A Game of Coins ~ [Coming March 15th for Android]

[Tall Guy Productions]

Hello Lads & Ladettes,

I represent an one-man development team, Tall Guy Productions. We've *cough* I've been working on a game for Android for the past 2 months and it's planned to be released on March 15th for Android.

'A Game of Coins' tells the story of a great injustice, commited a long time ago in the vast, distant kingdom of Faerul. You'll take on the role of the Royal Guards as they slide on the floor to end the Advisor's evil plans. Did I say slide? Yes, indeed. Because the Advisor has put a curse on our brave heroes and turned them into Coins made of clay. Now the only weapon in their arsenal is their determination, unwillingness to give up and endless inner strength! The gameplay could best be described as billiard with power ups.

Here, have a look:

You can also download the game for free before it gets released:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.tallguyproductions.agameofcoins.preview

Or follow its progress on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/agameofcoins

Of course I'm actively looking for testers and creative feedback!

Peace out

[Gmd]

Welcome to Exilian. Love the game especially just cuz turned into coins in my favorite spell.

[Tall Guy Productions]

Hey thanks for the warm welcome

You digged the transformation? Cool!! I was a bit worried it might be too far-fetched

[Jubal]

Yes, welcome!

I'll have a go at testing it soon if I get a chance between my own gamedev and trying to teach myself latin.

How much explanation do you give to the transformation/how much plotline is woven into the game (as in is there a "campaign" which ends with the injustice being solved)? It's a fun if quirky little story, I guess it's the sort of game that's really driven by the gameplay though...

[Tall Guy Productions]

Hey Jubal,

you plan on using latin for your gamedev or the two are unrelated for now?

The plotline is an indispensible part of the game itself. I couldn't bring myself to just develop something soul-less, so everything in the game has a background. Heck I even researched some ancient chinese divination tactics to come up with the Power Ups but I won't bore you with the details

The intro can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/agameofcoins/videos/1016351018444996/

For the outro, you'll have to play the game  8)

The story is simple, but I belive touches on some great aspects of one's character like force of will, determination and unwillingness to give up; that's what I wanted to convey essentially.

Let me know what you think!

Valē!

[Jubal]

I'm mostly learning it for research work, I'm a postgraduate who specialises in medieval near-eastern history (particularly Byzantium, the Caucasus, etc). I do however have a raaaather large tendency to end up combining different things I'm doing (I've been known to just get frustrated with an essay, then conceptualise it as a boardgame to get my head around it) so watch this space!

I would be pretty interested to know the divination details, that sounds fascinating

As for the trailer, it looks nice! A couple of minor things just in case you hadn't spotted them - you keep ending things with a double full stop (..), it should be a triple for an ellipsis or a single for a full stop and I'm not sure which you mean. Also I don't think Coins needs capitalising (at about 1 minute in) and "cherished" at 1:33 should only have one "r".

[Tall Guy Productions]

Oh that's a very handy background in games; are you working on something you'd be willing to share at the moment? Would love to see some of your work.

Considering the details, I haven't come up with much more than what is depicted on the intro you just watched; the king's brother, the Advisor wanted the throne for himself, so he sacrificed the most noble / honest / pure / just soul in the kingdom, the Captain of the Royal Guards, to a great Evil force in exchange for unfathomable magical powers in order to achieve it. Included in his new spell arsenal is a Transformation spell - sort of a Polymorph but the result can be even inanimate objects.

Now every living being has a Qi; an inner source of power which can not be torn away from it, regardless of the form it takes. This is how our heroes move around, by focusing their inner strength and just propeling themselves forward, as if an inexplicable force is applied to them. Also, everyone of us has the potential for greatness, visualised in-game as "The Favor of the Elements"; four of these 8 elements have been unlocked by our heroes through their determination and unwillingness to give up, symbolized by the 4 letters inscribed on their coins. Specifically, the elements were Earth, Heaven, Fire and Lightning.

The Ancient chinese used the 8 elements' combinations for divination purposes (advising concerning one's future) and it was a great source of inspiration for the power ups of this game. I used 4 of these combinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hexagrams_of_the_I_Ching

Also thanks for the minor pointers; cherrished has been fixed in the latest version (Friend of mine spotted it the other day ) and I'll probably turn the double full stops into ellipsis (that's what they were supposed to be). I'm still torn between Capitalizing coins or not - they are a main focus of the game.. maybe I'll just bold them?

Cheers for the feedback and hope I didn't give you details to the point of boring you

[Jubal]

No problem

At the moment the only bits of Gamedev I'm really working on don't use my work that much, but current projects really are -
LIFE, a Doctor Who setting text based adventure:
http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4181.0
And testing phases on Mr Pickles of Botolph Lane, which is a slightly surrealist card game:
http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3601.0

I've got lots of other semi-dormant projects though, I'm not great at finishing things! Something like Age of Tyrants I guess is more directly related (http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?board=206.0) and there's a fair mishmash of historical references in Adventures of Soros which is my own setting for a text-based RPG (http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?board=125.0)

Right, shameless self-advertisement done!

Ooh, the I Ching is interesting, I've vaguely known of it before but generally my knowledge of Chinese myth & magic is minimal. I have a sort of beginners' guide to the subject waiting to be read, but it's back in Norfolk sadly...

[Tall Guy Productions]

Wow text-based adventures & RPGs... talk about oldschool! (See I even used ellipsis properly )

I take it you are also a fan of pen & paper RPGs then?

PS: I Ching is very interesting both as a reference for game development (skill building) and as a 'divination' method as well - instead of trying to predict the future which seems to be the moto for western divination schools, it tries to make you understand what you really want by offering you various ways to look at something that troubles you. It actually helped me get a good perspective at a problem I was having.

[Jubal]

Yes, though I rarely get to play full on pen and paper campaigns - part of the reason I like designing board and card games is that they're much more time efficient to test and play through!

And yes, that sounds about right - I suspect a lot of old-school "divination" relied on various different methods of tweaking how people were thinking about things, even in the west divination could be a sort of placebo where the words of the prediction were pretty meaningless but either helped get people thinking the right way or were just given in a way that helped settle & relax people's minds.

[Tall Guy Productions]

Yay, cross-platform multiplayer is up for A Game of Coins (https://www.facebook.com/agameofcoins/)!

Coming March 15th for Android, Windows Phone and probably iOS.

[Jubal]

Nice Have +1 like on the FB page at least!

[Tall Guy Productions]

Thank you!