Fallen Gods - upcoming Norse saga-inspired roguelite from Wormwood Studios

[Quantomas]

Good news!

Here I was thinking MRY earns so much money as a lawyer now, possibly sizing up the long road to the Supreme Court or White House, that he can't play games anymore.

It turns out you actually had the time to play Disco Elysium (actually a good education any president shoud have) and there is even some promising progress on the game.

Nice surprise!

 

[MRY]

The “suddenly Orm” is silly placeholder text from the project’s foreman.

No much time to play games, but I’ve been chipping away at FG all this time. We’ll get there someday. Fortunately, unlike the eponymous fallen god, I’m not limited to 90 days.

 

[baud]

Gathering MRY's tweets here for easy reading:

Fallen Gods is finally playable. Nowhere close to ready for sharing, but it's a game! Going to share some highlights from my last few runs.

I had a great warband going. I was a physically strong god, I had two sworn berserks (sworn followers will never leave you, and berserks are the best fighters), two fighters, and a priest. Visited a jarl's stronghold, and the senile jarl's son asked me to depose his father.

I agreed to try. This offense against hospitality and hierarchy annoyed my fighters and especially my priest (knocking their morale down). A fight began between the jarl's guards and my warband.

My god was wearing Oraekja's Folly, a dwerg-made byrnie that reduces damage significantly, but sometimes betrays you and exposes you to massive damage. (I had gotten it off a boastful fighter -- when I shoved him, Oraekja's Folly tangled up and choked him to death.)

Now Oraekja's Folly betrayed me, and a guard one-shotted the god. The god doesn't instantly die, but he's taken out of combat, and the warband takes a morale hit. This causes both fighters and priest to break, and they flee the fight. The two berserkers fight on valiantly but die

Now the god is helpless and a fighter kills him. Normally the god can respawn -- but the jarl, in a fit of pique, has my body fed to dogs and their shit spread in his fields, with is sufficient to kill me for good. Game over.

Oraekja's Folly, indeed.

By the way, I'd gotten the two berserks as follows. First, by freeing one after he'd been crippled and tied to a tree to die of exposure for his crimes -- afterwards, brothers, fathers, a husbands of those he'd murdered hunted me down, but were no match for me and my warband.

The other one I met in a barrow: he was a dead man who tried to kill me for how the gods' death-cheating had caused him to linger on as a draug (undead), but when I used my Deathlore skill and three souls to bring him back to life as a berserk, he dropped his vendetta and joined.

(https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1198840350103633927.html)

Won on another run. On that run, I had a wolf fetch (familiar), the Foresight and Wild Heart god skills, good might, low wits. I started with the grathsack, a food bag made from the stomach of a dead Firstborn. Run started out pretty well -- spamming foresight to find treasures.

But things took a turn for the worse in a cave -- I found a dead troll with Firebrand in its back (a legendary sword), and when I had my berserk smash the troll so I could get the sword, the trollshards killed everyone but me, the berserk, and a fighter. Even my poor wolf.

By now, I was running out of days, gold, food, and souls -- I had 9 days left, 5 souls, 24 gold. Earlier in my run, I'd found Amarok (the Great Wolf, a possible end boss) using Farsight, so I figured I'd try to kill him. But he was on the other end of the map.

Fortunately, I was about two days' journey from a Songstone (menhirs that operate like moongates in Ultima; ordinarily you need to use souls to travel through them -- you can also win the game by pouring enough souls in to go back to the Cloudlands).

I had an item called the Lur (an ancient trumpet) that can open Songstones for free. I gated from the one near me (Westgate) to the one nearest Amarok (Northgate). Northgate was also near a stronghold and a village.

I hit the village to buy food (5 food for 1 gold in farming villages), then realized I could use my remaining gold to hire two fighters at the stronghold -- and I would have two days to spare! But cutting across some hills, I found my way blocked by a cliff.

Couldn't risk climbing down, so I went the long way (losing a day), bought the fighters, and made it to Amarok on the last possible day.

