Brad Wardell's site for talking about the customization of Windows.

Here’s a weird thing.  Stardock turns 20 this year.  That’s 20 years since I incorporated it back when I was in college.  My mom was the one pushing me. She was afraid I’d get sued by someone. I told her that was crazy. No one would ever sue us.  Cough.

I was playing FTL and if you don’t already have this game, you really should get it.  It’s a reminder that a great game can be made by just a handful of people.  It serves as a great exhibit for our internal game projects to exclaim “It’s about the game mechanics!”

We’re going to be announcing a lot of new game projects this year.  The first one will undoubtedly be the upcoming expansion pack / DLC (what do you call these things nowadays anyway) for Elemental: Fallen Enchantress.  The theme of it is to evolve the overall game design of Fallen Enchantress to help bring the role playing elements closer to the civilization building elements.  Sometimes, FE feels like it’s trying to be multiple games at the same time and as such, never fully develops a single overarching theme.  That’s what the expansion is being designed to address. 

Speaking of Fallen Enchantress, we’re hoping v1.2 comes out next week.  There’s a lot of AI updates in it and a lot of usability fixes (path finding got a lot of love).  That should (no promises) get out there next week.


Comments (Page 1)
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on Jan 16, 2013


The theme of it is to evolve the overall game design of Fallen Enchantress to help bring the role playing elements closer to the civilization building elements.

I'm confused. That sounds like it might be backwards. The RPG part is the best part, it's the civilization and army building parts that need to move closer to it in depth (IE more than 4 armor sets, and double (or more) the city levels as quick examples), IMO at least. The only realistic improvement I can think of for the RPG part is a few more quests, everything else is really solid.

on Jan 16, 2013

FTL is an amazing game. I got it for $5 and definitely got my playing time out of it. I only played it for about 30 hours or so before I had played all the ships and strategies, but there were several great moments of "Aha! My plan to suffocate the enemy crew has succeeded... now beam over and take all their stuff!" and the similar, "Well, I can die by either valiantly fighting in hand to hand combat or by burning to death trying to repair the shields, med-lab and door controls. Choices, choices..." 

Honestly I think the only thing differentiating DLC and Expansion Packs is the price. You pay less than ~$10.00 for DLC and over that for an expansion pack. I suppose you could try and refine it by saying DLC adds nothing more than content and an expansion actually adds new game mechanics, rules and features... but there's multiple instances of both types doing the other.

on Jan 16, 2013


Unless you're a Call of Duty DLC, then you charge $14.99 for the privilege of owning you.

on Jan 16, 2013

 

Thanks Brad for some glimps of info on the great news to come this year. 

 

Really looking forward to the expanion pack, whatever the focus it will have.

 

On the other announcements this year I'm very excited to find out what Jon Shafer is working on. I'm very hopefull it's GalCiv3, and that's what feels most likely. If not it better be another epical 4X, Grand Strategy TBS-kind of game. Don't waste his talents on rubbish....  

Stardock has a space strategy TBS-series, and now a fantasy TBS-series, so if it's a third Grand TBS it should be an historical one, preferable one covering an interesting age like the Ancient World or the Age of Discovery, or perhaps whole the civilized history of man like Sid's Civilization? Ages have gone past since that franchise got competition from Call to Power. Who could better make it's own Civilization-series if not Stardock?

 

on Jan 16, 2013


I like what I am reading and look forward to the FE Dlc.

 

 Thanks for the info.

on Jan 16, 2013

Aww, I thought you had decided to ship out cake and beer to all your loyal fans...
(Do one need more in life?)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

on Jan 16, 2013

Well,  your endorsement got me to spend $10 on FTL.  Hopefully it will help pass the time until 1.2 is released.

on Jan 16, 2013

FTL is a great game and just goes to show there is always room for the little guy to design something we haven't quite seen before.

on Jan 17, 2013

I did not take FTL on the ground it can be repetitive, am I wrong?

As for the expansion pack, I think many of us want more 'high fantasy' content also, i.e new weird races and such like.

on Jan 17, 2013

How about a playable race where the tech tree is more about unlocking new unit types (like a twisted faction that goes from darkling-ogre-troll) with unique abilities over weapon and armor upgrades?

on Jan 17, 2013

nice post!

is this upcoming expansion going to be the third iteration, or version, or whatever it's called, of the franchise that WoM customers from 2010 are supposed to get for free? Or is that something else? Could you perhaps clarify how "free" and these expansions work together?

on Jan 17, 2013

Good news indeed. I really hope GalCiv 3 is on the works with more "serious" graphics this time

on Jan 17, 2013


Sometimes, FE feels like it’s trying to be multiple games at the same time and as such, never fully develops a single overarching theme.  That’s what the expansion is being designed to address.

This is one of the few problems I don't see in FE. I think the design is pretty good. Unless...


The theme of it is to evolve the overall game design of Fallen Enchantress to help bring the role playing elements closer to the civilization building elements.

... is a very cryptic circumscription for "provide more interesting tactical battles", which is the weakest part of the game IMO, I'll remain sceptic.

Until then I'm looking forward to quite a lot of bug and usability fixes. At least, pathfinding looks like a start.

 

on Jan 17, 2013

Almost every review of FE said there was a disconnect between the RPG elements and the empire building. In other words, your champions and sovereign largely exist independently of your empire. One can play a whole game without even building an empire, or one can play without champions. While the player should decide for itself what path to follow, no game should be so completely without one part or the other as is possible now. This is probably what the expansion will try to remedy, by making champions more dependant on the empire, and the empire more dependant on the champions. More direct links between their progression, quite simply.

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