[Alpha] Dusk of D.A.W.N. by Fjord Games

[FjordGames]

 

Hey Guys,

 

we just founded our own independent game company and today I would like to share an early alpha screenshot from our first title "Dusk of D.A.W.N.". DoD is a strategic, browser-based collectible card game in a cyberpunk universe. The player takes on the role of a megacorporation with the goal for economic domination by any means necessary. Each player creates his own deck of cards from varying qualities (common through epic) and engages in battle by building facilities, executing strategies and dispatching employees.

 

 

 

 

I am posting this here, because I would like some feedback about the graphic representation. In a couple of weeks we will open the doors for alpha testers and if any of you guys are interested, just drop me a line in this thread. We will additionally soon accept beta applications if you want to wait until the game is a bit more polished.

 

If you are into technical details: We don't use Canvas but plain HTML5/CSS3/Javascript. The game uses a Websocket connection through node.js with socket.io and a mongodb database. The frontend utilizes backbone.js. I will gladly answer any questions you might have.

 

So, let me have it. What do you think?

 

Patrick

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/duskofdawngame

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DuskOfDawnGame

URL:  http://www.duskofdawn.com .

[champignon champion]

looks professional and polished to me

[FjordGames]

Thank you very much. I think our Illustrator is very talented and also a really nice guy. Although he is a bit swamped at the moment with finishing his bachelor thesis "on the side" while working 10-16 hours a day on our project. 

 

One of our card types are "Unit Cards" which are the first line of defense and attack. I will try to post a new card every two to three days while posting other stuff inbetween. If you are interested I could also dig up a screenshot from our "imageless" prototype to give you a hint about how ugly things looked when we were trying to create a proof of concept back in February.

 

 

On the attached screenshot you can see the combat buggy. One of our common cards. Using this card is a bit unpredictable, but on the other side it is cheap to build, costing only 25 funds (out of a maximum of 100).

 

Edit: I added the link to our facebook page to the initial thread - https://www.facebook.com/duskofdawngame

[mentuat]

definitely looks super slick so far! 

 

not easy to comment usefully on how this representation fits with user flow and gameplay - looking forward to see more!

[FjordGames]

I get that. I will soon elaborate on gameplay and present more ingame footage. I just don't want to spill all the beans in the first post. ;-)

[FjordGames]

I have gotten a few questions in regards to the setting and it seems some people would like to know more about the world the battle for economic supremacy takes place. So below you will find our introduction which will be represented in a video at a later time. I have also edited our game logo in the first post.

 

Hey there Softliner!

 

Looks like you survived the cryostasis after all... more or less. Your head must feel like it's been put through a blender.

 

You don't remember a thing, do you? Shit... You have been in stasis for almost 40 years now. We had a little trouble with our very own creation. D.A.W.N. is her name and she really turned the world to shit. Most A.I.s did what they were supposed to, but D.A.W.N. became the most vicious of them all. It took all we had to disassemble her and now she is history, except for a couple of isolated networks where you can find fragments of her. Still, the price has been high. Just look outside. There is not much left.

 

So, what to do with you? Oh well, according to these records, your shares, your patents and all the other things from your former business life are gone. But your private assets seem to still be there. Must be your lucky day. This should be enough to get you off the ground and back into the corporate world. If you are up for it...

 

Todays corporations are so much more than back in your time. It is not about competition, it is about war. The big companies are in charge of their own territories and support their own armies. Some take the more subtle approach of hacking into their competitors servers. But a digital death is just as painful.

 

You have to decide for yourself which route to take... I would suggest to buy some land and start out small. Don't expect anyone to be nice to you because you are green. People will try to exploit you and keep you down from the start. For a, let's say ... reasonable amount of credits I'll get you a piece of land and the necessary assets. As much as I can get after keeping my commission. Now show them that you have what it takes.

 

Maybe you will survive and just maybe you will once again make a name for yourself!

 

[FjordGames]

We just released a new card as a thank you to our (dare I call them) fans for hitting 100 facebook followers. The cloning facility is a very useful building, escpecially for me with my current 100 hours of work per week. ;-)

 

If you would like to know more about Actions and Charges used by this card, just take the jump.

