Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind - King of Dragon Pass spiritual successor

[Xamenos]

It still doesn't work on Win 7, does it?

You can use a Win 10 virtual machine to play it on Win 7. That's what I did.

 

[Norfleet]

play king of the dragon pass instead

Yeah, it aged surprisingly well.

That's because it fundamentally lacks anything that can age. Games with fancy graphics age poorly, but games with basically nonexistent graphics don't really age at all.

 

[Polanski]

play king of the dragon pass instead

Yeah, it aged surprisingly well.

That's because it fundamentally lacks anything that can age. Games with fancy graphics age poorly, but games with basically nonexistent graphics don't really age at all.

That, and the fact that it's one of the best games ever made.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Artstyle doesn't age, pixel count and SFX do.

 

[Norfleet]

Pixel count only matters to people with pretentiously large monitors who play games in fullscreen mode. KODP isn't really that kind of game. The sfx in KODP was never cutting edge to begin with and the game isn't based on spectacle, so a few cursory sound clips...don't really age either. I mean, are you aware that games have been recycling basically the same explosion noises forever? Every time something explodes, I can hear it, because I'm a connoisseur of explosions. I've exploded a lot of things, and in real life when I hear an explosion, I can immediately tell you what kind of explosion it was, as different explosives have different explosion characteristics and thus sounds. Like TNT has a different sound and feel from ANFO. They don't actually explode a new thing for games, nor do they authentically recapture the sound of the thing that is exploding. They just recycle the same set of explosion clips with little variation. Computer sound can't actually reproduce the full harmonic range of an explosion anyway. Explosions have a level of bass that not even the best subwoofers can reproduce.

 

[Malakal]

The music in KoDP is kinda... ear rape honestly.

Also what ages the most is story and events, at a point you know them all by heart.

 

[Xamenos]

The music in KoDP is kinda... ear rape honestly.

Also what ages the most is story and events, at a point you know them all by heart.

You also learn a good book by heart if you read it enough times. This does not mean it has aged.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The music in KoDP is kinda... ear rape honestly.

Even the ducks laugh at you.

 

[Thorakitai]

Playing the original version of King of Dragon Pass, Hard Mode is basically the RNG fucking at you all the way.

1st fucking turn I gotta raided by the Horse Spawn on Sea Season, experienced far more bad events like being forced to pay your clan a favor or your ancestor getting angry at you, got raided twice in Fire Season, raided by Trolls in the Dark Season....

I only got as far as creating a tribe before the RNG fucked me over again by losing battles despite my raiding party outnumbering the enemy...

How different is the Hard Mode of the Updated version?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I don’t think they changed difficulty settings in the iOS port, I could be wrong though, I only played through the port once to see the new events.

Re: Hard mode: Yeah, it strongly increases the chances of negative events/outcomes and changes the basic gameplay focus into mitigation. Raiding is extremely risky. Hero Quests even more so. The first five years are by far the hardest, but if you make it through them you can get a few shrines and blessings under your belt and they will definitely start coming through. Depending on your level of meta-knowledge you can also exploit the exploration map early for a few near-guaranteed positive outcomes that will put you in a much stronger position economically/treasure-wise. In general though War clans will have a much harder time in the early-game on hard, but if you do decide to go War taking thralls will make your life a lot easier.

 

[Richard Leaks]

The music in KoDP is kinda... ear rape honestly.

Also what ages the most is story and events, at a point you know them all by heart.

The music is good, it's the encoding/bitrate from the 90s that makes it sound grating.

 

[Alfgart]

Sad news. Stan LePard, composer of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages (as well as big games like Destiny, Halo Reach, Halo 2, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars, Crimson Skies, Age of Empires III: Asian Dynasties, Shadowrun, and Age of Mythology) has passed away



I will always remember him because of this little gem. RIP

 

[tindrli]

that song brings a LOT of memories

 

[Silva]

Any news on the new game / Lights Going Out?

Also, some random questions:

- will some of these games take place in Prax? I would love to play as those animal nomads;

- this formula applied to a semi-historical context like, say, bronze era Summerians or Myceneans etc. would kick ass. Did the devs ever thought about this?

 

[David Dunham]

TL;DR: yes, no, yes.

For example, https://twitter.com/SixAges/status/1394728512938971139

Your clan’s home is in Saird.

At one point we brainstormed a number of alternate stories that could use the basic game structure. Lots of fun possibilities. However, unless someone pays us to do them, we’re going to finish Six Ages: Lights Going Out.

