[Greenlight] Blood, Sweat and Gold

Blood, Sweat and Gold
A Party Based RPG with turn based combat.

At heart it's a party based roguelike with elements inspired by games like FTL and XCOM. Procedurally generated maps and with a variety of encounters and locations will hopefully give BSG a fair amount of replay-ability.

A fast, responsive combat system keeps the combat in Blood, Sweat and Gold quick and intense with subtle strategic depth.

Blood, Sweat and Gold is designed to give a player a complete gaming experience in an evening. Victory and your freedom, or defeat and your blood pooling on ground, either way, it should be a fun way to spend a few hours - and procedural generation helps keep that next play through fresh.

I've worked hard to present good quality visuals. How a game looks often defines how a game feels, and I wanted to give BSG a solid gritty feel. I tried to make keep the interface very minimal to help keep an immersive feel.

Despite easy access to great looking particle effects, BSG is a low magic world, more Game of Thrones or Darklands, less orcs and wizards.


3.30 Update

There's a rush to being on Greenlight. Making it onto Steam has always been a huge goal. When I first started working on this, people literally laughed at the idea. But here we are today, I've been on Greenlight for less than two full days and we're already at 34% of the way to the Top 100.

It's just thrilling. There's a lot of work ahead, I need to start another round of play testing, finish polishing, work on adding more content: more abilities, encounter types, etc. But getting to this point is a tremendous accomplishment and I'm really proud.



3.29 Update

My trailer is done and BSG is up on Greenlight!!

I have finally started the Greenlight campaign. It's too early to say, but so far the feedback on steam has been amazing. I've been refreshing the Steam stats every 30 seconds over the last 10 hours!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=415505676

I'm so exhausted from all the work in the last few weeks trying to get everything together, adding polish, tweeking everything. Learning how to make a half decent video, wearing a hundred hats and the relentless challenges.

So I'm going to take a day, rest and recover. Then post some fresh content and updates.

 

I'm working on almost the same thing , but yours is somewhat more complex.
Nice work you've got here!

 

Looks very promising! Great job!

 

I would play it for sure, looks fun!
Loved FTL : )

 

Looks pretty interesting!

 

Thanks so much for the comments. Working on this has nearly killed me. After scrapping the first design I came very close to giving up on this. I'll put together more videos and images soon.

The overall design for the game has gone through so many failed attempts. About a month ago a friend of mine suggested I look at FTL, and some of the techniques they used to frame the game were just awesome: simple, clean, accessible. So I reorganized the gameplay around very similar concepts, and stuff finally started to really come together.

I've gone through my budget at this point, so I need to get this done and released by the end of next month. I think I also need to start figuring out how to take a shot at Greenlight. If anyone has gone through this and has suggestion - I'd really appreciate any advice.

 

Don't worry, it happens to all of us! I can't even count how many prototypes I have shelved or work on a snail pace on them. Just one step at a time, goes a long way

 

Frosted, if you need some tips with Greenlight process, specially the marketing behind it, I will be sure to help you out.
It's all about maximum exposure in a short time frame.

 

Watching thread!

This is seriously amazing, I'm kind of jealous you were able to put this together within 6 months, it looks great. Keep the updates coming!

 

I'm going to be finishing up this screen today and adding more functionality - so this video is probably premature but honestly, I'm a little too excited at how well it turned out.

This is the character creation screen you will see when you first start the game. Since this is going to be sorta roguelike and encourages multiple plays - I tried to keep this sequence quick - the player is only passive for 5.5 seconds leading into his choices and 5 seconds leading out.

It may be a little too dramatic. I donno.

 

Looks nice! Would be nice with an option to skip it though it you already watched it for like 25times already : )

 

Yeah - I should probably let you skip it with click or something ;D

 

Really looking at this one with interest! Loved FTL, I'm still playing it too. FTL had awesome replay-ability and one of the elements which kept the replay-ability high was the music. I'm not a music dev but if you want to have the same level of replay-ability that FTL had please don't overlook this point.

I can definitely see the Xcom influence in the battles so far.

 

I don't think I can truly reach quite FTL levels of replay-ability. That game is really exceptionally well made. But I'm going to do my best.

It's funny you mention music, I'm actually in the process of talking to a music guy. Hopefully we can improve on it dramatically without breaking what little is left of my budget. I really like the theme I'm using now, but it's way too intense for general background.

Thanks for the suggestion. Music is really important and you're correct its part of how FTL stayed so fun. Another good reference is hearthstone which has incredible music.

 

Looks really good!

 

Re-updated the first post with some new screenshots of some of the encounter scenes i'm working on.

If the links there are still bad and the images aren't coming through let me know and i'll fix.

 

So I uploaded a new shorter video. It's a pretty big improvement, but I need to re-edit it so that it makes more sense.

Feedback is welcome.

 

So I wanted to post some screenshots too of some of the changes. I spent over a week on redesigning the gui both from both art assets to usability and clarity. I am not a good designer but I think it came out well enough.

Main Character screen:

Hiring guys

Combat HUD is somewhat improved:

 

This looks very cool! A blend of some of my favorite genres.

How many people do you have working on the project?

 

Just me. Working my ass off. Thanks.

If I had a second teammate the quality would go way up - this kind of game is too much work for one person. Too much to keep track of.

I ended up not getting the next video done today, spent the day sort of running some cleanup.

 

Wow, great work.

Having teammates help a lot, but then you also have to share your vision

Keep it up!

 

Looks gorgeous! Love the presentation. Big fan of both genres (XCOM / FTL). Following

 

Thanks dude! I spent a -lot- of time on the presentation. I've redesigned the interface a number of times, redesigned the way you interact with your guys and the map, etc. I really wanted it to look and feel good!



I've been polishing for the last few days and finally cut a new video.

It's finally starting to really look good!

 

Hey @frosted - supply the greenlight link bud.
I went to vote but couldn't find it.

 

LOL - thanks dude, it's actually not on steam yet - I should clarify that!!

I should have put it up there already but I've been waiting for this video to be done.


EDIT - added an annotation to the youtube video noting that its not up on steam yet.

 

Looks quite refined, cant really judge the game play though

 

I've iterated countless times on the mechanics and interface. It's pretty good! I've spent a tremendous amount of time trying to work out how the game should play, from combat mechanics to strategy map mechanics.

The big problem is just not enough content yet - but I'm working on it!

 

Keep it up man! And put out a playable version - even if you're great at analyzing gameplay, after staring at your own project for too long everyone loses sight of the bigger picture

I'm curious, what's your background? the programming as well as the presentation looks well executed

When do you think is it going on greenlight?

 

Very nice game! Keep the good work! I love the slow motion attacks, it was very smart to implement it.

 

I've been programming for like 20 years, working with unity for about a year - this is my first game. It'll hopefully go up on Greenlight in under 5 days. You're right about the demo - I might put one out after the greenlight trailer is done.

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In the meanwhile I finally got destructable environment in! Yeah! It's kinda awesome, even if you probably shouldn't blow up wells quite so easily:

 

So I finished putting together a rough pre-audio version of what might be my final trailer...

The game is really starting to look good, and the video reflects that!

Check it out - hopefully I'll post the final version with audio tomorrow! I'm planning to finally drop this on greenlight by the end of the week.

 

I just want to let anyone who's watching this thread know that I've launched my Greenlight camign!


Click to check it out! I'm really proud.

After less than two days we're 34% of the way to the top 100!

 

That's amazing! Well deserved