kael
A trip through the fantasy worlds I enjoy
Fallen Enchantress: The Journey
Published on October 9, 2012 By DerekPaxton In Elemental Dev Journals

>image

 

As you may know, we've set a release date for Fallen Enchantress. It's October 23, 2012.

These past two years have been quite a journey. When I joined Stardock, I asked Brad how much freedom I would have with the Elemental universe.  Could I make it a new and different game than War of Magic? He said, "Do whatever needs to be done, take whatever time it needs, make a great game." He meant it and that brings us to where we are now.

Fallen Enchantress isn't an expansion pack.  It's a new game. It exists in the Elemental world but beyond that, it's a new take on a strategy game in that world.

I was excited for the opportunity because I believe in the concept of the game, that you could have a 4x strategy game set in an RPG world.  The unit promotion system in Civilization IV, a traditional RPG convention, is what inspired me to keep going down that road with Fall from Heaven.  And with Fallen Enchantress we could go even further.

And I had the opportunity to work with incredible people.  The Galactic Civilizations team brought a focus on customization as well as being amazing artists and developers.  I also got to work with fantasy author Dave Stern and Jon Shafer, as well as spending many nights over the past 2 years talking about game design and the industry with Brad.

It is sometimes said that the games industry doesn't make games like they used to. I think what they mean is that there are few games with large budgets that take chances anymore. Having had the opportunity to design and build something that is unique, I can appreciate why there is such risk adversity in our industry. How to describe Fallen Enchantress? 

Fallen Enchantress is not simply a fantasy version of Civilization nor is it an Ultima-style role playing game.  Our goal was to create a strategy game that existed in a role playing style world.  We embraced mechanics that linked the unit layer with the empire layer, to take two very different games, and blend them into one. This was no small task to be sure.  That's where you guys come in.

For the past year, you have been with us every step of the way. Your feedback and ideas have been critical into molding Fallen Enchantress into the rich, deep strategy game you have before you. I am sure some of you would like us to spend another year refining it. We would love that too. But it's time to tell the tale of the Fallen Enchantress and let fate (and the market) decide where we go next with this game world.

Despite a release date being given, we have not yet "gone gold". We will have one final public beta this Thursday. We will also be listening to your feedback to that beta.  

I cannot express how thankful we are for all your support and help these many months. Thank you for sharing your time and thoughts with us.  We look forward to talking and listening to you for years to come.

 

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Comments (Page 3)
4 Pages1 2 3 4 
31
charon2112
on Oct 10, 2012

To the whole FE team:  Thank you.  Your hard work and obvious love of games has paid off.  FE is fantastic.  Thank you so much. 

32
jereome
on Oct 11, 2012


I honestly hope that you guys arent finished with the game, because it still needs a little more work.

Dont get me wrong, its a good game right now in many aspects but it certaintly would not be the best game in this genre.

The main reason i say this is because the magic isnt fleshed out enough for there to be a war of magic, and sadly its suffering from the exact same thing that prevented age of wonders from being a worthy successor to master of magic, and unfortunately this game has even less spells than age of wonders.

So please spend some time and flesh out the spell books. Here are some examples of things that can be done.

1: Give each school more offensive spells, because unfortunately it seems that death and fire have the vast majority of offensive magic. These should include both tactical and strategic spells.

2. GLOBAL SPELLS : I cant harp on this enough, because frankly this is what made master of magic so great. Not only did they have very powerful global spells, but they also had a system of global sparring. Global spells, Disjunctions, Spell Stealing, Enchantments that struck an enemies cities with an earthquake whenever a spell from a specific school was cast etc...

3. More Summons are needed, not only do we need more summons but there should be high end summons that summon kickass monsters on the scale of a dragon. Also where are the undead? We have a whole school devoted to death but not one skeleton, zombie, vampire etc... Also each school needs summon spells. i.e. Angels for Life magic as an example.

4. Last but not least we need more spells that interract with the world map. We used to have raise/lower land, create mountain, destroy land, flood and Kurgen's volcano. I noticed that Kurgen's Volcano was put back last patch, but we are still missing flood, create mountain and destroy land. I would like to see these added back into the game. Also Age of Wonders had temporary barrier spells like Holy Forest, Unholy Forest, Poison Land etc.. that would act as temporary barriers. It would be nice if a group of these were added for each school.

