Starting the journey

Why develop a game

I always liked to play games like Chess, Checkers, Tactics Ogre, Dofus, and Into the Breach. I even became a software developer due to my desire to build games like these. So, I’ve decided to go full indie… Well, that is the desire, but to be realistic, I will only do that if I make ends meet with my games.

I have not published anything since I developed Flash games before college. So, to get the machine running, the objective is clear… Publish a game!

My success criteria are:

1. I have fun developing the game
2. I publish the game
3. I sell 100 copies

That is it!

Harmonic Clash

The main idea that will make the game stand out is that each player simultaneously takes turns. That is a twist in the genre that I don’t see much (maybe for good reasons…)

I have been playing Into the Breach lately, so I got a lot of inspiration from it. I want to make units have low health, damage, and movement. Base health of 3 and 3 tiles of movement.

Each round of the game is subdivided into 3 turns; each turn, you can select one of your 3 units to act. The catch is that your turn 1 unit’s action will happen simultaneously with your adversary’s turn 1 unit. All sorts of complexity arise from this mechanic, what happens if two units try to move into the same tile, what if one attacks and their target moves, etc.

My vision is that the game ends up being the fun you have when solving a chess puzzle; you could have won every battle only if you had made the right choices and predictions.

By the way, predicting your adversary’s actions and their order will be critical.

Plans

As stated before, the main goal is to finish the project and not to make a “hit game”. I will not spend years on this project; I would rather finish it by the end of the first half of this year.

To keep myself rooted in a plan, I have drafted a Game Design Document for the game and will code just the bare minimum I need to play it as if it were a board game with friends. In fact, I have already had the first playtest and will keep doing it until I find the fun in the concept. (Or pivot the game altogether if I don’t think the current ideas are worth the time)

So, why the hell am I writing about all this? Marketing the game is one of the most significant difficulties for Game Developers with a programming background. So here I am, writing about it as my first step into marketing the game.

See you on the next devlog.