I've seen gamers who play just to be able to research, oblivious to the fact that technologies were simply means not purpose. So, what is technologies were the purpose?
OK, enough small talk and introduction, let's skip to the main topic - what do you think about a game which is all about research?
Our new prototype called (at least for the moment) Deus ex Machina is a game in which 2 to 5 players research technologies. Each player takes a civilization in its earliest stages and develops it to the 20th century.
You'll start by discovering the wheel, agriculture, religion, move through the middle ages with arts, cannons or alchemy and end up developing jet fighters, artificial satellites or social media.
The game has a total of 500 research cards depicting 159 different technologies divided into 5 ages, ancient, medieval, industrial, modern and post-modern/contemporary and also into 5 types, according to their purpose, government, military, science, engineering and culture.
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| Guilds Tech card, first prototype |
Every technology requires some older technologies or an amount of knowledge progressively higher as you advance through the ages and it open the path for one or more new ones. The same cards can be discarded to pay the knowledge cost of another technology, making the game streamlined and fast paced.
We are still in the early stages of play-testing, but things are looking well. We're going to start mass testing soon and we are hoping that Deus ex Machina will go to print before the end of the year.
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Andrei, there is a series of computer games called Deus Ex, take a look not to get into copyright/trade mark issues.
ReplyDeletePS: Deus Ex games are quite good, if you're into computer games I recommend to play them; especially the classic from 2000.
--sadyc
Thanks for the heads up, I haven't heard of or played that game, but this is just a working title. We'll probably look for a better name.
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