Written 02.05.2008 - Uploaded 15.09.2008
As an additional introduction to this document, I would like to say that right now this project is somewhat redefining its production part. The main problems are lack of time and people but I'm still very interested in continuing this project.
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“Tactical combat in a world falling apart”
The Copernicus is an experimental exploration ship with a mission to discover the past but the world is not a safe place. Unable to house a full combat crew due to its extensive laboratories, the Copernicus relies on professional mercenaries with highly various backgrounds and conflicting interests, sometimes bound together only by the walls of the ship itself. The game focuses on tactical combat as the crew faces various battle situations from ship-to-ship combat to fighting mysterious creatures in ancient ruins, and as the delicate balance of the world is slowly shattering the situations grow increasingly tense and critical while the friction between characters increases. The characters wield highly varying abilities; they are specialists who require cooperation in order to survive. The story follows the human drama between the combat crew from various perspectives, giving insight into any and all characters the player might be interested in as well as the volatile situation of the world itself as secrets from the past throw everything off balance sending the entire humanity into a spiral towards destruction or salvation. In short, the game mixes tactical challenges and epic storytelling to enliven the story of the Copernicus and its crew.
Why another tactical RPG?
A tactical RPG is certainly nothing new. In order to make it interesting, the game focuses especially on the characters both story-wise and in combat where their varying abilities must be put into good use to find appropriate tactics to answer different situations. The game is by no means a puzzle game however, and multiple tactics can always get the job done but high variation in both situations and enemies forces the player to rethink again and again in order to make powerful individuals into a surviving force. The scale of battles is wide: some battles are fought but with a handful of characters while the most epic encounters feature multiple battlefields and support fire from giant man-controlled robots and massive flying battleships. The story is told via human drama and the player is able to choose none, one, many or all characters from whose perspective to follow the story. While the story itself is rather linear and the player has little influence over the events, it'll make up for it in complexity and depth.
Target audience
Primary target audience is players of tactical RPGs who appreciate tactical challenge and interesting characters. Due to its extensive story, the game also aims to draw attention from players of more traditional RPGs, expanding their horizons from small scale group encounters to larger battles.
Production
As a turn-based game with game boards made of simple squares using 2D graphics, the actual programming of the game is not a primary challenge. The game will be made for the PC using Python because it's an excellent open source programming language, and Pygame which makes it relatively easy to implement games with Python. Primary challenge in the game will be its graphical and dramatic content, requiring metric tons of dialog and character art as well as short attack animation sequences to make the combat visually more appealing. The game's graphical style will be mangaish and story events will be text dialog, visualized with still pictures and enlivened by atmospheric background music. The production plan is to design game mechanics first in board game style rule format and then implement it into the actual game engine after some testing. Once this part of the project is done, the story will be made in episodes which will be released one at a time on our website, in order to draw attention of players in a relatively early stage and get them hooked. Since this is still more or less an exercise project and the people involved are relatively busy with other activities, a realistic estimate for the completion of the first part (game engine) is a full year and if story elements are developed simultaneously, the first episode might come out relatively soon after.
Key ideas
- Carefully written characters and the possibility to select perspective for the story – players can have as much dialog to read as they want, or none if they're just interested in the fighting.
- Demanding and rewarding game mechanics presenting highly varying tactical challenges to keep the player hooked.
- Large amount of tactical options, which also increases replay value of the game.
- Atmospheric audiovisual presentation to make story alive.
- Open source engine allows community to make their own improvements.