Happy 2024 friends of the omins!

It's time to share my thought about the past year and talk about my main goals for this new year.


[h2]My goals for the 2024[/h2]

They are essentially two: publishing the first demo and finally launch the kickstarter campaign. These goals were planned for the last year, but I have decided to include more stuff to the game in order to give you a better idea of how is going to be.

I believe that having the demo to be tested by players and streamers will boost the visibility of the game. There are not so much stuff left to complete the demo: I'd like to improve some buildings, make another pass on the user interface, and finally prepare the first demo mission with the design of the demo map.

I'd like to have the demo ready by April 2024 and try to launch the kickstarter between May and June(depending on how fast the game gain visibility thanks to the demo).

As always, if you wish to check what I'm currently doing you can go at this link.


[h2]What I'm happy with and what I'm not[/h2]

Overall I am happy with the way the game is shaping up. In my opinion, it has the potential to embrace different game genres: from real-time strategy to sandbox, from god game to survival. Thanks to this flexibility, my idea is include different game modes and objectives: the classic deathmatch mode in which all enemy factions must be destroyed; a game mode in which the player must survive all the waves of monsters attacking his village; a game mode in which the player must lead all his omins from one point to another in an huge map full of dangers, and so on. The game mode I was thinking for the demo is the destruction of four magic seals scattered in the game map in order to open a portal that permits the omins to escape to the next world. Every seal is obviously protected by enemies and the player will be attacked during all his stay in this world.

On the other side, I'm not that happy with the time required by the development, I Think I underestimated it because this is my first game I make. I know this project is ambitious for a single person and I may need some collaborators once ended the kickstarter campaign. Also working with a publisher may help a lot for all kind of support they can provide to the development.


[h2]Thinking about some features[/h2]

Many things have been completed so far, but still many are left to do. Also there are some features that I need to better define before present them. For example the role of the Gardians (the huge beasts that help the omins in their journey). At the beginning, I was evaluating something similar to the creatures in the old Black & White games. But I started to think that this concept does not fit well in my project. That worked exceptionally in Black & White 1 when the creature plays a fundamental role to win each map. In Black & White 2 it already lost a lot of importance due to the introduction of armies and other mechanics (I was even forgetting the existence of the creature while playing). That's why I need to better think about the purpose of the Guardian in The Omins. This does not mean that the Gardians will be excluded by the game, but will be presented later.

On the other hand, I was thinking about the introduction of Heroes: omins with special abilities and equipping special weapons and armors. I'm evaluating if to make it definitively killable or if it can reborn after some time it has been killed.

[h2]What I've done in the last two months[/h2]

Here a list of the main stuff I added to the game during November and December 2023.

• An omin can either flee or surrender to enemies when too scared. After surrendered, omins will take some time to calm down and behave normally. But also other omins can talk and encourage them so that they calms down immediately.
  
• Some animals can be tamed and added to the anifarms of the faction. The taming has a success rate depending on the animal and the ability of the omin. However, some dangerous animals must be neutralized before trying to tame them.
  
• The tamer is a new type of job that can be assigned to omins. These are the only omins that can tame animals and they have a dedicated workers hut.
  
• New animals added: bears, goats, bighorns and deers. Moreover, sheep have been separated in female sheep, male sheep (ram) and young sheep (lamb). Now carnivorous animals will hunt omins or other animals for their meat. New animations have been added and others already existing (for example walking and running) have been improved.
  
• Reactions to dangers have been enhanced. Now omins and animals flee when they are in front of an enemy much stronger than them. This does not apply to soldiers that will take into the account their current health, the number of allies around them and difference in their combat level. The reaction of animals depends on their temper: aggressive, defensive, coward, selfish, prudent. I'm planning to add buttons so that the player can change the reaction to dangers in soldiers.
  
• Animals and omins now can freeze when repeatedly attacked with ice magic. When attacked with piercing and cutting weapons can start to bleed loosing energy every second for a short period of time. Later, other status effect will come, for example burns, shocks, paralysis, poison and so on.
  
