The War for the West [Releasing Nov 14]

So it’s basically the whole ‘300 days’ part in The Great Tournament but even more complex?

I LOVE IT.

17 Likes

Such a cool idea. I’m pumped for more.

3 Likes

This looks interesting. First game like it on here that I could reasonably get into.

“You may have not, but one day you’ll surely have. It is the duty of a lord to make sure to bear children that will eventually inherit your responsibility. The lack of a heir can bring uncertainty and lack of stability to a province.” Then she goes on and on about the pleasures of a married life.

Huh. Didn’t know my parents were in this work. Perhaps they got paid ROYALTIES? Because…we’re nobles and such ingame? And perhaps striving to be kings and queens? No? I’ll take my jokes elsewhere.

You never knew that soup could taste so good. It has a thick consistency, but the taste is unlike anything else you’ve ever proved. It is even better when eaten alongside a piece of bread.

I too like to prove the taste of something. Just look at my equation that proves that crab stew does indeed taste like crab stew. And is even better with crackers. And is very delicious.

“I accept the betrothal. It would be an honour to marry Lord Dannel.”
“I accept the betrothal. It would be an honour to marry Lady Danna.”

Saw both of these options while attending the party as a guy. And there was no mention of a Dannel. But when I clicked on Dannel, they were suddenly Danna again. I’m going to assume they’re like a Pretty Cure or like Ranma from Ranma 1/2. Or perhaps trying to emulate Zelda turning into Sheik.

9 Likes

Don’t forget the option of an open secret. (How much do the people and the church care about such things, incidentally?)

Also, found a miswrite:

“Settlers from the South. After the Cataclysm that destroyed the realms of the south, your people travelled through the Wastelands and a descendant of yours fought its way to nobility.”

Should be “ancestor.”

And the “raiders” event keeps repeating whenever I talk to my military advisor.

The QM’s page needs to be fixed. Wall repair starts temple repair instead, and neither working on the walls nor the grounds sets the appropriate variable.

“Dear lady {name}… Have you ever wandered what it would be like to be among the Starry Veil? Surrounded by the blinking lights of a thousand stars, to stand among the God and the Goddess in their eternal dance around our world?”

I am insulted by being a placeholder! :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Nah, it’s totally descendent. Grandfather paradox shenanigans. The future makes the past or some such timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff.

5 Likes

When I captured the Star: “You lost -113487 troops.”

Now my military is huuuge.

6 Likes

First off awsome demo! I love this game already and look forward to buying it when it’s released.

Some errors I noticed:

  1. If you back out of any selection other than speaking with your advisors it advances the game a day.

  2. You advisors don’t see to have anything to say after you speak to them the first time. I think you should just have the option to speak with an individual advisor who has something to say pop up in the main daily menu at the top like other events.

  3. Some of the actions seem to take a whole day that really shouldn’t like reading a book or holding court. Just for satisfaction’s sake I’d recommended breaking each day down into three turns. Morning, mid-day, and evening or something like that even if it doesn’t effect your counter behind the scenes for the events.

  4. Training the drill year is a much better use of time than the library it seems. Three turns nets you two skill points while the drill yard is 1 for 1.

  5. Going to temple seems pretty pointless at the moment. Feel like it should be a bit obligatory for noble to go once whatever a week (ideally on the holy day) is in game or you loose church rep.

  6. Feel like the lore wise noble can find out about the rebellion plot pretty readily but can’t do much about it atm. I got the blacksmith and the assassin to confess can couldn’t even warn my ally.

  7. In the character creation screen it says your “descendants” settled from the south it should say “ancestors”

Again thanks for fantastic demo and keep up the great work.

7 Likes

Extremely ambitious but amazing so far! Good luck!

2 Likes

It seems your efforts have been CROWNED with disaster. :sunglasses:

…Sorry.

2 Likes

This is fun so far. I sense I’m headed for excommunication, every time some acolyte is complaining in my court I end up throwing them out.

