[WIP] Imagine Nations - A Fusion Voxel Game

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Latest Video

What Is Imagine Nations?
Imagine Nations stems from two core concepts:

1. A fully autonomous and simulated universe, where cultures drive the content of the game through their actions, interactions with other cultures, technological research, and everything in between.
2. A fusion of features available to the player from nearly every genre to allow a personalized way to experience the game that can be molded over time in the same play through.

Cultures represent themselves as various towns and holdings throughout the universe, and begin at a prehistoric level of technology. Every citizen of a culture has a purpose, and interacting positively or negatively with any will have consequences. Overall they drive the content via their research, pushing technology through various ages until reaching space and expanding through the cosmos.

The player fits into the game based on the genre of games they enjoy playing. If someone enjoys playing RPG games, they can come in and progress their character while partaking in various quests, clearing out dungeons, and seeing the story play out in front of them. An FPS fan may focus on becoming a soldier, working with the military to destroy any enemies both foreign and domestic. A City Sim fan may work to become a town leader and shape the very nature of a culture through their town expression.

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The Player Cycle
A player can smoothly transition between these (and more) modes at will provided they have the necessary access to each. This defines our "player cycle" which shows a possible outcome for a player looking to "test the waters" on all genres:

1. I begin my life as an adventurer. At this point, I am an unknown. My focus at this point is training, handling simple quests to build reputation, and larger growing a name for myself to begin handling greater tasks. As time progresses, the view of me from the culture is great, and I've generated enough funds to settle down.
2. I move into town and build a nice house. I meet someone and we fall in love, marry, and move into the home before raising a family.
3. My funds begin to diminish from my adventuring days, so I look to start a business within the town. With my adventuring experience, of which I dabbled with maintaining my weapons, I decide to start a smithy. Positioning myself from my reputation, I begin handling most orders from the culture, and my steel begins to gain a reputation around the planet.
4. A new leader takes over and begins impeding many businesses within the town. I cannot stand for this, and begin running for politics.
5. Through a lengthy battle, I take over as town leader. I resolve the issues from the previous leader, and begin building my town into an economic powerhouse. Trade between other cultures improves, and we are largely seen as a merchant hub.
6. The culture leader dies, and I take over her powers. We shift from depending upon imports for many of our raw resources, to setting up camps and outposts to handle all of our resource gathering internally. Profits increase, and the culture expands more.
7. Our culture's success leads to a rival culture starting a war with us. We tried many diplomatic means, but war was inevitable. I take control of our armies, and personally lead them to the battlefield. Many lives are lost, but we defeat their armies and conquer the culture. Peace is restored.
8. I am nearing the end of my life, and looking to settle down. I begin to train my son on the ordeals of being a culture leader. Power transitions to him, and I pass away.
9. My father died, but its now my turn to lead this culture to greatness. What decisions will I make during my term?

The "player cycle" also emphasizes another important aspect of the game: aging. The player experiences the world through the eyes of the current character. How the player wishes to progress is entirely up to them. They could have a family like above and take control of a child or spouse. Or they could have a squire they've trained in an adventuring company that they take over. Or they could randomly take over someone from the culture, the planet, or even another planet altogether. The game is as fluid as the player approaches it.

What's The Development Status?
As shown in the weekly video above, we are starting to see many of the features come together. We have the base terrain system fully functioning as well as the necessary components for both real-time AI (areas nearby the player) and simulation (everywhere else). Our current focus is the city sim mode, where the player will be able to build out a town to their heart's content in a similar mode to Cities: Skylines, Banished, and Tropico 5.

We've kept to two key mantras during development in order to keep this manageable: If it's not broken, don't fix it (with the focus of this game being the cohesion between genres to work properly together instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with them), and allow the technology to drive the complexity of development (with the prehistoric build making the requirements of the game much more simplified than if we tried to do modern technology or space age). We have clear games that are the inspiration from various genres, and unless there are glaring issues with any, we are building them in verbatim. This allows us to focus on what makes our game unique which is the simulation, and how the simulation utilizes all these features to present a believable output. Once we have a solid base, we'll begin experimenting with our own "spin" on each genre provided the core concepts are met.

Why Are We Now Posting On Unity?
Up until this point, most of our work has been back end systems like terrain, AI, and simulation. They're difficult to present and get any feedback as they're predominantly code based. But as we now drive into game logic, we'll have tangible content to show to get any feedback we can to flesh Imagine Nations out. Considering all the genres we are expressing in the game, we'd love to get general feedback on what everyone expects when playing a game of that genre, and whether we are accomplishing that goal appropriately. Are the various modes properly meshed together? At the end of the day, our focus is "fun" over anything else and if any part is not accomplishing that, we will need to redesign it.

Our entire focus moving forward is to ensure that anyone that wants to play this game is given the right tools to make that decision. We will be approaching a Kickstarter in the future, as well as beginning our Steam Early Access launch sometime during the holidays, but many of us in the team have valid concerns about both. A trailer and nice words isn't always enough to be confident enough to try a game.

As such, our short term goal is providing the prehistoric build for free when Kickstarter launches. This will not be limited in any way. The build will be available forever as a way to see Imagine Nations in action completely within the first stage of technology and have a good demo to work off of. And this approach will continue when we launch on Early Access, with each build being a complete experience (first one being the Classical Age of technology). We do not want a situation where someone is hesitant on Early Access due to being burned in the past from empty promises. So we're laying down all of our cards. If the prehistoric build doesn't suit you (unless its simply that the technology doesn't introduce you, in which case we invite you back at a later build's age), you know right away.

So lay it on us. There's not a huge amount so far, but any critiques are welcomed. We still have plenty to do, and if we can get the foundation set for all features, the game will be that much better.

Other Media

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What Is a "Fusion" Game?
We've all been following the expansion of open world, sandbox-style games. I know personally, they are the style of games I prefer. But generally, while some newer games are incorporating a mix of features commonly found in other genres, you're still predominantly playing within a particular genre to "complete" the game.

We consider a "Fusion" genre game as something where at least 2 or more genres are fully represented, and the player can experience the game completely in each without gimmicks. Imagine Nations is, with a few exceptions, a fusion game. You can play it entirely as a Skyrim/Fallout game, or a Cities: Skylines game, or an Age of Empires game, or a Civilization game, etc.

When starting a pure "standard" mode game, you would begin in that 1st/3rd person perspective and need to work towards accessing the other modes, and from there you'd be able to completely play the game in any of those, or flip between them and see your handiwork at multiple perspectives. Or you could give yourself various powers when a universe is setup to already have a particular mode active and never enter the 1st/3rd person perspective at all if that is your preference. The game is a tool belt, and you can use one tool all the time, or a series of tools to accomplish whatever tasks the cultures or you provide for yourself.

 

We have launched our second video showcasing the UI of Imagine Nations. More to come soon!