Ruinarch News

As we've mentioned in a previous post, World's Bane is now Ruinarch! And we have entered into a publishing deal with fellow Filipino game studio Squeaky Wheel. With this partnership, we are able to extend our development time up to early 2020 as well as get much needed assistance in marketing the game.

Much has happened since our last DevLog and the game is in a more complete form now with most of the important features needed to play the game from start to finish already in place. We'll just go through the most major ones here. For a more in-depth information about the game, please check out the first of our video dev log series discussing various features of the game at our youtube page:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn_J6Vd1zYA


We now have Demonic Structures that the player can build on invaded regions. They provide various features to assist the player in invading the world. For example, the player can extract new spells from some of his minions by performing an extraction ritual in the Spire. And the player can research upgrades in the Anvil.




We've gone ahead and updated our placeholder UIs with near final versions of it. Here are some screenshots of the new UI.



We recently attended ESGS. It is a Filipino gaming event that has a sizable area for local indie games. While it was exhausting for our developers to talk non-stop for 4 days straight, it was ultimately a very rewarding experience seeing players play and enjoy the latest version of the game for the first time. More importantly, we were able to collect valuable feedback that has now helped us figure out what's working well and what the game's major issues are. We have a lot of work (and re-work) to do ahead of us but we can now more clearly visualize what the finished version of Ruinarch should look like!

We've been holding off on this announcement for quite sometime now but some of you eagle-eyed followers would have already noticed that World's Bane has stealthily been changed into Ruinarch early this month.

Yes, we've had a name change. We feel that this new name has a nicer ring to it. It's more unique and evokes the game's theme much better than World's Bane. Doesn't it sound like you are a Monarch of Ruin? What wicked things one can do as a ruinous monarch...

But the name change is not the only major announcement that we have. We actually got ourselves a publisher now: Squeaky Wheel Studio! And they were the one to rightly suggest the name change.

Squeaky Wheel is also a Filipino game dev specializing on simulation and strategy games. They've already released two fun simulators: Political Animals and more recently Academia: School Simulator. Go and check them out, they are discounted right now!

Squeaky Wheel's experience with releasing indie games in this oversaturated market condition will be really helpful in propelling Ruinarch to a much wider audience. They also provided us with additional funding that allowed us to extend development of the game several more months before launching onto Early Access.

Wishlist and follow us to get more updates as we get closer and closer to our 2020 Early Access Launch!

This will be a lengthy post! We have been hard at work developing the World Invasion System and other gameplay features the past two months. While the bulk of the system is done, it is not yet in a stable state so we decided not to upload it on our itch.io page. We will instead probably upload a video DevLog sometime next month to explain the system in greater detail and also discuss what we intend to add to the game over the coming months.



We've introduced Fire into the game! Players can now use Ignite and Explosion to start a fire. Fire spreads through Flammable objects, characters and tiles. Residents will attempt to douse a fire when they see one by obtaining water from a Well or other sources of water. We'll have more interesting interactions with Fire in the future!

Burning inn.



You can now start your own zombie apocalypse. Players can now afflict a resident with a Zombie Virus. Characters with the Zombie Virus has a small chance of suddenly dying. Any character that dies with a Zombie Virus will reanimate into a Zombie that is hostile to all non-Zombie characters. Our Zombies shamble slowly when idle but moves really fast when there are hostiles in range!

Start your own zombie apocalypse!



Players may now afflict characters with the Plague. This is a spreadable disease that makes the character vomit from time to time until he eventually dies of septic shock. It spreads to other characters! A Doctor character may be able to cure someone with Plague.

Franklin was afflicted with the Plague and eventually died of septic shock



Players may now turn characters into serial killers. When afflicted with this Trait, the game will generate specific victim targets for the Serial Killer. If the killer meets anyone fitting his criteria, he will target that as his next victim and will eventually abduct and kill it.

Serial Killers typically are generated with two types of victims

They will eliminate their victim in a secluded location. Excuse placeholder graphics please!



Players may now afflict characters with permanent Paralysis. A Paralyzed character can no longer move. Other characters may still help him by feeding him and carrying him to his target location.

Friendly residents will assist their paralyzed comrades.



