What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

I’d say there is 5-10 hours of gameplay but it can grow exponentially if you like a challenge. It took me 30 hours to complete the last build, but I’m a bit of a masochist.

There is currently only one mission type, which is extermination or “kill them all”. The player’s goal is to hunt down and kill 5 Monarchs. As time passes in game, the enemy grows stronger and the player’s town can come under siege with building upgrades potentially being destroyed. This then becomes a delicate race against time as the player decides whether to go on the defensive or offensive.

Early version of the perks system and 45 abilities divided into 9 weapon types. Sword, axe, mace, greatsword, greataxe, warhammer and rapier. There are then 2 ranged weapon types, longbow and crossbow.

9 placeholder weapon models and 1 shield. A lot more weapons and shields are planned. The current models are placeholder and I plan to replace them once the weapon and shield models are finished.

50 unique armor sets currently implemented which make up the 20 tiers of standard armor and 30 rare cultural armor that the player finds out in the world. Standard armors have 6 color variations, cultural armor has 3 color variations. An armor set consists of the helmet and the body armor (torso to legs). Armor is historically inspired and grounded in reality. Plenty of armor sets to come in the future.

Recruits come from 10 different backgrounds, with each background having its own written biography. Starting stats and stat growth are influenced by the backgrounds and randomly assigned traits. There is also 150 portraits divided into 10 groups, 1 group for each background. Portraits are randomly assigned. Currently, you cannot rename characters but there is a vast list of names that are randomly assigned.

Combat currently supports up to 18 player units and is phased based, rather than “initiative” based. Meaning all player units go and then all enemy units go. Elevation system that influences hit chance and ability availability has also been implemented. Flanking and directional bonuses that influence hit chance, counter attacks, attacks of opportunity, action point system and ranged combat are in too.

Partial random map generation system has been implemented. What I mean by that is that maps have certain static elements that don’t change such as certain elevation clusters to ensure that they don’t break elevation rules. Aside from those static elements, additional elevation tiles, blocked tiles such as trees and rocks and terrain hazards are randomly generated.

5 biome types have been implemented. Each biome has a unique look and feel with unique terrain hazards. The biomes are forest, plains, desert, swamp and tundra.

65 monsters have been implemented, with 60 of them having unique monster models. Each monster has its own ability that plays into the overall theme of each faction the monster belongs to. Not all the monster animations are implemented though, so some abilities may initially be confusing to convey and diminish interface feedback. It is quite awkward to look at. The amount of monsters may shrink as I attempt to polish the monster abilities and the models may also change.

The initial crafting system has been implemented, which you can utilise to craft helmets, armor and weapons. The names of the weapons and armor are not set in stone yet.

6 buildings to upgrade. Each building has its own benefits to help provide a gameplay path to victory.

