Looking at the front page of my
website and the news section I saw that the last post I made was two years ago,
have I been doing nothing newsworthy for the last two years?
In this apparently
silent time I have been working on a project I didn’t want to talk about much until
it was at a stage where I felt it would best show the work done. I now feel it
is time to start showing some of this project as you may have seen recently if
you are a viewer of my Facebook page.
But before I talk about the
current project I should probably talk about another project that is currently
on that big development shelf where projects sit until that day they finally
get completed or get buried in the dust of forgotten memories.
Towards the end of 2012 I started
developing a digital Victorian horror deckbuilding game. A deckbuilding game,
for those who don’t know, is a card game where you start with a deck of cards
that are initially weak and during the game you buy additional more powerful
cards to make your deck stronger. You then draw a hand of cards each turn and
use these to gain more cards or defeat various hazards.
After a few months I
had a good portion of the Victorian game working and a lot of the card art
done, but the theme looked like it might be a bit dark for a wide audience.
I then decided to do a game with
a less dark theme and made VludKin Clanz, a lighter card game, although that
theme didn’t seem to appeal to a wide audience either, but I still had this
deckbuilding engine from the Victorian game I wanted to develop. After
finishing VludKin Clanz I decided I would try and do a new deckbuilding game
that was a bit simpler than the Victorian game, and also hopefully with a more
appealing theme.
Developing the Victorian game I
came up with a number of ideas and mechanics that formed the foundation for
what I now call the Lore Deckbuilding Engine, a card game system designed for
the single player, which I could hopefully use for several games using these
core mechanics.
I decided on a future military
idea for the new game as that seems a popular setting and quickly started
developing the game that would become Siberian Dawn, although it has turned out
to be a much more intricate and strategic game than first planned.
Now, two years later, the game is
nearing completion. Siberian Dawn is working, the art is being completed, and
all the elements are coming together. So now after explaining what I have been up to the last few years I want to start sharing details
about the game and talk about what makes it an evolution of deckbuilding ahead
of its release on Android and Pc.
In future blogs I hope to cover the world of
Siberian Dawn and also some of the elements of the Lore Deckbuilding Engine so please
keep an eye here and on Facebook and Twitter for more news and updates as I
reveal the secrets of Siberian Dawn.
- Winterflood -
