Airship Downs - A steampunk city sim w/ an RPG twist

[GeoFruck 2]

Hello All,

My name is Geoffrey Rucker, and I am here to spread awareness of a game that my team and I have been working on for quite some time. We currently have 15 members actively working on this game as volunteers, and we feel that the time is right to start spreading the word. Here is a brief (really, this is shorter than I wanted) discription of the game. It's my quote...couldn't find another better way to separate it, though

Airship Downs will be an innovative and engaging new city-building simulator with as many other gameplay elements as we can pack into it. The main city-building view will allow players to build a steampunk themed city using the knowledge and craftiness that most familiar with steampunk will be familiar with. For those not familiar with steampunk, it is basically low-tech and intricate machinery, which can sometimes even surpass modern technology. There will be some of the standard fare, such as housing, resource gathering, making things in the local shops for XP and GP rewards. There will be the full gambit of food providers, farms, fisheries, and game hunting. There will also be some unique city elements such as the Resource Synthesizer, the Automaton Workshop, and two storage facilities for organics and inorganics.

The main game will have a deep storyline and meaningful quests, which will include some strategic combat. DON'T FRET, if you are not into combat games, the standard gameplay will provide units for you, allow you to play this part if you wish, or you can just press the "I just wanna win this battle!" button. You will gain income and experience from your shops, using time based recipes, and gain levels, which will unlock more gameplay as you go. There will also be an overhead map, which will allow travel to other parts around the mysterious lake. These locales will be part of the quests, and provide as future expansion for your city!

The optional features will allow more experienced players to spread their wings as well. The strategic combat element will allow players to engage in 3D battles with the local bad guys, and provide plenty of random enemy occurrences to keep you busy. The overhead map will then also allow you to explore the region and meet other local enemies. Crafting will also be an optional element, which will allow you to collect random items in order to unlock city elements, new combat units, and more! The technology tree will also allow you to more customize the way your city works by unlocking building modifications, and increasing various aspects of your shop's productivity, as well as your food and resource production. If enough of the optional features are enabled, there will also be random cave encounters. Random caves you say?..what could be in the caves? Well, enemies and, of course, loot. Yes, this city-building game will have the favorite of dungeon crawling elements, but only if you want loot. I guess some people don't want loot.....I think.

The main reason that made me so passionate about making this game is because I don't believe there is enough representation of what a true city builder can be as a freemium game on mobile. This will add the RPG twist via a technology tree more adapted to an accrual and point spending mechanism, somewhat like a skill tree in the RPGs. If you want even more info, please check us out on FB here and we are also on the Mod DB sites, the most relevant one being Slide DB here. Please "like" or "watch" the game if you would like to help us get the word out about this potentially revolutionary new game. We hope to show the other mobile game devs out there that people really want a better game on mobile than what we are currently seeing. We do appreciate any help, but most of all, have fun!!

[raynev1 1,887]

Sounds pretty cool , can't wait to see some more progress on it though .

[GeoFruck 2]

Thanks for your reply, raynev1. We are actually in the process of prototyping right now, so we will have some in game footage within the next month. I'll be sure to post with our progress.

[GeoFruck 2]

Here is another update that I have posted for a different forum, that I'd like to share here as well.

This game is currently being developed by myself, and 15 other volunteers, under the company EVV Games. I started this project alone around July '12, and managed to gain support over the following months, and we easily have over 2k hours of time in so far. With such a team, we should be able to launch this by our Aug '13 target fairly easily.

A lot of games hope to be the next biggest title, so I won't bore you with this old song and dance, I will simply list a few of the standard and optional gameplay features and let you decide. It will be based on a city building sim, have a deep and rich storyline like the days of yore, have standard PvE battle encounters (which will have auto units and auto kill for the less experienced mobile gamers), and progress through levels using experience and gold. You will be able to enhance the buildings through building modifications and decoration based enhancements. There will be a unique leveling system, designed to prevent game breakage, which will progress the player through 10-20 levels, and then enter a new "age" which will start the levels over for the next age. Throughout the leveling, players will unlock new buildings, be able to combine the resources using streamlined mechanics, and unlock new buildings and building enhancing decorations. There will also be special "automaton" units that will be able to be created, and man the buildings, in order to add their bonuses to the particular buildings they oversee. These automatons will also have their own customization screen, and be able to be set on display for the player network. Other social features will currently include being able to build a network of fellow city-builders, who will be able to come to your city and collect money for you and restart your shop's recipes, which can be done a number of times based on the total number of people in your network. It will have a customizable UI for the main screen, user-definable play list for the music, the previously mentioned top-level "out-of-game" network, and allow the player to get full screen, high resolution pictures of each specific building.