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Short Version: I am primarily looking for feedback on the initial turn-based, tactical combat and base management layers that are currently implemented in the game. In turn, the feedback I receive from the community will undoubtedly help shape the game and also impact upon the implementation of the world map layer.Long Version: Dead Monarchy is an ambitious, complex and hardcore turn-based tactical game with multiple layers that come together in an attempt to create a world that you could lose yourself in. It is also my first game, a game designed by one guy. That may have already put you off, but ever since I started this development journey, I told myself that I wanted to be as transparent as possible. I know what it feels like to be burned by unsuccessful early access games, I'm a gamer too. If I screw this up, I'll be there too with torch and pitchfork in hand.When Dead Monarchy leaves Early Access, I plan to have a total of 3 layers. "Overworld", "town" and "combat". "Overworld" is the world map that the player explores, "town" being the player owned base and "combat" being the turn-based tactical combat. Before that happens though, I need to build a strong community around the game so that I can improve the game based on community feedback.”“To be completely honest, I need at least 2 years and it could be longer than that depending on community feedback and if any new major features are added. I’ll say it now though, just to be clear, regardless of how well this game does I will continue to support Dead Monarchy after the full release with new updates. Early Access is a gift to the developers, regardless of how long that development takes, I still feel a game should also receive adequate support after its full release.”“NOTE: I am currently using assets from the Unity store for things like monsters, animations, environments, sound and user interface elements. Things like monsters and UI are placeholder and I would like to eventually phase them out.The biggest addition would be the world map, which has only just recently been implemented as of 27/11/19. In the future, the world map will lead to different mission types and interaction with towns and dungeons on the map. Aside from that, there would be more weapons and armor in the full release along with the player perk system which is currently still under heavy development. Spear weapon types are not implemented yet either, so a whole batch of new abilities would be tied to those weapons too. Legendary equipment has also not been implemented yet along with the unique traits and models tied to those pieces.Aside from the world map, the second biggest feature would be the formation system and AI. I plan to implement a host of human NPC factions that will take full advantage of the formation system and AI, fighting in formations to grant special buffs instead of just wildly charging. The AI would take advantage of placing spears/bows in the back with shields in the front. The player would also be able to make use of some of these formation abilities. These are just some examples of what I hope to implement in the formation system.Monsters would also be overhauled, as I am currently using a lot of placeholders from the Unity Asset store. They don’t look out of place, but there are some limitations when it comes to the animation system. I would like to be able to transition some of the current monster skeletons into humanoid skeletons which would give me more flexibility with the animation system.The visceral nature of combat would also be overhauled with better decapitations, more weapon animations and blood pools that form from corpses. As mentioned, human enemy types are also not fully implemented yet which naturally comes with improvements to the combat AI. Fighting human opponents should be different to monsters which is why the human AI will have formation AI that encourages them to fight in formation instead of wildly charging.With a vast world map to explore and humans to populate the settlements, comes character variety. I feel like too many indie RPG games skip out on a real equipment system, so I wanted to do justice to that. The armor in Dead Monarchy is also more grounded and takes inspiration from historical armor as opposed to typical fantasy armor. Armor covers a vast amount of cultural groups such as the Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Scandinavians, Japanese, Rus, Polish, English, French, Germans and Persians. I’ve also taken some artistic liberties to ensure that the armor doesn’t look too wildly out of place considering I am taking inspiration from a vast period of time. There are also plans to further expand the current weapons that are currently available and again will be historically inspired just like the armor.I plan to further enhance character customization. Females, new hair styles, faces and different races will be added. Currently only the default body is available as I wanted to get the armors in first as reworking armor to fit multiple different body types is very time consuming.Such a huge amount of 3D assets will take some time to implement as they need to be optimized, but I believe they will flesh out the world of Dead Monarchy like never before and demonstrate to the players the true scope and ambition of this game.”“NOTE: Features are all subject to change, there could be things that just don’t end up working or are confusing. I went through three iterations on just how to calculate hit chance alone. If you played my old demos, quite a lot has changed.Lastly, the majority of the sound effects have been added to the user interface elements, combat animations for humans and ambient sounds within environments are in too. Not all the sounds for monster abilities have been implemented though.”“The price will increase slightly when the "overworld" map is fully implemented and then again, when the game is fully released. The initial lower price point is to reward those early adopters who risked their money for an uncompleted product.The only way this would change is if significant features beyond the initial scope are also implemented during Early Access. However, even if that was to happen it would still be lower than the price when fully released.”“Seeing as I’m a solo developer, I will heavily rely on the feedback from the community when balancing existing features and when adding new features. I’m sure there will be things that I miss or solutions to problems that I didn’t even consider.Prior to Steam, I released a few demos on IndieDB and my game was first discovered by Rpgcodex, which I will be forever grateful for. From that point on, I slowly branched over into other forums like Rpgwatch. I will still continue to post updates there, but I would really like to gather all the community in one place. I figure the best place to do that would be the Steam forums.So please feel free to give any feedback, whether it is good or bad as it will all go towards the improvement of Dead Monarchy. Hope to see you soon.Cheers,Kevin.”