Golden Xan

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Hey everyone,

Last night I was thinking about the mobile version of Deadhaus and I came to think about the possibility of having a completely different game of maybe even another genre in the mobile version. Developing a separate game at the same time may not sound like the best idea, but I guess it depends on how many people you've got on the team and at which stage the game is at. Maybe that will be something interesting for the future.

In any case, a few ideas came to my mind that could potentially be used. Concepts. I will share them below as just that, ideas that might be expanded upon to make alternate games in the Deadhaus universe. The main goal or purpose of that would be up to discussion, as well as any potential integration.


  1. As a sentient artifact, you try and influence the world around you as well as its individuals to achieve your personal goals. The artifact could be a powerful individual in the main game, but before its ascension. You could recreate its footsteps until it finds a proper vessel and becomes a character known in Deadhaus. Recommended genre: Point-and-click.
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  2. As an Elder God, you use your powers to control the world and try and tip the balance of power of the various warring factions. Like in Eternal Darkness, you could potentially choose from a range of Elder Gods and use your powers differently throughout a similar campaign, yet with different powers, enemies and, possibly, pawns. Recommended genre: Strategic god game.
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  3. As an agent of Deadhaus living in the Empire of Men, you try and influence the lives of various individuals in the city you find yourself in to potentially claim them for your faction over time. The time in your day is limited, you can only perform a limited amount of actions per day, each action consumes a certain amount of time, and the world doesn't stop around you. People change locations, they have their responsibilities to attend to, they have lunch and dinner, they go to sleep, and you can be caught doing inadequate things. Certain events happen at specific dates without your knowing, and some amount of randomness can give replayability, especially for failed attempts. You win by turning some, or all of the individuals to undead by the end of the game (maybe you have a limited time to do so). You can have achievements for performing hidden actions or being able to convert everyone successfully, among other things.
    Like Warden Petruvius in Sardok's story. Recommended genre: Point-and-click time management sim.
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  4. As one of the people invested in finding immortality, you play as a human who pray to the Death Gods before the formation of Deadhaus and the first undead. You move through his quest until he attains his goal, becoming the first undead. Then, the game might or not continue as you cement Deadhaus influence throughout time. Recommended genre: Turn-based side RPG, such as MARDEK RPG.
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  5. As the human faction, you try and storm Fort Zaestra continuously in waves. The undead are using their dark magick and undead forces to defend themselves. You take turns gathering people performing actions such as rallies and speeches, and upgrade your forces with the money you collect, build siege equipment and send your troops, time after time. But I don't know what would be the goal of the game, considering you can't beat the undead. :p
    Maybe you can also (or instead) play as the undead, defending the fortress with your powers against the increasing waves of the living.
    Recommended genre: Fort defense/attack.
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  6. As various individuals throughout Deadhaus' history, you make critical choices for them as the story progresses and you watch important moments of the game's story, maybe before the First Age, or from the perspective of minor characters, similar to what @derula made with his own fan fiction. Recommended genre: Choice-based visual novel.
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  7. As an investigator in the Empire of Man, you get to macabre scenes where undead have left death and destruction on their way. You try and put the pieces together to find out what happened, what kind of undead was responsible for the events, and hunt it down, travelling to different map locations and exploring the scenery in a Sherlock Holme's style of play. Nothing stops you from making the main character potentially become an undead, or meet beings other than Deadhaus' members, throughout the story or at its end. Recommended genre: Point-and-click detective adventure.
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  8. As an undead ruler of some region, you must make decisions that affect the lives of the humans living under your domain. You need to balance how many of them stays alive, how much freedom you give them, and how you deal with the events that randomly come up in order to maintain a steady supply of food (for yourself), power, and control over your domain, against external beings and internal uprisings. A whole game like this could be played on a single screen, with just text and simple dynamic representations of the current state. For example, you could be the Vampire baron in Jelrass, with the game's main screen being a sky view of the city, with its buildings being built and destroyed, and homes getting illuminated by candles in the night, and people roaming the streets by day. Recommended genre: Choice-making city administration sim.
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  9. As an undead blacksmith, it is your job to create items for other players in the main game through the crafting mechanics. Minigames are used to play through each phase of the crafting, and the end result is an item that you will handle to a real (or fake) player in the game. In exchange, you receive the game's regular currency, or something. Recommended genre: Recipe-based minigames (such as a cooking game, except dark and gothic)

I believe all these ideas could be made simple enough for a flash browser game, so they could definitely be made as part of a mobile companion app. With some creativity, simple ideas can turn very interesting and fun, and there are interesting integrations with the main game possible when exploring them all.
In either case, I think any resource, secondary game or feature made available in the mobile version should be accessible on the main game. Because not everyone has a smartphone, or a high-end one powerful enough to be able to play, and they may still want to do it on their main gaming platform.

