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Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse

TubeTube Registered User admin
Hello!

I've been developing a game since 2012. There's some info below, please give the demo a whirl, tell me what you think. It would mean a lot.

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A post-apocalyptic strategy/defense game

DOWNLOAD DEMO (version 0.9 b2):
Mediafire Link, 66.31 MP .zip, no install, no fullscreen

System Requirements: System Requirements: Pentium 4 3.4 MHz or better, 1 MB RAM, 256 MB Graphics card (nVidia GeForce 8800 GT / ATi Radeon HD 3870 or better)
OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
Warning! Do not play the game with a slower CPU! Likewise, playing with not enough RAM/VRAM will throw you "trying to draw non-existing surface" etc. errors. Pay attention to the Requirements!

TRAILER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy8-DBePg6I

KEY FEATURES:
EXPLORE AND EXPAND: Restore derelict metropolises, one turn at a time! How will you spend your Action Points this turn? Will you scout a nearby sector, then clean your weapons and check out a new recruit? Or will you patch the hole in your defenses and then blindly move into unexplored territory?

REDISCOVER LOST TECH: Plot your course over an expansive, multi-branched research tree! Bring forth scientific marvels, or start a second industrial revolution! Or perhaps, build a strong economy and make powerful alliances with merchants and mercenaries!

MANAGE YOUR TEAM: Choose your character class and find or recruit survivors. Gain experience and improve your team's skills and equipment. Find and buy tons of weapons, mods and usable items! But beware, for fighting the undead can be deadly...

BUILD AND FORTIFY: The Apocalypse has ravaged cities' infrastructure, and it's up to you to restore them. Construct improvements in captured sectors to empower your cause. Produce automated defenses to help you weaken or eliminate invading undead armies!

FIGHT THE UNDEAD ARMIES: As turns pass, more dangerous undead appear. From acid-spitting zombies to undead, armored soldiers, there are no limits to the horrors you will face. Set your snipers to aim for the head, have a bunch of grenades ready, and pray they don't reach your barricade in numbers!

UNLOCK THE FUTURE: Relieve the world from undeath in campaign or skirmish mode! Meet mysterious survivors and determine the outcome of random events! Unlock new areas, enemies, classes, bonuses and challenges and lots of extra content as you play!

SCREENSHOTS:
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WEBSITE:
Official Website

SOCIAL:
Facebook
Twitter
IndieDB

BETA TESTERS AND SPECIFIC FEEDBACK WANTED!
1) You liked the demo? You like hunting for bugs and testing stuff? Want a free copy of the game when it gets out? Consider registering here and report the bug! Mantis Bug Tracking is a great system and it would really help to keep all reports in one place instead of reading lots of stuff in forums - it might help you too, since you can check if an issue has already been reported!

2) What about the game balance? A mission was too easy/hard? OP skills? Please let me know!

Posts

  • RoeRoe Always to the East Registered User regular
    edited February 2016
    Very nice trailer, reminds me of Plants vs Zombies. The only thing I see that's a turn off is, it looks like you're playing the same map over and over again.

    I think the city building deserved more time in the trailer. Also, I am confused at how the new city buildings would affect the game. Do we get more players with more buildings, or is it just single player?

    Roe on
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  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    Thanks for your input. It's just so hard these days to squeeze just an ounce of feedback. It's usually a binary phenomenon of either zero or one comment in every forum.

    Players play maps divided in sectors. These maps vary in size as well as secondary mission objectives, like "Secure this area and have 10,000 credits" or "Secure this area with X character class". Map management is in turns.

    In combat players face zombies in the battlefield, the goal is to shoot them all down before they destroy the barricade. This happens in realtime, but each turn more and more dangerous zombies are added.

    So as an "interface" it may look like it's the same but it's different scenarios every time. There are many different subsystems at work, like party management, skills and levels, special abilities, merchants, tech trees, random events, and so many more, this trailer is more like an effort to show those panels, but it's easy for viewers to not notice what they are about.

    Generally the game has had positive feedback from those who played the demo. Criticism mainly focuses on the length of the trailer, with many people stating that when the game is submitted to Greenlight, the main trailer should be a shorter one without many fancy words.

