Sovereign Syndicate - isometric narrative RPG set in steampunk fantasy London

[rusty_shackleford]

combat de-emphasized

Good God. Why would anyone say that unironically?

It appeals to... wait, who does it appeal to?

People who like honesty? I feel like in many ways "de-emphasized combat" just means "we didn't want to spend time on combat systems because we're bad at it/or lazy."

Which, fair enough. I'm bad at building combat systems too.

There's no combat because it's a clone of an adventure book game.

 

[Rahdulan]

What I'd like to know is whether the different tarot cards would lead to a spread of qualitatively different outcomes in a way that rolling a d20 wouldn't. Something besides success/failure/critical failure, something thematically related to the card drawn. If so, that sounds like it could be interesting (and tough to create). If not, it's just a cosmetic change.

Assuming we're talking your basic poker cards here you'd already have more informative results from a single "roll" because you not only get a numerical figure but also color/type of cards as well. Two of Spades could be interpreted differently from two of Hearts, for example. Now, add something like "draw two cards and result depends on how they interact" and you can get way more than just sum of numbers you would with a dice roll no matter how many dice are involved. It just pains me to see that tabletop roleplaying games are actually turning more towards the success/failure/critical failure system you brought up by embracing proprietary dice which, I'm sure, won't at all be a problem to buy decades after release.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

I like that this game seems to focus more on other fantasy races like centaur and minotaur rather than standard ones like elf or dwarf... the steampunk setting is also a plus in my book.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[fantadomat]

Is the bull from dragon age inquisition only playable character? Is there a character creation? I am not in to playing some deformed mutants and shit lol.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674920/view/5175185597188108787

Monthly Development Update​

Sovereign Syndicate Monthly Update August 2021

Hi Everyone!

A month ago we went public with Sovereign Syndicate after more than a year of work. We announced the game and launched our Steam page, website, and social media profiles. The response has been overwhelming and it’s both exciting and humbling that we’ve started to build such a passionate and engaged community around the game in such a short period of time.

We received press coverage from outlets around the world, including several articles in English, Russian, Chinese, French, and German. We’re glad to have an international audience and are trying to come up with ways to better engage with these communities. Our Steam page was seen by almost 18,000 people and our reddit, twitter, Discord, and Steam community posts generated hundreds of comments and interactions, resulting in over 3,200 wishlists.

Over on our Discord more than 70 people became a part of our community and had the opportunity to play an early prototype and provide feedback to help guide our development efforts. Combining this with the feedback we heard on our other social media channels and reddit posts we’re working on some exciting new content and quality of life improvements to make the game even better.

Here’s a quick overview of what we’re working on over the next few months:


New Content:

- Adding some additional scenes and item interactions to the existing prototype.
o Combat encounter
o Stealth encounter
o A mechanical puzzle
o Some additional inventory items
o A couple more ways to die if you’re not careful


- Redesigning character sheet, journal, and skill check interactions to make them feel more cohesive
o Better integration of character sheet skills and tarot cards
o Better description of skills, secondary skills, and etiquettes
o More information given to the player about the possible outcomes and factors in skill checks
o Better integration and organization of player journal


Quality of life improvements:

- UI and control improvements
o Reinteraction disabled when no new content is available
o Retry on death goes right back to decision that caused it
o Tooltips / Labels for UI elements
o Controls menu display
o Cursor changes to indicate walkable and non-walkable areas
o Improve item hotspotting
o Mouse wheel zoom in and out during gameplay, camera re-centred
o Mouse wheel scroll in dialogue system
o Make journal, inventory, and character sheet accessible during dialogue
o Add numeric hotkeys to select dialogue options
o Provide better clarity between internal monologue / narrative and spoken dialogue


- Minor typos and bugfixes
o Correct typos in dialogue and UI
o Tarot card starburst remained on screen intermittently after dialogue window closed
o Add in-game feedback, screenshot, and crash reporting


Thanks so much to everyone who engaged with us over the last month and took the time to check out the project. Whether you liked it or you didn’t we appreciate you taking the time to have a look and give us some genuine feedback. We’re looking forward to continuing to work on the project, engage with the community, and deliver a game we can be proud of.

Until next time,

 

[Infinitron]

Crimson Herring Studios founder Isaac Otway and Chris (Tarmack) Halina discuss what's important in a game and how that relates to our upcoming Steampunk cRPG Sovereign Syndicate.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/devlog-3-why-unity-and-other-early-decisions/

DEVLOG #3: WHY UNITY (AND OTHER EARLY DECISIONS)?

In the previous post, I talked about how I learned about the industry, diving into the community with GDC talks, YouTubers, and reading up on the origin stories of some of my favourite studios. I also discussed my introduction to the business of gaming and my first iteration of the game design document.

After orienting myself and establishing what I wanted to do it was time to make some key decisions, chief among them was what game engine to use for development.

