“One and Indivisible” is Visual Novel with gameplay of turn-based strategy set in the universe similar to the period of I World War, telling the story of inner collapse of Ursuat Empire and desperate fight between the loyalist forces of former tsardom against revolutionary equalists and their Red Army. Player takes control of colonel Pyotr Karmazov, the youngest of tsar Aleksei IV’s sons who is caught in the middle of civil war. With loyal troops and leaders under his command he need to restore the peace to his motherland.
General Concept:
When it comes to gameplay, the biggest inspiration for “One and Indivisible” is Sunrider series by Love In Space studio, especially in terms of overall “theme” of it - dialogues, construction of story and some parts of battle gameplay, however in terms of battle gameplay and overall setup of it, the game leans towards Panzer General series. I’m personally also big fan of Advance War, which I played maniacally back when I possessed Game Boy.
Therefore, the gameplay will consist of:
1. Typical VN stuff - dialogues, choices, romance
2. Preparing your army - mostly by upgrading troops, managing your resources and buying more equipment from abroad
3. Missions that progress the story, done by using turn-based strategy gameplay.
When it comes to the story itself and the lore of the game, ‘One and Indivisible” uses mostly the history of Russian Civil War (1918-1921) as a reference material. However, while many characters from the game itself may be easy to compare to real characters, overall “One and Indivisible” do not copy the real history of Russian Civil War and is not “historically correct” view of it. In same way, some historical context from Chinese Civil War (1927-1950) will also appear. What we try to do with One and Indivisible, is basically, creating a game that “feels historical”, gives you good feeling by engulging you into a deep and complex world with clever references and winks to actual history.
We want to do it not just for the story, but for overall character design and all the details of the game. For example - the sketch of Cossack commander. Note how close it resembles the historical original.
Besides “story reasons”, the world of Tyrm (alternate Earth) is quite different. The magic and spiritual powers exists in the world, mechs are deployed in the world of Great War rifle weaponry and poverty and alternate version of paganism is still strong, holding out in many parts of the world. If I may summarise the overall “feel” of the universe, I would use one of many great concept arts by Jakub Różalski:
Also, because both lead writer and lead programmer are big fans of Legends of the Galactic Heroes, it is very likely we will try to make several references to this greatest anime created in the history.
More About Story:
The main character that player takes charge in is colonel Pyotr Karmazov, the youngest of Tsar Aleksei’s sons. Despite being part of the highest class of Ursuat, Pyotr was mostly sidelined. As a youngest son wasn’t destined for greatness - always living in the shadow of his older brothers. In the end, after finishing military academy he was sent to the Far East near the border with nomadic tribes of Bayar. Meanwhile, his older brother - Heir Tsarevitch Nikolai Karmazov became chief-commander of Stavka and entire military.
At first, Pyotr watched from the afar the struggle of Ursuat Empire and Republic of Touleisa against their common enemy - Denailand Federation. However, the tide of war turned against them and soon after Ursuat was on the brink of defeat. During that time, in capital city of Kerograd the uprising began, led by charismatic leader of Equalist Alliance party.
Nadia Fiodorovna Postayevna
leader of Equalist Alliance and main antagonist of One and Indivisible
leader of Equalist Alliance and main antagonist of One and Indivisible
Now, the Ursuat Empire is in middle of complete inner collapse. The border regions are in open separatist revolt. The country is thrown into chaos as Equalists rule is disputed by many generals of Imperial Army scattered across the continent. Meanwhile - anarchists, Cossacks, nomad people of Bayar and other figures stir the pot even harder, turning land of Ursua into the field of battle. And in the middle of it, there is colonel Pyotr Karmazov. And his story and fate of entire country, is all up to the player...
Structure of Turn-Based Strategy:
Let’s be honest, this is the most important part that will likely make or destroy the game. I played many turn-based strategy games and I had a big problem with overall idea what exactly would fit the game set in period of I World War. As a big fan of Advance War, I was tempted to op for incredibly simple system of units having one way of attack, clear paper-cut-scissors interaction and in general - overall simplicity. However, in the end what we have written up in GDD turned out to be quite different.
The overall concept goes as follows:
- Map is divided into hexes, one unit = one hex
- The movement is restricted, units cannot move through each other
- Each unit has “Direction” value indicating in which direction it’s looking. It means that it is possible to attack units from flanks dealing bonus damage and in general, careful maneuvers are crucial
- Units have both HP and Morale (or EdC as I like to call) - which means sometimes the victory can be achieved not necessarily by eliminating all units, but by forcing mass route. If you inflict critical damage and EdC falls low enough, the unit may run from the battlefield, and other units may join turning a single squad running into mass hysteria.
- Absolute lack of RNG in battles. Not one value is determined randomly. All is up to player.
For now, while we finished concept itself and we started on setting up concrete values (like how hard it is for units to move from forest tile, river tile or any other) we did not finished even the demo of such battle. For now, the only thing we have is complete write down of first battle (which serves as tutorial). You can find it - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Zg ... oJ5LE/edit.
Progress of the Game:
Okay. I want to deeply apologise, because you may got hyped for the game. But now I need to speak ugly truth.
Our “team”, that creates OaI consists of three people. We are all university students from Poland, not even living in the same region. Not only that, only one of us actually has any idea how to program anything. Basically, it’s:
- me, as a Lead Writer and author of entire of GDD
- “Ghatorr”, my dear friend who is trying to actually program it and create this game and is the only one that has any knowledge of Renpy
- “Gandzia”, my second dear friend who is mostly an assistant that helps us by suggesting tweaks in the story
So we have no one to actually draw necessary art or create music. The sketches of characters you saw earlier was not done by any of us - we had to buy commision from artist that is not part of our team. “Ghatorr”, the only one of us who actually knows how to program is also very overwhelmed by his study and complexity of it, so the progress is… terrible.
According to Google Drive history, the Game Developer Document for OaI was created on 5 November 2016. We “worked” on it for more than a year, and what we achieved was only a 50 page of GDD and nothing really else, not even the demo.
Recently, the project was almost dead and to be honest, we lost almost all motivation to finish even working demo - mostly due to the pressure we got from university studies. However, I was unable to truly dig the grave for this game, so I came up with the idea to publish here what we came up with and what we want to do.
The honest truth is, we are in desperate need of help. However, I don’t mean exactly “we are searching for artist/another programmer/musician” or anything like that. It’s true we need helping hand. However, what is the most important is the fact that recently we lost motivation to continue working on it, the creative spark that moved us back in 2016 to actually try to do something.
Therefore, the biggest help you can give right now is simple feedback.
- What do you think of the story premise?
- What do you think of turned-based gameplay idea we have?
- Do you think we should continue this project despite the fact it is clearly too ambitious and time consuming for us? If you are sceptical of our ability to finish it (we are too), do you have any suggestion what to do with it without abandoning the idea all together?
I simply hope that with getting some crucial feedback, we can regain creative spark and sense of commitment so we can actually try to work on it yet again.
Thank you in advance
- Verlax