Players may now curse an object. Anyone that interacts with it may suffer strange accidents. We're still not too happy about this one's effects so this may be improved later on.

A cursed Ore had another victim



The foundations of our World Invasion System is already in place. It is still pretty barebones in terms of content but most of the major components are already in there and just needs to be fleshed out and expanded.

The World Invasion System subdivides the world map into interconnected regions. At world generation, the player's Demon Portal will be spawned at one corner and a single defending settlement will be placed at the opposite end corner of the map. The player may then slowly corrupt the world by sending out a minion to invade one adjacent region at a time.

Different regions have different landmarks, objects and characters. When a new region is corrupted, the player will gain benefits depending on the region's content.



The player may only attack the settlement once his corruption is directly adjacent to it so until this happens, he may visit the settlement at any time and use his Intervention Spells to weaken the residents in preparation for the attack. There are plenty of residents spawned at the settlement so the player's invading minions will not be able to defeat them in combat without softening them up first. The gameplay loop we want is for the players to continually switch between the world map and settlement map as he manages the world invasion while simultaneously weakening the settlement.

There is a limited amount of time for the player to complete his invasion. The settlement is protected by a Goddess and a ritual is already underway to invoke its Divine Intervention. Once it completes, the player will lose. We are still unsure whether we want to include a final defense fight within the portal once Divine Intervention occurs or if it should go straight to Game Over.

This is only the initial setup for our World Invasion System. More landmark types, objects and random events will be added to fill up the game with enough content. In addition, Demonic Landmarks will be introduced soon which are structures that the player can erect in invaded regions for a variety of benefits. These are key features that will provide further progression system for the player.



Players may now obtain Summons from invaded regions. These will be a variety of beasts and monsters that the player can then unleash on the Settlement. We've introduced 4 Summons for now: Wolf, Golem, Succubus and Incubus. Wolves and Golems are fairly straightforward monsters that will engage the residents in combat. Succubi and Incubi are more interesting as they will enchant residents into going in bed with them and then suck their life force while they are at it!

A Wolf attacks the settlement!



Players may now obtain Artifacts from invaded regions. These are special objects that can be placed in empty spots in the settlement. Typically, artifacts have unique area of effect abilities that get activated when an unsuspecting resident inspects it. The Ankh of Anubis creates a quicksand in an area around it that will drown residents caught within. The Necronomicon will reanimate all dead corpses in the entire settlement and turn them into hostile Skeletons. The Chaos Orb will turn anyone that inspects it insane.

A Level 1 Ankh of Anubis in action. Pardon the placeholder graphics



Occasionally, a character from the defending settlement will travel to a different region and trigger a random event. The effect of these type of events will usually be detrimental to the player's invasion effort. There are a couple of ways we want the player to be able to defend against this. If the region is adjacent to corrupted ones, then they can invade it before the event ends to cancel it and kill off the character. If it is not, then the player may send a minion and interfere with the event.



We've transferred Intervention Spells out of minions and directly onto the player. The player now has up to 4 Intervention Spell slots that will eventually be filled out by learning new spells via World Invasion System. Intervention Spells are now one time use only so the player must use these wisely.

Let me explain why we switched to this. With the World Invasion System in place, we switched the Intervention Spells from being repeatable use via cooldown to single consumable use. The intent is for the player to be more mindful when to use a Spell as well as to allow the player to go through a variety of different Spells throughout a single playthrough rather than be stuck with just a small fixed set. So when a Spell is consumed, he will eventually be able to replace it with a new one as he invade the world. Now, this makes the minions merely containers of Intervention Spells and makes using them more fiddly as you have to go through a list of minions to find the Spell you want to cast. Moving it out of the minions makes it much simpler and still accomplish the same goal.

Now the downside to this is that the minions are now practically no longer involved in interventions inside the settlement. What we intend to do is to make them more useful in the World Invasion System and in combat. As we put in more of the World Invasion System's features in place, the minions will have various tasks to do including building Demonic Landmarks, unlocking new Spells, starting random events, interfering with other events, etc.



We've started working on our Save/Load functionality. It's not complete yet as it takes a bit of time to do it for the data inside the settlement but it should be finished by next month.



