Current Projects: Orchold

Orchold is the placeholder name I'm using for my latest project, a turn based strategy where the run of the mill soldiers are a little more then just cannon fodder for the heroes. (But still not that much more).

The game is currently in the alpha test stage of the demo. If you want to help alpha test drop me an email.

Due to me, the developer getting hired, the coding behind the project has been put on hold for a while, but I still get people together to test the system through way of a paper prototype on a biweekly basis, and we've ironed out a lot of kinks in the ability system, troop lists, hero leveling system etc.

Follow the twitter feed #orchold

The 3 modes of play

In campaign mode the player takes control of a small group of heroes traveling though the lands of orcs, elves and undead to save the day. And maybe the next day too.

In world conquest mode, the player moves armies of nameless troops on to crush all opponents.

In scenario mode, the player fights battles with predetermined forces and events specific to each map.

Design decisions

No skill caps -> Skill caps always seemed artificial and limiting, instead I use diminishing returns on many skills.

Note: Ok, this is no longer completely true, as I do currently have "Caps" which are soft caps, you can raise the caps indefinitely forever as they're tied to your hero's effective level, which has no cap. I may test out removing the caps again later.

Give some love to those little guys -> I try to make every unit in the game interesting and unique, and even the worst troop should never have 0 chance to deal any damage to their opponent.

This is important and something that I'm trying to keep relevant even when heroes with no level limit are running around feeling powerful. This can be a difficult job especially for low-tier melee troops, especially with no "hard counters" but I have a number of ideas that help a horde of weak melee troops overcome one powerful enemy.

Heroes are heroes for a reason -> it is not my plan to have heroes able to overcome great odds because they're stronger or faster or heal more then their enemies, but rather because they have a variety of special skills that they can use to be more effective then a regular soldier with equivalent statistics.

Still there in the development, still relevant. Still something I'm striving for.

Map editors are great -> I would love to have a map editor so that players can create scenarios for their friends. Depending on how well this goes, I might decide to create world editors or campaign editors for the other modes as well.

What I want from you

Right now the game is in the early stages of development, and best for generating ideas of how things should work. I have played my share of turn based strategies and table top role playing games, but I still have questions about how things should be done to make them fun (and to a lesser extent "realistic"), not just for me, but for other people too. So I would love feedback and discussion on ideas presented here and elsewhere.

I will be posting new posts to discuss different ideas for the game, here's some links to them: Initiative Order - http://gamedesignproj.blogspot.ca/2013/06/initiative-order-options.html
Item tiers, Rising action and the luck formula - http://gamedesignproj.blogspot.ca/2013/06/item-tiers-rising-action-limit-break.html
Mounted Combat and Equipment Lists - http://gamedesignproj.blogspot.ca/2013/08/mounted-combat-and-equip-menu.html