Examples:

Life - Consecrate Ground - Blesses and heals all Life units that enter the area and Curses / Damages those that follow death.

Death - Desecrate Ground - Exact opposite of Consecrate.

Fire - Wall of fire - places a temporary 3x1 wall of fire that damages all units that pass through.

Air - Arcane Tempest - Calls down several tornadoes that throw units entering it in a random direction as well as damaging it.

Water - Torrential Rains - Floods a small area preventing any passage for a few turns.

 

Lastly It would be nice to have the option to play a game with the Dynasty system enabled, where Sovereign's can marry, have children etc.. and most importantly it would be nice to have a toggled option where you can kill Sovereign's and Heroes. Examples there should be a chance that Sovereigns and Heroes can die from battle wounds a certain percentage of the time and perhaps add in assassin units that can be used to assassinate Sovereign's or heroes.

33
cugeldaclever
on Oct 11, 2012


It deserves to be a classic. Kudos to all

 

At times it feels like Master of Orion III - just too much - not enough explanation

 

I feel this surpases MOM, for me at least

 

Best wishes

34
cardinaldirection
on Oct 11, 2012

jereome
reply 33

I honestly hope that you guys arent finished with the game, because it still needs a little more work.

Dont get me wrong, its a good game right now in many aspects but it certaintly would not be the best game in this genre.

The main reason i say this is because the magic isnt fleshed out enough for there to be a war of magic, and sadly its suffering from the exact same thing that prevented age of wonders from being a worthy successor to master of magic, and unfortunately this game has even less spells than age of wonders.

So please spend some time and flesh out the spell books. Here are some examples of things that can be done.

1: Give each school more offensive spells, because unfortunately it seems that death and fire have the vast majority of offensive magic. These should include both tactical and strategic spells.

2. GLOBAL SPELLS : I cant harp on this enough, because frankly this is what made master of magic so great. Not only did they have very powerful global spells, but they also had a system of global sparring. Global spells, Disjunctions, Spell Stealing, Enchantments that struck an enemies cities with an earthquake whenever a spell from a specific school was cast etc...

3. More Summons are needed, not only do we need more summons but there should be high end summons that summon kickass monsters on the scale of a dragon. Also where are the undead? We have a whole school devoted to death but not one skeleton, zombie, vampire etc... Also each school needs summon spells. i.e. Angels for Life magic as an example.

4. Last but not least we need more spells that interract with the world map. We used to have raise/lower land, create mountain, destroy land, flood and Kurgen's volcano. I noticed that Kurgen's Volcano was put back last patch, but we are still missing flood, create mountain and destroy land. I would like to see these added back into the game. Also Age of Wonders had temporary barrier spells like Holy Forest, Unholy Forest, Poison Land etc.. that would act as temporary barriers. It would be nice if a group of these were added for each school.
 

Lastly It would be nice to have the option to play a game with the Dynasty system enabled, where Sovereign's can marry, have children etc.. and most importantly it would be nice to have a toggled option where you can kill Sovereign's and Heroes. Examples there should be a chance that Sovereigns and Heroes can die from battle wounds a certain percentage of the time and perhaps add in assassin units that can be used to assassinate Sovereign's or heroes.

 

^These are indeed the quick additions that would push this game to excellent status.

The raise and lower land spells could be made more accessible just by decreasing their mana cost and/or giving them to all Sovs.

Spells similar to Grip of Winter, and summons of existing creatures would not be much to implement.

Although extremely basic in form and only accessible via cheat, the dynasty system is still in game;

and the world creation screen is in dire need of a mortality toggle.

35
sareth01
on Oct 11, 2012

I'll be honest, i'm interested in this game now.  I can't wait to try it out when its released via steam.

Kudos to the devs!

36
charon2112
on Oct 11, 2012

sareth01
reply 36
I'll be honest, i'm interested in this game now.  I can't wait to try it out when its released via steam.

Kudos to the devs!

 

Is it confirmed to be a Steam release?

