Dawn of the Sol Empire (WIP)

The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. This is a universal rule in the history of life. Yet if you’re in the weaker position, wouldn’t you do anything to turn the tables?

  • Play as the leader of a space colony threatened by the aggression of a much stronger neighboring civilization
  • Manage your colony, expand your military, make diplomatic breakthroughs and either fight or talk your way to success - or whatever else it takes to survive!
  • Start over to see how differently things could have ended up with certain different choices

Demo link: https://dashingdon.com/play/zaldath/dawn-of-the-sol-empire/

This is my first real project with ChoiceScript, so I decided to ask for early feedback before committing to my initial plans too heavily. Granted, the planning process is already almost complete, but since only around 2% of the actual game content is finished so far, there’s still room to make many changes (if necessary).

The early parts of the game are rather linear (choices have only little meaning), but it’ll start splitting into tens of different routes and even more endings over time. My initial plan is to make the game highly replayable by having some extremely impactful choices so that you can have an entirely new experience by replaying the game. We’ll see how it plays out in the end, though, and feedback is certainly welcome! (for example, do you prefer to play a game only once and having a single playthrough be as long as possible - or is it better to have your choices matter as much as possible even though the length of a single playthrough is reduced?)

As for updates, I’m unsure how often I will/should update the demo. Feedback is welcome on that topic too. At least I’ll be gone on a vacation for the next week, but then I’m planning to write as much as possible so that I’d be able to finish the game at around 40-50k words and to have a beta test during the Fall. Perhaps it would be a good idea to update this WIP thread after reaching certain milestones as well - let me know what you think!

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Like it so far! Can we be an alien species? Or maybe like a race of aliens that descended from humans but have mutated since then. Such as looking mostly human with a few different features like bioluminescent lines or spots that change color depending on their mood. It could be apart of their cultures way of communicating or something. If not that’s cool too, I just like too play play as something other than human. Keep up the good work :blush::+1:t2:

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I like the premise. Can’t wait to see what you have in store, good luck!

I’m glad there’s more stories were you can managing your own Empire I love this game already also I’m going to bookmark this for later

Thanks for the comments! As for playing as an alien race, that’s not exactly possible, although you could consider the colonists to be a separate race from original humans (due to changes in biology from genetic engineering and a different living environment). And as for appearance, I’ll somewhat leave it up to imagination, although they’re not that different from your average human.

Got my curiosity a going :smiley: look forward to seeing more.

Is it going to be a mix of The Expanse and Mecha ace?
And nice title, I like the name “Sol Empire”

Feedback

You missed a dot (as in…) and A would be capitalized.

I think the () text make it a bit less immersive, but that’s just my opinion.

If you do not want to join two words then it would be better to use em dash (—).

Oh, thanks for the feedback! Good points. I’m a bit torn on providing those pieces of immersion-breaking advice or not, since someone might be disappointed if they choose a gender+name carefully and they won’t have much impact in the end… On the other hand, it does break the flow/feel of the prologue somewhat. Maybe it’s better to remove them, after all.

I think the story is a bit more similar to the Expanse series. It’s more about strategic decisions than combat tactics.

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Sorry for the lack of updates! I’ve been writing this story a lot, though, and I’d estimate it’s actually around 60-70% complete right now, with around 25k words of text at the moment (been writing almost 1000 words per day!).

A big part of me wouldn’t want to spoil the consequences of major decisions in the game for potential testers, so I’ve avoided updating the demo link and even took down the original demo at some point. It’s possible for me to change my mind, though, but I’d kind of want to wait until it’s completely ready for testing (in maybe 2-3 weeks from now?).

A good estimate of the final length of the game seems to be something like 35k words (total text) and 10-15k words (one playthrough). It’s a bit on the shorter side among CoG games, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to drag out the story too much. It might be possible to add some new branches etc. during testing?

Well, that’s it for now :smiley:

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The link doesnt seem to work.

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@Mohib_Waris You haven’t read the previous post?

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Thanks @aryton3326 I actually didn’t read the previous post.

Ey, not to be a dawner or anything, but that tends to be, in what i’ve seen in this forum the greatest mistake people do on their first IF. People get burn out, players feel the game doesn’t progress as every time there is an update only people who replay a lot of rutes see it while everyone else feels it barely progressed, and things fizzle out. . Remeber that Tolkien wrote the hobbit before LOTR :slight_smile: But again, this is just what i’ve seen from WIPS here.

Now, as a player, my preferences (which i think align with the succesful games around here)

Imho the best way to go is around 2/3 routes with a lot of “self contained” variations (eg. You’re in a mission to secure the mcguffin, you might go gunz blazing, you might go stealthly, you might do diplomatically but you always end up in either “secured the mcguffin” or “didn’t secure the mcguffin”)., so that each playthorugh feels unique and yet you don’t drown yourself on 15 routes

It depends heavily on player preferences, but for me the best games are the ones that make me feel that my MC is unique enough and my choices matter, but that Don’t make me feel like i’m losing content out trying different variations. I feel like i’m losing content when other routes have scenes that could blend very well with my playthrough

For example, I dislike the “you have a free day, what do you want to do/who you want to spend it with”. I feel i’m missing content. On the other hand, if my MC is good, i don’t feel i’m losing content if i don’t see scenes that obviously only make sense with an Evil MC. Same way, if my MC is the stealthy type, i don’t feel i’m losing content if i don’t see the scene of guns blazing.

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