Tom's Gaming interviewed Kevin Zhang - developer of the tactical RPG Dead Monarchy:

Kevin Zhang [Dead Monarchy Studios] (Dead Monarchy) – Interview

Welcome to yet another developer interview. This time we are talking to Kevin Zhang, the man behind the recently released tactical RPG Dead Monarchy. We talk about the hardship of being a solo developer, dreams of the future, and what is planned next.

Tell me a little about yourself – who is the solo developer behind Dead Monarchy Studios?
So I’m Kevin Zhang, that part is probably quite apparent. I’m a Chinese man born and raised in Australia previously with a Thai surname. Yes, I am quite culturally confused. Dead Monarchy is my first game, I started development when I was 24, so the start of 2017 basically. I had no real experience prior to that, I just took on a relatively useless multimedia/games design degree that didn’t really teach me anything other than good folder management.

How come you started the difficult task of becoming a solo developer?
Depression and curiosity. Came out of a hurtful relationship and wanted to find meaning in my life. For a while games became the crutch then when I healed myself, I wanted more and more from gaming and eventually that curiosity made me take the plunge. I essentially see my whole solo game development journey as “real-life ironman mode”, I’m enjoying each step of the way, discovering new things and implementing things I’ve always wanted to do. It’s become a way of life for me now.

Is it your full-time job? If not, is it a dream to make it so?
Nah, I got other part-time jobs. It is my dream to be able to make games for a living but considering my games are super niche, it might always be a dream. That’s alright though, gives me enough reasons to keep pushing forward.

Do you do everything yourself – programming, sound, writing, etc?
I suppose if you want to get really technical, I designed the entire game myself but I didn’t develop the entire game myself. That is to say I didn’t make everything from scratch, I assembled various pieces that on their own are just tools, pieces of the puzzle. They have no real inherent meaning until they are put into the context of a game. I used to fiddle around with LEGO a lot, so in my mind it is like assembling a giant LEGO set. The music, those are all non-exclusive pieces, though I scour the asset store for suitable tracks which is surprisingly very hard to find. The writing, that’s all mine, it’s not particularly great but it gets the job done. I have various tools that assist me in programming and I invested quite heavily into those tools to get tailored solutions for Dead Monarchy. The only custom assets are the vast majority of the armour/weapon models and the animations, which I got help from by various contracted freelancers. It is still and I really mean this, an ungodly amount of work, especially when dealing with 3D which can quickly become a blackhole.

Let’s take for example the armours, when the models come in, I break them down into smaller pieces so I can get more customisation from them. I then rig the armour, decimate the polygons, create the alternative textures needed, like blood, scratches etc. Then I need to do the icons, do another pass for clipping and then set up the item in-game. I’m not a great animator either, so I got a freelancer animator to do my animations however for each attack he needed to animate, he wanted me to do a video of each attack taken from multiple angles. He would then use that video as the basis for the animation. So I spent about 100 hours of my life with a mop, hammer and umbrella bashing and slashing away like a maniac. After those animations are done, I then need to sync them with the various death and hit animations, etc, etc, etc. So when you take a step back and look at the entire picture, the assets make up about 90% of the overall game development process.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

Splattercatgaming checked out Dead Monarchy:

Dead Monarchy - Sandbox Medieval Mercenary Company Strategy RPG

The tactical RPG Dead Monarchy has been released:

Dead Monarchy

Dead Monarchy is a turn-based, tactical RPG with roguelike elements, inspired by games such as Battle Brothers, XCOM and Jagged Alliance. Equip your warriors with historically inspired equipment and attempt to survive in a dying world overrun by all manner of monsters.

Currently the game consists of two layers. The "town" layer where you manage the player base and the "combat" layer where you engage enemies in turn-based tactical combat. As it stands, the core gameplay loop is to go out on a mission, gather resources, then spend those resources on upgrading buildings which in turn provide a variety of bonuses to your warriors. As you continue to upgrade your town and go out on expeditions, time will pass and the enemy will grow stronger and then will eventually attack your town. Failing a base assault without being completely wiped out will result in your building upgrades being destroyed.

This weakens the player and makes it harder for the player to achieve victory. To win the game in its current Early Access state, you must defeat all 5 Monarchs, one for each respective biome. This eventually results in a race against the enemy, with the enemy trying to wipe out your town and with the player trying to become strong enough to defeat all 5 Monarchs before getting wiped out.

• Turn-based, tactical combat where the player can control up to 18 warriors at once. No longer do you have to justify to yourself for playing with a small party of 6 poor souls against the world. Combat is phase based, meaning all units within a faction act before the next faction goes however movement is based on action points allowing movement multiple times in a turn.
• Counter attacks and attacks of opportunity, ranged combat, synergistic abilities, flanking, action point system, positional bonuses and elevation tiles that influence hit chance.
• 45 abilities divided into 9 weapon types. Sword, hatchet, mace, claymore, greataxe, warhammer and rapier. There are then 2 ranged weapon types, longbow and crossbow. Each weapon type has 5 unique abilities assigned to it.
• 50 unique armor sets currently implemented which make up the 20 tiers of standard armor and 30 rare cultural armor that the player finds out in the world. Standard armors have 6 color variations, cultural armor has 3 color variations. An armor set consists of the helmet and the body armor (torso to legs). Plenty of armor sets to come in the future.
• 5 unique biomes to fight in, with each biome containing its own environmental hazards. Combat maps also have partial random map generation. Rocks, trees, environmental hazards and singular elevation tiles are all randomly generated using an algorithm.
• 65 monsters of which 60 have unique monster models. Not all unique monster abilities are animated yet, so there could be some confusion when it comes to "feedback" during combat.
• Assume leadership over a town. Decide where you want to send an expedition team to scavenge, based on the rewards and resources that the different biomes offer. Use those resources to upgrade your town buildings to prepare your warriors against the eventual town assaults and to give them the necessary support to hunt down the Monarchs.