I hope some of these suggestions bear good fruits, of any kind.
 
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Lost lore - a two part type game where like the mystery game #7 you travel to differnet locations but instead of hunting a person... you are hunting down lost pages / scrolls (they are not in order, and they are cyphered as well) easy tasks could be simple small messages. where some longer harder ones could be special locations / events in game.

after gathering pages you are presented a cypher (good way to possibly add Furthak runes) where you then decypher the script to uncover the lore.
 
Hm, interesting topic! What I've been thinking reading these suggestions is that these sound more like marketing tools. Like to make the people interested in the real game instead. In particular, they all seem more like single-player experiences that are contained and don't affect the real game.

I wonder if instead of doing that, it would make more sense to actually apply what people do in the mobile game. It could still be very much a mobile minigame style experience. For example, it could be a sort of crafting minigame, but the items you craft are sent to an actual in-game NPC who will sell them and pass some of the profit on to you. With the gained money, you can buy materials from the in-game trading post to craft more. It doesn't have to be the same mechanics as in-game crafting (it could just be a match-3 game ^^), just the input and output would be the same. So you're playing a mobile-friendly puzzle game, while at the same time interacting with a living online world. In my example, you don't even need to be always online - just for buying materials and getting your profit from sold merchandise.

As various individuals throughout Deadhaus' history, you make critical choices for them as the story progresses and you watch important moments of the game's story, maybe before the First Age, or from the perspective of minor characters, similar to what @derula made with his own fan fiction. Recommended genre: Choice-based visual novel.

This gets me thinking, expanding on my idea below, maybe they could get limited control over NPCs? Like maybe they can trigger certain events at certain times that are usually auto-triggered by the server (they would, of course, have a cooldown) and see, from a birds-eye perspective, how it affects actual players in the world. Or they could take control of a mob of enemies, maybe choosing their primary target, formation, etc. If done well, that could make random/timed events or mobs more interesting.
 
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You are right that these concepts are more singleplayer than multiplayer. I wasn't really thinking about multiplayer when I came up with them, but it would make sense considering DHS' nature. Though I wouldn't say they would serve as marketing to the main game, I think of them more like... an expansion of the universe. In the story-focused concepts, you could uncover bits of the game's lore through conversation with the characters, learn more of the world's history and unlock codex entries in the main game.

As Denis mentioned before, he doesn't want the mobile version to be just a prop, so whatever thing they do, it must have some connection to the main game. I figured that the people who are passionate about the lore would want to play through it if they could get their hands on new bits of information through the mobile version. I also figured the mobile version could potentially offer new perspectives in the story, such as the human's perspective.

Perhaps, and this is something that I should probably include in the first post, the mobile version has a scrying feature. It gives you access to an item that allows you to see the past, or the future, and that's how some of these concepts could fit in.

In any case, thinking retrospectively, it could also serve as a marketing if the mobile version ended up being so fun that it attracted different kinds of users, players from the mobile market. I just don't know if that would end up benefiting Deadhaus much. Maybe. But it could be a plus.

Your comment about crafting gave me another idea... perhaps the mobile version would allow people to administer trading operations for the main game? Such as posting items on action houses. It will depend on how deep will be the commerce and item mechanics in the game, if there is such a thing.


This gets me thinking, expanding on my idea below, maybe they could get limited control over NPCs? Like maybe they can trigger certain events at certain times that are usually auto-triggered by the server (they would, of course, have a cooldown) and see, from a birds-eye perspective, how it affects actual players in the world. Or they could take control of a mob of enemies, maybe choosing their primary target, formation, etc. If done well, that could make random/timed events or mobs more interesting.

They intend to have social media integrations. I don't see why the mobile version couldn't integrate with the main game in such a scale as well, given they have good ways to do so.