Amarok is guarded by a pack of wolves, but for three souls you can use the Wild Heart skill to drive them off. We then fought Amarok. A lot turned on whether my original fighter would flee -- his morale had been worn down by that point. But he held!

A few rounds in, Amarok howled for more wolves. Between him and his helpers, the berserk died as did one of the new fighters. But we prevailed! Of course, there's no ending yet, so I got anticlimactic placeholder text left by one of my team mates.


Still! After seven years of development, I finally won Fallen Gods! Perhaps in seven more years, it'll get released ...

(https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1198844990006292480.html)

 

[MRY]

Yeah, I'll do some more congenial format in the future, probably a proper blog update. Right now, I can't take screenshots without the debug menu showing, so I'm reluctant to put in the effort for something legitimate. Thanks, baud for doing this at least!

[EDIT: Greatest rating of all time from Riddler. Oh no -- Riddler removed the rating. Anyway, it was a "Piracy is Wrong" rating, which made me laugh aloud. I assumed he gave it because the "stuck with debug menu on" sounded like a complaint from a user of a leaked warez version of the game.]

 

[baud]

 

[MRY]

I have a terrible LP I did -- basically I was too lazy to take screenshots, I have a terrible microphone, I didn't think to turn down the game audio, I muttered, and for inexplicable reasons that even a child would recognize as unsound, I tried to narrate over the VO. My invaluable right hand man, the polymath Polish co-designer/editor/scripter/motivator/etc., described the LP as so bad that "even for the Codex" it was unacceptable. But, anyway, having spent half an hour on it, and having no imminent time to record another, here it is.

It's not the playthrough described above, but it ends in failure.

 

[buffalo bill]

UI, writing, animations and illustrations all look incredible. The vignette-style gameplay looks cool too—I'm really into KoDP/Darklands-style games.

However, the combat mechanics look absolutely awful. In this respect it is like Darklands too, except at least Darklands allowed a few different tactical options (e.g. go berserk, throw potions, break engagement, etc.).

Why not make the combat a bit more sophisticated? Instead of combat decisions consisting entirely of which enemies to engage with, why not also have options for blocking, and aggressive versus less aggressive attacks (with aggressive attacks having some cost)? Or something like that. Also, though the combat animations are good, the sprites flying all over the screen looks really silly, imo. A walking animation for some characters would be way better. I know combat is not the focus of this game, but why leave a weak link when it could be easily improved by giving the player (and AI) more tactical agency?

 

[Infinitron]

I have a terrible LP I did -- basically I was too lazy to take screenshots, I have a terrible microphone, I didn't think to turn down the game audio, I muttered, and for inexplicable reasons that even a child would recognize as unsound, I tried to narrate over the VO. My invaluable right hand man, the polymath Polish co-designer/editor/scripter/motivator/etc., described the LP as so bad that "even for the Codex" it was unacceptable. But, anyway, having spent half an hour on it, and having no imminent time to record another, here it is.

It's not the playthrough described above, but it ends in failure.

Unlisted video. Is this newspostable? Is there going to be a blog update about it?

 

[vortex]

Does the game take place in the same universe as Primordia? The UI style is identical.

Primordia Lore Police detected.

 

[Quantomas]

It is almost like a form of art, where the music and narrator and your voice recording compete for what we can make out.

Once you accept that, the LP provides actually a fairly thorough impression of what seems a highly interesting game. Good call to share it!

That it is difficult is a must, otherwise the game would grow stale quickly.

At this point, there isn't anything that I see fit to criticize. Yes, the combat can be improved, and probably should as it is employed as a core pillar.

Anyway, it is a pleasure to hear your voice at last. It seems you are used to talking a lot competently. Your writing is top-notch, the artwork and lore great, the narration outstanding.

Will have to think a bit if there is something that could be added/improved to make it a timeless classic. But so far so good.

PS
Did you check whether the audio and voice recording are saved in separate channels, so that you could remix it?