    In general, it's different for certain game genres to make an appealing trailer that shows variety. Imagine making a trailer for an ASCII roguelike: "What's that, there's just letters all over the place!" would be the main reaction, even if that game had ten times as many features, mechanics or emergent gameplay than your average game out there.

    It's ultimately up to the people who tried the demo to decide if all those separate systems mix in well.

  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    An overview of the game's main character classes and their abilities

    When a new game is started, three classes are immediately available: The Engineer, the Scientist and the Bounty Hunter. Each class focuses on a specific aspect of the game.

    There is a huge variety of names and portraits for every character. Players can choose their portrait and enter their own name. Additionally, there are over 4,000 female and 1,200 male names available, either for naming your character or for the game to randomly name characters you find!

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    Male portraits

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    Female portraits


    Below is a description of each one of the starting classes.

    Raising steam
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    Engineers are skilled individuals who understand how things work and have put their expertise towards rebuilding their environment. A solid class with a defensive orientation.

    LEADER SPECIAL ABILITY: Repair items have +50% effectiveness.

    CLASS SPECIAL ABILITY: +10% defense power and toughness.

    Engineers are trained in Small Guns, Big Guns and Shotguns.

    Other Skills: Targeting, Debilitator, Knockback, Defender, Last stand, Readiness, Steady, Dangerous bullet, Harden defense, Empower defense, Salvager, Thorough, Repairman, Overtime, Weaponsmith, Engineering, Piercer

    Class overview: Some people believe that the best offense is a good defense. At some point things in combat may get out of control, with lots and lots of undead dealing damage to the barricade quickly. Engineer's special ability of extra repairing during combat can save your skin! Also, automated defenses can play a critical role in the game: Based on your Production, each turn you manufacture defenses that you have researched. At the end of each turn, if an enemy army moves into territory you own, your automated defenses engage them first. They can cause major casualties in the undead ranks, or completely eradicate them! Engineers have production-boosting skills and defense empowering skills, making them masters of this particular style of gameplay.

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    A male and female engineer in combat


    At 1.21 gigawatts
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    The future of mankind dwells inside the brilliant minds of scientists. Though not as combat-oriented as other classes, scientists posess a slew of practical skills and can contribute to rapid technological advancements.

    LEADER SPECIAL ABILITY: breakthrough_zpsaizkquhv.png Breakthrough: +10 research for 1 turn for 2 AP.

    CLASS SPECIAL ABILITY: +4-8 crystals each turn.

    Scientists are trained in Small Guns and Energy Weapons.

    Other Skills: Leadership, Eagle eye, Presence, Readiness, Dangerous bullet, Harden defense, Empower defense, Tech hunter, Crystal farmer, Diplomat, Thorough, Prodigy, Scavenger, Estates, Treasure hunter, Intuition, Salvager

    Class overview: If you want to carve through the tech tree like you learned all that stuff in the Apocalypse High School, scientists are your type of hero. Their Breakthrough ability makes early-game research projects trivial, and their research-boosting skills further enhance their potential. Also, the steady income of crystals as well as their Crystal Farmer skill help speed up crystal production. Crystals are essential for unlocking more team slots, can be converted to money and can also be used as currency in certain special events. And last but not least, their expertise in Energy Weapons makes armored enemies much less of an issue later in the game.

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    A male and female scientist in combat


    Let the hunt begin
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    Since the Apocalypse, most bounty hunters have had trouble with the "dead" part of "dead or alive" contracts. But those few who persevered are now known as legendary undead exterminators. A powerful combat class complemented with wealth-boosting skills.

    LEADER SPECIAL ABILITY: Double bonus from Corpse Loot skill.

    CLASS SPECIAL ABILITY: On a critical/weak spot hit, +10% damage and reload speed for 5 seconds.

    Bounty hunters are trained in Crossbows, Rifles and Big Guns.

