Orc: Overview
Posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 8:40 pm under: OrcI’ve taken the recent launch of Microsoft’s XBox Live Community Games as a signal that I should buckle down a bit and focus on a single project to take from concept to completion. I won’t say I’ve stopped fiddling with other projects and experiments (since, obviously, building a Knytt level is not a key step in completing a game for the XBox360…), but I have bent most of my major development efforts towards one relatively straightforward project lately. The project I’ve been working on was in close competition with a second one for a while, but ultimately won out simply because the level design requirements are much less finicky; the second project is still next on my list, and I plan to post about it here soon as part of this series of updates I promised.
Today, though, I want to offer an overview of Orc. To make things more interesting for you, and to express something about the spirit of the game, I will provide the information from the point of view of both a run-of-the-mill human being, and a mighty battle-hardened orc:
Man
Orc is an arena shooter with some adventure and RPG elements thrown in. You play as Cherg, an orcish thief who is contacted by the Blood God and offered a road to power and glory, as well as a way to build a new nation for his Orcish brethren.
After some brief introductions, you’re free to explore a randomly generated collection of towns, caves, forts, and castles, earning money and experience. Once you have gathered sufficient strength and weaponry you can storm the castle of Lord Vereem, the corrupt noble who currently controls the region, overthrow him, and claim the surrounding territory in the Blood God’s name.
Orc includes more than 20 different weapons to collect, with various strengths and weaknesses, about 40 different enemies to do battle against, and a wide variety of arenas.
Orc
Orc is a fearsome saga about slaughter and devouring the hearts of your enemies! You will learn of Cherg, the mighty orcish lord who was favored by the Blood God and given the power to build a new Orcish kingdom from the bleeding ashes of the filthy man-things!
After proving himself to the Blood God, Cherg rampaged across the land, crushing the human settlements before him in a wave of merciless revenge, plundering and feasting on the dead as he went. Eventually, the filthy coward Vereem would face Cherg in single combat, only to be crushed by an axe dulled on a thousand man-skulls! At last, the orcs would rally around the blood-stained banner of Cherg, ready to ride out into the land and reclaim their rightful glory.
Cherg was a master of many weapons, often hacking the limbs from his enemies, leaving them to bleed to death on the blood-stained ground, or perhaps bludgeoning their skills with a mighty war-hammer. Many creatures, man and beast, rose up against him, but Cherg slew countless hundreds, screaming aloud with every strike so that the Blood God could keep count of his victories!
The story of Orc can stand on it’s own, but if the project wraps up and seems to garner some interest via the Community Games channel, it may become the prequel to a three-part episodic series that recounts more of the story of Cherg and the Orcish Nation.
I am taking care to avoid a great deal of overhead with the development of Orc, since I would like to be able to release it on XBox Live for 200 Microsoft points. I’d be delighted to release a subsequent PC version for a similar price, but I expect it will need to be a bit more costly, to cover incidental costs.
I’m still working a great deal on adjusting the behavior of many of the creatures in the game, but once that’s settled down, screenshots and video will be on their way.