When they mentioned asymmetry, I wondered whether they would have classes or Houses that would play on another genre entirely. Denis said no, the essence of the game will always be an action RPG for all of them. But perhaps that could be warped a bit in the mobile version. :)
 
Though I wouldn't say they would serve as marketing to the main game, I think of them more like... an expansion of the universe. In the story-focused concepts, you could uncover bits of the game's lore through conversation with the characters, learn more of the world's history and unlock codex entries in the main game.

Maybe our misunderstanding is that I didn't quite see how your suggested mobile games would be monetized. If they don't have some sort of microtransactions, than they would provide a continued revenue stream only by the people that discover the app first, and from there try the game. That's why it sounded like a marketing tool to me. The way you make it sound now, it's more like the mobile games themselves would be microtransactions that the player can buy in-game.

Anyway, while I like the idea that the player can explore more in one or another direction with a mobile app, the app's development has to be payed for somehow.

I figured that the people who are passionate about the lore would want to play through it if they could get their hands on new bits of information through the mobile version. I also figured the mobile version could potentially offer new perspectives in the story, such as the human's perspective.

I wouldn't want lore to be locked to a certain platform. To the contrary, I would like lore to be as open as possible, probably more so than makes sense from a business perspective. If you want to roleplay a character effectively (and you, like me, aren't good at bluffing or pretending), you basically have to know everything your character would know. I don't want to have to play the game for a hundred hours before I can start to roleplay. (And no, I also don't want to make a character that starts out with amnesia :D)

Then again, I'm still not sure how well DHS will lend itself to roleplay, or if anyone else other than me will attempt to do that in a meaningful way.

Your comment about crafting gave me another idea... perhaps the mobile version would allow people to administer trading operations for the main game? Such as posting items on action houses. It will depend on how deep will be the commerce and item mechanics in the game, if there is such a thing.

Calling it now: m,obile game will be a stock market trading sim, except it's the actual in-game stock market and will effect DHS's economy.
 
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I really wasn't thinking about any microtransaction system. In fact, I'm only making these suggestions because they said they will have a mobile version of the game on Android and iOS already. Otherwise I wouldn't even have thought about it. If they already have it planned, they must think it makes sense financially, though I have no idea what they have in mind. Maybe the main game would more than pay for its mobile version. Maybe making a mobile version wouldn't be that complicated that they need to divert too many resources to make it.

I wouldn't want lore to be locked to a certain platform.

I agree. Which is why I said in the original post that, whatever content they prepare for the mobile versions, it should be available from the main game as well. The mobile versions have to be complementary, maybe an alternative to certain features, but not something that restricts the players or that is required in order to achieve X or Y.

I actually like the (real) stock market myself, but while I think there are benefits to there being a trading system, an auction system, and possibly a stock market system, I'd rather not have to deal with any of this at all in the game and just focus on story, roleplaying and character development. :)

They haven't touched the subject, but I'd like the mobile version to be yet another way that players could watch other people play and influence the game, like we will be able to do on Twitch streams. But I'd rather do that through the game's own app than through Twitch or any other streaming platform. They even open up more possibilities this way, in terms of capabilities.
 
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You could also do a companion app that lets you interact with your house or fortress quest hub, like sending out scouts or some other kind of NPC that can return with random items like retainers in Final Fantasy 14 where it could be almost anything. They could also return with maps or information that leads to a special dungeon or area with higher treasure rating or experience, basically an area with a buff. In that same thought you could also do things that give your characters a buff the next time you play, like a blacksmith buff that all your weapons are sharpened and so now you deal extra damage or have higher crit chance.
Things like that would definitely need a cooldown though. This could combine alot of these ideas into one, like having someone that represents you in the Auction house as Golden Xan said, you could also have a "historian" that can do research and uncover lore as Varik Keldun said, and use the crafting to make in game money like gold and suff like Derula mentioned.
 
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When I initially thought of these possibilities for the Companion App, I was thinking about things that you could do when you were away from your computer, when you only had access to your phone. But then it dawned on me that you could have features where you use your phone together with the main game, while you play.