 

[FjordGames]

Time for a little update. Our company page is coming along great and will be released August 5h. With the release you will find a lot of game information right from start as well as a blog on which we will share a lot of details about the features, especially leveling, deck building, combat etc.

 

Today we released the first of our strategy cards to the public. There is a bit of additional information available about strategy cards on https://www.facebook.com/duskofdawngame

 

[xerver]

Just a comment about the board design. Generally if you are a player in a CCG your cards are closes to you while your opponents are furthest from you, a vertical playing board. The horizontal orientation is avoided since it makes the player feel that he/she is watching the game as opposed to being a player in it.

[FjordGames]

Great comment. Thank you.

 

We had quite the discussion about exactly this topic.

 

The main reason for our decision is the currently used widescreen format on most screens. We would have had to compress the game board vertically to display all the necessary information and would have been left with a whole lot of unused space to the left and right side of the board. Going horizontal meant, being able to use more space for the board itself and thus intensify the feeling of closeness to the action. If we had decided to develop our game in 3d, things might have been different. 

 

I think it still works and there does not necessarily have to be a disconnection with your own "army" of cards.

 

If you look at all those turn-based combat games like the Heroes of Might & Magic series, they do work with a horizontal field of battle. Scrolls (by Mojang) does also go with the horizontal approach. Since you have your hand cards in front of you, it will still be giving you the feeling of holding your fate in your own hands. That impression might get lost on the screenshot since there are no handcards displayed. This will rarely be the case when playing a match in Dusk of D.A.W.N. 

[FjordGames]

Well, I have another one for you. It is our bunker system. I hope you like it. Next week we will introduce our final card type, the tactic cards. For now, a building card has to do. We weren't quite satisfied with the design of the tactic we had picked out initially, so we went back to the drawing board. Although all 110+ cards have been designed, we always do one final checkup before releasing them. 

 

So, here you go:

 

[FjordGames]

Today we introduced our first tactics card. More info as always on our facebook page.

 

 

For those into technical background info: We will be pushing the release candidate for our corporate webpage on our staging server tomorrow. There might be a couple of bugs left to fix and our illustrator still has a bit to do until the goLive on August 5th. Still we are actually a bit ahead of schedule.

 

I also got some gameplay information for you:

 

Gameplay

 

The game board will be divided into three columns corresponding to the three card types: Buildings, strategies and units. Each turn you will receive funds and draw new cards from your deck, which you can position individually and put into play by using funds. Using your played cards requires proper planning: In each turn, you only have 5 actions at your disposal. Actions are consumed upon playing or activating a card. But there is a fourth type of cards: Tactics. Their effects on the game board are immediate and thus allow you to gain the upper hand and bring the enemy's corporate power to zero.You will decide whether to take the physical or the digital approach which correspond to the two damage types at your disposal. All attackable cards have their individual resistances against those damage types. You are better off attacking and hopefully taking out a tank via the matrix, instead of putting a barrage of gunfire onto him. A soldier is better taken out by using a precisely aimed bullet.

 

Deck Management

 

The management and planning of your deck is a central game element of every collectible card game. Dusk of D.A.W.N. offers an intriguing system which also ensures the balance of each deck: The deck capacity. Each card consumes a portion of your deck capacity, with more powerful cards requiring a larger amount. It is important to find the right balance, because if your deck becomes empty in the middle of a match, it will be reshuffled, but your corporation suffers significant damage in the process. This means if you use just few, but powerful cards, it will become vital to play them in a perfect style and to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible.Furthermore you are allowed to assign two buildings to your deck, which will be available at the beginning of the match and count as played out cards.Lastly you will have to assign a division to your deck. Divisions are unlocked by reaching a new level with your corporation. These special cards will provide a passive boost to your corporation and thus allow for greater synergy with your deck cards. For instance, a division could decrease the costs for playing drones, while also increasing the power of all drones. Or your turn-based income of funds could be passively increased. The opportunities are manifold!

