to keep it growing for a long time
Q: When I create the island, do I play a game of Carcassone with all the tiles in my hand?
It's funny you mention the randomization of what you can place in Carcassone-like fashion. That's exactly how this game started and was conceived. And oh MAN was it not fun.
Q: Or do I play whatever is available to me at the time so I can't easily do things like place village on hill -> make killzone with marsh -> stock archers -> village become invincible to melee units.
Bear in mind that everything costs resources, and you are pursuing multiple objectives at once. It's like trying to balance an equation, and constantly having a remainder. You put in minotaurs to save one village, then have to save the other side from the minotaurs. If you had no outside stressors, like the Woes and bandit keeps, then sure you could just set up a stalemate in various ways and everyone would be safe and happy. However, if you don't create military units then your cities crumble before bandits and Woes pretty fast. And your military units won't stay still if they have access to enemy towns or enemies in general: they will run off and attack. So that archery stronghold you mentioned would instead be a breeding ground for archers running around the map, not staying where you wanted them to. If those archers prove TOO effective, you're going to be struggling against yourself on the other side to fix what you just wrought.
On the other hand, if you block off your archers so that they can't reach the enemies directly but can just shoot at them, that actually would work... for a little while, until you die. ;) See, the military units won't actually move unless they have an enemy in their sight range or an enemy town center that they can path to. So if you make the enemy fortifications perfect, you'll get a backup blockage of guys in your "perfectly safe" town. That sounds fine, until you learn that more than one unit can't stand on a tile. And that military production facilities can't produce units while someone is standing on them. And then there's bandits and woes, which can strike in unpredictable places. It's not a good idea to leave any part of your empire just absolutely exposed.
The whole "do I do whatever I want" sort of argument is kind of like saying the same thing in any any strategy game. And I know the next argument in that: "but you're playing against a (human or AI) opponent there, rather than playing both sides." Which is true, but here you are playing against an equally challenging... let's call it "environmental situation." If you just doodle around, the game kills you.
Q: I can bring into being any god in every game?
Nope, the gods get randomly rolled for you. So depending on the gods you get dealt, and the Woes, and the other environmental things that happen, there's a lot of randomization there.
Q: I foresee complaints along the lines of "I buffed the Greek archers with invincibility, but they didn't go on the attack!" Free-will is a fickle thing.
Your archers will never just sit around if they have any route to enemies. If they are sitting around, it's your fault. The complaints would come in the form of "argh, you made small decision X instead of Y, and now my larger schemes need some adjusting." That's part of what Josh and I both were adamant the game needed somewhat predictable AI in the units. If you have archers, and they have somewhere to go, you can be 100% sure they will start heading out. Which exact place they go, or who they meet and how they fight along the way... that's a different matter. But since this plays out over turns, you can kind of see how things are developing and airdrop minotaurs or whatever where needed. ;)
The free will here isn't terribly fickle: it's where the rand() you're looking for comes from.
Q: The AI is sounding a lot like Dwarf Fortress'. The potential for carnage is unlimited!
DF is a lot more complex in that you can set rules for individual dwarves, whereas here the rules are built into the unit type from the get-go. But otherwise, yeah; I think there's some similarity there.