 

[MRY]

buffalo bill I would say the odds are reasonably good that combat will get a bit more complex, particularly in terms of target selection, but there are no plans along the lines you describe (aggressive/defensive posture is something we’ve considered and might include). Combat presently “gets it done” in terms of what is needed from a structural standpoint. Other systems don’t yet. We considered significantly adding to combat and for various reasons (largely art load but to some degree that it shifted gameplay focus) decided not to. Zero chance of changing leaping to walking. Hugely increases art cost, adds coding complexity, and slows down combat, with no meaningful upside IMO. Leaping in combat is something that appears in Njal’s Saga, FWIW.

Obviously, all this is subject to a non-self-destruct rule. If I thought no one would play or enjoy the game with combat as is, I might have no choice but revisit. But Codex isn’t a good sample for that, as it’s grognardier than most.

Auraculum Yes, it’s a simulation made by Horatio after he erased his knowledge of how to fight. Actually, Vic just has one main UI style, so there it is.

Infinitron Please do not post. I will do a blog when I have a camera ready video.

Quantomas Thanks as ever for the encouragement!

 

[Quantomas]

If the main impediment to a more complex combat system is cost, there are alternatives.

I am also a backer of the Iron Oath, and interestingly enough their artstye for combat comes pretty close to what FG has now. But they invested a lot of work in animations and feats and other features, but have it mostly done now. I can only recommend what they have shown so far.

So ...

Would it work for you if they shared with you a trimmed down light version of the Iron Oath combat? Collaborations like that are normally not done, but why not doing a first, instead of always reinventing the wheel? After all, you are both indies.

The Iron Oath's main developer is also here on the Codex. All it takes is a PM to ask. Maybe he would settle for as little as some of your quality writing in return.

 

[MRY]

So, the principal direct costs are (1) design time (even if I started with another system like Iron Oath's it would still need to be translated to FG) and management time (in making sure the art, coding, and balance get done); (2) out of pocket cost (for a considerable amount of art); and (3) disaster risk. #3 is arguably the biggest -- getting combat actually workable was an averted disaster. Resetting combat to a new style risks critical morale failures across the board (particularly coder and artist). And by extending the dev time by a significant stretch, even if it did not increase the odds of disaster, it would increase the risk (since there would be more time for a disaster to occur). Example of disaster: coder finally gives up and moves on with life, forcing me to find a new coder who can understand WTF the old coder did and finish the game.

Setting aside those problems, the fact is that FG was never made with tactical combat as a goal. If I wanted to make a game with interesting tactical combat, here is what I would do:

(1) "Unit" types (heroes and enemies) would be defined with an eye toward creating interesting tactical possibilities -- in other words, rather than having people just whack each other, I'd be thinking of about what kind of interesting things units can do (knock-back, sweep, jump, long range, area effect, mind control, etc.) that would highly differentiate units from each other. (Telepath Tactics, for its ample flaws, is a good example of what I'm talking about, though I would do a more simplistic approach for a non-SRPG.)

(2) Units would have a fairly robust set of stats to allow for some of that differentiation to happen algorithmically rather than by hard definitions.

(3) A major role of gear would be to unlock those kind of interesting combat options, especially for the player character. Thus, you'd want the player to be able to switch between, say, axes (sweep), spear (thrust or throw), hammer (knock back), sword (boring generic attacks), and bow (long range). You'd want armor and gear that significantly limited mobility or enhanced mobility.

(4) Battlefields would be designed to provide interesting choke points (at a minimum), if not even more in the way of SRPG stuff.

(5) Encounters would be designed to set up interesting battles.

But none of that is true about FG. FG was inspired by Barbarian Prince, which has two stats for each combatant (might and HP), and consists of just rolling a die over and over till you find out who wins. FG is considerably more complicated than that, but that was the baseline idea, and a lot was built around that simplicity. Going back would require revisiting all sorts of things (bestiary, the way battlefields are handled, items, etc.). The whole thing likely would unravel.