Is there a way to read about the different factions? I’ve been playing as loyal to the king, but I’d like to make a more informed decision based on the king’s policy as well as the rebels.

1 Like

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I have fixed most of the stuff reported, but people might need to clear their browser’s cache in order to see it. (It should appear “version 0.2” below the title of the game on the first screen).

There should be another version uploaded today aswell, with more fixes and a bit more content.

At least two of them, at some point.

Thank you for your kind words. I believe the reason something like this keeps appearing is because we all(the people who attempt to develop such games and the people who want to play them) simply want it so much. Between a low fantasy setting that takes itself seriously and the customizing mechanics of creating a noble and managing a fief, there are too few games available who deliver that experience.

I also believe that, while ambition is great, there has to be some scope to that in order to better work with the elements presented. Instead of creating dozens of provinces and houses, having enough of them in a “controlled environment” is a good approach to keep it “simple”(and doable) while also providing lots of possibilities and different interactions, in a way that (hopefully) don’t feel lackluster or too vague.

Thank you. I certainly like the Lovecraftian approach to medieval mythos, and of course Game of Thrones is a huge influence. To be fair, I was not aware that “smallfolk” was derivated from GoT; I thought it was just another way to name peasants. I’ll certainly restrain myself from using it.

I won’t pretend I got what you were meaning with the soup thing, but I can certainly appreciate bug report here(and the Ranma 1/2 reference). It should be fixed by now.

That’s true. About the “how much they care” part, lets just say that some people have nothing better to complain about where peasants decide to plough their pricks.

Indeed it should be. It’s too early in the game for paradox to st-:dizzy_face:

I think I fixed it, but I’ll have to check every version of the event in order to make sure. [quote=“Ramidel, post:24, topic:26275”]
The QM’s page needs to be fixed. Wall repair starts temple repair instead, and neither working on the walls nor the grounds sets the appropriate variable.
[/quote]

I found the one about the walls, but not the training grounds. I’ll check it down.[quote=“Ramidel, post:24, topic:26275”]
I am insulted by being a placeholder! :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Sorry, m’lady. :sweat_smile:

I think it’s fixed now. :sweat_smile:

At the moment the passage of the day is associated with the option in the “court” menu to facilitate keeping check on it, but eventually I’ll have to find a better way to do that, probably by checking if “stuff was done” before returning to court.

They sometimes can be asked about some new information you gathered. When that is the case, usually the person you are speaking to or the narration will suggest that maybe going to talk to them is a good idea. But indeed there are too few of those, spread too thin across the game.

The truth is that at first I had the notion that you would have to access the Council screen every time you wanted to speak to one of them, but eventually it became clear that this would create too much unnecessary back-and-forth, so I’m keeping it open for some non-immediate questlines that present new options when talking to them while I think of better ways to make that screen worthwhile without the player having to guess when there is new content in there.

It’s a good point, and I can’t argue with the fact that some actions wouldn’t necessarily take a whole day. Dividing a day down in turns probably can be implemented and its certainly something worth considering, but it brings two problems with it, in my opinion:

First, In many cases, it would also mean that triple the current content would be needed in order to span the same amount of time it is doing now.

Second, I really, really think it’s important to achieve a reasonable balance between being believable and being entertaining with the content flow of the game.

Let me try to be more clear with an example: Does it really make sense that, in one week, your fief is visited by a foreign noble, is attacked by brigands, a meteor falls from the sky and all of the events have no relation between them? I think we can both agree that the answer is no. There’s a fine balance that I’m trying to achieve, between “boring tasks” happening in quick succession and “interesting stuff” between them, so as not to make the game look like some grimdark Adventure Time spinoff where crazy events keep on happening in quick succession or a Downtown Abbey episode that spans across an entire day.

I think that if I go too far on the “common” and “daily life” stuff, it will simply be overwhelming both for me(creating such content) and for the players(who will have to go through too much inconsequential and “boring stuff” to get to the “interesting” parts).

