PixlBit

Teaser: 

www.youtube.com/embed/2x1iLpQjULA

If I were ranking this whishlist in order of most anticipated, this would rank in the top 3. From the makers of Dungeons of Dredmor comes a colony building/management sim/RTS heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress. I have dubbed Dwarf Fortress "Game of Forever" since I found out about it in 2010. Since then I have put more time into that game than any other  I've ever played. Hundreds of hours, dozens of fortresses started, much sleep delayed lying in bed thinking of fortress layouts and efficient systems of production and defense. The primitive graphics, insane complexity, and a mess of a UI have kept it from penetrating the mainstream, yet it has a strong cult following and has inspired hits such as Minecraft and Terraria.  To go into all the myriad details of the game is way outside the scope of this write up, but I'm confident in saying the game is the most complex and maybe the deepest game ever made.

Instead of dwarves and high fantasy, Clockwork Empires is set in a world of steampunk and Lovecraftian horrors from beyond the stars. Like the game that inpsired it, you start out with a small band of colonists, each with their own skillsets and personalities, to whom you give tasks to collect resources and build a settlement. You'll be farming, excavating land, setting up buildings for shelter and commerce, building workshops to produce goods for use and trade, attracting migrants, building defences, raising a militia, managing your settlers moods, keeping order, preventing chaos. You'll do all of this in procedurally generated biomes of your choosing, each biome containing its own particular climate, flora, fauna, and geology.

 

Like Dwarf Fortress, misery and madness can take hold of a colonist and spread to others. The twist in Clockwork Empires is where the aforementioned Lovecraftian elements come into play. Your characters can discover ancient artifacts while excavating and exploring. These artifacts may contain an evil or magical force within that can affect the mental state of those that possess these items.  If not dealth with, this madness can spread to others, eventually resulting in a domino effect that leads to the insustainibility of your settlement. Taking the Lovecraft even further, unknown horrors may be summoned by those gone mad.

Yeah, this game could be major. There is really nothing like Dwarf Fortress in the mainstream, or even semi- mainstream. Of existing games, you'd have to combine the likes of Tropico, Settlers Age of Empires 2, and Minecraft to come up with somethig equalling the level of complexity, emergence, depth, customization, and detail of it. But Clockwork Empires looks to be on track to offer all of that while providing a far more accessible interface and more developed visuals, and adding a few wrinkles of its own.