After a bunch of false starts, overcomplicated prototypes, and other things preventing me from working on it, I’ve finally made enough of a start on my next game that I’ve got something to show.
Empire and Legacy will be a random-event-based narrative game about being the last ruler of a declining galactic empire. My idea is to explore what happens after the end of an empire-building game like Civilization or Stellaris, when the empire that won the game inevitably declines.
The Legacy part of the title refers to the outcomes the player can guide the game towards. You can’t save the empire, but you have some control over how it falls and the long-term legacy it leaves.
Galactopedia
The story is told in two ways. There’s the normal second-person present-tense narration in which you make your decisions, and there’s also the Galactopedia, which is written centuries after the events of the game, when you and your empire have become history.
The start of each section of the game (i.e. each new random event) is set off by an excerpt from the Galactopedia. These are meant to evoke the Encyclopedia Galactica excerpts in Asimov’s Foundation series, and they have a similar purpose: to provide extra detail about the setting, and give a sense of historical inevitability to the events being played out.
You can also view the entire Galactopedia in a separate tab. This Galactopedia grows over the course of the game, with more entries appearing as they become relevant, and the content of the entries changing and expanding based on the player’s actions. The player is literally as well as figuratively writing history.
At the end of the game, the player will get a final Galactopedia excerpt summarising their empire’s legacy, be able to view the complete Galactopedia of the galaxy whose story they’ve played out.
Factions
The main stats used to model the Empire are six factions, each of which has a Power and a Support score. These are shown as badges down the side of the screen, and you can see their power and support going up and down as you make your decisions.
(These are placeholder images; I’m thinking I’ll eventually commission some custom icons.)
The factions are:
- The Noble Houses
- The People’s Assembly
- The Galactic Church
- The Academic Council
- The Imperial Navy
- The Guild of Corporations
Almost every decision you make will please some factions and displease others, so the factions’ support scores will change often. The factions’ power levels will change less often, and will generally trend downwards, representing the Empire’s gradual decline.
Future Plans
The main thing I’ve got to do now is write tons of content. Now that I’ve got started, I’m going to try to do monthly dev blogs until the game is ready for launch, which I’m optimistically hoping will be early next year.
See you next month, probably with some examples of the game’s random events!