A new beginning

The past

Years ago now, I started work on a small game called Shadows Behind the Throne. Initially I just intended it to be a couple of months project, to see how much I could do. I got surprisingly far, and released it on Itch.io, posting originally in the Something Awful thread for That Which Sleeps. That game, sadly unreleased, served as an inspiration for this in many ways, along with Crusader Kings II and Civilisations I, II, IV and V. The thread itself had devolved into people posting mock gameplay sessions, to trick others into thinking the game had been released, and I figured the best joke would be to make the game itself, and post it unceremoniously alongside this.

It turned out I had more free time than anticipated (my research masters' assessment overran by many months), and that I rather enjoyed making the game. And the people who played it were very supportive and enthusiastic, so I continued. Versions went by, and features were added, such as saving/loading, gameplay expansions and occasionally (not often enough) UI improvements.

The arrogance

This continued till version 13, which was the end of the "First form" of the game. After that, I decided to rebuild much of the game. I had a range of gameplay ideas I wanted to put into the game, a bunch of things I felt should be tried. My main process was to imagine a type of evil from fiction (The Ancestor in Darkest Dungeon, Dracula, The Innsmouth cult of Dagon, The Red Death by Poe, The Minotaur's Labyrinth), then to throw together some gameplay features which may someday allow this to exist.

Sadly this turned out not to be a good process. The game became bloated, confusing and unfun. I failed to keep gameplay cohesion in mind. The game didn't have a true core 'loop', as I tried to throw everything into it, and make it fully freeform. I tried to keep everything from the first game, and everything I wanted from other games, and new stuff alongside it.

Eventually, I ran out of time, but the game was flagging before then. It had lost its essential gameplay elements and became a mass of confusing messages.

A new beginning

Since then, my academic work has been far too pressing for me to manage to continue proper releases, but that all changed a few months ago. Chatting with a friend, he said he liked the idea so much he would code it himself. Aware that it was far more work than he may be expecting, I told him that instead we should collaborate on it, and see if we could restart the project.

Neither of us can contribute as much time as I used to (academic life is unrelenting with its pressure to publish), so progress is slow. Months of work have allowed us to salvage much of the previous code, and build it up into a new version.

This new version is open source, leaving open the possibility of forks to the project, as other try their hand at implementing ideas they think would work well. It also allows anyone to see how I implemented certain features (often badly, or for reasons which are no longer applicable). Exact legal situation to be decided should the need to decide ever arise.

The future

We hope to continue working on the project, while keeping in mind the successes and the failures of the past project. Certain features are still needed for even a basic Version 1.0, such as saving and loading, maybe sounds, filling out all missing flavour text, a good balancing pass, but we were eager to release, to let people know that the project isn't dead.

Successes which we'd like to bring back are the fun gameplay ideas. I personally really liked the fog, and it should work well with the current gameplay setup, and many of the abilities of the Deep Ones need to return in some form.

Failures are those which add complexity without a very strong reason to exist. Cities don't need to be constructed building-by-building, as this just adds design overhead. Investigators don't need to go from city to city, this only made the map a confusing mass of units moving. My initial aim for investigators was a vision of a game in which your enthralled lives in a dark castle past a forest, and kills off anyone coming to visit, isolating their village from the world, trying to stay hidden from the world at large as they built up power. Sadly, this just isn't feasible with the current map setup, and the map can't easily be changed without altering all other gameplay loops. A good idea in the abstract, but not a good idea for this version of the game. (Of course, it being open source, feel free to try your hand at implementing it).

We aim to continue expansion around the core gameplay loop of political interactions, threat estimates by nobles being manipulated by the enthralled to keep them confused and conflicted, suspicion being gained and managed.

If new features are needed which would harm an existing gameplay feature, they should be implemented as a new gameplay mode. The undead were implemented in this way in a previous version, and that allowed the game to adopt a new form of core loop, without harming the existing game. This style of "Choose how the game will be played" seems the best way to allow mechanisms to co-exist without having them overwhelm the game.

The near term

The first goal is to get a Version 1.0 out. Save/loading, full flavour text for all abilities, clear the buglist, add a few abilities to Deep Ones, the Flesh and to the general political situation.

After that, expansion into new types of abilities would be investigated. Ideally players would pick which to take, selecting the form of evil they have access to, while keeping the basic political actions. Climate change, for example, possibly in the form of an army of darkness marching down from the frozen north or up from the scorched south, would be nice to see again. The fog, also, expanding outwards from your captured realm, allowing magics to be cast on those under its effects, was a mechanic I liked. Difficulty levels should also return, to help the beginners and challenge the veterans.

From then on, we'll have to see what's possible and what seems like it would be fun.

Anyway, thank you so much for the initial support, I hope to make these upcoming versions the best the game has had.

If you have any suggestions and feedback, of course, feel free to comment.