 

Research and Development

 

You might know the issue: You just bought yourself a new booster pack and as you earned some bad luck, you now own the same card multiple times although you don't need it. Fortunately, there is a solution to that in Dusk of D.A.W.N.! You may consume cards in the process of researching, which will unlock a random new card for you. You choose the rarity level of the new card and select cards that you would like to sacrifice. Depending on the chosen rarity level you will need a minimum amount of points to start the research, while the consumed cards provide a certain amount of points that depends on their own rarity level. If the required minimum amount of points is met, you may start the process. If it is successful, you will receive a random card of your desired rarity level. But even if you fail, you will get a major amount of your consumed cards back.

 

[FjordGames]

A question came up about the flavor texts on cards like the combat buggy. People wanted to know, if we were going to add flavor text to every card.

 

We have talked about this internally since the very early stages and this is a feature I personally really enjoy. We already have a fan on facebook who tries to come up with flavor texts for our cards and I think it adds to the emotional value of a card. I don't think we can put a flavor text on every card. As you can see by the Psionic Novice below, there is not much room left. Instead we came up with the idea of a card album on which additional information is made available. This could include flavor texts and should most definitely include the name of the illustrator to give credit where credit is due. This way we could even include a longer flavor text to start really filling the game universe with life, but in a way that is not distracting during a match.

 

I am not sure though, if we could implement this during alpha or early beta. It is a non-essential feature and if the community wants to see it, we will implement it during the beta process.

 

[Chris]

Well, this is a digital card game. You have some big advantage, common card games dont have: you can make interactive cards.

So either you could allow the textarea on the card to be scrollable, or include a little icon somewhere that - when clicked - displays the flavor text of the card instead of the cards values.

Just an idea.

[FjordGames]

Sure, that would be another way to handle this. In a match I would still consider flavor text to be unimportant. But on every other game screen there are multiple valid solutions. I am sure we will try some of them out and see which approach has the right feel to it.

[FjordGames]

In almost every CCG it is imperative to build a strong deck. Dusk of D.A.W.N. is no different. If you want to create a strong and dynamic deck you have to make use of card synergies. A couple of days ago I presented you the Combat Buggy which moves to a new field after every successful attack. How great would be the combination with our "New Opportunities" card. Attack, move, heal, repeat. 

 

[FjordGames]

Next weekend we will release something a bit bigger than card previews. I am really looking forward to it. We might even include a couple of screenshots if I can get them polished until friday.

 

[FjordGames]

 

Hey Guys!

 

As promised we released quite a bit of new stuff today. For a full article you could head over to Facebook.

 

So today I have two new ingame screenshots for you. One from the corporate headquarter and one from the match screen. Enjoy and please let me know what you think.

 

Headquarter

 

War Room

 

I have also updated my first post with the new images.

[Travis]

The game's UI looks really, really similar to SC2's UI. Was that something you were considering, or did it just happen that way?

 

Reference: 

[FjordGames]

We realized early that there was a resemblance, but we didn't feel the need to change it.

Blue and orange are after all complementary colors and just go very well together and digital displays tend to work with buttons. 

[Travis]

I agree. Overall the look is sleek and future-looking - just what you were going for, I think. Best of luck in development! I'll be following...

[FjordGames]

If facebook is not your thing, you can now also follow us on Google+. 

 

[FjordGames]

Well, it has been a long weekend. We have been shooting our promotional video and finalized our homepage. I think I got 6 hours of sleep since friday morning and I am pretty beat. 

 

But we did it, our homepage is online, so if you would like to know more about the game, you should head over to www.fjordgames.com. There is also a blog post about the creative process in regard to our card illustrations.

 

[FjordGames]

If you are interested in a peak behind the scenes and a blog article about prototyping in games, you should check out our latest blog article:

 

http://www.fjordgames.com/blog/3-game-development-ep-01-prototypes

[FjordGames]

Well, over a week has gone by. I am sorry. At the moment I am rather busy, because our illustrator is on a much earned vacation and our game designer is preparing for the gamescom. And of course I always checked back for new replies by you guys, I just didn't post anything new.

 

Still, we expanded our homepage quite a bit with additional information about the anatomy of game cards as well as with our card library, which offers an overview (or rather a sneak peek) of all 115 cards.

 

• Anatomy of the cards

• Card Library

 

So, check it out. ;-)