I went down the rabbit hole of trying to compare all the various options (Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, RPG Maker, and more…) At first, I thought I might like to do the programming myself and use it as a learning opportunity; but for expediency and practical reasons decided against it. It would likely take me years to gain competence in any of the major programming languages and engines and I was better off focusing on the business side of things anyway.

Ultimately, I decided to use our reference games as a comparison, if Unity was good enough for Shadowrun and Disco Elysium then it was probably the right decision for my studio.

With that out of the way I had to set about hiring the right talent to make my game idea a reality. As I mentioned before, I don’t have any of the traditional hard-skills in game development, I’m not a programmer, artist, designer, or professional writer, so I knew that to be successful I had to hire the right talent, give them the tools they needed to be successful, and provide the guidance, time, and money they needed to do the work.

Hiring people proved challenging initially, leveraging my experience in HR and the game design document I’d drafted previously I started looking for freelancers who had the skills I needed and might be interested in the project. After talking to several people across multiple recruitment channels (Fiverr, Artstation, Facebook, Indeed, and others…) I managed to find a programmer, writer, and concept artist, enough to get started.

As for money, it was important to me to pay everyone fairly from the start, no grandiose notions of making everyone millionaires from some far off “rev-share”. What little knowledge I had of the industry and interaction I’d had in the community taught me that “idea guys” like me were all too common, usually all flash and no substance; and that the community had a sixth sense about such things.

If I was going to make it, I knew it would be by being professional, offering real work opportunities, managing the scope of the project, and focusing on getting the funding I needed to make it happen.

As I mentioned I had saved some money, enough to get started, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. We’ll talk more about funding in the next post, but for now I had learned it was important to get to the prototype stage. Most investors want to see something playable before making an investment decision, and if we had to go the crowdfunding route, we’d have an uphill battle being a new studio. So I thought being further along in development and having a playable demo would earn us some credibility with both investors and the general public, and hopefully I had enough money at least for a prototype if I managed it properly.

 

[ItsChon]

My initial reaction was that the game looks like shit. But after watching some videos and looking at it a bit more, I say there's potential. I'm not a biggest fan of the screenshots of the game they've posted so far, everything has a weird yellow haze to it. I also don't like how empty some of the text boxes feel. I wish they'd scale the text a bit so that it doesn't look so empty sometimes. Other the that, got to play the game and see what it's about. I'm not holding my breath this will be anything but shit though.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Commissar Draco]

So many games mentioned including Disco Communism but Not Arcanum and Fallen London? Also would prefer to make my own character playing as some mutant freak is beneath Commissar.

 

[Fedora Master]

I hate Steampunk so fucking much.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1674920/view/3053996429939782784

Development Update​

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a little over two months since our last development update, wanted to share some of what we’ve been working on.

We continue to be surprised and humbled by the positive response from media and the gaming community. We had an article in PC Gamer that gave us exposure with thousands of gamers, many of whom added Sovereign Syndicate to their wishlists and joined our Discord community[discord.gg]. It was great for the game and the community, but also felt really special to have an article in a major publication that I grew up reading and have been a fan of for years.

We’ve also been in talks with several publishers who have shown interest in helping bring Sovereign Syndicate to market. While we haven’t secured a publishing deal yet we’ve received some great feedback that’s helped guide our development efforts and we look forward to continuing the conversations.

We’ve also added some new folks to the development team focused on game design, interactive design, and animation. They’ll help us to better define our tarot card and skill mechanics, improve narrative and quest design, and develop more custom animations to supplement the mixamo animations we’ve been using during initial prototyping. I look forward to working with the team to continue improving the game with the goal of completing a vertical slice demo and having it up on Steam for you all to play by the new year.

Since the last update here are some improvements we’ve made:

New Content:

- Added two additional scenes, working on interactables, NPC’s and dialogue for these “levels”
- Additional original music and sound design

Quality of Life Improvements

- Various UI improvements
o Camera re-centred on character, added ability to zoom in and out
o Removed slant on UI
o Improved dialogue panel scrolling
o Added access to menus when dialogue panel is active
o Added numeric key support for dialogue options
o Added cursor change for inaccessible areas
o Added tooltip functionality when hovering over UI elements
o Added click and hold to walk/run
o Added wishlist and feedback tools and crash diagnostic reporting

For the next update we’re working on:

- Re-working of our character sheet and how we communicate skill development to the player
- Re-working of the tarot card system, how the skill check mechanic works with the character skills and attributes, and how we communicate probability of success or failure to the player
- Additional inventory items and consumables

Thanks again to everyone who’s engaged with us over the last few months. I’ve genuinely enjoyed chatting with you, answering your questions, and reading your feedback. Your comments have also been great for helping to focus our development efforts, ask ourselves tough questions, and ultimately make the best game we possibly can.

Until next time,

 

[Harthwain]

So many games mentioned including Disco Communism but Not Arcanum and Fallen London?