We've started adding more flavor to the characters by introducing new traits that will affect their behavior. Some are buffs like Doctor, Vigilant and Blessed. Some are flaws like Accident Prone, Music Hater and Ugly. Some are neutral like Nocturnal and Curious. Many more will be introduced next month.

An Accident Prone character occasionally stumbles and gets injured while doing stuff



This is getting a bit too long but know that there are a few more Spells we added in there such as Cannibalism, Agoraphobia, Lullaby, Spoil and Release. We still feel that there is still not enough means for the player to plan out a specific course of action. To fix this, I think we need to figure out a more manageable way of unlocking specific Spells that the player needs rather than what's in place right now where the player may choose from a random set of three ala Stellaris. What's tough here is how to balance it in a way that it wouldn't be too overpowered. We can't just allow the player to turn everyone into Serial Killers (or could we?).



We're updating our character AI to better consider the Day/Night cycle in the game. In previous builds, characters do not really take the current time into consideration too much. Example: they dont typically sleep at night time and don't have an eating schedule as they are largely controlled by their Need Meters. We're changing this up so that characters will eat and sleep within a set schedule even if they may not be too hungry or sleepy by then. Our major goal here is to have most characters asleep around the same time at a certain point at night. This will then be a good time for the player to switch to the World Map and work on that side. We think it would be a good loop for the player to be in the Settlement Map in the morning and then in the World Map at night.

At the moment, we're in the middle of transitioning to this. However, it is tough taming the AI into doing a predictable schedule when faced with many unpredictable factors and events. Though I think we should get it done by next month.

June DevLog

June is a comparatively lowkey month for us. There was still a lot of work done but most of it are revisions or improvements of existing features. Now that we are satisfied with the fundamental simulations in the game, we'll start turning our focus towards our World Invasion System. This is the last but biggest missing piece in the game which includes the random world generation, corrupting world tiles, minion growth and management, win and lose conditions, threat meter, and more. This is a big feature that will take time to complete. I don't think we will have another significant update this month but expect a fully playable (albeit barebones) game by end of August.

Prototype Build v0.4

We've updated our prototype build with more features and improvements. Here's the link: World's Bane Prototype

Gameplay Trailer

Finally we were able to complete our first gameplay trailer which should give players a clear idea of what we're going for with World's Bane. This is only the first one and focuses on how the player interacts with an internal map. We'll have another trailer in a couple of months that will show an overview of the whole game flow once the initial structure of the World Invasion System has been developed.

Revised UI

We've revised the way the player performs actions. Now, there are icons on the right side for available minion abilities. The player may select one, and then click on a valid target to cast it. We'll conduct some playtests to determine whether this is the best way to perform actions in interior maps.

Revised Event System

Events now are stored by NPCs as part of their memories. They can now react appropriately to a piece of event when they witness it, or when they have been informed about it by the player or by another NPC. We've not implemented complete reactions to all available actions yet but most of the major ones have been applied. Due to the overhaul, there will be some major weird/illogical reactions for now. We'll smooth it out in later updates.

Watching Event

NPCs are now able to watch some events that are taking place (ex: two factionmates in combat, someone poisoning food, someone playing music) and may react after the event ends. This is an initial setup, and will be a feature that will keep expanding throughout development.

Updated Combat

In previous builds, combat results occur instantaneously. Now, we've introduced a new combat system where the NPCs actually have attack range, attack speed, hitpoints and damage based on their Race and Class. This is only an initial version that is still heavily imbalanced. We'll revisit balance of combat in the coming months as well as add unique combat abilities to different classes.

Combat Animations

Skeletons, male human and elves and wolf NPCs now have combat animations. More combat animations will be added in the future.

Ruler Succession

When a faction ruler dies, is kidnapped or becomes a criminal, he will be replaced by another resident as the new ruler. There is a hierarchy amongst the residents based on the relationship with the current ruler, class and gender.

Raise Dead

The player can now raise corpses (including those buried in tombstones) from the dead and turn them into hostile skeletons. This is an Instigator minion ability.

Mouse Drag

Players can now drag the interior map using the mouse.

Here's what we've accomplished during the month of May.

