A World in Motion

Note: this position is currently filled!

Hello,

I am a rather inexperienced programmer and even less experienced project manager. However, I have a little under 13 years of game design experience, mostly in tabletop and forum-based games. Over the years, I had ideas to adapt some of those concepts into video games, and take advantage of the greater flexibility of the medium. Until recently I did not think I had the skillset, or the time to learn the skillset, to do so - but coming into Godot something has just clicked that never did before.

This project is for a turn-based "narrative strategy" game with some RPG elements, set in a fantasy world of my creation. The basic idea is that you govern a society by proxy, through ingame characters, who take the roles of heroes and ministers. This game, unlike most others of its kind, places a lot of emphasis on building and managing a constantly-changing culture and society, with emergent storytelling and gameplay, and evoke themes of human ecology, religion, and cultural evolution. In short, it is less like a pure wargame - though combat is certainly a present and important element. The rules are an adaptation of a forum-based game I designed, played, and iterated upon over the years with more than twenty regular players. The mechanics thus accommodate what can reasonably be achieved by hand/pen and paper or on a message board, leaving the focus on the narrative the players and the GM would put together.

In translating this to a video game some things have gotten more complex where it makes things more interesting or fun, but in general it should remain an elegant design.

You can read more about the project's vision here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EIpYOroGF9WnCrgpbUI9t9ZBo94Lo7zSq-2dsOUGMtk/edit?usp=sharing

As you can see by the 'development milestones' section of the GDD, we have already made some headway and have a very basic skeleton of game systems coming together. This is a complex project where many things interact with each other, so it is taking time to get to an alpha as many things have to be set up simultaneously.

A fully-detailed breakdown of mechanics can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3m5BZ3uelbcxXqiiFA0v0beAfarDU4BgUUGPeiUVyo/edit?usp=sharing

Open positions

Currently we are a small team including myself as lead designer, part-time coder, part-time writer. My girlfriend also contributes some artwork, and we have two other artists (I am not looking for more at this time). There are two other programmers (but I am looking for another!) plus a music composer. Apart from another programmer, I may soon be in the market for a concept artist, some help with writing game text, and someone who can do sound effects.

What I am looking for:

• Experience with data structures (programmers)

• Knowledge of genre conventions (strategy games in particular)

• Interest in the topics the game wants to explore (see design doc)

Pay, conditions, and budget

This is a paid project, funded entirely by myself. This is not an infinite pool of money by any means. I do not expect to hire anyone on a full-time basis - not even I myself work on this project full-time. I in most cases am willing to pay 25 to 30 euros per hour at most, for somewhere between 10-15 hours a week (at most)

On that note, I am an American citizen, but I am based in Germany, so payment is in Euros; if you want to receive dollars or pounds etc. it might be best to use Wise as a payment medium to avoid some fees. As the game gets nearer to a releasable state, revshare is something we will negotiate.

There are no deadlines, there is no expectation of non-disclosure, in general this is a chill work environment.