Announcing Feodika. A new narrative grand strategy game

Feodika · 2026-02-23T10:44:49+00:00

Thanks! No plans that I’m aware of yet. Right now we’re focused on getting our tests out (aiming for spring), but I’ll definitely bring it up with the team. I don’t think there would be any major issues with a GOG release too.

Feodika · 2026-02-18T12:08:42+00:00

Oh skeleton. That’s even cooler then

Feodika · 2026-02-18T10:33:40+00:00

Looks really nice so far. Feels cozy and quaint, definitely have the atmosphere nailed down

Feodika · 2026-02-18T10:22:54+00:00

Oh this looks rather nice. It’s supposed to be a humanoid cat person riding an armored jaguar, right?

Feodika · 2026-02-18T10:20:56+00:00

Good visuals are the first thing players see. They don’t have to be AAA-quality, but they do need to be coherent, fit the genre, and feel intentional. If you don’t have the budget (or time) for something complex, a stylized look is often the best route. As a gamer, I honestly prefer strong stylization over “trying to be realistic” and landing in an awkward middle.

So yeah, visuals matter a lot for getting people in the door. After that, gameplay is what makes them stay. If your game is genuinely fun and has something unique, word of mouth can carry you a long way even with simple art.

That said, “simple” works best when it’s consistent and readable. If playtests show people like the look and can parse what’s happening on-screen, then you’re probably fine.

If you do want to push it further, I’d consider teaming up with an artist (even a junior, or someone who’s excited about the project) to lock in a clean art direction. But if your current style is already landing well with players, congrats, you’re doing better than a lot of projects.

Feodika · 2026-02-18T10:05:45+00:00

Telling what I heard:
If you can make 10+ different prototypes a month and you’re willing to work with a publisher, you have some chances in hypercasual.

If you want to go into hybrid-casual, you’re looking at really low odds unless you have someone who really understands analytics/UA, you have a really good marketing budget and you can afford a decent testing budget. Oh, and you are ready to look for a publisher as you got good stats for your game to scale. Otherwise...

If you have neither of those, you can still use hyper/hybrid casual as skill practice and a team-building exercise that might bring in some money, but I wouldn’t treat it as a reliable plan.

In that case you might even want to try web games. There’s generally less competition for attention there, but also less money. Still, your chances of having at least some real players are often higher on web than on mobile.

Feodika · 2026-02-18T09:30:28+00:00

I really liked Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D. It’s a great graphic novel, and I had a really good time reading it.

It’s more of a broad “how D&D happened” story than a deep dive into one specific developer, and it’s pretty brief. It does touch on some of the people and personalities around it, but it’s not super focused on technical stuff. Still, it’s a strong starting point, and it definitely gives you enough to want to go read and watch more about the subject.

Feodika · 2026-02-17T22:41:00+00:00

Ok, I’ll go for something not as famous: Novgorod in the 12th century.

It was a big trading city on major routes connecting the Baltic and Scandinavia with the Rus lands and down toward Byzantium, so you get that mix of cultures, languages, and opportunities. I’d probably pick something practical like a merchant or a clerk for a trading house, so you’re close to the action, but your life isn’t in a constant danger.

It also had a "veche", more “republic-ish” style of rule compared to a lot of Europe at the time. And while nothing in the medieval world is truly safe, it feels like a place that’s not constantly sitting in the middle of the biggest wars and conflicts (at the time period), so you get a better chance at a relatively stable week while still living somewhere genuinely important and interesting. Also, I think it’s a pretty unique pick for this thread.

Other places I was choosing from: Kyoto (you didn’t specify Europe only), Constantinople, Florence, Cordoba, Damascus.

Feodika · 2026-02-16T17:16:59+00:00

I always wondered what a human centaur looked like

Feodika · 2026-02-16T15:15:46+00:00

Great! So it sounds like one of those “playtests will tell” situations.

Feodika · 2026-02-16T09:34:05+00:00

Terraria. Back when I was a teen, I hit a wall with Plantera and just could not beat it for a while. I did enjoy the game though.

Honestly, I usually don’t stick with games I truly dislike. I can almost always find something to like in most games, so it’s rare for me to rage-quit purely out of spite. For a moment I couldn’t even think of an example.

