It began in 2001 when I decided to make a "paper" game to just mess around with. My passion for games was fantasy, and in particular turn based fantasy strategy. Games like Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders, FAntasy General, Ogre Tactics, Brigandine, and others are some of my favorites. These as well as dungeons and dragons, Magic the GAthering, and Astral Tournament (indie game) are some of my inspirations for Immortal Kingdoms.
They don't really make too many of these types of games anymore but they were popular with my generation. Remember any of these?
Anyway, so I started coming up with classes, stats, and various rules for the game. I developed creatures and had a couple ideas for new concepts. Two things in particular I wanted to do differently than some other games.
1) No movement. In a lot of strategy games moving your units around takes up a lot of "time" in the battle. And in my opinion it isn't necessary.
I thought of games like some rpg's where you simply use abilities but don't move your guys but instead focus on the different abilities/spells of your guys. Also, CCG's don't use movement but have a lot of strategy involved. And I thought I could increase the depth of strategy beyond these two examples by adding more spells, powers, etc.
With this change I could see this turn based game still being quick enough to play a relatively quick game.
2) 2 turns per round.
One problem I have with a lot of games is you can't use all your abilities. You end up just using your most powerful spell/attack and can't use potions or lesser abilities.
So, I thought if you broke up the round into two turns then you could do both. So I added primary and secondary attacks. With primary attacks you can use physical attacks and spells and with secondary attacks you can use potions, magic items, creature abilities, and disciplines.
And so I finished making all these rules up in a couple of months. I had pages and pages of different stuff. I messed with it a little and then shelved it. I became busy with another project for awhile and really had no intention of making a computer game. IN fact, I did not know how to program at all.
More on that later...