But even if it didn't, there is a decent chance that adding more complexity to combat would slow combat down considerably, which in turn would cause combat to occupy an even bigger aspect of the game's focus.

Anyway, we might do more with it (for instance, creating more hard counters like so-and-so follower is strong vs. such-and-such class), but probably within the existing parameters, rather than expanding it.

 

[Murk]

MRY great showcase and it looks much more to my taste than I had initially anticipated reading about it.

If you would entertain a suggestion for a vid you plan to blogpost -- lower the in-game audio and raise your microphone audio so it's easier to hear you .

 

[MRY]

Yes, I promise I will do better next time in that regard. Clearly I'm not accustomed to doing LPs or really any sort of computer-based talking.

 

[Murk]

Yes, I promise I will do better next time in that regard. Clearly I'm not accustomed to doing LPs or really any sort of computer-based talking.

You did a great job showing the game so hey,

 

[Quantomas]

Resetting combat to a new style risks critical morale failures across the board (particularly coder and artist).

Thank you for your insight.

In general I would assume that a team lives by a shared vision to make the game as good as possible. But it seems you have more personal visions to manage too. It looks like FG is a piece of art at so many levels. Bodes only well for the game.

I have no issues with the combat system in its current state, I also have no problems with the flying sprites as I tend to see the combat abstractly in my mind anyway. But there are so many ways in which the player prepares for combat (health, food, party members, morale, artifacts) that the game would benefit immensely if the impact of these would be visible in combat to immerse the players more with their decisions and the path they took. These don't need to be active feats and could be simple, like showing the morale or affecting damage, or heroics.

Regarding what could be added to the game, I truly like the breadth of FG, the scope that you have to handle while forging your path.

As it seems you have designed FG in a way, which is also evident from your LP, that it favours more pragmatic solutions to the situations at hand, it will probably give me a hard time to make my way while still trying to set things right.

As a suggestion and means to compensate for this, FG could benefit from different endings if you win the game. Different victory screens for simplicity. Depending on your choices you made to forge your way ahead the screen would show a different world left behind. A world in which wolfish clans prevail and the people despair, in contrast to a world in which people have faith and look forward to rebuild, or as a middleground a world in turmoil in which hope still has its place. Obviously it would be harder to achieve all these endings, thus it would give the players a motivation to replay FG and add to its longevity. On a higher level, beyond the lore and your stellar writing, it would offer the players insight about the role of pragmatism in the world. Beside that you could add also more involved endings, maybe for dealing with all Firstborns in a single run or doing something special that only a true Norse would know.

 

[MRY]

Thanks for the comments. We do have different endings depending on which of the various ways you win the game (defeating Fraener, defeating Amarok, atoning to Karringar, laying Ormsson to rest, ascending via the Songbridge). I hadn't planned to do ending slides of the sort you suggest in large part because the overall theme of the game is that while the narrator and player might care about what's happening in the world, the god himself doesn't; showing the wake of his actions might actually be anti-thematic in that sense. To the god, all winning endings are happy endings, no matter how much worse he left the world behind him.

Still, everyone loves ending slides, so who knows? We'll see what we have time and resources for.

Incidentally, we just discovered that Unity was applying some stupid blur filter that had been messing up the pixel art; after five years, that's finally turned off.

 

[Quantomas]

It is very good that you stay true to your vision and are not heeding market forces (fan's wishes) much.

Hearing about the different endings is great, as it confirms there is a lot in FG we could discover.

Regarding your spot-on comments on the combat system, I do know what you speak about as I am working on a HoMM-related project.

That said, it would be great if you could make a mental note to look into upgrading FG's combat after its release. My comment on the Iron Oath combat wasn't meant as a full replacement. As it uses sprites as well, FG's combat would artistically remain unchanged. It just would add hex cells, obstacles, movement to the combat (for which you don't have the coding resources).

