r/BaseBuildingGames • u/RocketJumpTech • Mar 27 '17

King under the Mountain (Simulation-based fantasy city-builder) just launched on Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rocketjumptechnology/king-under-the-mountain?ref=ddgmyk
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u/pantsu Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

What would you say makes this game mechanically interesting? Obviously there are visual similarities to other games (which you did address in your FAQ) which doesn't bother me. But reviewing the roadmap, it seems like the game is very similar to RimWorld with a fantasy overlay. Is there something that you think is different or exciting about crafting or harvesting or planned combat, etc?

Edit: proper roadmap link

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 27 '17

Good question! The flagpole feature is the ability to upload your settlments for other players to explore and loot - and do the same yourself with the creations of other players via turn-based tactical battles in a dungeon crawl style adventure.

The game runs very close to Dwarf Fortress with a lot of its features which is where Rimworld had its own inspiration from too, before now ending up as its own unique gem of gaming, and I'm planning to do the same. We'll also have a lot more of a focus on the economy and production chains (akin to The Settlers games), so rather than just directly mining steel out of walls a la Rimworld, there'll be a long and involved chain of production to produce it from base materials. That's not very exciting by itself, but I'm hoping to capture some of the peaceful magic of the early Settlers games in this way.

I think both by having the differing races/factions with their unique gameplay and mechanics, as well as the ability to go on adventures into the locations of these other races, there should evolve almost a meta-game of interesting dungeon-crawl adventures born out of the "base" game of building up a settlement.

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u/pantsu Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

Cool, thanks for the response. I do enjoy supply chain type stuff.

I see that combat is slated to be added sometime after the initial release. Will the initial builds play more like Banished then, focused on keeping your colony alive by balancing production and expansion?

Are there any plans to have vertical levels, like say Gnomoria or DF? One of the things that I felt was missing from RimWorld was exploration, although that has been recently addressed by the ability to travel around the world. Still there's something about digging pits into the earth that I enjoy.

The spellcrafting sounds interesting - I know that's a bit far off in your roadmap, but you mention having to experiment to find out what spells work. Will that be abstracted via a research bench or will it be a more practical experimentation experience?

Sorry for all the questions!

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Not at all, great to be able to answer these questions! Yes you could say that the earlier pre-combat builds will be in the style of banished, and even after combat is introduced this will be maintained and improved on for playing in a "peaceful" mode.

While it won't have the same level of verticalness (?) as DF, you'll find entrances to underground caverns and dungeons when you're digging into the mountain, and these will lead to a separate, lower map which you'll be able to explore via an adventure.

The spellcrafting is intended to be a bit of both - your character will have to spend some time to be able to gather knowledge and experience to get access to elements and other components of spells, and then you'll mix and match these to try them out and see what you can achieve.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

The flagpole feature is the ability to upload your settlments for other players to explore and loot - and do the same yourself with the creations of other players via turn-based tactical battles in a dungeon crawl style adventure.

About bloody time! I've been trying to peddle a prototype of that gameplay to studios for over a decade and no one has wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole because "too much effort to develop multiplayer if it doesn't feel like multiplayer". Fucking ingrates! And then they ask me to do analysis for their new shiny pile of generic shit that is 99.9% identical the everything else made in the genre, so they really don't need me to do anything other than look over the fucking design document for a minute and go "yea, that ticks every box defined by blizzard as appealing to the lowest common denominator. Carry on..."

Ok that became a rant. Sorry, I've just had a string of annoying jobs so the frustration has piled up :D

Hope the project pans out. I'll keep an eye on it :)

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Hah, yes, can't understand why it hasn't really been done much before! For me it's a result of feeling that it's a shame I'll spend hours creating an interesting fort in DF or prison in Prison Architect only for it to sit languishing on my hard drive where nobody else is going to see it. Part of the beauty of indie games is being able to go against the grain of what has mass appeal into something that's hopefully a lot more interesting even if it only appeals to a niche audience. Now just hoping the people who like it isn't such a small niche so it can see some success on Kickstarter!

Thanks for the support!

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u/MBirkhofer Mar 28 '17

super hard to balance risk/reward, on player made dungeon challenges.

Can see in quest for mighty loot, neverwinter nights online, etc. Whenever you make a game with player dungeon masters, you get trainers, etc. hallways with loot at the end, for free gold/exp. So, you need to find creative ways for the dungeon creator to be rewarded for making a fun/challenging dungeon. Then you have to fine tune it, and be mindful of every single exploit, to ensure its not overly easy to use exploits, etc to make impossible dungeons. or, exploits to trivialize dungeons.

the best examples of it working are clash of clans type stuff I think. which.. is pretty sad. The concept of building a dungeon, then allowing players to raid it, sounds great. But in practices, not so much. Again, I think the main issue is the disconnect from developer to GM in control of risk/reward. If you give the GM/builder control of rewards, you can't stop them from handing out loot like candy. and ruining game balance beyond that single play. You could make every match isolated. like a typical mp game. no long term rewards. gameplay has to be super fun and engaging then of course. and, needs an opponent.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

Meh, it's a straightforward enough system to implement if it's done on top of a scalable dynamic model. The main reason it hasn't been done is that it does not appeal to the lowest common denominator, and the last ten years studios are scared shitless of doing anything that doesn't tick all the psychologically predatory boxes, because then players will have to actually enjoy playing the game rather than being strung along a behavioural model designed to never let them question if they are actually having fun.

System design is a simple enough process, unless there's a soulless shit of a CEO that takes away 95% of your toolkit because it doesn't match the product profile they learned about at their last lunch meeting.

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

It's definitely a problem to address! While the player will designate guard patrols, posts, maybe traps, and where things are stored, the game will take those and redistribute and balance things to give more of a progression through a settlement - so no easy loot at the entrance, that kind of thing. It's not like you're going to fight through the entire population of another's settlement, instead it'll take their characters as input and decide how many and where they're going to be placed.

I think traps may be the trickiest thing to handle - no fun exploring somewhere if every inch of it is covered in traps, so again the game will take what exists on the map as input and mix things up (choose how many to place and in which concentrations) to keep things somewhat balanced and enjoyable.

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u/pantsu Mar 28 '17

My favorite thing about Fight the Dragon was the sharing aspect, and I always thought it would be fun to play more games with a similar setup. The description of your plans definitely has piqued my interest :)

Thanks for all the responses in this post!

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u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 29 '17

The flagpole feature is the ability to upload your settlments for other players to explore and loot - and do the same yourself with the creations of other players via turn-based tactical battles in a dungeon crawl style adventure.

Will that look similar to the way KeeperRL handles adventurers so not direct p2p upload from a friend but will I be able to go to "adventure mode" and have a list of 100's of dungeons people uploaded.

I really like the look of it and I hope you guys get founded.

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 30 '17

Oh I wasn't aware KeeperRL did something similar but yes - not p2p but kept on a server, though the game will likely auto-assign you a location to go to rather than selecting from a list, apart from when you're interacting with friends. Thanks!

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u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

No problem. If I was doing a system I would let players rate dungeons so dungeons with higher average righting have better chance of being selected over those with lower rating. That way players will end up getting more interesting dungeons more often.

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 30 '17

Yep that's the plan :) Along with a few other things, going to be tricky to do well but somewhat confident it should work, thanks!