Dawn of Aquilas is a dystopian cyberpunk flavored with Roman imperialism. You’ll get to play as a newly-promoted Praetorian Guard struggling with your allegiances and loyalties as your home city, Megalopolis Umbra, rises in revolt around you. Its main inspirations are Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the Tower of Babel, the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and most recently Obsidian’s Tyranny. Its allegories and themes will center around the US’ current political climate, techno-utopianism, post-truth politics, and socio-economic inequality.
This is a moodboard I put together on Pinterest that I use for inspiration: Megalopolis Umbra
Also, this is part of the Penumbra Extinction multiverse. Check out the actual play podcast at penumbraextinction.com.
Whet your appetite
Megalopolis Umbra is the dark, cancerous city growing amidst a vast, toxic wilderness; some mockingly call it the Jewel of the Northern Wastes. Its sleek obsidian towers reach far above the ground in an attempt to touch the heavens themselves. In Umbra Above, only the richest and most powerful citizens can lavish under the sun in opulence, while in Umbra Below, the people are cast under the perpetual shadow of the city’s looming towers.
You were born at the bottom, where the cold and forgotten do what they must to survive.
that is great i do love a good romance in games.but i do have a question about the world will it be set on earth or a different planet if it is set on earth how far into the future will it be? or is this some sort of alternate history thing?
I’m craving for a good military/political game. Setting like this only makes it better. I can recommend you Age of Decadence, both as a great game and as a potential source of inspiration. It definitely fits the theme of your game (a lot of common points actually).
Update One
Merry Christmas! I seem to have luckily finished the prologue/chargen on time. Check it out in the original post above.
All C&C appreciated, of course! I do have a stylistic question, though, about CamelCase words. I know that some developers abhor it, but how do you feel about them as a reader? Should I replace or keep them in this work?
Also, I plan to have Chapter One finished on January 31st. Actually, I’d like to have each chapter be done at the end of each successive month. Not sure how sustainable that’ll be, but it’ll be a good challenge. I plan on this story being at least 5 chapters.
Whoo, what a fun prologue! I usually dislike them, stylistically, but yours seems to add to the flavor of the story, instead of detract from it. One thing I am curious about, however, is the whole “intentionality of your choices” that the COG team tends to amp up, and the cybernetics.
Both of these are, I guess, kind of summarized in the same section. When you choose your cybernetics in the prologue, I have no idea what they do! I guess I can infer what they do from, y’know, the “armor” part, but the musculature one, to me, seems like it should be the same thing as armor. I quickly peeked through the stats too, and there didn’t seem to be any changes to skills, or any info added in the cybernetics chart. I think knowing what the player is getting into with each cybernetic would be worthwhile, and perhaps knowing its use afterwards? Whether its a skill-enhancer, or merely aids in certain story points.
Amazingly fleshed out for a demo. I usually skip through the prologue because half the time it can be worthless but this one it seemed everything made a difference which I thought was nice. The stats screen is well fleshed out for a demo.
