RMMV Expansion - Winner of the Dreamhack Austin Jam

flynnmichael81

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Expansion was made in ten days for the Dreamhack Austin Games Jam.
It was selected as one of the winners and will now be shown at Dreamhack this year!
It is made in RPG Maker MV!
You can download it here!


It is a strategy game played on a board of 3200 squares which represent the/a galaxy. Each map is randomly generated within specific parameters. Upon the board are four different races, resources, obstacles, and stellar phenomena.



You play the humans, but there are robots, squid-folk, and aliens. The first half of the game is about expanding your humans across the galaxy, and the goal of the game is to completely cover the entire galaxy in humans.



Population density matters, but initially the idea is to reach out and claim valuable resources, before the other races do.



There are three types of resources…



There is also a pair of wormholes on every randomly generated map, which can offer the user instantaneous travel across the galaxy.



Games are played in turns. At the start of the game you get a single population to drop on the map but as your population grows, and as you acquire Populanium, you will be able to drop more population per turn.

Once the galaxy begins to fill up the different races will encounter each other. At this point assimilations begin to occur automatically. An assimilation is when one race replaces another one on the map.



In the above example the central human has a population weight of 3, his own weight of one and the two adjacent green men. There is a population weight of 2 Aliens bearing down on him. In thi case the tile would not be assimilated.



Having dense groups of population means a tile is less likely to be assimilated. It is important to fortify vulnerable locations by surrounding them with population, or preferably reinforcing certain map points to keep large areas safe.

There are other methods of strengthening the weight of a tile. Dyson Spheres are large population centres that reinforce any line with an extra 25 points.



Lines can also be disrupted with the building of walls.



Which can also be exploded to take out especially strong areas, or even resource hubs.

During the first half of the game expansion is key, but in the middle half of the game, holding on to resources and breaking up enemy lines will stop inevitable stalemates when equal population densities meet.

Each map also generates with a number of suns ready to go super nova. When they do they cause a huge amount of damage to the surrounding map but leave behind a resource. A supernova can alter the game at any stage by strengthening one race or causing new lines of battle to open up. The endgame is usually, but not always, played out between two races doing the best to completely annihilate the other.

The Races:

You play as the humans. Who are equally good, or bad, at everything. The red aliens excel in expansion and are usually dominant in the early part of the game. The blue squid-folk gain a bonus to mining resources. The grey robots cannot use Populanium to boost their growth but gain Unobtanium every turn, regardless of resource centres owned.

Difficulty:

There are five difficulty settings. I would suggest playing on normal before lowering the difficulty.

Screens:

 
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mlogan

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I'm intrigued to give this a try when I can! I love seeing games made with RM software that look so unique!
 

flynnmichael81

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Thank you! The game-jam required only custom graphic assets which is why it looks so unfamiliar. Its the first thing I've ever made with all my own graphics and I'm really pleased with the result!
 

Canini

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This is really cool both in concept and execution! I did a short review of the game for my blog:
http://atspela.blogspot.se/2018/05/expansion.html

Some thoughts:
- Graphically and musically the game was amazing, and really fit the gameplay.
- I really think this game has strategic value, and it was worthwhile to go again and try new things
- Better instructions on where/when you can place special units would be appreciated
- I felt that the game space was a little too big, which made matches dragged on a little too long.
- I really would have liked an option to place several units at once. While testing I had to rest my hand twice from clicking so much.
 

flynnmichael81

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Update: Expansion was one of the ten winners chosen from the Gamejolt & Dreamhack Game Jam, and will now be featured at Dreamhack this year!!

Thanks @Canini! I completely agree with your assessment of the limited tutorial. I was only an hour away from the Game Jam submission time before I remembered the game even needed one. Now the Jam has been judged, I plan on cleaning up the game a bit and adding a better tutorial (we weren't allowed to do fixes after the submission date). Also, arghhh... so much clicking! I'm not sure what I can do about that on this version, but I'm considering remaking it on a grander scale and, if I do, I will definitely be adding a way to place multiple units.
 

mlogan

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I did get a chance to play this, but not a chance to report back yet.

I did really enjoy it! It's a very impressive build, graphically and structurally for only 10 days. I'm curious - did you use custom plugins to make this work?

I don't have much to add outside of what Canini has said. My biggest issues were with the special pieces - I figured out the Dyson Spheres pretty easily. One point of confusion was with breaking walls - it seemed to work sometimes, but other times I could not explode them, even though I had enough Unobtanium, so I'm not sure if there was some other restriction on them or not. I get though, being rushed to finish. :D

The only other real confusion was when the game actually ended. As I gave it a go on easy mode just to try it out, I fairly easily managed to overtake the whole board, but then - nothing happened, so I felt unsure if there was something else I should be doing to end the round.

And, as Canini pointed out, being able to click and drag to cover an area would be great, seeing as when you start getting into placing higher numbers, the clicking becomes quite tedious.

But overall, it's a great strategy game. I love seeing unique things like this made with RPG Maker, and I do hope you will expand - haha! - on this game.
 

flynnmichael81

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Updated the game to version 1.1 with some post-jam fixes: The 'win screen' now shows up, walls should explode correctly, novas should happen in all games,and Populonium has been nerfed, other and various fixes.

@mlogan: Yes. I would say 90% of the game is written in JS with very little actually going on in the editor. I'm relatively new to JS so the code is pretty lazy but feel free to poke through it of you are interested. I've fixed most of the issues that you pointed out in the new build. I wish I could have done them sooner but with only ten days (well 8 really as I went away for three nights to celebrate my ninth wedding anniversary, and needless to say I was certainly not interested in working on it then!) I just didn't get around to it.

Thanks for playing it and leaving feedback. I was excited to share it with the community here!
 
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