EoE is (back) in development!

About 10 years ago, I started a doomed project in Unity3d. I wanted to make a 4X game that emphasized management and player decisions. I was in over my head at the time, and life decided to put that idea on hiatus.

It’s funny what ten years (and an industry change) can do for one’s ability to reasonably scope a project and determine what tools are best for the job. This time around, I’m keeping things simple and making a few major changes to the approach: First off, I’ve made a pretty firm decision to keep this game in the browser, and eschew (most) graphical sprites (at least for now). The player’s decisions should be at the forefront of the game. Every decision made should feel as though it has weight. I’m also keeping an open mind to the idea of this eventually becoming a multiplayer game, and that’ factoring heavily into the development process.

As for where the project is now: A lot of core work is nearing completion. The basic entities (Governing Organizations, Nations, Zones, People, and Buildings) are working and interacting as expected. Plots, activities, and science are still rough around the edges. They’re being cleaned up as as mechanics get further solidified. Combat is the highest priority in terms of fixing/refactoring, as something is going on that’s preventing agents of the EVIL Empire from taking damage. Once that’s fixed, the game can be won and lost.

One new feature this time around is ‘simulation’ of citizen’s actions at the end of each turn. Each person in the game that’s not an agent of the EVIL Empire takes a few simple actions, potentially based on quirky status effects they’ve gained during character generation or the run of the game. Hopefully in the future, this will create a society of npc’s that dynamically react to the player’s decisions (and impact on their lives).

The development process is wide open on this. You can find the repositories for the game library and client on github as well as a GitHub Pages hosted version of EoE. I also occasionally stream development of the game on Twitch (@JedaiSaboteur).

I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I want to make a web game people will never forget.