• New objects have been added: new resources like pumpkins, eggplants, oranges, prinkly pears, dates, coconuts; new trees like pines and palms; new bushes and new types of plants like vines and cactus.
  
• I improved the aspect of the map and geographic elements like mountains, seas, lakes, oasis and beaches. Moreover, the map will have now also hills and depressions.
  
• Several bug fixes, improvements and changes under the hood.
  

Ufff!

All this month I worked on adding new features to the game and improve its visual. More precisely, I defined most of the jobs that can be performed by omins and the most important upgrades that can be applied to houses and workers huts. This was a big step because permitted to solve some lacks in the gameplay of the upcoming demo.

After that, I started to work on a more exciting and spectacular feature: special attacks!
You will see below a video showing fire mages casting firestorms and ice mages casting icestorms. More attacks are coming later. You can follow the progress on the Development board at the link below.

Development board


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[h3]Development[/h3]



Omins perform different types of jobs in order to collector resources, construct buildings and craft components for armors and weapons. Woodcutters are in charge of chopping wood; hunters kill animals in order to take their meat and skin; miners extract minerals and so on... Other jobs will be created in the future like the foresters, the herborist and the carrier.

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In order to recruit a new worker, the player needs to assign an omin to workers huts which can be upgraded to unlock new jobs. A gatherers hut can be upgraded to a farmers hut; a sticks collectors hut can be upgraded to a woodcutters hut. A craftsmen hut can be upgraded to either a component makers hut or to a builders hut and so on... Workers hut can be also improved to unlock new functionalities, for example the capability to define a different work area.

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[previewyoutube=smJnrtn2Qv8;full][/previewyoutube]

Soldiers can learn special attacks after levelling up and reaching a new rank. These attacks spend a lot of stamina and have a cooldown. The attacks that can be learned depend on the type of soldier. In the video accessible from the link below we can see fire mages casting firestorms and ice mages casting icestorms. New attacks are coming later, also for warriors and rangers.


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That's all folks! Please, support the project and share it with your friends and on social media

Finally, I'd like to thank all the people that have wishlisted the game. Don't hesitate to contact me on Discord to share your thoughts or ask questions about the project.

See you soon

Gunax

New monthly update for The Omins!

In these last days I'm working hard on the development of new features that at the beginning were not planned for the first official demo, but which finally are necessary to introduce new mechanics.

This change brings good and bad news. The good one is that the upcoming demo will have more features and will be more fun to play. The bad news is that its release date has been inevitably delayed. But I will try to do my best to release it as soon as possibile. Actually, I'm really excited at the idea to hear your thoughts about it

I am highly confident that the demo will help a lot to enlarge our community. That's why, I'm going to focus on it during the next weeks. You can follow the progress on the Development board at the link below.

Development board


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[h3]Development[/h3]



Rocks and minerals: rocks can now contain also copper, iron and gold. These new resources are not immediately visible but must be discovered by geologists.

Video - Rocks and minerals

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Houses improvements: Houses now can be improved to increase their confort, the robustness and allow the omins to perform new activities in it (mating, healing). They can also be converted to specific uses such as mating houses and healing houses. Later I will introduce new uses for them, for example prisons.

Video - Houses improvements

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Workers huts can be upgraded in order to enable new type of workers. A stone collector hut can now be improved either to stonecutters hut or to miners hut or to geologists hut. These upgrades enable the recruitment of stonecutters for the extraction of stones from rocks, geologists for the discovery of minerals and miners for their extraction.

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• New thoughts balloons so that the player can see what the omins are thinking.
  
• Building signs: reporting notifications about the building (for instance to notify that a stockpile is full of resources).
  
• Improved omins drawings and animations.
  
• Several bug fixes.
  

Hello dear friends of the omins!

The planned launch date of the Kickstarter is approaching but we are still far from the number of followers we need to grant its success. That's why in the last month I started to play a little with the ads campaigns in Facebook and Instagram. Maybe some of you have joined this page thanks to it :)

Here the video I used for it:

[previewyoutube=Sdb1YKDAl-Y;full][/previewyoutube]

At the same time I'm working hard to get the first official demo ready for October. Then I will contact some content creators to play the game and show it to the public.

