Currently I’m working on two projects. One is meant to be a super short story 2d game. The other is a simple mobile game. Both in unity.
I’m trying to improve my skills and not focus on huge ideas. I will post pictures soon. For the mobile game, it’s currently pretty simple and I’m trying to find a way to make it standout more.
I first learned of Founders’ Fortune watching a Let’s Play on YouTube. I liked the graphics style and I needed a new game to play. So a little later that day i downloaded the game. About 6-8 hours later i finally managed to save & close the game, hopefully that should say enough about the game.
NOTE: The game itself is in an alpha version but is very stable. I didn’t encounter any performance bugs at all.
Founder’s Fortune is kind of like The Sims meets Age of Empires. You have to manage resources and build your colony/village, while simultaneously catering to each of your villagers’ specific personality traits, needs, and stats. The mixing of these two game types is well done.
In founder’s fortune you manage your village and it’s villagers throughout the 4 seasons. You can give them specific jobs & tasks to do, and must also mange the villagers themselves.
I’ll try to explain some major aspects of the game below.
In RTS games the player must tasks his available units with gathering resources. A unique type of resource in Founders’ Fortune are it’s Crystals. Shown in the screenshot above (and on the main menu), these crystals are your primary resource for the research process. The research process is how the player unlocks new items to build & craft.
First-off, the crystals must be mined. After being mined, they can be analyzed. Analyzing crystals earns your points towards unlocking new research nodes. Each Research Node will have prerequisite research nodes (except for the first two).
Once you have unlocked something from research you’ll need the necessary resources to build it. The primary collectible resources in Founders’ Fortune include:
Researching and gathering resources are a common feature in RTS games. Founders’ Fortune does it’s village building a little bit different though.
With unlocked material you can build up your village. There are no predefined buildings however. Like in the sims you can place walls, doors, and flooring wherever you want. There are different types of floors, walls, and doors. You can also decorate the interior and exterior with a vareity of items such as Vases and potted plants.
A cool feature is that each villager is aware of what their “home” is, and what their “room” is. A villager’s “room” is the enclosed space where their assigned bed is. A villager’s “home” is the overall space that encloses their room.
Researching, gathering resources, and building your own custom village isn’t the end of things though. Enter a Sims-style villager management system.
All of your villagers in Founders’ Fortune are unique. Each villager will have his or her own expectations, wishes, thoughts, stats, and traits. You’ll have to manage all of that for each villager, while keeping an eye on the seasons and your resources. It sounds like a handful, but you get the hang of it real quick and it’s a lot of fun.
I only got up to six villagers. I had the opportunity to recruit 2 more, but i wanted to be prepared for a nearing winter. Unlike in a lot of RTS games, you cannot recruit new villagers on demand. They will come to your village over time, if all your villager’s expectations are met.
A villager’s stats include their Hunger, Health, Stamina, and Mood.
As long as their is food, villagers will feed themselves. If there is no food, they will start to starve and their health will drop. You can increase or decrease a villager’s food rations if necessary.
When a villager loses all their health, they die. A villager’s health can drop when they get the sick, and/or are damaged in battle. A villager regains health using health potions and also by sleeping.
As a villager works, they lose stamina. When their stamina is depleted they must sleep. If a villager as a Insomnia trait, they will require double the amount of sleep.
When a villager’s mood reaches it’s limit, they will stop working. Your villagers’ mood changes based on their thoughts. More about thoughts below…
Each villager will have two wishes at given time. Granting these wishes will earn them a specified number of satisfaction points. When a villager gets enough satisfaction points, their satisfaction level goes up one.
A villagers’ wishes can include things like:
Yep, villagers have their own thoughts too. This is a pretty unique add-on to the game. A villagers’ thoughts affect their mood. They vary in where they come from, but positive thoughts increase a villager’s mood; whilst negative thoughts decrease a villager’s mood. A villagers’ thoughts can include things like:
There are a variety of thoughts a villager can have, which helps keep things fresh and novel.
Some final aspects of the game i’ll go over are Goblins, Seasons, and Trading.
At least in the normal difficulty, goblins are a minor part of the game. Occasionally they will attack your village. However, it’s not difficult to defend against the attack and receive little damage.
Founders’ Fortune cycles through the four seasons. A cool feature is that certain farming crops only grow in specific seasons, and nothing grows during winter. This does add an interesting spin to the game’s strategy.
To be honest, I didn’t think i would make it through my first winter. I didn’t have too much food saved up, and crops would no longer grow. My saving grace was in trading. Fortunately i had a lot of wood to trade when the trading merchants came along.
Occasionally a trading merchant will appear on the shore. You can talk to the merchant, trade with him, attack him, or kill him. I’m not sure of the ramifications of attacking/killing him, but my curiosity is brewing. Talking didn’t seem to have any affect, maybe this is a bug or unimplemented feature? As for trading, it’s what you would expect. You can trade what you have for coins and/or what he has.
Overall, Founders’ Fortune is a promising Indie Game that has hours worth of fun. If you are a fan of the RTS genre, it’s definitely a must play. The developers are even cool enough to put a free (super-stable) alpha out. They’ve definitely earned me buying it, and for an early-bird price too.
Check it out at: https://foundersfortune.com/
Think, Sleep, and Play Games 