Turtledome

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I recently read the 37 Signals book Rework. I was fairly familiar with they’re theories on business already so there were no huge surprises. It did reaffirm a couple of idea’s I’ve had about stuff and helped to focus more on other stuff.

I’ve also been a follower of the Lean Startup. That’s why I do continuous deployment and I’m working on an minimum viable product. Seeing as how this is a game I’ve always had trouble figuring out what the MVP should be and then it hit me.

I believe the key to this game is combat. And the interesting thing about the combat is that for the most part it’s always the player against a computer. Even when a second player get’s involved the combat resolution, as it where, is one sided. 1p vs CPU.

That means the MVP is a 1 player version of combat. It also means that as combat get’s designed it’s immediately playable. It can tell a story and act as a tutorial.

That’s what’s on the homepage now. Level 1.

I hate travian, ikariam and most browser based games in general. When a game tells me I can’t do something for an hour I get upset especially when I’ve just started playing.

This seems to be a thing with most multiplayer browser games. Restrict how much someone can do by either using action points or time. Why do this? The only reasons I can think of is to reduce the amount of stuff people do or to balance the game.

These are bullshit reasons if you ask me. They mean there’s a problem with the way game design or the program design.

Instead of playing shitty games I went with the get excited and make things strategy.

The game (which as of now has no name) is a browser based strategy where there will always be something to do.

There isn’t much to it yet but it’s growing. It’ll be interesting to see where it ends up.

Update:
You know what add Farm Ville on face book and I Rule on the ipad to the this list. Fucking bullshit.