This game looks amazing and is rumored to be in beta.

Video

http://www.gamebrew.com/tactics100

I’ve been kicking around this idea a little bit in my head for quite a while now, and I figured that it would be better if I sat down and wrote about it as opposed to trying to keep it all locked up–Where I’m usually apt to forget about it. Here are just a couple rambling ideas that I’ve had so bear with me..

‘Delinquent - Law of the Fist’

Objective - As a new student at a Japanese School, it’s you’re objective to become the “school guardian” or Head Hoodlum. By joining clubs and forming aliances, you will hone your skills to overcome and crush your enemies, while making sure not to be expelled.

Format -On-Line Based… Though I suppose you could do other things as well.

Attributes -

Strength
Speed
Stamina

Honor Based Systems -

Authority
Classmates
Hoodlum

Authority would be Teachers / Principals / Gangleaders (Yakuza) / Police, etc..
Classmates would be non-combatant characters for who you would interact.
Hoodlum - You’re overall reputation with the other ‘gangsters’ in your school.

You social ranking with these groups would determine how or what you would be able to get away with. For example, say you start off at a 0 ranking in all three attributes. If, for example, you had a Positive Ranking with Authority, you would be less inclined to be bothered by those if you ended up being in a fight.

Club Activities
By participating in certain clubs, for example the Judo Club, you could get further experience in special attributes in certain combat skills. The more you train within that subset, the increase amount of skill you would have for additional combat.

Work
If you decide to participate in a Job, it’s a means to earn extra money.. Or you could do nefarious things like bully your classmates for money (but you would end up getting a negative attribute in doing so.. )

Fighting
Don’t really know how you would go about doing this, but you would have certain hoodlums that have a set social ranking. For example, if you tried to fight a higher end hoodlum, you wouldn’t be able to even approach them unless you had a high enough experience / hoodlum level.

You would start off fighting someone at a lower level and after defeating those people, you could work your way up to fighting the ‘boss’ of that particular gang.

In fighting someone, if you defeat them, you could either form an aliance with that person, or you could utterly defeat them — Making them a pure enemy.
So as you go further up in your fighting, say you got involved with a turf war or whatever, you could call on your alliance of other people to help out in that fight.

Anyway, those are just some ideas I was kicking around in my head. In reading it now, I guess it sounds a little bit hokey… But I figured that if it was an on-line environment, it could have various people going ot the same school, trying to each become the head hoodlum. The clubs could have there own forum, and if you wanted, you could challenge other people online in a gang fight.

I suppose it all comes off either too much like those ‘Pimp Wars’ games (or a more recent type — Bite Fight’), but it would have a specific nitch audience.. Those people who are familiar with the early Japanese Macho Anime / Manga where might made right, and the most extreme weapons you would see would be like a knife, baseball bat, or bicycle chain..

So I guess it would be pretty much a strategy game to a certain degree.. But how to put it all together is beyond me at this point. But I just wanted to share my idea and see what you think.

Influences - ‘Angel Densetsu’ Manga by Norihiro Yagi, Anime / Manga taking place in the late 70’s..

- Rob

So these gameplay movies of the new FF:Revenant Wings for DS came out: Link

The reason it’s worth noting is primarily because of the pacing. It is an action tactics game, so based off of the same gameplay as FFXII. In making a semi-real time (’real time RPG’ just sounds so dirty and so irrevocably Star Ocean 3 / Diablo / Final Fantasy Adventure any other PS1/PS2 RPG that eschews ‘choice’ or even ‘reaction’ for plain and simple ‘action’ (X button to slash) that I refuse to use the term with the ’semi-’) game, one of my primary concerns was the appearance of the pacing.

The concern is that players are not used to and will not welcome a game that they feel is moving too slowly. There is a visceral joy in fast paced combat that draws in even the non-RPG otaku into a game (this is why this formula rose to the top), and the truly calculated turn-based game has a love amongst the civilization / wargaming fanatic who wouldn’t be adverse to the idea of Play By Email. So the question is whether the middle ground would have any supporters or would it a traitor to both camps. These clips of Revenant Wings, even though the gameplay is fundamentally still FFXII (don’t know how much pausing and wait mode come into effect - the reason I can enjoy FFXII), the appearance of a slower pace (even if by accident due to the number of pixels/percent that enemies can even be ‘visible’ at for the characters to still be of a discernable size) makes some of my fears subside.

PoxNora looks to be a very good conceptual competitor written in Java.

Introversion (developer of Darwinia, Uplink, etc) has a new game in the work called Subversion. Subversion’s development is being blogged on their website. They make some great arguments for procedural generation for indie developers.

Great article on The Escapist about Boutique MMOs (like our concept), and a follow up article.

The Escapist - Boutique MMOGs

Tips on making your own MMOG

Envy and Adoration

This makes me weep tears of joy/fear.

The MSOG

Wow, there are a lot of amazing looking RPGs on the horizon in next gen. Really nice to see what feels like 25% of all nextgen games at TGS right now are RPG-like. Granted it’s also TGS, not sure how many will hit America. Speaking of gorgeous.. been playing Okami. It’s everything I wanted to do with the watercolor shader type effect and more. So many stills from this could be works of art by themselves. If you curious about the gameplay (since most only talk about the graphics), it’s Zelda with some cool brush mechanics.

Guild Wars is also pretty amazing looking, the interface polish and character designs and everything about the art direction I like way more than WoW. Too bad it’s not a very ‘deep’ game.

I expect to have some more work done on the chat this weekend, look forward to it!