A Simple yet deep Browser/Mobile Multiplayer Online RPG with deck-building combat and without Micro-transactions or Pay-to-Win.
Game Geeks News is proud to bring you another great gaming project currently running on Kickstarter. Justin Towe, Albany, NY, has been a professional browser game developer for 3 years and a web developer for over 11 years. Justin has created many of his own worlds for various D&D campaigns over the years and the reason he became a programmer in the first place was that he always wanted to be a videogame developer. Elements of Adventure (EoA) is a browser/mobile Multiplayer Online RPG set in a persistent medieval fantasy world, with some “idle” gameplay elements, active PvP & PvE, and exploration of a vast 2D landscape. The game provides a simple gameplay interface without bombarding players with too much on the screen at once and allows you to customize your character to your preferred play style.
Build a deck of combat powers based on the 4 elements, craft new powers and equipment, become a trader, and explore the mysteries that lie underneath the layers of the world.
- No micro-transactions or pay-to-win; the monetization model is built around optional subscriptions and ad-watches.
- Gameplay is built around the concept of playing in 5-15 minute spans rather than for long periods at a time – great for those with limited time, or who like to multitask with their phone/browser open in the background to play a game on and off while they work or do other tasks.
- Player choice has an impact! Not only for yourself, but you can build permanent map structures (such as your own house) visible to all! Certain quests affect the global storyline based on the cumulative choices all players make, and player interaction with markets affect the economy!
- Weekly events that pit players directly against each other, or indirectly by seeing who can do the most thing, or fastest thing.
A Multiplayer Online RPG in a shared, living world. Create your own unique character! There is a lot of variety to choose from, alter your appearance to your heart’s content (note: heart’s content is limited by the game engine)! Gain experience and level up! Each level you grow more powerful, gaining HP and skill points which you can add to your 4 primary stats. These skills are composed of the four main elements: Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water. Each stat corresponds to different aspects of your character and allows you to improve your character. There is no class system, just stats and skills to learn that you can tailor to your play style!
Deck Based combat system! Collect a variety of different powers, in the form of cards, to create a battle deck of your liking, and use strategy (or brute force) to defeat your opponents! Powers are comprised of the four elements and all come with their own unique animations; will you try to be in balance with the elements, or focus your power on one?
Equip your character from head to boot to give yourself stat bonuses and become more powerful! Not all equipment is necessarily built the same either – if crafted masterfully, or if the RNG (Random Number Generator) Gods will it, the same “Sword of Damascus” one player has may give +5 STR, but one that another player found gives +3 STR and +3 DEX instead.
Explore the world! The map is split into zones that fit on your phone (or browser) screen. There are thousands of zones to explore, each with its own resources and landmarks. Some zones have towns with different markets where you can sell your goods. Some zones have forests or mountains, where you can find or extract different resources. Zones may also have unique landmarks which serve a variety of purposes; perhaps you will find a forest dojo where you can obtain a rare power, a large obelisk that gives you a temporary stat boost, or a cave full of mystery and treasure! While you are exploring the map, you may encounter enemies, allies, and monsters; defeat them in combat or complete quests to gain experience, gold, valuable items, resources, and more!
Collect Resources, Buy & Sell, and Build “extractors”! You can collect resources on the world map yourself, or build extractors to automatically collect for you while you are off adventuring. Resources can be sold at town markets for gold or used for crafting items. Each town’s market is unique and prices for goods are driven globally by all player’s interactions with the market (supply and demand, in a sense).
Build your own house and storefront! When you have enough gold and resources, you will be able to build your own home which exists as a permanent map structure visible to other players! You can store things here, or even set up a small shop that other players can visit and purchase the things you put up for sale! Unlike other games with player housing, the world is incredibly expansive and there will always be some open land somewhere for you to plop down a property (2D web games are easy to code like that)!
Form guilds with fellow players as well! While the gameplay itself is largely solo, with your guild you can pool together resources and even build your own hall! Guild Halls act as player-run towns with marketplaces and more. Haggle, negotiate, and decide democratically what is sold and what to price it at! Guild Halls are permanent map structures that are built on the world map, and can be seen and visited by other players! There will be numerous structures available for the guild to enhance the features of their Hall and provide bonuses for Guild members. (And if you are the lonely solo type, don’t worry, you can always join some of the NPC guilds, or be a one-man guild if you’d like!). Guild Halls may be vulnerable to brigands, and perhaps even other guilds, so hire mercenaries to protect your Guild Hall!
