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Before Arthur - City building grand strategy meets open world RPG

A topic by Ashwood Games created Feb 26, 2025 Views: 197 Replies: 3
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Hey everyone, just thought I'd share the state of my game so far and what I am working on next...

First off the game is a blend of City building, Strategy, RPG open world and a sprinkle of Life Sim. Your goal is to build your kingdom and unite England during the dark ages as you also live out the life of your monarch and your heirs. 

As of today when we run the program the player starts in the opening game menu, the player can now change their appearance, name, and starting traits, and these changes continue over into the game world following a loading screen. The player can move around the world using both ASWD keys and point and click, and a walking/running animations fire.

They can talk to townspeople spawned around the settlement, (but needs way more dialogue). They can talk to merchants and buy and sell inventory. They can open their inventory and change their gear and arm weapons. They can attack NPC's and fight them. They can click on the build button and place starting houses, taverns and shops in their capital settlement. 


Walking out to an unclaimed sector allows claiming the sector for the player, the AI can and will also claim sectors. The player can found a village and name them, placing starting houses and buildings without a grid system.

The player can also open the character window and see their character stats and traits. They can read books to gain skills, eat food or sleep to gain stamina, sleep also speeds up time and time now progresses from day/night cycles as a trigger system now fires the start of AI choices depending on time of day and other factors.

The opponent kingdoms have a full AI system that allows them to manage their realms, including running their holdings and engaging in war and diplomacy. (still need to include an AI building system that will allow for them to build up their own settlemetns also.) 

Through a new UI the player can raise an army and engage in battle with other kingdoms and the battle system is currently being integrated into the game without the need of the testing menu. During battle the player can assign troops to battle groups and issue orders to those groups (forward, back, flank, charge etc.) A start of the battle manager script handles AI decisions during the battle based on many factors including the player's choices.

As the player and AI kingdoms expand, the map border stones (showing kingdom borders) move positions to reflect the current borders of each kingdom. The player can chop down trees and mine stones while main NPC's (lords and kings) now have their own AI systems and move about the world based on their decisions. The player can also click on the map icon and view where they are in the world on an overview map.

There is still a ton to add to the game such as:

  • Ability for player to buy furniture and decorate their halls
  • Ability for player to hold court and hear their subject's issues
  • spawning of subjects and their AI
  • Ability to hold feasts
  • Ability to craft custom laws and punishments for your subjects
  • A way for the player to court / marry NPC's and have a family
  • Quests
  • Horses and animals
  • Farming, fishing and hunting
  • mini games
  • more buildings, and a research system to unlock them
  • more expanding and polishing of EVERYTHING currently in the game! :)
  • And more...

If this sounds interesting so far, please consider wishlisting the game on steam as this would help alot! I've been working on this for over a year now and am about 35% done, so a full release is still a ways away, but I hope to keep updating everyone as we go. 

You can check out more info on itch.io here: https://ashwoodgames.itch.io/before-arthur

Just finished adding a new feature, now the player can decorate their manors to change things up and impress visiting subjects. 


How the system works:

  • The player can buy items at their local shop or find special items while exploring the world
  • The player can place these items inside their manors, changing their position, rotation and color options. 
  • Depending on the item they may give you special bonuses when your subjects come to court, or they may impress visiting dignitaries.
  • Some items have special uses, for example beds allow the player to sleep, tables allow eating / feasting and thrones allow holding court

Added wolves and wolf attacks to the game. Players now have the chance of finding wolves while exploring the wilderness. If you manage to take them down you can harvest resources from their corpes such as meat, fur or hides. 


I've also added over 40+ technologies that can be researched during the game, these can unlock new buildings, weapons, or abilities. Hovering over a known tech opens a popup giving you a description and letting you know how much (if anything) has been researched. UI is still a work in progress, but getting better...

Other things added:

  • Weapon weight effect animation speeds and "hit" timing
  • New food eating animations
  • New Feasting mechanic that lets you host feasts at your kingdom
  • Perma death on health = zero, or of old age / sickness