A little over two weeks ago I wrote a post about wanting to make the first Steem Monsters RPG. In that post I discuss the potential hurdles and the scope of the project and also discussed that I wasn't really sure how to fund this project. I've decided that the project will be completely open source and free to play, and to be clear I don't mean free to play and I nickel and dime you and other people for money and ruin the game experience. So I had some lofty goals, I'll admit, but today I'm going to discuss in more detail the scope of the project with my realistic time frames and I'm going to provide a demo for PC, Linux, and Mac to show what I've been up to for the last three weeks. In the video below, you can see the very beginning of the demo, but at the bottom is a link to play it for yourself!

https://youtu.be/KEM6V--OSmM

First and foremost, I had a lot to learn and still do, but I knew that going into it. I want to make a game that follows the lore, but also builds upon on it and introduces you to the next generation of Summoners for the Steem Monsters universe. Since @aggroed told me that the Steem Monsters universe was going to be open sourced I was even more on board and I've been pouring about a hundred hours a week into this so far. Let's talk about what's to come.

I'm currently in talks with an amazing artist from the steemit community to create some artwork for a custom storybook style intro to the game, that isn't ready for the demo, but it's coming. In the demo, you'll have access to about 10% of the game that I have planned out. I have more world building, encounter scripting, and balancing to do, but I have the database mostly built and the characters all have animated attacks and there are three summon spells that I have created custom animations for already.

The final game will feature six custom summons at a minimum. Each character will have multiple sets of gear and weapons to upgrade to while leveling up and exploring the story. I want this to follow the lore as closely as I can, so it should be noted that the Summoners only have 8 levels. That doesn't mean you'll run out of things to do or it'll be over too quickly though. We have a whole shard to explore after all. I'm expecting the game to take between 5-10 hours to play depending on how many side quests and completion the player goes for.

I have plans currently to implement approximately thirty unique enemies all built from existing and even some currently unreleased characters. You'll get to explore the world and play the story in a way that cards simply don't allow you to do. My goal is to take the world that the teams dreamed up for the previous Steem Monsters contest and build it into something that you can jump into and experience for yourself. We'll visit all the key points of interests on the maps and hopefully when it's over you'll feel like you understand what it's like to live in the Steem Monsters green shard of Anumün.

But that's just the beginning. I want to do this for each shard and build out the entire Steem Monsters world.

So what am I here for? That's a good question as I'm committed to making this happen one way or another. Simply put, this project is taking all of my time and I want to complete the first game over the next two months and release it around Thanksgiving. That is going to be well beyond a full time job and while I have access to some resources through the community, like art assets that have already been created and a soundtrack of music from awesome people like @isaria and @swelker101 who run the @steemcreative witness, I still have bills to pay and expenses that come up when I need custom work done.

So while I am here to ask the community to support me in making this project come to life, I'm also here to make a pledge as well. I promise you that I won't quit before the game is finished and I will do my best to hit the expected release of the end of November, but I'm not going to compromise quality if I need more time. I also promise not to make this game a cash grab that is going to ask for anything from the people that get to play it. I am working on figuring out how to use the github that I created earlier, but for now I'm going to leave a link to my mega.nz folder that has a zip file for a Windows, Linux, and even a Mac distribution. Feel free to try out my demo and leave feedback, and if this is a project that you want to support, I'll do my best to make you all a great game that everyone will have a chance to enjoy.

The First Steem Monsters RPG