Project Reliquary introduction

This isn't the first game i've attempted to develop, but its by far the most ambitious so I have decided to use this blog to try and keep me on track.

This project is starting out with the code-name Reliquary, it is suitable considering this game at its core will be an adventure style dungeon crawl.

WHY?

I decided to start fleshing out some of my ideas into an adventure game after being frustrated too many times with similar games that didn't seem to have what I was looking for. Either the game would be too random and it felt like a glorified game of "war", the game would be overly complex to the point of zero immersion, or it simply wasn't fun for everyone to play. Usually it was a couple of these issues.

I really want to play an adventure game where I start with a regular character and build him over time (not too long, i'm thinking 1.5-2 hours), where there is a minor amount of randomness but the overall winner will find themselves in their position mostly due to skillful game play. After continuing to find games, try them, and be disappointed I figured I might as well see if I can do better. I'm already finding out why this genre is so hard...

BRASS TACKS

So what are the over riding themes I require and what are the pitfalls I am attempting to avoid?

• Skill based success with minor randomness to keep things fresh and not 100% predictable
• Have a real sense of improvement of one's character over the game, and have that progression be guided by the player.
• Minimal item usage, and minimal "special rules" for various items. I want the book keeping in this game to be minimal. I don't want a character who is about to win to be so glutted with weapons, armor, spells, and abilities that it takes 30 seconds before every battle just to figure out how much attack damage they do.
• Reasonable play time of 1.5 - 2 hours.
• Keep everyone in the game, and those who lose still have a good time. I am essentially trying to avoid the biggest problem I see with Descent, where when the overlord wins it is anticlimactic and everyone else usually feels more disappointed then satisfied in a good gaming experience.
• Keep player interaction high. I don't want this to be multiplayer solitaire where characters barely acknowledge each other as they plunder the game board.

WHERE I'M AT

So far I have some initial sketches and ideas about the character progression and dunegeon boards. I'll explain them here:

This entire project started in an instant while I was brain-wandering on a drive home from game night. I suddenly thought that it would be really cool to have a character progression matrix which could be customized by the player. The first thought was a tetris like layout, and a grid. Where they could try and fit various abilities and upgrades into this matrix but obviously not everything would all go together, so they would have to choose. I relatively quickly moved on to a different idea that is far from original. I've played my share of Final Fantasy games, and it occurred to me that the "skill maps" that FFX etc used could be quite easily used in a board gaming environment. It would of course be no where near as complex.

Below is a sketch I made with a dime (odd that it came out non-silver) and a very basic skill map. Ultimately I would like it to be one tier bigger, but for now I am trying to keep everything as simple as possible in order to get to alpha play testing.

The character will start out with just his skill map token (map token for short). They move the map token around by spending experience which they have gathered through slaying monsters and maybe other mechanisms. I imagine they will start with enough XP to move to one of the three first options before the game even begins. Each end point on the skill map will provide a very nice attribute to the character who got there, my initial idea is the three themes will be strenth, dexterity, and magic (SUPER creative and out of the box, i know!). The other middle skill spots will all offer some sort of benefit to the character depending on how far away from the center they are. This will be static improvements to things like attack power or defense that will be adjusted on the player sheet when attained. This way the player doesn't have to keep recalculating what their skill map is telling them.

The really cool part I am most excited about all this is the ability to drop stagnant tokens along the way. It would cost a good chunk of XP but the player can then leave a stagnant token in one of the regions while their map token can move elsewhere. This would allow them to keep their progress in one direction while then working towards a different progression area with the mobile starting map token. The player would have difficult decisions to make about whether they want to push to the final upgrade or just buy a stagnant token and start working elsewhere and get two benefits instead of one big one. I imagine this will be a balancing nightmare! oh well, its too cool not to try.

The other part that i've worked on so far is the main dungeon board. It is not very inspired at the moment. I am thinking about one large outer ring with reletively low level creatures to kill and things to accomplish with obviously low level rewards. The farther you delve down the concentric circles the harder things get but the better the rewards are. In the center maybe there will be a really big bad guy? I'm really not sure at the moment. One thing I know is that I don't want to seed the board like Prophecy or Tomb. I am thinking that certain spaces will activate certain types of events. Maybe one spot will be a "crypt" and every time you go there a random crypt like monster (mummy, skeleton, ghost, etc) will be drawn from a stack for you to defeat.

The last thing I have put some thought towards is the player interaction. I want everyone to be participating at all times, not dozing off while other people are taking their turns. However I don't like the idea of player vs player combat since this usually helps a runaway leader more then it hurts them. My current idea is that everyone will have access to a kind of card which they will keep in their hand. Every card will be dual-purposed, with one beneficial effect for the current player and one detrimental effect to an opponent (they can only use it for one or the other). Each will have a cost in XP (i want there to be only one resource for the whole game) and maybe even have some discounts if the detrimental effect is targeting someone who is the "strongest", however i might define that.

HOW DOES IT END?

I have no solid ideas at the moment. I am wary to go the "Victory Points" route, so it might be an "acquire X number of Y to end the game total, the one with the most wins". Time will tell.

Let me know if you have any comments, this is still very early on in the Dev process but all criticism is appreciated :)