Final name pending; suggestions welcome!
The design is essentially a minimal version of ‘heroes of m&m meets majesty’.
Basic premise:
You are the ‘Warden’ of a brand new settlement. That makes you the task-master for a growing team of explorers whose job it is to survey the land for resources, impending dangers and other nomads/settlers with varying intentions, good or bad.
Your little town will gradually be built up with the resources you gather, one building at a time. New people isn’t something you can generate out of thin air; they need to either arrive or be found.
An unspoken goal of the game is to live in harmony with the surrounding ecosystem; disturbing the environment with harmful & extractive practices will trigger a response.
Example: https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Tarrey_Town
As far as the AC-like city building is concerned, that’s basically what I’m going for. I don’t really care so much about where I’m putting a house and how it’ll look. What’s exciting for me is seeing a town get built up from nothing.
I have been wanting to make an open version of Animal Crossing or something akin to Stardew Valley for quite some time, but I was missing the right type of twist for the city builder genre to appeal to me.
Throwing the ‘autonomous hero’ mechanic from Majesty on top feels like it may just be the piece I was missing. Same leisurely experience without the monotonous grind of AC/SV. Clearly that’s an appealing way to chill for many people, but to me personally any game with “chores” has never felt right.
The PoC will basically be a fake Majesty simulation, with some units moving randomly around. https://youtu.be/Y5o1M4T1ZNM
Will use Shotcaller assets for prototyping: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785221806214479872/805108070069829683/Shotcaller.zip https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/903031114132766761/930526406893510717/Viking.zip