37
BlackSmokeDMax
on Oct 11, 2012

charon2112
reply 37

Quoting sareth01, reply 36I'll be honest, i'm interested in this game now.  I can't wait to try it out when its released via steam.

Kudos to the devs!

 

Is it confirmed to be a Steam release?

The beta has already been on Steam for a while now. You can buy it anytime you like and start playing the beta now.

 

edit: It should be noted, if you purchase through Stardock, you can NOT play through Steam. You have to purchase via Steam to get a Steam Key for the game.

38
seanw3
on Oct 11, 2012

They say the journey is more important than the destination. Does that cheapen the goal or simply urge us to keep traveling?

39
Bellack
on Oct 11, 2012

jereome
reply 33

I honestly hope that you guys arent finished with the game, because it still needs a little more work.

Dont get me wrong, its a good game right now in many aspects but it certaintly would not be the best game in this genre.

The main reason i say this is because the magic isnt fleshed out enough for there to be a war of magic, and sadly its suffering from the exact same thing that prevented age of wonders from being a worthy successor to master of magic, and unfortunately this game has even less spells than age of wonders.

So please spend some time and flesh out the spell books. Here are some examples of things that can be done.

1: Give each school more offensive spells, because unfortunately it seems that death and fire have the vast majority of offensive magic. These should include both tactical and strategic spells.

2. GLOBAL SPELLS : I cant harp on this enough, because frankly this is what made master of magic so great. Not only did they have very powerful global spells, but they also had a system of global sparring. Global spells, Disjunctions, Spell Stealing, Enchantments that struck an enemies cities with an earthquake whenever a spell from a specific school was cast etc...

3. More Summons are needed, not only do we need more summons but there should be high end summons that summon kickass monsters on the scale of a dragon. Also where are the undead? We have a whole school devoted to death but not one skeleton, zombie, vampire etc... Also each school needs summon spells. i.e. Angels for Life magic as an example.

4. Last but not least we need more spells that interract with the world map. We used to have raise/lower land, create mountain, destroy land, flood and Kurgen's volcano. I noticed that Kurgen's Volcano was put back last patch, but we are still missing flood, create mountain and destroy land. I would like to see these added back into the game. Also Age of Wonders had temporary barrier spells like Holy Forest, Unholy Forest, Poison Land etc.. that would act as temporary barriers. It would be nice if a group of these were added for each school.

Examples:

Life - Consecrate Ground - Blesses and heals all Life units that enter the area and Curses / Damages those that follow death.

Death - Desecrate Ground - Exact opposite of Consecrate.

Fire - Wall of fire - places a temporary 3x1 wall of fire that damages all units that pass through.

Air - Arcane Tempest - Calls down several tornadoes that throw units entering it in a random direction as well as damaging it.

Water - Torrential Rains - Floods a small area preventing any passage for a few turns.

 

Lastly It would be nice to have the option to play a game with the Dynasty system enabled, where Sovereign's can marry, have children etc.. and most importantly it would be nice to have a toggled option where you can kill Sovereign's and Heroes. Examples there should be a chance that Sovereigns and Heroes can die from battle wounds a certain percentage of the time and perhaps add in assassin units that can be used to assassinate Sovereign's or heroes.

I agree with a lot of what you said except

" sadly its suffering from the exact same thing that prevented age of wonders from being a worthy successor to master of magic"

AOW and AOW:SM surpassed MOM and have been the closest worthy succesors of MOM. AOW:SM is still to this day one of the best Fanatsy 4x out there (Espicially with the Community patches and the modding. Vanilla game is not too bad either but I play a fully modded version with almost 1000 more units of all types)

FE has the potential to surpass them all but it still has a ways to go (Sea units. MP, Improved TC - walls cities and such.)

40
DsRaider
on Oct 11, 2012

Glad that I could help. I look forward to the release and everything that comes after that as well. 

41
marionesi
on Oct 11, 2012

jereome
reply 33

I honestly hope that you guys arent finished with the game, because it still needs a little more work.

Dont get me wrong, its a good game right now in many aspects but it certaintly would not be the best game in this genre.

The main reason i say this is because the magic isnt fleshed out enough for there to be a war of magic, and sadly its suffering from the exact same thing that prevented age of wonders from being a worthy successor to master of magic, and unfortunately this game has even less spells than age of wonders.

