The Jungle

After a long journey filled with trials, errors, mistakes, wrongdoings and whatever word you can find to bear the same meaning, at last we got into a path which leads to something solid at the end of this ruthless jungle. Something solid doesn't mean we are still not far from a full release but a playable demo seems within reach. Our main goal is to push for Steam Next Fest at the end of February, however that seems like a tough goal - not impossible but hard, really hard.

Skills

We spent a lot of time on building the Skills - Perks tree system. In most similar games, the skills level up in a straightforward fashion. As you see in the pic below, if you wanna level up your skill in Shargad: First Blood, you have 6 perk choices of which you can pick 3. Either from column A or B. And you dont necessarily follow a straight path of A or B; you can pick A1 then B2 and then B3.
Some paths are locked straight because of prerequisites (say A1 is prerequisite to A2, if you pick B1 then A2 option is greyed out) but overall you might realize that you, the player has a lot of room for skill customization. Honestly i think this is the punchline of this game - not artstyle, not animations (especially not with such a tight budget) and not else but the variety of skills and heroes player can choose. It is impossible to try them all, thus we are hoping to add replayability value to the game with this aspect - a hope to let players test new builds even after game completion.

No Hell, No Piece of Cake

Another thing we can account for game replayability value is the difficulty. Difficulty is progressive upon game completion. So you start the game in the standard difficulty mode. When you complete the game, you progress from the same game file to next difficulty level. We have 3 character classes for the main hero Abbas, but you can make the class choice it inside the game. Means, you can complete the game as Skirmisher, and you can choose Warden for the next difficulty. You dont need to start a new game from scratch to test other classes of Abbas. Fundamental reason i personally did not want to offer difficulty choices in the beginning of the game is; i feel the difficulty system is a bit too loose in rpg games. There are very easy and very hard difficulty levels which are either piece of cake - noone who has a small bit of rpg knowledge would play, or too hard - noone in their right mind would want to torture themself to try something unattainable. And come on, we are doing an indie game, although it is my personal wish many people would spend hours on this game, i am aware they have other bigger titles to sink their time in. Nowadays we got too many good games out there and the competition is real. The market is getting larger (yes pc gaming is not dead as some futurists prophesized a couple of years ago) but that doesn't necessarily mean it is something good for indie games. Now you have to make your mark more than ever, to get the attention of the player. How do you do that? No one really knows. But surely, as in all things, you gotta find a unique trait of yourself and work on your strength rather than trying to become something you can never be.

Lore and Story

What is unique about our game? I never thought of it. But i am hoping my personal work on the lore and world setting for the last 7-8 years is something to make a difference. Generally story and lore in most games are very superficial, as most of you could notice. Be sure you will get something deeper here, both lore and storywise. At least i can comfortably say lots of thought, effort and research went into this. Mythologies is something big for Shargad. I have setup the main infrastructure of the lore, and gods pantheon based on Mesopotamian mythology. While we use a lot of features from African mythology in the game - and borrowing from many other cultures and folklores too. Sometimes mixing and matching, sometimes directly stealing (well mythology is pretty old right? so it doesn't even count a steal)... But truth is; while there are so many races and cultures in Shargad, i never thought of making up a language from my ass. I can make one or two, but not fifty! So i borrowed from the various languages as well. If i got a culture called Galunas, i'm not gonna create a new language for them, Spanish would make it. I got Macalakies - weretiger folks, so should i create some bullshit names consisting of 5 apostrophes and 6 consonants one after each other? That ain't gonna happen. I got some nice Southeast Asian cultures in this world which can help me out. I will not spoil and explain everything i did while creating the lore, but you got what i mean.

Conclusion

Lastly, i guess when and what will happen to the game deserves some mention. We are hoping to release a playable free demo in the month of March. It is still a hard goal but i think we can make it. Getting ready until Steam Next Fest seems really really hard. I did write it is not impossible in the beginning i guess... But yeah, it is close to impossible. Though we will try. Thanks god i am not alone in this. I got a programmer buddy and a couple of freelancers who sticked with me for a long time, and i guess, the time to reap what we sow is nigh. Need some more push. So feel free to push us in twitter with your questions. Semih

[ 2022-01-16 13:41:49 CET ] [ Original post ]