Hey all,
The game I’m working on has some similarities to KoDP, and I was curious from those who have played it - what are your thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses? Right now I’m most specifically interested in the interface and how it presents information to the user, but I’d welcome any and all thoughts.
Thanks.
I’ve only recently played it - and not very much.
My favorite aspect was the random story bits, being given a decision to make, and applying some strategy based on the state of my tribe.
The Castles games also did this to a lesser degree. I think it really helped to give the impression of responsibility to a community, rather than everyone simply being pawns in your game.
Problems I had with the game were mostly about easily understanding the status of my tribe … Whether we needed more food or magic. Not that the information wasn’t presented, but I felt as though I had no quick and accessible reference when making decisions. That might’ve been due to a lack of experience, however.
I think the battles, too, could’ve stood more detail (as a decision, however, depending on how you prefer to play - defer to a commander or take more control).
I’d love to see more stuff like Dragon Pass, anyhow. Are you able to give us more details?
King of Dragon Pass website, for those interested. I haven’t played it.
Well, for the interface I really like how it presents you with advice. You have your group of advisors, all with fairly clear agendas and distinct personalities, and they will all present you with more or less conflicting advice. Very conflicting when it comes to taking hard decisions, more overlapping when it comes to the everyday management. This way the game helps you make decisions but at the same time forces you to consider the hard choices that you make and reinforces the idea that you’re leading a group of people who all have different wants and needs.
It works because the advisors all have clearly distinct roles and interests that are discernable to the player. If you had to guess at, or puzzle out, their motivations the system would only be frustrating.
The one thing I didn’t like about King of Dragon Pass was that you could only do two things per season, and it wasn’t immediately clear what would take up a “time unit”, or when that “time unit” would pass. If you could queue and then run a season’s activities it’d be pretty much perfect.
Random events are great, and responses are also great. I particularly liked the occasional random story arc, like the one about the warrior who gets cursed into the form of a beastman, and can end up settling down with your tribe anyway and single-handedly turning aside an invasion.
Thanks much for the toughts.
I also really liked the way the advisors are semi-reliable narrators, and how you can get to know them and their opinions. Really good point on how the overall game pulls you into caring about your tribe.
Yeah - I feel like the interface is pretty fragmented, and find myself wishing at times info during events - like what season it is when I’m confronted with the choice to raid right now.
Agreed on the actions per season thing - it drove me nuts whenever I tried to tinker with farmers/acreage/etc, and I’d do it once and the season would immediately turn.
Zen - I’m not talking too much about it yet, only because things are still in flux. I’m shooting to have a prototype at the Independent Games Conference in April in Boston (which as been announced in some venues, but isn’t widely known yet) and a much fuller version in the IGF for the November deadline. But I’ll be damn sure to let people know when there’s more than designs and vaporware. :)
Roughly speaking, doing something on a screen, and then changing to a different screen was what took one of your two actions.
From the “buy” link on the games website:
If you can’t find a copy we can burn a copy of the CD. The cost is $19.95 (check or PayPal) plus shipping. Please note that we aren’t a retail operation and can’t promise to ship promptly.
Ummm, hello? This is 2009. Get this puppy on Steam.
As I recall a KoDP dev explained it in another thread here that they looked into getting the game onto a digital distribution service but it wasn’t feasible for technical reasons.
Oh yeah, another UI thing. Make the game playable in windowed mode. Every time I fire up KoDP and have to watch the absurd black borders it reminds me that I have all this extra screen space that I’d rather use for other stuff.
Personally, when it comes to games where the pace is slow or turn based I like to play them windowed so that I can check my IM, keep up on forum threads, etc, while playing.
Every time I think about ordering this, the “We may or may not ship this anytime soon” caveat stops me from doing so.
FWIW, in the KoDP thread there’s a fairly solid number of people (myself included) who ordered the game and received it within 2 weeks.
I liked the fact the game systems were kinda vague. You’d be rewarded more if you tried to understand the setting, via the history of your tribe and the myths of the land, and the people, via the advisors and event interactions, in it more than metagaming a rules set.
Down with numbers, up with fog of war!
That’s CYA boilerplate. They shipped mine lickety-split just four or five months ago. Either way, it’s well worth the wait.
I bought this game, and one of the sound files that looped in the background had this incredibly high-frequency distortion whine… kind of like the noise a CRT tv makes but a lot more prominent. It seemed like the sample was badly recorded.
I asked about it on here, but no one seemed to know how to fix it. I never even tried to begin playing it as this sound was so annoying
I absolutely agree with you on playing by feel versus numbers. I’m certainly not a number-gamer.
But even still, I had a difficult time comprehending just where we were and where we needed to go. Better visual cues to let you know when you’re really in the red, or putting yourself at risk. Maybe more interactive advisors.
Not sure - I’d have to play again to come back with more concrete stuff. I just remember having a hard time being sure quite how things were going. I wouldn’t want it to say ‘plant x seeds and get y veggies with z multiplier’, to be sure. Just a little more awareness of where we stood.
Aside from minor interface issues I think the only thing I didn’t like about KoDP were the heroquests. They fit just fine in the setting, but the actual mechanics of having to read the long blocks of text combined with trying to figure out which vague choice was the right one really didn’t work for me, especially given the often high price of failure.
I didn’t do very many of them when I played since I disliked them so much, so maybe I was missing something, but I think they were the weakest part of the game.
Yes! The Hero Quests! Not so fun!
If at all, I’d prefer them more of a dungeon crawly kind of thing.
And on that note, being able to generate your own characters and have more of a choice in bringing on, raising up personalities and such would be nice. The more actual faces and humanity you can build into the tribe the more interesting it becomes … To me, of course.
That befuddles me. If you can download the demo, why not the full game?
The reason was pretty much nonsense from what I remember.
I really think the guy is just extremely paranoid about people pirating his (10 year old, extremely niche) game and insists on burning DRMed discs of it still.
I’d almost guarantee that if he removed all the DRM from it and sold it off his site (or GOG or steam) he’d get a lot more sales than this bullshit paypal jump through hoops maybe we’ll mail it if we feel like it thing you’re presented with now on the site.
I for one had gone to the site on at least four separate occasions over the years to buy it, then remembered how sketchy the entire thing sounded and decided to not buy it.