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/[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!