    Other Skills: Targeting, Critical strike, Critical damage, Debilitator, Sharpshooter, Eagle eye, Farshot, Steady, Hand of death, Piercer, Crossbow training, Bazaar child, Scavenger, Agile, Treasure hunter, Intuition, Corpse loot

    Class overview: Extra damage AND money-making skills? Count me in! In combat, almost every undead type has a weak spot (usually the head but do expect surprises). Also the Critical Strike skill grants a chance to score a devastating hit even when not targeting a weak spot! When Bounty hunters score a critical or a weak spot hit, mayhem ensues. Subsequent critical/weak spot hits can preserve this bonus indefinitely! Also, bounty hunters come with skills enhancing your Economy (the amount of credits you gain each turn) and other skills influencing merchant prices, money from capturing sectors and many more! Finally, their enhanced Corpse loot skill makes them gain even more credits from killing zombies in combat!

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    A male and female bounty hunter in combat


    These are the starting classes. Each one makes you plan ahead in different ways, and even recruiting them in your team can alter the way you progress!

    As players get deeper into the game, more classes are unlocked. From the half-crazy but resourceful Wastelander to the hideous, time-slowing Touched, you can never predict who you will have at your side in the next city!

    Would you like a sneak peek of more classes and their abilities? Leave a post below!

    =========================================================

    On a side note, a new, shorter game trailer is ready. Depending on its reception, this will probably be the featuring video in the upcoming Steam Greenlight submission. If you think it's OK for that purpose, let me know!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t594lfUEA_U

  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    HUGE UPDATE!

    The game has been submitted to Steam Greenlight! Please show your support and vote for it! Clicking the logo below will take you to the game's Greenlight page!

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  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    A small update and insight on Steam and the Greenlighting process:

    1) The game has gathered a bit over 500 Yes votes and it's been there for 7 days as of now.The first 2 days is where most of the votes come from. Then vote acquisition rate drops dramatically, unless a gaming website makes a review, where you will see a spike in voting.

    Nobody can tell when/if the game will be Greenlit. It can sit there for a week or a month. It can have 1,000 or 100,000 votes. Games have been Greenlit with as few as 400 Yes votes! Also, the Yes/No vote ratio is largely inconsequential, as many games have been Greenlit with 30%-70% Yes-No votes. Remember that for every game genre your game is, people who like 10 other genres can and will vote No for your game.

    Ultimately the entire voting process is some sort of daily journal of potential customer interest for Valve and they have the final word for greenlighting a game.

    Also, almost all of the comments are positive, save for the purely trollish/12-year old ones like "LOL XD". It's generally more frequent for someone to leave a positive comment rather than a negative one. No voters just vote no and leave. But if your game has a ton of negative comments, this should cause some pondering on your part.

    2) The game will be featuring dynamic music during combat. Each music track will be separated in 3 layers of intensity, and as more zombies appear and the situation becomes more dangerous, the music will also be more tense. Neat, huh? The music will be compose by Janet Banerjee.

  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    The game was featured in an article at Rock paper Shotgun! yay!

  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited March 2016
    My first critique from playing the demo is rather than have the game start when all options are set, you let me have an "OK" button. It just felt a tad jarring.

    I praise you for letting me have so many avatars to choose from, big pain in the ass to search through avatars and find only five pictures. Seemed drawn from the same aesthetic though, maybe find some more with some black people or some with green in the pictures.

    Character select made me happy to see those challenge options and I look forward to exploring them as I play through the tutorial.

    edit: Congratulations on taking two hours of my valuable time.

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    Your game blends what I loved about Rebuild and Last Stand with a clear visual overworld and a fun battlescape.

    After two hours:
    Some icons to let me know when blocks have nothing built and what is built upon them, rather than clicking each one.

    Fluff the battlescape a little, a bit of variation in the foreground and background elements. Different barricades.

    Damn fun, though.

    RoyceSraphim on
  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    Thanks for the feedback.
    Some icons to let me know when blocks have nothing built and what is built upon them, rather than clicking each one.

    Holding Space will display a useful legend overlay with mini-icons about basic sector stats and built improvements.

    Hope this won't eat you another 2 hours :P

  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
    Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse will be released in Steam on April 27 2016. Trading Cards, Cloud Saves, Stats & Achievements are supported.

  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    Congradulations, saw a blurb about your game in PCGamer's US print mag.

  • vdwellervdweller Registered User regular
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