Noblemen: 1896 (Foursaken Media) - strategy + 3rd person cover based shooter

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Noblemen takes place in an alternate reality late 19th century, with a mix between early WWI, American civil war, and a dash of steampunk technology. The game consists of 2 main parts: a large scale strategic overworld, and 3rd person, cover based battles.

More about gameplay... In the strategic overworld, players will build regiments and armies, move them across the map, capture lands, bombard enemies from long range, siege forts, and more. Players will change the battle through the use of Battle Cards, which can be anything from adding equipment to regiments, building special building, recruiting special units, adding special abilities, inhibiting the enemy (things like starvation, bad weather, etc), and more. We're trying to create a very dynamic battlefield with the use of the cards.

When 2 armies end up fighting, battles take place in 3rd person. You play as a hero character, taking cover and fighting the enemy alongside your own troops. In this part of the game, players will also be able to enter a command screen to give specific orders to units (such as flanking, switching targets, etc) - however, we've designed the AI to be pretty smart so you will only be giving broad commands to units; they'll handle things like taking cover appropriately on their own. We also have varying degrees of difficulty, so easy difficulties will include better automated AI.

Notably, we've tailored the game to be playable for tons of different levels of players, from hardcore fps players, to those that might struggle with 3d games on mobile. In battle, we have an auto-battle option if you want to just spectate and enjoy watching the battles (you can still give orders to your units and even control you hero from a top down strategic view if you want). You can "pop-in" and "pop-out" of auto battle whenever you want during a battle, allowing you to take control whenever you feel you need to, or want to.

 

One hero, with 4 classes. Each class has a few weapons to choose from and gets some basic bonuses based on that class. There is also randomized equippable armor, similar to what there was in HC2.

The game is totally free move, but we've tried to build in as many ways to play as possible. This includes playing like a typical 3rd person shooter for one, but we also have some things like a cover button that allows your character to auto run to the nearest cover you're looking at, as well as the auto-battle toggle which puts your hero into AI mode (which you can toggle on/off freely at any time during a battle).

And yes, I'd say Risk is a good baseline idea for the overworld, in the sense that you will be building, moving, positioning, repositioning, etc your units. When you engage a battle on the overworld, you then fight it out on the ground. It creates some interesting scenarios where you may be outnumbered for ex, requiring better play from your hero to come out on top!

There will be quite a few battle cards. Right now, you will automatically unlock cards based on your player rank, which increases as you play. Also, you don't build a deck in Noblemen, as the cards you choose from at any given time are from a global pool that both you and the enemy chooses from.

Re: price, we're not sure whether it will be free or paid quite yet. Either way we'll make sure that the game is 100% balanced, playable, and most importantly fun, without the need for IAPs.

As of right now, cards are automatically unlocked as you progress. As mentioned above though, you don't create a deck in Noblemen... cards are drawn from a global pool that both you and the enemy can play from.

 

I also forgot to mention that the shooter aspect of the game includes some cool bits such as bullet drop from gravity and precision aiming. Hit detection is accurately modeled - for ex, you can shoot into the slits of a steam tank to hit the crew, damage the wheels of vehicles (if your shots can pierce the armor there), target weak armor spots in order to better penetrate, shoot in between (or avoid) the armor plating of heavily armored units, head shots, etc.