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

[Infinitron]

http://www.wormwoodstudios.com/2019/12/2019-in-review.html

For a good while, I was writing Fallen God design updates that were really fun, but really time-consuming, to put together. Then I got out of the habit, and decided that I should focus all my time on design/writing on the project. The result has been an apparent stoppage where, in fact, there was tremendous progress.

As I’ve tweeted about recently, Fallen Gods is now a proper game—you can win and lose, and do everything we wanted on the way to that victory or defeat. We still need quite a bit more content, and a lot of balancing, and then even more play-testing, but for the first time in the many years of development, it now feels inevitable that the game will be completed. I am reluctant to put any release date on it, but 2020 is not out of the question.

 

[Farewell into the night]

I'm waiting for this. Looks promising.

 

[MRY]

Looks are very often deceiving!

 

[Ivan]

Not here

 

[MRY]

Been playing the current build a lot. There are some major flaws in the game that we're going to need to fix (where we have an idea how to fix) and solve (where we haven't yet figured out the right fix). The balance is out of whack in many ways. There are huge swaths of missing content (including no real implementation of one victory path, and terrible lack of good text on other victory paths). But I've gotta say, it's the only game I've made (or even worked on) since high school (i.e., in over two decades) where I enjoy testing it. I'm starting to think it might actually be a fun game when it comes out in 2083.

 

[Quantomas]

Totally agree. The concept is great and your writing is a USP. The assets are not AAA but for this type of gameplay they don't need to. What matters here is that they have heart, and they do.

Regarding my earlier comment regarding different endings and giving do-gooders a hard time, I went back to your earlier update about violence. I get that, no disagreement here, but as in real life, you have always to guard your own interests but you can use your intelligence to make the most out of a situation for the benefit of everybody. I don't mind that FG will give me a hard time, I enjoy the additional challenge, but for me it is about to figure out the fine line where I can succeed and still have some leeway. Hence my desire to see this reflected in different ending slides that show the state of the world left behind.

 

[MRY]

New build out -- this feels a little like the LARPing That Which Sleeps thread, but really, it's real guys! -- and I've been testing it, and the game still makes me laugh.

One recent addition is that when you have a berserk in the warband, he doesn't let you pursue peaceful solutions. I had a very successful run where I spawned with the Death Lore skill and three souls, right next to a barrow. Inside the barrow, I encountered a mighty, undead warrior within, and while he was choking me to death, brought him back to life for three souls (an option that requires DL). I then noticed nearby an event where brigands guard a bridge and charge tolls, but their mighty leader can be sweet-talked into joining you. Well, I think, time for two bad ass warriors in my band. I detour over, whip out my silver tongue, and ...

Shortly thereafter, I came across a hot spring where a beautiful maiden was bathing. On the shore is a witch's skin and clothing. Being a god-fearing god, I used my Soul Fire skill and one soul to burn the witch's skin, and the maiden joined me. Both she and the berserk were loyal, which is great!

Our adventures took us to a widow's farm, where an evil wizard was trying to force her to marry him. My eagle fetch tracked him down, then dive-bombed him, and my berserk finished him off in one hammer blow (berserks strike first in battle), which caused his undead minions to die with him. This netted me a Skinbound Book (anti-curse item) and the widow's warm affections. Now I could stop by any time for some R&R. However, next time I stopped by, my maiden had some choice words:

Later, while exploring a cave, I came across some lost adventures -- for a measly 10 food you can get their gold and win their affection, so why not?

Anyway, after many travails I managed to accumulate the massive gold pile necessary to bring the threefold goddess Karringar back to life and win the game, the first time I've managed to do that without getting our ~draupnir coin that gives you a gold piece a day. Was a fun run, even if a loyal berserk on day 1 makes things kind of easy.

EDIT: In case I've used imgur the wrong way, here are the direct links:
https://imgur.com/a/GsfSGqM
https://imgur.com/a/B36lGfM
https://imgur.com/a/9M3h6Fu

 

[Monolith]

Damn, this looks good!

 

[Archibald]

New build out -- this feels a little like the LARPing That Which Sleeps thread, but really, it's real guys! -- and I've been testing it, and the game still makes me laugh.