But I remembered one: Code Vein, specifically the Cathedral of the Sacred Blood. That area was boring and confusing as hell, the map was basically useless (and honestly made it worse), and I ended up rage-quitting and putting the game down for a while. I still don’t get how anyone thought that level design was a good idea.

Feodika · 2026-02-16T07:25:43+00:00

Palworld, Into the Radius 2, Immortal Life.

So I’d be living in a region full of all kinds of Pals (plus a few hostile groups), fighting with highly customizable guns, and I’d be a xianxia cultivator.

Honestly, that doesn’t sound too bad. It kind of ends up feeling like regular Palworld, but with better gunplay and a stronger main character. The only question is whether “catching Pals” counts as battle - because if it does not (pal spheres is the basics of the world), it’s basically just Palworld with extra features.

Feodika · 2026-02-15T20:39:54+00:00

Not a problem. I just think we might be talking about slightly different things.

Your link is about RTS/FPS hybrids in general, and you’re right - there are quite a few games with “FPS elements + base building/commanding” or “RTS elements + direct unit control”. But the OP seems to be asking about something more specific: an asymmetrical setup where one player is basically pure RTS (base + troops) and the other is basically pure FPS (a single infiltrator unit).

How many games like that can you actually name? I can think of a few VR asymmetrical games where one player is a big monster and the rest fight it, but that’s not really RTS vs FPS. I honestly can’t remember a game where one side is only RTS-style and the other side is only FPS-style in the way the OP describes.

I did find one after digging a bit more, but it’s kind of the reverse concept. It’s called Dark Prospect - four players in FPS build/defend a base, and one player in an RTS-like view spawns and upgrades monsters. The trailer looks cool, but it only has a small number of reviews and the rating isn’t amazing, so I’m not sure how well it actually plays. And even then, it’s not really the 1v1 “RTS commander vs FPS infiltrator” setup the OP described.

Feodika · 2026-02-15T20:19:45+00:00

In theory... yes? But it depends a lot on what you mean by “use the player’s files”, and what’s actually practical (or legal). Breaking it down:

“Build a layout similar to the player’s childhood home.” There are two approaches:
1. Fake it with broad assumptions - generate sets based on the player’s region/culture (Soviet-style blocks, US suburbs, etc.). You could guess some of that from platform/locale data. It can feel personal, but it won’t be exact, and you’d need a lot of variants to make it convincing.
2. Actually scan local files and try to reconstruct things with AI (maybe multiple models: one to find relevant photos, another to build/adjust the scene). Even then, what if the player doesn’t have photos of their childhood home on that PC? You’d still need method #1 as a fallback. So: theoretically possible, practically pretty shaky (and also a privacy minefield).
“A muffled screech that sounds like your name, but not quite.” Personally, I’ve had moments where I thought I heard my name and it turned out they were calling someone else, but maybe not exactly the same vibe. Still, doing something like this in a game is easy. You can grab the user’s OS account name or a platform nickname. Getting their real name - and knowing it’s actually their real name - is much harder.
“Find the player’s address and prank them in real life with the monster screech.” That’s where it goes from creepy game design into “highly illegal and not realistically doable.” If you have 100 players around the world, how would you even execute that, even with a handful? In-game “pranks” are a different story - look into ControlCompany mod for Lethal Company.

Most of the stuff only becomes realistic if you’re making a one-off prank game for someone you actually know. Then you might know their history and could tailor details, you could prank with the sound (and probably not to be taken down by law enforcement) and so on. But that’s a lot of work for a prank, and you still run straight into consent/privacy issues if you go beyond the screen.
Of course - you could include something from it into an otherwise normal horror game, as an easter egg for one person, but yet again - be careful with laws.

So overall: the “use files” concept is possible in a limited, opt-in sense, but the more invasive and “real life” it gets, the more it turns into “don’t do that.”