While this somewhat limits some of the resources, I also thought... why not? There are interesting things that can be done in this regard. I will suggest some more possibilities below:


  1. Idle animation voices being announced from the Companion App
    We know that certain items, ancient weapons and the sort will speak with the player. Perhaps you can add an effect of perspective by having their voices come off your phone. You could easily place your phone by your side or even behind you and feel that you have a companion speaking to you while you play.
    Better than having them play while you're idle is having them play while you are active instead, commenting on the things you do.
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  2. Accessing the minimap
    We already know the game will have a minimap. While it's typically easier (and more practical) to have a minimap on the main screen, some people may prefer to have it hidden not to pollute the screen and then have it available on the phone, which they can lay down on the table for easy access.
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  3. Accessing the codex
    If I recall correctly, there will be codex entries (logs with various records of the story, items, locations, individuals and other bits of the lore) available in the game. People could use their phones to be able to read a codex entry respective to something they've just seen in the game. If the phone is synchronized, you could even have it brought up to you on your phone with a single key press upon looking at something in-game. Together with Modulate's technology and a text to speech capability, the codex entries can be read out loud to you while you play as well. This way, you can see things or read about things while you are still moving around in the game, not having to stop your gameplay or asking your friends to sit still while you read through the codex.
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  4. Controlling the dungeon
    The player's personal dungeon is something already planned. If you have access to it from your phone, you could be able to make changes to it, make decisions, collect resources, give orders to your minions and authorize access to others to visit your place while you are playing. In order to not overwhelm the screen with information or in order to not have to pause the action in order to make meaningful choices to your base of operations.
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  5. Seeing mission objectives and statistics
    This is a bit gimmicky, but some people would definitely benefit from it. Instead of having your objectives shown in the game and polluting the screen as it does with some games, you could have them shown in the phone app while you are on a mission. Additionally, and more importantly, you could show mission statistics of all kinds on the phone, such as the amount of enemies slain, the damage caused, absorbed and received, mission length and other interesting data. This is especially useful for record breakers or speedrunners. Which gets me to the next topic.
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  6. Accessing leaderboards and score tabs
    While not something that everyone would be making use of, some people would like to keep track of leaderboards, if they are in an intense competition or if someone is fighting for specific numeric goals. Furthermore, you could have access to the scoreboard of the current match, if there is such a thing, particularly for PVP. Though I find that might be also a bit superfluous if you can have that easily available in-game via a key (usually Tab), but it might be more useful for people playing on consoles where the inputs are restricted.
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  7. Music player
    While people can have their own play lists running in the background, be that on consoles, PC, or even their own phones, you could also make it an easily accessible feature within the Companion App with Deadhaus' sombre score. Unless there is a natural flow to the in-game music that needs to be adhered to, as Steve Cupani suggested there might be. But, if the app is synced, perhaps people could more easily override it if they want to, or the app could even allow you to insert your own songs into it. One way or another, you could have the music play from the phone itself. People can set up stereo audio from their phones if they want to like that, or create their own resounding boxes to put the phone into (perhaps you could sell such boxes in the Merch store), and it would add a different effect to the gaming experience.
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  8. Twitch stream Dungeon Master interface
    Guys, this is a "must". If you are gonna have people interact with other people's games via Twitch, it would be a tremendous waste not to have that same possibility in-app via the Companion App. People might just use Twitch on their phones for that, but why not have it integrated within the app itself, right? :)
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  9. Twitch chat integration
    I am not a Twitch streamer and I don't know how that typically works, but perhaps streamers can clean up their gaming interface by being able to open the chat of their viewers via the Companion App itself? I suppose this could be done already via the Twitch app, but then again, the more unified everything is, the better.
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  10. Character emotes handler
    While it's something that should be possible from the game itself, you could possibly configure some macros for your phone app to create "hotkey buttons" on the Companion App to make your characters in-game do some emote action. That way you can have a number of voice lines and movements in set numbers and easily access them from the phone interface instead of typing out "/graciousbow" in the chat to make your character revere another.
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  11. PVP matches announcers
    You could have the PVP matches audio announcements be executed from the phone app, if you happen to have it integrated with anything else, as your scoreboard.
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  12. EDIT: Access to the Faction Meta game
    If it happens to be implemented, the Companion App may be a way to access and accompany the development of the faction meta game in Deadhaus. The capabilities from the companion app would depend on the features of that meta game itself.

I think some of these ideas are better than others, and some are interesting on paper but would be more of an inconvenience than a practicality while playing. For instance, having to move your eyes and focus from the screen to the phone is consuming and can actually distract you, especially if you want to keep track of certain things such as the scoreboard.
But, I thought better to mention everything I thought of anyway, as you may take that idea and transform it into something else that happens to be more useful in the future.