When alpha version for super secret backers will be released?

 

[Monolith]

I like that type of decisions as they add a lot of character to the game. Bring a devastating 1-hit killing machine into the team, but get dragged into unnecessary bloodshed and mayham. I prefer this to the usual +2 damage on hit or almost cosmetic differences in skill use.

 

[MRY]

Very nice comment to read. If there is a single design goal that motivates me most here, it’s the desire for items, followers, fetches, and skills to all feel really distinctive, rather than just +1 this or that.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm sold. And yes, especially with this kind of 'popup event carousel' loop, I think clearly showing how the different buttons and choices get picked up elsewhere is really crucial to making it feel like it's a cohesive journey, and not a series of buttons to click.

 

[Murk]

Very nice comment to read. If there is a single design goal that motivates me most here, it’s the desire for items, followers, fetches, and skills to all feel really distinctive, rather than just +1 this or that.

This is absolutely the right way to go.

 

[MRY]

I'm sold. And yes, especially with this kind of 'popup event carousel' loop, I think clearly showing how the different buttons and choices get picked up elsewhere is really crucial to making it feel like it's a cohesive journey, and not a series of buttons to click.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but for the most part we don't track choices in made in events, so perhaps it will all feel like button pressing. To the extent events interact, the interaction is fairly indirect -- for instance, you might get a blessing in Event A that assists in Event Q, but not because there is some relationship between the events. You might get that blessing in events other than A (indeed, the game's design is generally such that we would not add a blessing unless it were featured in many places) and you might use it in events other than Q. So event Q would not say, "Using the blessing you got from Durin the Dwarf, you unlock the gateway to Moria."

Very occasionally an event can trigger a follow-up -- like, if you help a trader recover his goods, he might send a runner to bring you a reward later. But those are uncommon.

You should assume no greater interaction among events than you'd see in FTL or any other of that rogue-like genre.

 

[Tigranes]

Thanks MRY. Some disappointment, yes, but I think even just seeing the ways in which having the Berserker around modifies the text & flow is interesting, which I suppose is what you mean by indirect. It's more about feeling that if I got here with a different set of resources and choices, I wouldn't necessarily see the same event.

 

[MRY]

That is definitely true. Lots of paths through the events, some fairly obscure.

 

[Archibald]

I think it could be argued that such indirect interactions give more control to the player. For example, as I understand, if I notice that Berserker screws things up for me then I can decide to remove him from my party and alter future events. With direct interaction we usually have no idea if option X is going to have some future effects on other events or not and when we notice that it had an effect we often don't have any options to change it.

 

[MRY]

Well, the reality is that direct connections would probably be a big addition -- I love them in AOD, for instance. But they really can't work with the structure of the game and my own limited resources (time, energy). There are already a lot of events, and I need to: (1) add many more; (2) clean up / complete many existing ones; and (3) add many more "generic" special conditions (e.g., "In the quest where the thane asks you to find his lost son, if you find the son's arm ring outside the barrow and go in, and defeat the draug inside, should you have the option to use the Deathlore skill to raise the thane's son?" Right now, you can't; letting you do so means additional nodes and additional states for the town when you return). To me, it's more important to have more opportunities to use your skills, followers, items, fetches, etc. -- and to have simply more events, period, which makes sessions less repetitious. If I were less obsessive and weird about the writing style, I could probably add more gameplay, but the writing style has been a really important feature to me, and I can't bring myself to compromise on it.

I do think that, to some extent, you do have some sense of a narrative arc simply by virtue of generic connections between events. Like, for example, I had a run where early on I met two other fallen gods (a wounded hunter god and a god who had become a farmer), and I got them in my warband. This God Squad lent a particular feel to the adventure that others hadn't had. A run where you get a witch early on can often have that feel, too, because witches have such unique options.

 

[Quantomas]

New build out -- this feels a little like the LARPing That Which Sleeps thread, but really, it's real guys! -- and I've been testing it, and the game still makes me laugh.

Glad to hear that you are still on track. These days, with all the upheaval, it is simply good to know that people are still doing fine.