So please spend some time and flesh out the spell books. Here are some examples of things that can be done.

1: Give each school more offensive spells, because unfortunately it seems that death and fire have the vast majority of offensive magic. These should include both tactical and strategic spells.

2. GLOBAL SPELLS : I cant harp on this enough, because frankly this is what made master of magic so great. Not only did they have very powerful global spells, but they also had a system of global sparring. Global spells, Disjunctions, Spell Stealing, Enchantments that struck an enemies cities with an earthquake whenever a spell from a specific school was cast etc...

3. More Summons are needed, not only do we need more summons but there should be high end summons that summon kickass monsters on the scale of a dragon. Also where are the undead? We have a whole school devoted to death but not one skeleton, zombie, vampire etc... Also each school needs summon spells. i.e. Angels for Life magic as an example.

4. Last but not least we need more spells that interract with the world map. We used to have raise/lower land, create mountain, destroy land, flood and Kurgen's volcano. I noticed that Kurgen's Volcano was put back last patch, but we are still missing flood, create mountain and destroy land. I would like to see these added back into the game. Also Age of Wonders had temporary barrier spells like Holy Forest, Unholy Forest, Poison Land etc.. that would act as temporary barriers. It would be nice if a group of these were added for each school.

Examples:

Life - Consecrate Ground - Blesses and heals all Life units that enter the area and Curses / Damages those that follow death.

Death - Desecrate Ground - Exact opposite of Consecrate.

Fire - Wall of fire - places a temporary 3x1 wall of fire that damages all units that pass through.

Air - Arcane Tempest - Calls down several tornadoes that throw units entering it in a random direction as well as damaging it.

Water - Torrential Rains - Floods a small area preventing any passage for a few turns.

 

Lastly It would be nice to have the option to play a game with the Dynasty system enabled, where Sovereign's can marry, have children etc.. and most importantly it would be nice to have a toggled option where you can kill Sovereign's and Heroes. Examples there should be a chance that Sovereigns and Heroes can die from battle wounds a certain percentage of the time and perhaps add in assassin units that can be used to assassinate Sovereign's or heroes.

 

Though some of us may agree on this, it is way, way, way too late for these changes now. I have the impression that this game is already in good shape. Let's hope for a huge success on the market, so that the sequel will improve on the magic system to bring a very good game into a legend.

Thank you Frogboy for your posts, your share of work in the game, and for allowing Derek so much freedom to shape the game as he felt best. Thank you very much, Derek, for sharing your thoughts with us. It's been a pleasure to be of help - if any of my feedbacks ever helped! I look forward to having more discussions on game design, especially on the hopefully forthcoming second chapter of FE. Maybe one day I'll retire and devote some time to such an interesting and challenging profession. For now, I'll have to content myself by collaborating with some intrepid modder...

42
hntr101
on Oct 11, 2012

Thanks for making this game happen.  

Sometimes a big thanks is in order.

43
dowdyhoody
on Oct 11, 2012


It's ALIVE.........It's ALIVE.................and that's a good thing!!!!!

44
JackArbiter
on Oct 12, 2012

Bellack
reply 40



AOW and AOW:SM surpassed MOM and have been the closest worthy succesors of MOM. AOW:SM is still to this day one of the best Fanatsy 4x out there (Espicially with the Community patches and the modding. Vanilla game is not too bad either but I play a fully modded version with almost 1000 more units of all types)

Out of curiosity does aow:sm have the global magic sparring that he was referring to?

Waiting on latest beta! I plan to buy at that time.

45
charon2112
on Oct 12, 2012

Leo in WI
reply 38

Quoting charon2112, reply 37
Quoting sareth01, reply 36I'll be honest, i'm interested in this game now.  I can't wait to try it out when its released via steam.

Kudos to the devs!

 

Is it confirmed to be a Steam release?

The beta has already been on Steam for a while now. You can buy it anytime you like and start playing the beta now.

 

edit: It should be noted, if you purchase through Stardock, you can NOT play through Steam. You have to purchase via Steam to get a Steam Key for the game.

 

What if I'm getting FE for free because I bought WoM on release?  I'd much rather play through steam.

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