That's probably because neither Arcanum nor Fallen London were made on Unity engine:

Ultimately, I decided to use our reference games as a comparison, if Unity was good enough for Shadowrun and Disco Elysium then it was probably the right decision for my studio.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/devlog-4-how-are-we-paying-for-this/

DEVLOG #4: HOW ARE WE PAYING FOR THIS?

So let’s address the elephant in the room, money. How are we paying for all this?

Game development isn’t free, even if you choose to do all the work yourself there’s the value of your time and the opportunity cost of what else you could have done with it. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t bring a traditional game development background to the project. I’m not a programmer or artist, and I think if I tried to do everything myself it would take me too long to learn the skills and the final product wouldn’t be up to my (or my audiences) quality standards. So, if I’m not willing to do it all myself, the only other thing I can do is pay people to do the things I can’t.

From the beginning, one of my goals was not just to make a video game, but to start a business, to pay people for their work and give people who might otherwise be un- or under-employed the chance to utilize their skills and contribute to something. Especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainty around work, the economy, and reliable employment, I thought it was important to provide stable income as much as possible. I didn’t want to be an “idea guy”; the all too common trope in video game development circles who recruits people with the promise of some phantom “rev-share” that will likely never materialize, and who doesn’t contribute anything to the project other than lofty, but poorly thought out ideas.

Before I decided to start a business and before I knew what kind of business I wanted to start, I set aside $50,000 knowing I’d need some seed capital regardless of the project. So this is our budget, $50,000 of my own personal funds that I worked, saved up, sold personal items, and invested to earn.

But $50,000 isn’t a lot of money in game development, so what are we going to get for our money? I knew that I couldn’t make the game I wanted for just $50,000, that the total budget would be significantly more and require some outside investment. I needed to research what other funding mechanisms were available, what the requirements of this funding were, and how we could leverage our limited funds to meet these requirements, to give us a shot at making the game we wanted to make.

So, I set about learning about the industry and the requirements of the various funding mechanisms, publishers, angel investors, government grants, crowdfunding, and others. I attended some “business of gaming” talks put on by industry veterans like Jason Della Rocca and Mike Rose, and read up on the business of gaming, game discoverability, and marketing, from folks like Simon Carless at Game Discover Co. and Chris Zukowski from How to Market a Game. I also read articles and watched GDC talks about publishers, funding, crowdfunding, and the business in general and looked at publisher websites and Kickstarters best practices.

Through all of this I learned that especially as a new studio I needed to establish the credibility of what we were doing, give confidence to potential funding partners and the general public if we chose to do crowdfunding, that the game was more than just an idea and that we were taking concrete steps to get the game made. Most funding partners require a playable demo, a vertical slice of gameplay that demonstrates the core gameplay loop and shows off the art style and other key pillars of the game, in this case the dialogue, combat, and player choice and consequence.

So I wrote a game design document for this playable demo, outlining the various gameplay mechanics and what would be needed in terms of assets to produce it. I talked to freelancers and other industry contacts I’d built, showed them what I was working on, and asked for advice and feedback to remove as many unknowns as I could. With a defined scope, the right talent, and a commitment to prudent scope control and project management I thought we had a good chance of producing what we wanted and staying in budget, which would give us a playable demo that we hoped could attract additional funding.

So with that we set to work.

 

[gothfox]

I hate Steampunk so fucking much.

as far as genre fiction goes, steampunk is essentially fantasy with cogs clued on and """science""" (not really) instead of magic. it feels a bit unfair to single it out.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

it feels a bit unfair to single it out.

Not entirely. I guess its one of those things that have been effectively ruined by popularity among hipsters.

 

[gothfox]

lol, probably because making fantasy outfits takes more effort than attaching random cogs to tophats or w/e.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Not unlikely.

 

[Irxy]

Canada? Uninspired woken mess is pretty much gauranted.
Also steampunk is gay when done by a bearded dev.

 

[LESS T_T]

Trudeau believes in disco: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1674920/announcements/detail/5301301606965862062

Development and Funding Update
Major Funding Announcement!

H Everyone!

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. It’s been a few months since our last update but we’re looking forward to a great 2022 for Sovereign Syndicate.

It’s been a busy few months over here at Crimson Herring Studios, putting the final touches on our demo; but I wanted to take a few moments and share some really exciting news.

Our Game has been selected by Canada Media Fund to receive $250,000 in development funding!

Check out the announcement here:
https://cmf-fmc.ca/news/cmf-announces-a-4-4m-investment-through-its-prototyping-program/

We’re really excited about what this means for our community and everyone working on Sovereign Syndicate. Being able to grow our development team and accelerate production means a lot to us. And we’re hopeful this funding will open more doors to additional funding and business opportunities to help make the best possible game for our community.

Thanks again for all your support!

We’ll be releasing our demo to our Discord community soon for some user feedback and QA testing. So head on over there if you haven’t already.

https://discord.gg/vrVrE3vBSx

Thanks Everyone, Take Care.