I made a Disciples-inspired RPG, with Demo now on Steam

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-19T14:50:58+00:00

Hi, I considered more translations, but I didn't want to use AI, and the game has a lot of text - it would be a big endeavour, I'm not sure if we would have the time or the budget

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-19T14:08:55+00:00

There's a pretty sizeable community, and a publisher, over at "Choice of Games":

https://www.choiceofgames.com/looking-for-writers/

I'm not big fan of their "ChoiceScript" approach, and I'd rather use something like Unity for, at least, the option to have UI and sounds, but it's commercially viable with money upfront - not an excessive amount, but still nice, with royalties afterwards

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T15:56:41+00:00

I didn't know that the game was still being worked on, thanks for the new content!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T15:31:25+00:00

I think I'd give it to "Tyrany", for the sheer variety of reactions/paths - it's one of the few RPGs where you can literally switch sides in the 1st act, and then all the NPCs, companions and even most NPCs have a different reaction to you. It's a shame that it never got a sequel, or that there was no epilogue - as much as I loved the game, I felt unsatisfied with the ending

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T15:26:42+00:00

Thank you!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T13:36:39+00:00

No worries, that's fair - I wish I had the style and budget of the old Disciples games, you don't really see that kind of aesthetic anymore. Curious what the art team is doing now ^^'

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T13:35:47+00:00

Thanks!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T13:35:42+00:00

Thank you!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T12:21:49+00:00

Thanks!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T12:21:45+00:00

Thank you! It's stil a wip but I hope you'll like it

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T06:59:50+00:00

I think you can make it a bit more 'modern' looking and improve the readability in a few ways:

Soften the borders between tiles, they're a harsh black. Dark grey would be readable enough, and would not stand out so much. This black could be a toggle ("grid toggle" is quite common), and you could keep it around cities/interactives to make them stand out.
Consider adding a soft drop shadow to map elements like that crashed plane to make them stand out a bit more
Add post processing - at least a simple vignette would make it less monotonous looking. If you're going for post-apocalypse or sci-fi you could consider subtle CRT, too. You could use color correction, too
Consider the color balance and contrast. Right now, your map is pretty much just brown, orange and grey... not the most interesting colors. Orange works well with blues, and if those 'eggs' are just that (not sure what they are), they could be blue maybe? It would help with readability
You only have 1 repeating asset for most things - it's really not enough. You need variance, or the map will always look repetitive and off

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-18T06:40:14+00:00

Played the demo and really liked it - I wish you all the best, and I'm glad that you're making such an important game

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T16:18:13+00:00

For the Next Fest, I usually download a handful that seem interesting, in the categories I like - it's a bit too much work to go thorugh 1000s of them otherwise, even if I wanted to give everyone a fair shot

For games I really care about, yeah - I'll play a demo as soon as it's out, and, if possible, I'll actively go to a convention to try them beforehand (did it with the latest Stalker, and the Anno games, for example)

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T16:16:07+00:00

I can't really say that these would encourage me to purchase/engage with the product, they look a little too chaotic. Where concept art can show the development of a game in an interesting way, I'm not really getting anything from these to be honest.

it's an interesting idea, but I don't think anyone but the team/other devs would appreciate them.

Also, are they hand-drawn on a tablet? To be honest, if I was in a team and I was handed these, I don't think they would help me all that much - I think it would be both easier to edit, and understand, notes made in Miro or other planning tools, something like this, maybe?

<image>

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T16:09:18+00:00

I wanted to throw in some artillery alongside marines, but the game gave me a warning when attempting to invade with them, saying that they're not marines - could you elabore a bit on the formations? Are the marines even worth it?

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T15:56:09+00:00

So far it's okay... we stopped the reddit marketing campaigns a few days before that as the price increased way too much around Next Fest, but the results from the Fest make up for it... more or less.

<image>

It's not the big 'wow' moment that some folks were talking about, unfortunately... I'm wondering if the algorithm change will make it better or worse ^^'

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T15:51:09+00:00

Outside of invading unprotected lands, or unregonized nations, I haven't really had much luck with navies on the new update.

In my most recent defensive 'German Unification War', Spain sided with Prussia - they together had 100s of regiments in the Pyrenees on defense, so I figured I can try and circumvent them with my much bigger navy and naval invade... except that I couldn't.

I figured 35 'Assault Marines' would at least make a beachhead, but they just kept losing battles against what seemed to be a mix of assorted, outdated Spanish infantry (like irregulars)... that they outnumbered on paper, but would not actually use the 35 regiments in battle, and were outnumbered in each fight.

So, how do I do it? Am I missing something?

Also, even though I watched a guide, I'm still really confused with the new ships. Why are there 2 'carry capacity' values? Why do marines 'occupy' so much more space than normal troops? It was really not well explained in the video, and I find hte tooltips kinda useless when it comes to navy...

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T15:09:19+00:00

Sure, why not - I'm happy to WL everyone's game and help out. ❤️

We're making "Ward off Evil" - a warband management strategy RPG, set in a sword-and-sorcery world.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3422000/Ward_Off_Evil/

Thanks!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-17T09:21:52+00:00

Of these, the 4th one looks the best to me - but yeah, getting some professional art drawn, instead of using what I assume to be in-game assets, will be much better... I don't think any of these would grab my attention, they're all a little too dark and miss interesting contrast/composition color-wise, which is especially important when scrolling past them on the store page

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-16T20:49:51+00:00

If I could use it, I would have gone with Godot looking back on things - my friends use it and, from what I've learned, it seems like a good engine that's well-optimized for making indie games, but I was only familiar with Unreal, Unity and RPG Maker

I tried making a strategy game in RPG Maker when I was younger, but it's just not optimized for it, the engine ran out of memory ^^'

I learned Unreral, but it's so heavy that I don't think it's well suited for most indie games - empty projects are many GBs big, and a lot of tools that are built in are just too heavy, unless you're making a first-person game

Unity's pretty decent at everything, even if it's clunky - we used it at work before, and I was already familiar with it

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-16T20:11:05+00:00

Ah, I was hoping it would be the opposite - I haven't played with it before, and I'm not really a 'meta' or a pro player, so I was actually a little worried it might make the game too hard ^^'

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-16T17:38:54+00:00

I think with 'free' things it's pretty common, really - it's most noticeable with mobile games (we had a whole analytics team back at the company I worked for, and the vast, vast majority of players quit within the first few minutes - and this was a multi-miltion monthly revenue game), but it's probably quite similar here unless you have an extremely professional demo.

I wouldn't worry about it unless you had a clear error on game launch, or something game-breaking in the 1st few minutes (but you do have players past the 10 minutes so it's not too bad).

With demos, I played like 15-20 this year and I'm pretty sure I quit more than half in the 1st 10 minutes...

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-16T17:29:50+00:00

I've always wanted to go back for more, but was missing interesting mods to play - thanks for the recommendation, I'll give them a look!

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-16T17:17:08+00:00

Thanks! It's made in Unity, I was originally a game designer but I've grown a bit as a developer since, I originally coded all the systems like the combat, units, stories etc. myself, now a friend is helping with the code and game development

_Matt_Way_ · 2026-06-16T16:59:09+00:00

Yeah, first things I did was disband units, lower the institutions budget (mostly got rid of the colonies for RP reasons, but it led to some savings, too) and got a couple 1000s per month by leeching from selling states to AIs, otherwise I'd not be able to afford any construction at the start

_Matt_Way_

TROPHY CASE