The authors of the 4X strategy Will&Reason are looking for 15 million rubles to launch and market the demo version

We continue the cycle of publications about games that require investment or a publisher. Next up is material from the Russian studio Artemics, which is developing the strategy game Will&Reason.

Artyom Kopyl, the project manager, told about the project.

Artyom Kopyl

About the team

Our indie studio Artemics has been around for more than five years. The development of the game Will&Reason unites 2D/3D artists, screenwriters and game designers from Chisinau to Ussuriysk. Someone works professionally in commercial game development, while someone's main employment is in another field. Anyway, all the participants combine their main work and the creation of the game.

I am responsible both for the project as a whole and for its entire technical component. There are no other programmers in the 12-person team.

We do not involve new programmers, since most of the game has already been written. Plus, the game is quite technically difficult due to full procedural generation, which requires high skills from specialists who are not so easy to find within the chosen work format.

At the very beginning of the development, the team size reached 30 people, but over time, the most active remained, who can afford to participate in the long-term construction.

Zero rubles were spent on the development of the project, except for trips to conferences, so everything that you will see next is done solely on enthusiasm. It's not just about the prototype of the game. For example, we have our own artbook with hundreds of pages of illustrations, a book with an ent is planned, which will depict the mythology of all gaming cultures present in the game, and much more.

About the project

Will&Reason is a 4X strategy game with elements of a role—playing game and a "bagel".

The game takes place in an alternate world where the legends of ancient cultures come to life before our eyes, and mysterious technologies change reality. The player will be able to guide his chosen people from a simple village to a world-famous kingdom. Building a state will require the development of the economy of cities and the extraction of resources, the seizure of territories and even the crafting of equipment for the needs of the army. The real Heroes will help you in military and peaceful purposes, political intrigues and exploring the labyrinths of ancient ruins. By choosing one of the paths of development — from destructive magic to steampunk — you can challenge the gods themselves to save this world.

The presentation of the project can be viewed here.

The project is being developed on Unity.

Most of the game has already been done, balancing is underway, hypothesis testing and mechanics, as well as content filling — from quests to 3D models.

We are close enough to put together a demo for selected testers (there are already several hundred of them in our community). It will take about a year to create the full version. At the same time, the quality of the final product depends on the availability or absence of a budget, of course.

Development history

It all started six years ago with a publication on Picaboo, which showed a landscape generator with a huge number of options — from an endless world to a dynamically customizable grid. It also invited those who wish to join the development.

Then, for some time, people were selected and the details of the implementation were discussed, after which representatives of different departments were identified and work started. At first, everything was quite difficult, since few of the team had real development experience. Nevertheless, we were moving in the right direction.

The results of the first two years of development can be viewed in the diaries below:

In parallel, the team members gained experience in their main studios. At the same time, many people grew up directly on our project and thanks to it they were able to get into commercial game development.

The interface of our project can be found in the diary below:

This diary was later sent to the Buljat community, where players are asked in a special section how interested they are in a particular project. According to the survey results, this post is still in the top 5 most popular in the category.

An artbook was also released for the game by our forces:

We spent a short story about the workflow in the team with representatives of XYZ on the stream

The last two years have been spent developing a combat system and a quest system. We also talk about them in the following diaries:

Not so long ago, we got into the IXBT Games video, after which several hundred people came to our community at once.

About the mechanics of the project

The game tells about the development of mankind in an alternative fantasy world in which magic and unusual technologies are present.

The gameplay begins with a small settlement, the remnants of a civilization destroyed in previous cycles of the world's existence, and ends with an entire empire that can influence world history.

The main features of the project:

• procedural, multi-level locations that can be excavated and captured;
• choosing one of several cultures that influence gameplay and visual;
• customization of the faction depending on the decisions made by the player, from the characteristics of the unit to the general ideology of the development of the state (magical, technological or imperial);
• dynamic technology learning and decision-making system at the faction level;
• The main quest is about confronting a global cataclysm with elements of survival at the state level;
• hundreds of side branched tasks.

Let's look at some of them in a little more detail.