Well, the reality is that direct connections would probably be a big addition -- I love them in AOD, for instance. But they really can't work with the structure of the game and my own limited resources (time, energy). There are already a lot of events, and I need to: (1) add many more; (2) clean up / complete many existing ones; and (3) add many more "generic" special conditions (e.g., "In the quest where the thane asks you to find his lost son, if you find the son's arm ring outside the barrow and go in, and defeat the draug inside, should you have the option to use the Deathlore skill to raise the thane's son?" Right now, you can't; letting you do so means additional nodes and additional states for the town when you return). To me, it's more important to have more opportunities to use your skills, followers, items, fetches, etc. -- and to have simply more events, period, which makes sessions less repetitious.

You are doing well here. In principle it is the same method you use to build advanced AI. Direct interactions are cheap and not that interesting. Adding reactivity adds much more. What advanced AI does is to look at the ordering of potential events. That you have unique behaviours, let's say the type of a fetch, the presence of a witch or a berserker, leads to many potential sequences of events, in practice the paths you take through FG. It is great. An AI would do a lookahead to determine ideal paths. But here the players do the job, making choices to forge their path. Instead of the AI learning, it is the player learning to play the game. How to survive in this world, what a witch does, how your party and items affect the outcome of events. I guess your intuition led you to follow the right path. Direct events would be much more limited, and put a cap on the scope of the reactivity. The one thing I am worried about is that you have to match all the reactivity with your writing. Maybe a part of it can be, not generic, but rather tied more directly to the characters/items/fetches, a bit like the maid saying in a pop-up "I think we should let the old woman be", possibly meaning that she will loose loyalty if you visit again. Expressing reactivity by different actors systemically can lower the burden considerably.

The artstyle is great. It adds a sense of mystery. The vibe I get reminds me most strongly of Weird Worlds. Not so much FTL. In Weird Worlds you never know what happens. In FTL you have an idea.

Apologies for my very brief reply to your explanation how you would design great turn-based combat. I didn't mean to be rude. It is clear that you know quite a lot about how these games are designed and how you arrived at a subset of features that makes it into FG. It makes sense. Though I still would love a bit more structure and reactivity, like obstacles and stances, in FG's battles.

 

[MRY]

Weird Worlds was the original inspiration—back in 2006, I had the thought, “What if you combined Weird Worlds with Lone Wolf style text adventures?” Originally that was Star Captain, but while I was diverted by Primordia, it got preempted by FTL. In the interim I remembered Barbarian Prince (and read The Long Ships), and realized I could shift the concept to a saga setting.

 

[Monolith]

Now stop posting here and get back to testing, mate.

 

[Quantomas]

Weird Worlds was the original inspiration—back in 2006, I had the thought, “What if you combined Weird Worlds with Lone Wolf style text adventures?” Originally that was Star Captain, but while I was diverted by Primordia, it got preempted by FTL. In the interim I remembered Barbarian Prince (and read The Long Ships), and realized I could shift the concept to a saga setting.

You probably shouldn't worry about getting preempted. For one you can't afford it, with all the Viking themed games these days. And we certainly would have loved an improved FTL, maybe with text adventures in the style of Space Rangers 2. Plus it possibly would have sold like hotcakes with the market established by FTL.

 

[MRY]

I’m past preemption with FG. As I’ve often remarked, now there are Viking FTL-likes and Viking RPGs with “Fallen” and or “Gods” in the name. But this could well be the last game I make, the way life is going; to abandon it would be to abandon game design as well. An easier existence, probably, but still would like to get Strangeland and FG out before the wolves swallow the sun and the moon.

 

[Bulo]

Funny, I occasionally fool myself into believing that this will be the last videogame I ever play. Or maybe I'll just play through Primordia again!

 

[Ayreos]

Damn it! I want that Space Captain game! When a good game in a genre releases, it creates demand for the same genre until said genre is saturated! FTL was light on narrative too, your crew was bare cannon fodder. All i want whenever i play it is something with more elaborate narrative. Mass effect is a more valid concern, but it's not really the same genre and the truth is a good game always ends up selling. Even if it needs a few marketing kicks.
If i buy your Viking game, you better finish SC too!