My favorite concepts are definitely the dungeon control and idle animations voice lines. The voice lines are something that would a nice feel to having the sentient items with you.
 
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those are some fine things personally i like numbers 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10

though i do have some hesitance for numbers 5, 6, 11 - and heres why

5) though i DO think it would be nice to just be able to look down or over at my phone to see what objectives i have completed and what not - as a speed runner its hard enough to look away from the screen to focus on much else unless its an easy area to get through. I usually tell people while speedrunning Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain that i will not be responding to things in the next few minutes cause i need to focus on things. so adding a timer to a phone to track things seems a waste (at least for that purpose) its would be fine to track how long you have been at something though (campaign wise)

6)Personally when i have played in PvP in guild wars 2, world of warcraft, call of duty, counterstrike ect ect... - i tend not to focus on anything but where my enemies are, where my allies are, and where the next objective is. most of that is reliant on a minimap and looking at the battlefeild. scoreboards are nice but a HUGE distraction (usually only viewed at the end of a match or in-between revives / matches) having it on the phone seems a bit useless / redundant (most games tend to pop a scoreboard when your dead or inbetween rounds anyway.

11) i'm not to sure what exactly this would entail, would it be along the lines of (hey you qued up for PvP and your match is ready) - where an in game pop up annoucement might be better ( i always hated waiting for games / dungeons(world of warcrat) to start with their in game ques only to have people not say ready and go into re-que - i could see this causing more issues than that if it were al redirected to your phone so your not even at the computer to click anything, making the ques that much worse.

or is more along the lines of Player / team X captured location Y. or has X item or is on a RRrrrraammmaagge! if its this then - again to me - this seems like just an audio thing that should be in game rather than on a seperate application...

a PvP thing i COULD see (though it might be abused if done improperly is have PvP type matches watchable via the app as in X people join as viewers of said PvP type match and can watch whats happening ( id would have to say add like a 20-30 second delay to remove cheating Via seeing what the enemy team is doing while playing and watching via Phone) but that could be interesting people like to watch E-Sports type things and it could be something along that line.
 
Thanks for your input, Varik.
I agree that taking the focus away from the main game can be counter productive. That's why it has to be well-thought. I decided to suggest everything anyway because I believe it could serve as inspiration for something better.

Perhaps better than the sixth option is to show the something else... I'll make an edit adding a new concept.

The 11th is pretty much the second option you mentioned: the announcer saying things related to the match itself, such as making comments on your performance (or that of others) and announcing the time left in the match, or important events.
Should it be present in the game? Yes, of course. Is it a sort of gimmick? Yes, it is. But then again, it is also an experience that no other game has and it can create an interesting effect that creates immersion. Just like the suggestion Nº 1.

I don't think we should be able to view other player's perspective or any perspective other than our character's in competitive matches, be them in PVP or vs. the stream viewers, because then it would be a sort of cheating.
 
I don't think we should be able to view other player's perspective or any perspective other than our character's in competitive matches, be them in PVP or vs. the stream viewers, because then it would be a sort of cheating.
what would stop an opponent from viewing a streamers match (this is not against Twitch ToS) it IS considered bad form but its also the "risk" the streamer takes when streaming.
An example to reference here would be Counterstrike, one of the more highly competitive games out there. when you log into the game you can cllick on a tab called. "watch matches and tournements" which will then bring up a list of currently active games that people are playing, what map they are playing, with the current scoreboard - you can then proceed to watch the match in progress.
could someone from either team watch the game on a differnet computer? yes.
does it affect the overall game? no.
why is this? the delay for the game is aprx 2 minutes (the time it would take for a full round from start to finish if the time would run out completely.)
what is the benifit of this? people who are trying to learn can watch and learn.
people (scouts) can look for new team memebers.
People who help coach can watch and help try and fix problem areas.
great teams(players) can possibly get sponserships to official pro teams (team liquid, astralus, ect ect)
 
This is probably too much for mobile but what the hell, I'd like to propose map making.

You direct one of your companions as they scout out an area you intend to go through with your main. They map out the area and identify all threats and treasures within it as they must stealthily go about to avoid certain death upon discovery.