The optional features will include a technology tree based on a level triggered points earning system, which can then be spent on the technologies, somewhat like a skill tree. Strategic combat with a multitude of units, using an 8-way square "star" grid, which will combine the flexibility of the hex directional capabilities, and the square's multi-sized unit practices. A Crafting system using basic and enhancement elements gathered from battles and exploration. Customization of the PC and NPC with standard attribute based stats in order to create specialty population units. Random overhead and underground special encounters with special enemies and loot (a-la dungeon crawlers) along side standard random encounters. PvP and co-op, turn based battle options.

These are what we currently have, but will add and/or modify as development progresses. Unfortunately the programmers insist that I will have to have a "feature freeze" at some point, but that hasn't happened yet.

The game will be a F2P with a premium currency based system, which will also have premium buildings to go along with it. The premium system will allow players to save time only, and also be a unique implementation of a currently abused mechanic. You will be able to "downgrade" premium buildings in order to get back somewhere over 50% of your premium currency back into your stash, and there will be plenty of promotional opportunities to earn free premium currency. This will be a generous system to basically "allow" players to spend money on the game if they wish, and help us sustain development and support for continued updates and expansions. It will also be successful, because no matter how much premium currency you give away, as long as there are more things to purchase with it, people will always want more.

To the best of my knowledge and research, nothing quite like this set of features has exactly been tried yet, so I hope it to be at the very least a unique gameplay experience. At best, I do hope it is very successful, so that it raises the bar for the current mobile development community in order to prove that not only can this be done, but is what should be done.

If you would like to keep track of our progress that we will be showing in the upcoming months, please check us out here and help vote our game up, and watch us for updates. We are only posting here temporarily and will have a website up soon at www.airshipdowns.com. We will continue to participate with this community until people migrate to our forums and wiki that we will provide on our site.

If you have read through to this point, we greatly appreciate your time, and whether you decide to check us out or not....have fun gaming!!

[GeoFruck 2]

We are now on Google+! Here is a brief list of the game's communities.

Facebook

Google+

Indie DB

Slide DB

Slide DB and Indie DB are linked, but some people seem to prefer one over the other. And since we are independent mobile game developers, it seems appropriate to be on both.

[nuyokcity 22]

Hi GeoFruck, sounds like an interesting idea and a setting that hasn't gotten much attention in a city builder context.

If you or any other readers are interested in other steampunk themed games either for inspiration for Airship Downs or to check out I have made a list here, primarily of fantasy rts pc games. Rise of Legends in particular has a unique steampunk faction, the Vinci, whose concept art can be viewed here.

I also added Airship Downs to that list as it fits in with the steampunk theme.

And of course there are many other non-rts steampunk games, Mobygames has a list here.

[GeoFruck 2]

Thank you for the encouraging words, nuyokcity I will check out these other games over the next week or so to see what sticks. Thanks for that direction as well!

[GeoFruck 2]

We are in our final stretches for some videos and a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.com. We will launch this later this month, and will offer first time exclusive perks for those who help support us as we begin the long road to gaining funding for production of this game.

We really are trying to do something ground breaking with this game. I'm not sure how many of you have found the current mobile city builders lacking, but WE SURE HAVE!! The current F2P games in general are just broken, forget pay-to-win, now we get pay-for-?.

We are going to do something about it, and we will continue to update here, but you can also help us by liking our FB here, and also watch our progress on the Data Base trio here. We are going to bring back a really engaging and replay-able game with Airship Downs.....and we will stop at nothing!!

Any support you are willing to give will be greatly appreciated

[Yorkman 0]

Hi guys. I'm Yorkman, the PR Director for EVV Games and Airship Downs.

We are coming down to the wire with our preparations for our Crowd-funding campaign. and we need YOUR help in getting the word out. Please get your friends and family to like us here on Facebook or watch us on IndieDB and get FREE Beta Access at launch. We will give this and special status on our website to everyone who has helped us get started by the launch of our crowd-funding campaign.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AirshipDowns?ref=ts&fref=ts

IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/airship-downs

[The Wrench 24]

Hmm. Sounds interesting.

[Yorkman 0]

Well we're hitting a major milestone in the development of this project and this company as a whole: the Airship Downs website is live! On the site you can get updates and live blogs from the CEO himself, check out game features, view the team member's page, interact on the Forums, and other things. We are a matter of days from the launch of our Indiegogo.com campaign and need your involvement now more than ever. Look forward to seeing you on the site!

Website: http://www.airshipdowns.com

[Yorkman 0]

Hey guys,

This is it, the day has come. Our Indiegogo.com Campaign is live! This is where we need your support the very most. Contribute if you can and help us spread the word. This is NOT possible without everyone’s help and support. 2013 is going to be a revolutionary year in the gaming industry, and by supporting us you can make your mark. Catch you soon. =D

http://www.indiegogo.com/airshipdowns

[GeoFruck 2]

We have added some prototype gameplay footage to our campaign page.  Please check it out here!

[GeoFruck 2]

Hi All, Sorry we haven't updated here lately, it's been a crazy month!  We have added another video to our collection, and have an added incentive on our indiegogo.com campaign.  Please help us bring this great game to you by either contributing or spreading the word.  You can find the campaign here.