Fantasy Civ Solo – the Aspirations and the Doom

I’m still on track for the mid-June release of Fantasy Civ Solo: Discovery and Doom! Though…the timeline feels tight at the moment.

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The key gameplay driver of Fantasy Civ Solo: Discovery and Doom, are the civilization aspirations, and the civilization doom. I wanted to cover these in a bit more detail today.

Aspirations

When you start a game of Fantasy Civ Solo, you’ll roll an aspiration for your civilization. This aspiration will be your civilization’s goal, and your civilization’s end-game. 

If you are able to achieve the aspiration, you win the game! If not – well, the game continues!

Aspirations focus on one of the three main areas of gameplay – exploration, combat, or expansion.

However, there is a lot of design room for more thematic aspirations.

I decided to start with three more “generic” aspirations, and three “thematic” aspirations. If the game does well and people enjoy it, I can see more aspirations being added in the future.

Doom

At some point during the game, your civilization’s doom will hit as well. This is a massive challenge, often scaled to your current military prowess, that your civilization will need to overcome. Think of it as a boss battle. 

If you are able to survive the doom, the game continues! If not – well, your civilization has fallen.

The different dooms are mostly based on combat threats – though there are other aspects of gameplay impacted by the doom.

Similar to aspirations, there is a lot of design space available for doom. I have a full idea that I haven’t completely implemented yet, called Quests. The idea is, instead of always needing to survive a doom through combat, there will be alternate victory conditions around defeating a doom. These might involve searching for something, going to a specific hex and completing a challenge, etc. 

I can see the doom list expanding in future versions of the game.

My Feelings Pre-Release

As of writing this article, I am about 2.5 weeks away from Fantasy Civ Solo: Discovery and Doom’s tentative release date of June 17th (I’ll probably be able to solidify that release date by the end of next week).

Overall, I’m feeling nervous. I know the game is fun (I’ve played it after all, and really enjoy it), and I think it’s quite creative. I’m not sure there is another print and play game like it out there at the moment.

But I’m still nervous. I usually get like this as a release looms ahead. I’m nervous that other people won’t find the game fun, that the rules (especially barracks and combat) will be too hard to understand, or that people will just end up apathetic around the experience. I’m also nervous that there is something game-breaking that I missed, especially around basic economy or combat. I don’t believe a game needs to be balanced to be fun, but I do believe game balance (or lack thereof) should be intentional. And if I missed something, then it isn’t intentional.

I think it’s a good thing I feel this way – it’s not a negative, overwhelming feeling. It’s just a nagging reminder that, well, the results of my hard work, and the hard work of the games’ playtesters and artist have yet to be validated.

I’ve put in the work (given the resources I have) to ensure the game rules make sense, and that the game is fun – but the feeling remains.

I’m not quite sure why I’m sharing this. I guess I just want to update folks on where my head was at.

I will say – the best thing about digitally releasing a print and play game, is that anything and everything can be fixed and improved.

I’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks as we approach release day for Fantasy Civ Solo – but if you look at my track record with Dwarf Mine, Distress Calls for Space RPGs, or Star Solo – you’ll begin to understand that above all I want to make a great game, and sometimes it takes a few additional releases and updates as I better understand my audience to bring the game from “good” to “great.”

Connect

More articles will be coming your way about Fantasy Civ Solo and how progress is going! If you’re interested in staying up to date with news and updates as development for this game wraps up (as well as release discounts) by signing up to the newsletter here!

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Thank you for being a fan of games! I’m looking forward to exploring with you!