Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role-playing Game Update #33 – State of the Game

Iron Tower Studio’s upcoming Colony Ship RPG is inching towards its playable combat demo, and according to the latest development update, that demo is now just a few months away. Apart from sharing this piece of news, the update also briefly talks about some of the game’s features and shares a good deal of neat-looking screenshots. Here are the text parts:

After nearly 2 years of work we finally have a playable build, which is very exciting. First, we finally get to see how things work in-game, not on paper, and second, it’s great to see the game rapidly changing with every daily update. It’s very rough, of course, as it’s the First Iteration: a promise of things to come rather than an actual game, but the promise IS there and it’s a good thing. Right now you can talk to people, fight, loot bodies, increase skills and equip new gear. The dialogue scripts are working like a charm, so you can go through all the fights and get one of 5 endings. The AI is doing a pretty good job seeking cover, flanking, and using different attacks. Collapsible textbox, pop-up attack icons with tooltips, status icons that tell you which enemies your character has a line of sight on, if the enemies are in cover, and most importantly, if you’re still in cover when the enemies are flanking you; the cover provides the highest bonus when the cover is between you and the enemy; less when the enemy is at an angle), etc.

The only feature that’s not done yet is the gadgets (energy shield and such), which gives us time to focus on the basic mechanics, iron them out, then introduce the gadgets. The armor sets are almost done, waiting to be textured. Plus tons of small things like various GUI improvements, proper textbox messages that show rolls Battle Brothers style (it’s much easier to accept missing 3 times in a row when you see what you’re rolling), blood splatters, a balance pass or two (changed AP from DEX+10 to DEX*1.5+5, working on the attack and weapon stats now), the cursor, etc. All in all, I’d say we need 2 months to get the combat system into shape before we start beta-testing, then another month before we release it.

It’s longer than we expected but late is always better than never. In comparison, it took us over 5 years to reach this point with AoD (due to working part-time and being inexperienced), so overall the game is progressing nicely.

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your families.