Locations

• All locations on the global map are generated procedurally and can have several levels of depth.
• There is a conditional division into caves, ruins of ancient cities, historical sites and plans of the gods.
• Exploring multi-level dungeons allows the player to explore the experiences of past eras and uncover the plans of higher creatures.
• The population of the locations depends on the game situation and may change during the passage. Secret levels open.
• Mines and other important places can be captured after stripping so that they automatically bring in resources.
• Visiting various places on the global map reveals the history of the world to the player and reveals unique artifacts of the past that can be used in battles with countless different monsters from different bestiaries.

Culture

• Each game culture is based on a real prototype, has its own style and visual, but, depending on the decisions made, it can vary greatly. As a result of the player's actions, cities and units can be obtained, for example, in the style of southern steampunk or the Slavic community of magicians.
• The development of the world affects primitive tribes and other small factions.
• Each culture has its own fantasy mythology (since the creation of the world), based on the real one. You can meet with a dozen gods, start worshipping some of them, come into conflict with someone, and even start hunting someone.

Quests

• The quest engine allows you to create quests of any complexity, as it is built on its own node system with the ability to add nested nodes. For the sake of experiment, we even created a quest in which several players participate at once, which is a rather unusual solution for this genre.
• The game constantly creates unique stories at the level of fantasy states, including through a dynamic technology tree, a procedurally generated world, as well as a generator of biographies of heroes, quests and overlapping events.
• The rulers and characters have separate scenes and are loaded from them, having some interactivity.

In addition, it is possible in the game:

• Collect loot;
• Create items;
• manage the equipment of the heroes;
• to build multi-level city fortifications;
• and much more.

We decided for ourselves that we were creating "Skyrim in the world of strategies".

Of course, we want the game to be more beautiful and detailed as well. But here it is important to make allowances for the fact that the world is completely procedural, so, for example, we have no way to bake light in the dungeons.

We also pay great attention to developer tools. Therefore, we have our own admin panels for easily adding items to the database, and our own map editor.:

About the target audience of the project

• The main audience: strategy fans (primarily 4X strategies).
• Potentially: players are fans of other turn-based genres and indie games.
• The age of our target audience is from 20 to 30 years old.
• We also find quite a lot of interested people among D&D enthusiasts.
• Even without marketing, we already have about 200 applications for testing.
• We have prepared a list of similar games in the genre and their indicators in a separate document, which is available on request.

About the business model of the project

We plan to sell copies of the game in the appropriate stores and not use the internal purchase system. Several major additions and cosmetic changes are planned. Separate releases of paid add-ons, quest packs and the launch of a modification store are also possible.

Ideally, we expect sales in the region of 100 thousand copies. It is possible to achieve this with the publisher, but if we have to publish the game ourselves, then the numbers will, of course, be much smaller.

About metrics

At the moment, we have not created a page in the store, as we want to accompany this process with a marketing campaign. Currently, there are no sufficient funds for it, so we try to implement interesting solutions to the game as much as possible in order to interest a potential audience with them.

It can be said for sure that the first additions will focus on cultures close in spirit to Asian and Indian, including with the aim of entering these markets.

There are certain sketches on this topic, for example:

About who we are looking for

We have an understanding of what tasks still need to be solved. You can read about them here.

We are looking for investments in the final stage of development and marketing of the demo version in order to conduct full-fledged testing, collect feedback and continue cooperation with the publisher until the release of the full version of the game.

The most ideal option for the team is to attract 15 million rubles to release a demo so that the project does not look like an indie without a budget, but a high—quality product comparable in level with other representatives of the genre.

Of course, in the current realities, this is quite a lot (although for such games, in fact, much more is required). The amount raised may be less, but this will affect the final quality. An approximate list of employees and their employment is described in this document (access on request).

For understanding, the demo will represent a game in which most of the stated mechanics and content work for the first two eras (plus it will lack the network part).

The budget for the full version of the game will depend on whether the work in the fulltime studio format will continue, so it should be discussed separately with the publisher.

If there is a publisher who is ready to immerse himself in the product and help us do something really new and original in the genre, then we are happy to talk to him.

Unfortunately, so far we have not met such people (we have even heard the opinion from industry leaders that they are not needed for such complex projects). Therefore, we are still planning to self-publish.

We are also looking for a team:

• 2D artists;
• 3D artists;
• the animator.

How do I get in touch?

Through the game's public in VKontakte: https://vk.com/willreason