At last, I am revealing the title of the Grand-strategy game I'm currently working on:

FOLK: Heirs of Midland is a turn-based grand-strategy game where you control a nation in a randomly-generated world for you to shape and explore. You will be facing off against other nations similar to yours, forging alliances, waging wars and progressing civilization in a chaotic and unpredictable landscape. This game also serves as a simulation of humanity, from a fictional standpoint.

I'm still working on the taglines and the descriptions (I'm not very good at those hehe) but this is all very experimental at this point. However here's the general situation for this month of April:

ROADS

The road system of FOLK is still in the works (as is everything) but it is working for the most part. There's still much to do regarding them, especially with the idea I had for levelling them up to be faster, which I'm still not sure how it will work. There's also the problem of handling blocked/destroyed roads and how that should shape the already defined paths of the Units, which is a whole other can of worms. Regardless, I am not messing with the roads any more for the moment.

ESTATES (NEW FARM VARIANTS!)

I added new resources that are found in the natural world generation, and can be obtained via specialized Farm Estates. These resources are the following:

• Salt - Found in shores - Reduces the rate at which food spoils that is stored with it, also used to make Gunpowder
• Spice - Found in Spice Habitat - Increases Satisfaction in regions with consumption
• Silk - Found in Silk Habitat - Helps to give prestige to higher classes
• Nopal - Found in Nopal Habitat - Decrease Infection rate, also used in Medicine
• Hagleaf - Found in Hagleaf Habitat - Use unknown...

These resources, beings specific to areas of the map, can only be obtained by some nations via trading. This will add some new motivations for nations to expand and take control over specific territories and routes.

NEW INTERFACE

I finally got to make some UI and clickable tabs, so the player can more easily navigate the different aspects of the game. There are 7 screens at the moment: Geography (Map), Politics, Economy, Militairy, Building, Progress and Culture. At the moment, I only have work on the first three.

NEW LORE

Oh yes, there is lore. I have written a couple of paragraphs regarding the setting of FOLK:

The many worlds of Folk can be considered to exist in an infinite array of parallel universes, all of them separate but all with the same origin: a world forge called the Exachron. Each of the worlds created by the Exachron may be distinct, but their inhabitants only know of the existence of one, their own, which they call “Midland”. The inhabitants of Midland call themselves midlings, who are human in every aspect except stature and genetics.

Midlings believe in a better place, free from all the pain and evil of the world, known as Lyvanthia. A place with fountains of eternal youth, diamond trees and palaces of gold where heroes live a life of pleasures. This mythical place is believed by many to not be just a myth, but to be a real location outside the bounds of Midland. Others believe it to be another dimension, or to be found deep within the earth. Others yet believe it to be a spiritual plane where worthy souls go when they die, or that you may only get to it via enlightenment. Then there are those who see it as a mere fantasy. It is the myth of Lyvanthia, as well as other beliefs, that drive the many factions of midlings to expand and advance their technology and society, hoping to one day be the first to discover the truth about their world and shape it to their will. This, however, will not be an easy or fair road to take, and an untold amount of pain and suffering will befall them. Do the ends justify the means? That is for you to decide.

FURTHER PLANS

I am intending on releasing this game here on Itch.io as well as perhaps Steam and other platforms once it is finished. I will be using the Electron framework in Node.JS to compile the game for release on PC.

I also have begun fiddling around with IndexedDB within the browser, and I have realized the limitations I had been imposing on myself for the save files of the game are more restrictive than they have to be, so I'm giving myself some breathing room there. Still, I want save files to be no bigger than a dozen MB each, since I am striving for an optimized game.

I will be posting more of these updates whenever I have something substantial to show. My obssession for geopolitics and history is probably enough to keep me engaged working on this game, which is a project I've been wanting to do for years, and I know it will not be easy but that's not why I'm doing it anyways. Thank you for being here for the ride, and I hope you enjoy it too! :D

Anyways, I believe that's it for now. It's 2 am while I'm writing this and I need to rest.

Have a good one!

- Mateus