While fans are just the audience, their perspective can still offer valuable insight. A special edition FG with an upgraded combat along the lines mentioned above, IMHO would make FG a unique proposition in the market. It is already, yes. Still a good squad-based tactics game with the best lore and writing there is would be a heck of a game.

 

[buffalo bill]

Of course, it is understandable that you have limited financial and morale resources, and want to commit them toward other features of the game. But if you don't have the resources to make the combat system enjoyable, why is it a part of the game? You have already invested resources into combat animations, but it would be a sunk cost fallacy to think that this is a sufficient reason to keep the combat. Maybe I am wrong, and the combat will ultimately be enjoyable, but in that video it really looks tedious. Replacing combat with an auto-resolve algorithm based on your party and resources (again, like in King of Dragon Pass), would be preferable to a bad combat system, imo. Or, better, a totally abstract-but-fun system like in NEO Scavenger, though this would require additional commitment of resources toward development and coding and testing.

I'm not trying to shit on your game. I really, really think it looks great, and lots of features of the game are very appealing (I will certainly buy it regardless of what the combat system ultimately turns into). Hopefully criticism from an impartial outside perspective is useful, even if it is not fun to hear. And yes, as a poster on this website, I probably represent a niche portion of the population of game-players, since most of the population is happy with easy and boring crap like Candy Crush and Skyrim. It would certainly be safe to ignore the opinions of people who have taste like mine if you expect the majority of your consumer base to have more mainstream standards.

 

[Harthwain]

Still, everyone loves ending slides, so who knows? We'll see what we have time and resources for.

I always thought that the ending slides were cheapening the experience by giving people answer on a plate, whereas not having a clear cut answer(s) encourages people to formulate their own opinions on whatever happened. This can result in people coming up with interesting theories or explanations, which in turn stimulates discussion. But for that to happen you need lore or information from which conclusions could be drawn.

 

[MRY]

buffalo bill Obviously a feature that is a net negative shouldn’t be in a game, but a Codexer watching a bad LP is a poor measure of whether the combat system is/isn’t a net negative. Watching games isn't the same as playing them, and Codexers are more grognardy than most (as you note). IMO, even a boring, low-consequence combat system is often worth including—a point I’ve often made re: the trash combats in PS:T. But I’m not persuaded that the combat is boring, and it does carry consequences.

The reason at the outset for including combat is that there’s no more satisfying measure of the progression of your strength. Indeed, while I like KoDP, I found the combat system somewhat disappointing in that regard.

It may also be an age point. Simple combats were ubiquitous in my formative years, whether in The Ancient Art of War, the Lone Wolf Game books, the Barbarian Prince board game, or even a non-trivial number of RPGs. For instance, the BBS door game Legend of the Red Dragon stands out in my memory as a game with an absurdly simplistic combat system. So I have an a priori assumption that simple combat systems aren't worthless/net negatives, since my peer group and I delighted in them back in the day. I do think that more complex combat systems are generally (though perhaps not always) better, but that's not an argument for leaving combat out altogether.

Anyway, time will tell!

 

[MRY]

Caveat: I should say "entirely" boring -- the combat is definitely a little boring. I'm hoping we can improve on that though.

 

[baud]

Wormwood Studios
@WWSGames
Just had an absurd Fallen Gods run in which I managed to get a witch early on, and over the course of the 63 days it took us to eventually kill Amarok, the Great Wolf, she:

- sucked the youth from a maiden
- ate an abandoned child
- rode a wizard who tried murder me while draining his magic ("hag-ridden")
- offered to "help" a gruesomely wounded god who had been mauled by the Wolf and was being tended by priests, only to suck his last life in a lurid kiss
- seduced and destroyed undead jarls
- poisoned her cleaver with cobalt-tainted water dripping from stalactites
- enraged every follower other than my berserks with her antics
- at max level and with an attack bonus, delivered the death blow to Amarok

Mission accomplished:

Fallen Gods Update #5: Witches and Dwergs

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1208207073772634112.html

 

[lophiaspis]

Sounds like incredible incline.