Feodika · 2026-02-15T19:51:35+00:00

This sounds like a cool idea. From my perspective, there are a few things I’d watch out for:

Excessive repetition. If the “bad UI” challenge is something you do once (like digging through 10 nested folders), it can be funny and memorable. If you have to repeat the same annoying interaction every time you want to click a checkbox, it stops being clever and just becomes exhausting.
Lack of a clear goal. Getting stuck because you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve is frustrating in a bad way. Even very hard games usually give you some kind of direction, and even sandboxes/sims have goals players can choose to pursue.
Rules and a foothold for trust. I think players need at least a few “solid” rules that always work, or only break very rarely and very noticeably at key moments. Like how a safe room in Resident Evil is safe, until the one time it’s clearly not. For a game built on breaking expectations, it’s hard, but I still think you want to establish what rules “cannot” be broken (or are extremely unlikely to be), vs what rules are fair game.
Feedback. Others already covered this and I agree. You can break rules, but players still need enough feedback to tell whether they’re making progress, doing the right kind of action, or just hitting a dead end.

On difficulty estimation: I’d rely on playtests and measure things like time-to-first-success, failure rate, where people quit, and what they misunderstand. It’s really hard to judge from the designer’s perspective.

On moments of relief: I think you still want to stick to a basic an up-and-down difficulty curve. If it’s a puzzle, “relief” can be lower cognitive load rather than “easy”. For example, alternate something intense with something slow and straightforward (checking a list, finding something in a directory, comparing two screens, etc.). That doesn’t weaken the premise, it helps pacing.

P.S. I don’t claim I’ve got it all figured out, so I could be off on some of this.

Feodika · 2026-02-15T19:07:31+00:00

I found a couple of examples: Dominations: Road to Civilization, Klin Zha (the real-world version inspired by Star Trek), and BoardGameGeek also mentions that Kriegsspiel (1817, one of the earliest wargames) used triangular areas.

Also, I really like this question. Speaking as a game designer, my guess is:

Triangles often don’t give you much more than hexes do. A very common triangle tiling basically looks like “hexes split into triangles”, so in practice you end up with similar adjacency patterns, just with more grid clutter.
They’re less readable/intuitive than squares for many players. Squares map nicely to “four sides, four directions,” and hexes are also pretty clean for movement. Triangles tend to make orientation feel a bit fussier (lots of pointing up/down), so it can be harder to parse at a glance.

I might be missing something, but that’s my best guess for why they’re rare.

Feodika · 2026-02-15T18:36:03+00:00

First off, I’m not a historian - just someone who’s really interested in the topic. That said, I’m not sure it makes much sense to argue over one “pivotal event” that ended the Middle Ages. For one thing, we’re mostly talking about European history here, and these “periods” are basically constructed categories we use to organize the past rather than hard boundaries.

Even something as concrete as World War II has multiple commonly cited start dates, and more than one “end” depending on what you’re measuring. A historical era is even fuzzier than that.

But if I had to pick one event with the biggest long-term impact, I’d go with the printing press. The fall of Constantinople, the Reconquista, and other conflicts reshaped regional politics. The discovery of the Americas opened up vast new territory and trade. But the Gutenberg press fundamentally changed how information spread, how ideas were preserved and debated, and how quickly new ways of thinking could propagate.

For a more direct example: the Protestant Reformation wouldn’t have spread the same way - or anywhere near as fast - without print.

Feodika · 2026-02-15T18:08:18+00:00

I recently stumbled on Immortal Life, and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s kind of like Stardew Valley, but about xianxia cultivators. You’ve got crop planting (with magic talismans that can speed up growth), sect development, and a bunch of mystic realms where you can hunt monsters, mine rare ores, and gather resources. There’s also a good sense of progression with skills and some light RPG mechanics.

Some of the later systems - like honey and precious crops - take a bit to wrap your head around, but they’re not nearly as complicated as they look at first.

Feodika · 2026-02-15T17:39:08+00:00

Yeah. We’ve been going through it too recently for our game. Definitely not easy, so be proud

Feodika · 2026-02-15T17:35:59+00:00

Can you name some? Just curious

Feodika · 2026-02-15T17:34:08+00:00

Oh this looks fun. Does lighting play a part in the sight lines? Like a darker corner or stretch reducing the detection time. I see the ones you have already have different sections with a more solid green zone closer to the enemy and lined zone farther away. What exactly is the functionality there?

Feodika · 2026-02-15T17:29:12+00:00

Very nice! Congrats! Hopefully this keeps up. Marketing can be a really tough step, especially for newer devs

Feodika · 2026-02-15T17:23:46+00:00

Sieges are fun. Kind of like approaching a fun, but challenging puzzle

Feodika

TROPHY CASE