Interactive story quests! Every now and again, you will come across some quests given to you by NPCs, or perhaps unexpectedly while you are out exploring! Maybe you will need to find Fred’s sheep that have run amok, or perhaps you will come across a mysterious cavern that radiates a magical aura. Some quests may be minor, though some may be major, and your collective player choices will alter the future of the world! (So if there is a major storyline quest where you have a choice to pet the dog or not pet the dog, at a future real-life date that quest’s storyline will affect the world in some way based on which route the majority of players chose. Seriously though, pet the dog). The quests range from serious to humorous – We like to pay homage to other video games and pieces of media, and quests often reflect that (is doing this in itself a homage to WoW???)
Raid Bosses! Who doesn’t love a good raid boss every now and again? Sometimes fantastically destructive creatures may show up on the world map! Perhaps a giant Ogre, or a mythical dragon – a creature you yourself can not stop! But together with other players, you can whittle it down and eventually stop it all together! And get rare loot in the process! Perhaps they appear at random, perhaps because of an event, or perhaps because they were summoned by a player. Regardless, these powerful enemies with their rare loot will exist to be defeated by the players for glory, rewards, and possibly affect the narrative of the world!
Player Vs Player (PvP) AND Player Vs Environment (PvE)! Here at Elements of Adventure, you can play vs the environment OR against other players themselves! Battle against other players in asynchronous combat (and if the stretch goal is met and the players want it, synchronous combat as well!), to gain glory and rewards! Perhaps you may make a name for yourself as the strongest in our daily PvP ladder. Or perhaps you will use your cunning in the various different weekly events that will be ongoing – battle prowess isn’t the only thing going on in this game! Events may include things like: defeating as many orcs as you can in 24 hours, collecting as many mushrooms as you can in 48 hours, travelling the most distance in 12 hours – you get the picture! You will be pitted against other players not just directly, but indirectly by trying to accomplish something the fastest or doing the most in a set period of time.
Crafting of course is a staple of many games, and this game is no different! With tens to hundreds of different resources out there, you can bet that you will be able to combine resources to create new things. Become a blacksmith to craft equipment, a cook to craft food items or a Thaumaturge who can create powers or a simple artisan who creates useful tools. Each player will be restricted to one craft of your choice so choose wisely (actually, it’s okay if you change your mind and want to do something else, there won’t be a big penalty for it, so you don’t have to be THAT wise, Justin respects your time and desire to try different things). You may end up inventing new things, and be known throughout the land for your inventions!
Make a name for yourself! As you play through the game, you may find yourself excelling in certain areas, and becoming known for such things! You can obtain titles to place in front of your name such as “Inventor”, “Dog Petter”, or “Gnome Killer” (you monster) when you do many of such things! Titles are not just decorative either, they will give some small bonuses as well! Some titles may be common, and some may be incredibly rare and hard to obtain! While you may try and seek such titles, for the most part, you will likely obtain them by just playing the game and reaching certain milestones. Think of them as achievements or trophies, that also offer small bonuses!
Player Reincarnation – this is a MORPG that will have a level cap, but Justin is a firm believer in continuous play offering a continuous reward! Many idle and roguelike games give you the ability to do a soft “reset”, where you start back from scratch, but have some bonuses this time – player reincarnation in EoA will work similarly. Once you hit the level cap, you will have the ability to reincarnate back to a wee little level 1 character, and when you go back, you will have special reincarnation points that you can allocate for permanent bonuses. Be careful though, as you will lose everything you have when you reincarnate (well, technically they will be converted to reincarnation points, but you can expect to say goodbye to all your stuff – Tradeoffs must be made!)
Secrets Galore! While Justin and the team like to be transparent about many things in the game, such as the core mechanics of how things work, there are many secrets to discover in this game. Their philosophy is to let players understand how the game works and give an expectation of things in the game, but there will be many secrets to discover within the game. Exploration and adventure is a huge aspect as there are thousands of zones to explore, many of which will have unique elements. Sometimes players may stumble across long forgotten relics of the world – or maybe accidentally unleash a monster that has been slumbering for centuries! Then it is up to you as a player if you want to share your discoveries with others, or hoard that knowledge to yourself!