The objective is to reach 1000+ followers on Kickstarter in order to set a funding goal of 35K. If this objective cannot be reached in October, the launch date of the Kickstarter may shift to November. I don't like the idea of postponing it, but this is for me something like the first boss fight in the development of the game and I want to be sure to be prepared for it.


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[h3]Development[/h3]



Main menu and localization: I created a main menu with Video and Audio configurations and a language menu. The first official demo will include the following languages: English, Italian, French and Spanish.

Twitter post - Main menu

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The resource panel has been completed with the description of all resources present in the game. A hint label will show the description of objects and units by simply pointing the mouse on them and waiting a few seconds. Alternatively, the label can be forced to show by holding the key H.

Twitter post - Resource panel

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Most weapons and armors have different classes depending on the material used to craft them: stone weapons are crafted with stone components, copper armors are crafted with copper components, and so on. Components are created by Crafters in the crafter huts. Weapons and armors when damaged need components to restore them. Divine weapons can be used only by Hero soldiers and they never get damaged.

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Omin Panel: the player can inspect the status, the skills and the gears of his omins by opening the Omin panel that is placed at the bottom-left corner of the screen. Much information has been added to it, including the weapon and the armors owned by the omin.

Twitter post - Omin Panel


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[h3]The first ads campaign[/h3]

At the beginning of August I launched an ads campaign on Facebook and Instagram consisting of a video and a button opening a link of my choice. Here are the results for ~9 days of ads campaign:

• 430k impressions
  
• 42.5k clicks
  
• + 68 Instagram followers
  
• + 52 Facebook followers
  
• + ~130 Mailing list contacts
  
• + ~300 Steam wishlists
  
• + 5 Kickstarter followers
  
• + 10 Discord members
  

Hello dear friends of the omins!

During the last month, the development has taken most of my time and I didn't communicate too much. I'm sorry for it

This should change in the next weeks, since the Kickstarter campaign is planned in 3 months and we need much more followers before launching it. According to some fellow developers I need 1000+ followers on KS to reach the funding goal of 35K.

This means that I should start to communicate quite intensively. At the same time I must prepare a demo and the project page on Kickstarter. And since I'm working alone most of the time, this will be challenging (and exciting)


[h3]Game cover[/h3]

I'm also looking for an artist to draw the cover for the game. Apparently, it's more difficult than I thought at the beginning. I'm contacting people on ArtStation, on Fiverr and also game art studios. If someone among you knows an artist or a studio interested in this job, please let me know at my email contact@temesagames.com.


[h3]MacOS[/h3]

I'm trying to figure out all the restrictions to run an application on MacOS. By default, MacOS runs only applications that are signed and notarized. It is still possible to run the game even if it does not comply with these requirements but the user needs to modify some system preferences. Ideally, I should avoid this last case. So, another goal for the KS is to have everything ready to port the demo also on MacOS.


[h3]Development[/h3]

The development was focused on game controls, user interface and the rework of some modules.

I implemented more than 30 orders that the player can give to the omins. And many others still need to be implemented. Why so many orders? Well, I imagined The Omins as a game in which the player has more interactions with the units rather than with the buildings (as done in village building games). Anyway the player doesn't need to micro-manage the omins all the time.

My objective is to give the player a feeling of total control over the omins so that he can order them to do almost everything including chatting with another omin, attempt to seduce him/her, capture a surrendered enemy, tame an animal, rescue an injured ally, extract resources, hunt, build, repair, sleep and so on...

In order to make all these commands easily accessible by the player I had to introduce a series of tools and mechanics, such as a command menu, the command pins, the possibility to chain commands and a button to hurry the omins.

I think all these aspects will become much clearer when presented visually. So, I'm planning to make a series of videos to publish during the next weeks in order to explain the controls of the game and show the functioning of the different orders.



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That's all folks! Please, share the project with your friends and on social media to support the project

Finally, I'd like to thank all the new people that subscribed to this newsletter. Don't hesitate to contact me at the address below or on Discord to share your thoughts or ask questions about the project.

See you soon

Gunax