First steps of Fleet Calamity

This blog is documenting my progress as I make my first game. I have a bunch of help from friends and family and I'll list them as this blog goes on so you know what they contribute and how we go about things.

First off, what is this game?

Well its a computer game where Battleship meets Magic the Gathering.

Sound cool? Well I hope so, cuz I certainly think so.

A quick overview of game play:

Each player starts with four Flotilla; Two battleships, one civilian ship and one resource ship. These ships hold your vessels, which are basically creature cards from Magic.

Your goal is to destroy the opponents Flotilla using your vessels, traps and upgrades. But first you must seek out your opponent by moving about the hex grid.

As it stands a turn looks like this:

1. Draw cards or warp. Warping allows the player to move to any point on the map, not just an adjacent hex.

2. Draw until you have 7 cards in your hand.

3. Discard to gain resources.

4. Play vessels, upgrades and/or traps.

5. Move. This move can only be to an adjacent hex, no further.

There are no resource cards. Instead, to gain resources you must discard. Discarding one card gains you one resource. Two cards gain you two resources and so on and so forth.

So what do we have done?

Well the basic game play is fairly solid. We have created a tangible prototype with temporary cards made of card stock and a play area made of  unused pizza boxes.

We have a bunch of cards for Humans and Machines set up too. We are focusing on these two factions and making sure the game works properly before expanding out to the other aliens. We are starting to play test with people not associated with the game and soon, once we feel we have a pretty solid game on our hands, I’ll be searching for investors to help fund our need for programmers.

My friend Matt Oberdalhoff has been helping me develop this game and really tweaking the finer points to make sure its easy to understand, fun to play and quick to get into. He’s helped a ton on keeping me on track and making sure I don’t add too much fat, especially in this early stage.

I myself am Matthew Hagen. I started developing this game about a year ago while in school. I picked away at it as I learned the ropes of game design while working at a game studio locally. I really am excited to present this game to you all and I hope you are all happy to keep checking in as I update this blog.

As I progress I’ll keep this blog updated. It may be slow in the beginning as more non visual stuff is being developed, but it will pick up more as art is produced, and programming magic is cast!

Take care!

P.s.

Blogger didn't like me adding pictures to this post, so next post will be featuring that.