Free to Play – Finally, an important aspect of this game is that it is free-to-play and not pay-to-win. Money of course is needed not only to feed the developers and admins but also to pay for monthly server costs. So how do they do that effectively? My thought is with watching advertisements for bonuses (as many mobile games do) and with an optional low-cost subscription model ($4.99/month)! There is no “premium currency” in this game – gold is the primary currency (though maybe in some lands they use something else) and goods may be bartered for resources instead of currency at times. So watching ads will provide some temporary bonuses, resources, or items; as a subscriber, you will get a set amount of “ad tokens” each month, which you can use in lieu of watching an ad to get the bonus OR you can use in conjunction with watching the ad to have your bonus marginally improved. Maybe a small bonus every now and again with a daily login reward as well.
As a note, ads are only definitely for the iOS and Android apps – it is difficult to find ad-watching services for browsers these days so if you only play on your browser, a subscription may be the only way to get these bonuses and support the game – that said, however, the team do plan on searching extensively for such services. Justin also plans to integrate the mobile apps in such a way so that, if you choose to, you can be logged in to your character on both a browser AND the mobile app, and you can use the mobile app as an ad-watching machine while playing on the browser. The team really don’t want this game to be pay-to-win, so Justin is going with a low subscriber cost & ad-token methodology to pay for the game. It is basically 1 five dollar foot-long at Subway per month, so they hope enough people will subscribe, and with supplements coming from watching ads, the game will make enough to continue running for years and years!
If players want to give more money, they of course can – there will be cosmetic purchases available, as well as the ability to buy additional ad tokens, give random gift subscriptions to other players and get a small something in return – The team are very much open to ideas from players on this front as well. And yes, if someone really wanted to pump a bunch of money into purchasing additional ad tokens, they could theoretically level up and make gold faster than others and whatnot, but they will still have to explore and play the game in order to find all the best things – you won’t be able to just pump money in and buy the best equipment or powers – that weapon will be hidden in a secret grotto that you must find and then defeat the dragon guarding it (or something like that, you get the gist)! Justin wants to reward players for playing the game, while you reward them for making fun and engaging content.
Discord server setup for players to join – Here you can casually talk with other players about their experience, and possibly share knowledge or discoveries. Players will also be able to report issues to the developers directly or contribute in polls for what features to prioritize. You can join the Elements of Adventure Discord group here. This game will be ever-evolving, even once it is fully released, and alongside the ongoing living story that will receive updates, improvements will be made to the game, and new features added.
About 70% of the game features are already coded, so it just needs a bit of additional work, some polish & balance, and of course, content. This Kickstarter is all about allowing Justin and the team to push the game into completion and fill it with content. The development includes software purchases, licensing for mobile development, and buying two years of quality server hosting up-front (Not only do you get a better price buying up-front, but this is to ensure the game will operate for at least two years no matter what), and paying people to work in a full-time capacity on programming and content creation. The marketing budget is both to pay off credit card expenses used to market this Kickstarter and to pay affiliates who brought in backers from their affiliate links, with any leftovers going towards post Kickstarter advertising for the game’s official release. Depending on the level of the Kickstarter’s success though, a heavy push for advertising may not be needed, and more funds could be diverted into development instead.
There are many possible features and things planned for the future, but raising extra funds with the Kickstarter will ensure we have the development costs covered to get things done and get them done soon. Some of the unlockable stretch goals include; Sub-maps for Player Housing, which include Player Farming, In-game live chat, More Character Customization Options and also Steam Release. For more information be sure to check out their crowdfunding page on Kickstarter.
Elements of Adventure will be the Flagship for Justin and the team’s new indie game studio: Cat Castle Games. They are an employee-owned Co-op and hope to expand and launch many more games in the future! Justin is currently the only programmer, but there are two other people putting in work for content creation (writing, graphics, filling the world with stuff, that sort of thing) who wish to remain anonymous. The Kickstarter will allow them to work in a full-time capacity to push this game to the finish line. If the Kickstarter does really well and hits some stretch goals, they will be able to hire more people (especially programmers) in order to run at full speed and create more features & content!.
Rewards for backing this project include closed beta access, naming an NPC, naming a town or landmark in the game and more. For a full breakdown of the rewards available, check out their crowdfunding page on Kickstarter.
