Inspiration

After completing development on my last game, Nevergrind, I took a break to think about my next project. Nevergrind was a single-player game, and I knew that I wanted to make something multiplayer. While browsing web forums, I noticed that people were often playing a variation of Risk using their own imaginative set of rules. The concept of applying a twist on a classic game inspired me to create Firmament Wars. 

I thought about all of the amazing strategy games that I have enjoyed over the years. I love strategy games—but the worst part was sitting around waiting for my turn. For that reason I decided that it would be an exciting challenge to create a multiplayer real-time strategy game of my own. Check out my comprehensive demonstration of Firmament Wars in the video below:

Gameplay

Firmament Wars allows up to eight players to play in three different game modes: Free For All, Team, and Ranked modes. A leaderboard displays the top ranked players' nation names and flags along with their wins and losses. The average game on the fastest game speed takes about 15 minutes. On the slowest speed, games last about 45 minutes.

Before the game begins players may configure their nation's name, flag, government, and their color. You can select from over 130 current and historic flags, and I plan to add even more. Once the game begins, each player starts in a random location at their capital. Each player must expand outward and conquer tiles to help accumulate more resources. Each tile has varying amounts of food and culture to help expand your empire's power. Plundering nearby barbarian tribes is also vital to gaining the upper hand.  

You can also decide to play offensively or defensively. A defensive player may opt to fortify key choke points on the map with bunkers, walls, and fortresses. On the other hand, offensive players can opt to invest their resources in cannons, missiles, and even nuclear weapons!

Repeating Integers

When your food bar fills, you receive an army allotment. Every army allotment in Firmament Wars is issued a unique incrementing integer. Bonus troops are earned by hitting special combinations of repeating integers such as 88, 777, 1337, and even 112233! The rarity of such repeating integers will determine how great the bonus! A combat meme will appear to herald the occasion in a humorous fashion.

Culture Warrior

When walls and weapons aren't enough, you can turn the tide with cultural warfare. When your culture bar fills up, you will receive a random culture milestone reward. A Great Person will appear such as a Great Artist, a Great General, a Great Tactician, a Great Scientist, a Great Industrialist, or a Great Humanitarian! Each has their own unique way to give you the edge on the battlefield. For example, a Great General gives +1 attack to all armies on the map!

Social Environment

Careful attention has been given to the social environment in Firmament Wars. I wanted to create a robust chat environment with all of the features expected from a AAA chat interface. Firmament Wars chat interface includes channels, whispering, friend lists, ignore lists, notifications, and presence detection. All of these features make it easy to figure out who is online and where they are. This makes it easy to connect with friends and start up a public, or private, game.

Development

I have been working on Firmament Wars since February 2016. The game is nearly completed and I am wrapping up the final stages of testing and development to keep it as bug free as possible! There are only a few key features left and I am aiming to release the game on March 14th! Much of the game's development can even be tracked on my Github account. I went to great lengths to use responsive design, which allows you to play at 1920x1080 HD or even 640x480! The main feature I am still working on is adding more maps to the game. I plan to have at least a dozen upon release, including USA, UK, Italy, France, Spain, Japan, Turkey, Macedonia, and more!

Complete Game

The game will be free-to-play, but many of the cool features will be disabled until you purchase the complete game for $9.99. There will be no micro-transactions. The complete game includes:

• Unlocks all flags
• Unlocks all maps
• Unlocks ability to rename your nation
• Your military ribbons will be displayed to all players. Ribbons show all of your achievements in the game to other players.
• Unlocks ability to select from 20 player colors
• Unlocks the game's music

Platforms

Firmament Wars will be available for most modern web browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Any browser that does not support websocket technology will not be officially supported. After its initial release, I will seriously consider adding support for mobile and possibly even client-installed versions by using software like Electron to port the game.

Fueling the War Machine

Realtime multiplayer global conquest—doesn't that sound exciting!? If you enjoy waiting for your turn, this is NOT the game for you! I have never seen anyone else implement a realtime Risk-like strategy game. That's why I thought it would be a blast to design and implement. 

And, with your support, you can help take Firmament Wars to the next level! The game currently has 133 flags to choose from, but I want to put them all in the game! I want to put flags for every major nation and U.S. state in the game. Sure, I could just use a simple flag from Wikipedia, but since flags are truly the centerpiece of the game, I wanted them to look amazing! That's why I hired Gabriel Oliveira, a very talented artist, to create the flags for me.  

I also want to include different music tracks to help set a proper tone for each government. There are seven governments in the game, and I would like to acquire three tracks for each government. So that's a total of 21 music tracks that I would like to purchase for the game. Here's a sample track called "Return of the Fallen" by Chris Haigh.

The funding would also help cover other art costs that I have incurred thus far, such as logos and the lobby's artwork shown below. And, of course, it would help cover miscellaneous costs of developing video games such as software, services, and licenses. The total of these costs exceed $5,000. Nevertheless, a goal of $5,000 would help cover a considerable chunk of the development costs:

• Flag artwork: $2,500
• Map artwork: $100
• Logos and backgrounds: $300
• Music: $1,200
• Sound effects: $200
• Web services: $800
• Licences and legal fees: $500

Final Appeal

Thank you for your time and consideration. Please, consider backing Firmament Wars to help sustain passionate independent game developers like myself that love to develop unique, creative games that gamers demand. With your generous support, it will greatly enable me to continue developing games like Firmament Wars long into the future. Thank you for your consideration and have a great day!