In the end, it’s one of the most fundamental aspects of the game, and the struggle to find that balance is something that I try to have in mind at all times. I want players to feel like their actions and decisions matter, presenting them with interesting situations that also feel believable.

The amount of day it takes to read a book will eventually depend on the “size” of the book, and sometimes different books can give you different stats(“How to talk to ladies at feasts”, for example, would grant you some Social). The training grounds(drill yard may actually be a better name, now that you mentioned) also needs to be balanced. There is also supposed to be a “cap” in there eventually, so you can’t get more than X of each stat during this "chapter.

Same thing that happens with the Council screen, I believe. There are a few interactions you can get at the temple(arranging a ceremony to be made for Emyria and promoting the feeding of the poor after you speak to the other priest at Hilltown, if I recall correctly), but in the end it simply needs more content to be put there. The idea of making the noble go there once a week is quite good, actually. I think I’ll implement that.

I actually have no idea how “balanced” that currently is right now. :sweat_smile: The blacksmith is supposed to be just a hint, but the assassin is quite evident and indeed there will be branches that open when you have that information(Talking to your Council, to your allies or to the King/High Court).

Should be fixed by now.

Thank you so much! I really appreacite such a detailed feedback.

More backstory is to be implemented regarding that. Usually, Lore and Social are the skills to get in order to find out more about these things, as they will be presented in the Characters and Noble Houses screen at the stat screens.(the more you have on those, the more information appears). Also, the members of the council will eventually give more info as well.

5 Likes

Awesome! Once I can find the right girl and sweep away the issue with the church I will be set then! I have always been a huge fan of holding court in games, though this is the first time it’s actually been a big part of it so I’m very excited about this game :grin: I even got my girlfriend playing it and this sort of thing isn’t normally something she enjoys, so bravo on that!

3 Likes

Am hi i think i found a bug in the stat screen i get promised to lady danna and the northerners even though i didn’t accept the northener and accepted lady danna and also when u strike a deal with the eastern brotherhood of trade or something, the money don’t get added to ur treasure

1 Like

Nice game, enjoyed playing it multiple times

1 Like

I was expecting a bit more of context about the current king when i played, but i liked the story so far.
About the marriages, are there more options? I feel like arriving at a feast and being asked to marry someone called Dan-something without really knowing the person was weird.

I’m all for strategical marriages here, but i don’t even know if allying that house would be a good thing considering they couldn’t even hide the drunken uncle there.

But i did only a quick read before sleep, so maybe i did let something slip? Besides the gal name, but that can’t be helped. :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

Well I have had 3 proposals so far, sadly all guys, including one jerk that basically said “Marry me or it’s war” and so war it is :stuck_out_tongue:

7 Likes

I can’t really blame you on that choice. War does sound much more appealing than marrying a jerk.

7 Likes

Very enjoyable. I hope advisors will be romanceable in the future. Jenneth should be good at keeping our relationship secret, considering her job :smirk:

4 Likes

Well jerk or no it wasn’t going to happen, now if it had been a Lady that came riding in with an ultimatum like that…maybe :stuck_out_tongue:

4 Likes

Fixed those two. Thanks for the report!

There is certainly going to be more information on the King, but one of the plot points of the current political situation in the Kingdom is that the Western Peninsula is too detached from the eastern intrigues due to geographical limitations, mostly.

The idea behind the feast on Dullis is that Lord Dullac is actually trying to lure you into a marriage offer. This is something a character with high Social might find out in a few interactions, and can even confront Lord Dullac about it. So it is kinda the point that the offer seems abrupt; he wants to force your hand. Literally filling you with food and beverage, making his wife try to soothe you down and then coming for the final blow, as a marriage alliance with your lands would be quite good for them, since you are their only immediate neighbour and you stand between them and Sielccia.

There are other marriage possibilities in the game that will come out of a less political context, eventually. Currently, if I recall correctly, there are three marriage options, all of them more political than anything else.

[spoiler]You wouldn’t want to marry your half-sister, would you?

Wait… Perhaps you would. Gotta keep that bloodline pure. [/spoiler]

9 Likes