 

[Thorakitai]

I'm honestly wondering if Lights Going Out is going to be like this: Starts off normal like KoDP/RlDW but things are slowly going wrong until a disasterous event similar to Ride like the Wind occurs and it's now like a survival horror game where you and your clan try to survive against the Great Darkness and hope that even a small remnant can survive and maybe even your hero can participate with the Lightbringers.

Seriously, the setting of the Great Darkness is perfect for an Oregon Trail like game, except you are worried if suddenly one of your clan members attracts horrific chaos monsters or events instead of Dysentery.

 

[Heinrich]

I really love this game but I had the oddest experience when I first started playing: I played this game over several evenings and in the first evening I hated it. I went into it as a King of Dragon Pass fan excited for new content so I started playing it like KoDP and had a miserable experience. I had food issues I'd expect from a hard game in KoDP while playing on normal, I had trouble with balancing the costs of sacrifices and gifts, I clashed heavily with the new combat system. Fundamentally all the numbers were off ever so slightly so I couldn't play it just like I would KoDP and be successful, while the game was too close to KoDP to make me learn to play the game on it's own merrits right away. I had a kind of uncanny valley experience, restarted several times and went to bed that first evening being frustrated and being reminded of all the bad parts of KoDP and none of the good parts. The next evening I got used to the game, really enjoyed myself from that part onwards and basically arrived at what seems to be the standard take on the game: It's basically more of the same (in a good way), removing lots of the more frustrating aspects of KoDP and being generally more pleasant to play at the cost of being a fundamentally smaller experience in terms of content and feel.

Yet that initial unhappy experience didn't let go of me so I was inspired and went back for a game of KoDP and had exactly the same experience: Now that I was used to Six Ages I clashed with the original and had a miserable first evening with several restarts before getting used to the game again. I suspect that if I'd now start a game of Six ages again I would feel major friction in my first few hours of play. Did anyone else have an experience like that? I f any of the devs read this, did something like that ever come up in development and do you think it could have impacted sales, with returning players having an oddly frustrating experience at the start?

 

[oscar]

I think that's actually good game design. Ride Like The Wind you are a desperate band of nomadic refugee newcomers while your clan in KoDP are much more established farmers. I was never able to rack up the huge food surpluses in RLTW that I could in KoDP so I think RLTW might actually be the tighter game (when KoDP is actually not too difficult once you have a solid grasp what you're doing, what blessings are powerful, what is generally the best responses for events etc though without internet guides I imagine this would have originally taken a long time to master). In RLTW you simply don't have the time to get to that level of power and game-breaking.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Yeah, I haven’t played Six Ages nearly as much as KoDP, but my impression is that the devs tried to seriously address some of the balance issues present in KoDP. A lot of this resulted in streamlining some of the more complex and obfuscated systems, but it’s definitely harder to break the game in SA than in KoDP.

I still prefer KoDP overall, mostly due to setting and the larger breadth of content, but I can see the Six Ages trilogy becoming an objectively superior game in terms of design (if the trilogy is ever completed, of course).

 

[Heinrich]

The point I was trying to make was less about balance (I think it's good that food production is harder, although ultimately it's a problem easily solved if you have one or more of the food-production spirits). The point was that it feels bad to play Six Ages after you're used to King of Dragon Pass and vice versa due to some weird uncanny valley effect. What I'm interested in is if anyone else felt the same way and if this experience is common; if it could have negatively impacted word-of-mouth among KoDP Grognards and ultimately have a negative impact on sales. As far as I know sales have been mixed, with a strong initial showing but not the longterm legs the Devs expected, though that's a question only David Dunham can answer if he ever shows up again any time soon.

 

[LESS T_T]

In this 2019 GDC session, designer David Dunham shares how the pieces came together to create a re-playable emergent narrative in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

He reminds me of this guy from Sin City.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Here's whatever shit I posted that didn't load (curse you, short edit window! )

 

[Heinrich]

In this 2019 GDC session, designer David Dunham shares how the pieces came together to create a re-playable emergent narrative in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind.

Hey, thanks for posting stuff like this, it's always nice when I have your face popping up in my alerts.

 

[Üstad]

The music in KoDP is kinda... ear rape honestly.

Also what ages the most is story and events, at a point you know them all by heart.

Rather than music some of the game art is cringe and immersion breaking. The games art does not take itself too serious but things like duck people really makes me question myself why am I even playing this game.