Dead Monarchy Studios is me, I'm just one guy. I'm a solo developer and a gamer who's been chasing a lifelong dream of creating a RPG that I could live in. I was born and raised in Australia and I spent my childhood playing games. Dead Monarchy is my passion project and it has been influenced by games such as Battle Brothers, XCOM and Jagged Alliance. I plan to develop Dead Monarchy for several years, even after release. If I don't, then I'll see you at the stake.

The open-word RPG Dead Monarchy got a major update:

Dev Update #22: Build 10 (Map Expansion, Random Events, Arena Champion)

(Live Build Update)

Hey guys,

A large update has been uploaded to the beta branch. Not fully compatible with previous save files, recommended to start a new playthrough.

Opting In:

• Right click Dead Monarchy.
• Select “Properties”.
• Select “Betas” on the left menu.
• Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.

The past few months have been extremely productive, I have fixed several bugs and done the first pass on:

• Items Update
• Arena Champions
• Combat Maps
• Random Events
• Map Interactions
• Map Locations
• Map Expansion
• World Map

In addition, I've removed all the placeholder text from UI elements and updated it with the appropriate text and added initial "Journal" entries.

In the next update, I'll finish implementing the rest of the settlements for the first continent, the models have been added but they have yet to be fully implemented. Then I will be looking into implementing "Trinkets Rings and Legendary Equipment", which will then help flesh out the new locations.

[...]

The Early Access version of the strategy RPG Dead Monarchy is now available:

Dead Monarchy

Dead Monarchy is a turn-based, tactical RPG with roguelike elements, inspired by games such as Battle Brothers, XCOM and Jagged Alliance. Equip your warriors with historically inspired equipment and attempt to survive in a dying world overrun by all manner of monsters.

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Currently the game consists of two layers. The "town" layer where you manage the player base and the "combat" layer where you engage enemies in turn-based tactical combat. As it stands, the core gameplay loop is to go out on a mission, gather resources, then spend those resources on upgrading buildings which in turn provide a variety of bonuses to your warriors. As you continue to upgrade your town and go out on expeditions, time will pass and the enemy will grow stronger and then will eventually attack your town. Failing a base assault without being completely wiped out will result in your building upgrades being destroyed.

This weakens the player and makes it harder for the player to achieve victory. To win the game in its current Early Access state, you must defeat all 5 Monarchs, one for each respective biome. This eventually results in a race against the enemy, with the enemy trying to wipe out your town and with the player trying to become strong enough to defeat all 5 Monarchs before getting wiped out.

• Turn-based, tactical combat where the player can control up to 18 warriors at once. No longer do you have to justify to yourself for playing with a small party of 6 poor souls against the world. Combat is phase based, meaning all units within a faction act before the next faction goes however movement is based on action points allowing movement multiple times in a turn.
• Counter attacks and attacks of opportunity, ranged combat, synergistic abilities, flanking, action point system, positional bonuses and elevation tiles that influence hit chance.
• 45 abilities divided into 9 weapon types. Sword, hatchet, mace, claymore, greataxe, warhammer and rapier. There are then 2 ranged weapon types, longbow and crossbow. Each weapon type has 5 unique abilities assigned to it.
• 50 unique armor sets currently implemented which make up the 20 tiers of standard armor and 30 rare cultural armor that the player finds out in the world. Standard armors have 6 color variations, cultural armor has 3 color variations. An armor set consists of the helmet and the body armor (torso to legs). Plenty of armor sets to come in the future.
• 5 unique biomes to fight in, with each biome containing its own environmental hazards. Combat maps also have partial random map generation. Rocks, trees, environmental hazards and singular elevation tiles are all randomly generated using an algorithm.
• 65 monsters of which 60 have unique monster models. Not all unique monster abilities are animated yet, so there could be some confusion when it comes to "feedback" during combat.

Assume leadership over a town. Decide where you want to send an expedition team to scavenge, based on the rewards and resources that the different biomes offer. Use those resources to upgrade your town buildings to prepare your warriors against the eventual town assaults and to give them the necessary support to hunt down the Monarchs.

Dead Monarchy Studios is me, I'm just one guy. I'm a solo developer and a gamer who's been chasing a lifelong dream of creating a RPG that I could live in. I was born and raised in Australia and I spent my childhood playing games. Dead Monarchy is my passion project and it has been influenced by games such as Battle Brothers, XCOM and Jagged Alliance. I plan to develop Dead Monarchy for several years, even after release. If I don't, then I'll see you at the stake.