Demigod Developer Diary #3

Stardock president and CEO Brad Wardell has returned to pen a third developer diary for Demigod over on RPG Vault.

When designing Demigod, our goal was to create a play style that had a lot of role-playing game elements to it, one that players could sit down and play in a short amount of time. Let’s consider the challenge there. How do you create a strategy game that has short gameplay time, but doesn’t feel like a click-fest? You don’t want users to spend their time building gold mines or barracks, but you also want to incorporate enough strategy to let them showcase significant differences in their skill levels.

The answer came from a WarCraft III mod Defense of the Ancients. In DotA, as it’s more commonly called, wealth is generated by killing other units and structures. Rather than constructing new buildings, players get better by gaining experience during the game, and using it to upgrade a hero unit. Moreover, they can enhance this their characters with items purchased with the gold earned from battle. And lastly, they did not have to construct units; instead, “creeps” appeared automatically, and were controlled by the computer.