Prototype Build v0.3

We've updated our prototype build with more features and improvements. Here's the link: World's Bane Prototype

Additional Corrupt Actions

- Vampirism. Characters afflicted with this do not get tired anymore but can no longer recover their Fullness Meter using their usual eating actions. Instead, a Drink Blood action is now available which they typically use on Sleeping or Unconscious characters when they are hungry. If a vampire starves, it may knockout other characters to render them Unconscious and then Drink Blood from them. Victims will be lethargic for 24 hours, slowing down their movement. There is a small chance that a victim may become a Vampire as well. Vampirism is an Aberration-type crime and those that are discovered will also be restrained and judged.
- Unfaithful. This is a very subtle affliction. Those with an Unfaithful trait will develop Paramour (affair) relationships when they already have a Lover. Players may attempt to report an NPC's infidelity to his lover (by storing the event as an Intel and then doing Share Intel) and see how a lover reacts to it. This behavior requires further improvements.

Disable or Destroy Objects

- World objects may now be clicked. Initial actions available are Disable and Destroy. Disabled world objects cannot be used by NPCs for 4 hours. Destroyed world objects are permanently removed from the map. This uses a placeholder UI.
- This is an initial step to introducing further actions on world objects.

Additional NPC behaviors

- Lovers and Paramours can woo each other and make love to replenish Happiness Meter
- NPCs will now bury corpses. Those with a positive relationship to a buried character may reminisce beside the tombstone to replenish Happiness Meter. Those with a negative relationship to a buried character may spit on the tombstone to replenish Happiness Meter.
- NPCs with Craftsman trait may sometimes craft Guitars, Desks, Beds and Tables and place those inside Dwellings. They may also craft Healing Potions and Tools to replenish the City Warehouse stocks. Healing Potions are now consumed by Cure and First Aid actions. Tools are now consumed by Release, Poison Food and Remove Poison actions.
- NPCs now store memories of events they have witnessed or been informed of and may share this information to other characters. For example, a character that witness his enemy committing a crime may share this info to that enemy's friend to break up that relationship. This behavior requires further improvements.
- NPCs may now break up with their lover. For now, this occurs when a character has been informed of his lover's infidelity either through the player's Share Intel or another NPC's Share Information action. More break up triggers will be added in the future.
- NPCs in a Dark Mood may have a Tantrum and go berserk for a few hours.
- NPCs will now sometimes visit a friend's house and stay there for a few hours.

Improved Chat System

- NPCs sometimes trigger Chat Action with other characters within range. Usually this just involves a quick chat with no significant effect. Sometimes, sexually compatible characters may flirt, become lovers or become paramours. Enemies may argue with each other or resolve their hostile relationship. Sometimes, characters may also share information but as of now this actually does nothing yet.

Provoke Action

- Added Provoke action which may persuade an NPC to attack an enemy. Success rate is higher if the target is in a bad mood. Can only use on Humans and Elves.

Revised Intervene Action

- Intervene Action may now afflict NPCs with a variety of short-term status effects.
- Zap. Prevents the target from moving for 30 minutes and cancels any action it's currently doing.
- Spook. Forces the target to flee from all other characters for 30 minutes.
- Jolt. Doubles the target's movement speed for 30 minutes.
- Enrage. Forces the target to enter Berserk State for 30 minutes. An NPC in Berserk State will be hostile to all other characters and may sometimes destroy world objects.
- Fumble. Forces the target to drop current action and all other existing plans.

June Plans

- I really want us to finish the Gameplay Trailer this month. We just keep on pushing it for later as game development of actual features take up all of our time!
- Updated Combat Mechanics. Currently, our combat occurs instantaneously. We intend to update it so that NPCs now truly perform attacks on the map that slowly reduces their target's HP until they get knocked out or dies.
- Additional World Object Actions. We'd like to introduce a few interesting actions that players can do on world Objects.
- View and Alter Memory Actions. Currently, an NPC's history log is freely viewable anytime. This will change soon as viewing an NPC's history log will become a Spy action. This will also allow the player to store past events as Intel. We're also considering a Debilitator ability that alters an NPC's memory which may then affect how he views characters involved in that memory event.
- Revise Action UI. We're considering better and quicker ways for players to perform the various actions available to them.
- Balance and Tweaks. We'll need to spend some more time to ensure that characters behavior make sense. This involves more tweaks to action costs and extensive review of the entire behavior AI.
- Complete Share Intel responses to existing events.