A downloadable game

Overview

Saddle And Sword (temporary name?) is an rpg sandbox simulator heavily inspired by Kenshi and Mount and Blade (M&B), specifically the Prophesy of Pendor overhaul mod for M&B. Some elements of Total War Warhammer and Civ 5 are sprinkled in there too. Saddle and Sword aims to blend a couple core game mechanics found in each of these titles into a cohesive rpg/rts sandbox experience while also adhering as much as possible to a low scope vision.

The core of Saddle and Sword is largely inspired by the sandbox management found in Mount and Blade. Mount and Blade is a niche series that provides a unique sandbox experience around managing cities, armies, and characters. However, the common complaint about many of the systems in Mount and Blade is their utter lack of depth. NPCs are completely void of personalities, villages and taverns are pointless and dull, quest lines are few and repetitive. The player quickly finds themselves in a long grinding cycle that gets boring and repetitive quickly. Perhaps the saving grace of the Mount and Blade series is the 1st/3rd person battles that the player can partake in.

Prophecy of Pendor is a beloved overhaul mod for Mount and Blade. It attempted to do what Mount and Blade couldn’t -- breathe organic life into the many systems that Mount and Blade provided. Companions with unique personalities and backstories interacting with each other, a deep cohesive lore behind the game world, unique discoverable quest lines that fit well with the world and were fun as hell to play through, and (my personal favorite) a custom knighthood order the player can build from the ground up. Despite being a wonderful overhaul mod loved by the community, it was still limited by the functionalities of the Mount and Blade Warband base game.

The aim of Saddle and Sword is to:

(1) Hyper-focus on the fun parts of Mount and Blade world map gameplay. There are a lot of grindy mechanics in Mount and Blade, and I intend to cut these out as much as possible. The gameplay of Saddle and Sword will be supplemented by a couple core mechanics from Kenshi, Total War Warhammer, and Civ 5.

(2) Bring depth to the game like Prophecy of Pendor did for Mount and Blade.

(3) Cut out micromanagement as much as possible.

(4) Craft an organic world that feels alive with lore and discoverables

(5) Give the player lots of freedom to customize their faction

Intended features

  •  Customizable settlements that start as simple encampments and can grow into thriving cities with investment and time
  • Customizable player troop trees. You decide what your armies will look like! You can assume control of any army/squad on the world map belonging to your faction.
  • Discoverable companions/heroes with memorable backstories and quests
  • Stretch goal: traditional top-down RTS style battles with auto-combat. Although I love the 1st/3rd person battles of Mount and Blade, I don’t think I can realistically build that entire experience as a solo dev on top of all the other systems of the game. To keep things somewhat in scope, I decided to opt for a more old-school simple RTS autobattler system between little units on the battlefield.
  • Interesting world lore with environmental storytelling and discoverability. I've been cooking up a low-fantasy world for the past 2 years and am very excited to share it through a game like this.
  • AI that makes sensible world-map decisions, not rage-inducing dim-witted decisions like walking past a crucial seige/battle to chase 10 farmers across the map.
  • MODDABLE - I already built a prototype modding tool for myself to easily add whatever factions, troop trees, cities, buildings that I want to the simulation. I envision this growing into a complete modding application for Saddle and Sword just like FCS is for Kenshi!

Some example features from other games I intend to include to Saddle and Sword:

Total War: Warhammer

  • City-building by choosing buildings to construct in the UI

Civ 5 

  • Simple discrete resources: food, gold, peasants, materials, equipment, and mounts
  • Regional unique resources that provide buffs to your settlements 
Kenshi
  • Able to control any squad in your faction
  • Very little hand-holding. You define your own goals. You explore the world map, meet recruitable heroes, and discover the lore of the world on your own.

Prophecy of Pendor

  • An interesting world with a captivating history and lore
  • Unique heroes/companions
  • Lore-friendly, cohesive, non-repetitive quests that allow the player to learn about the world and define their own overall goal

How I'm doing it

The game world is one big simulation and you, as the player, are just tossed into the mix. I'm currently building the headless simulation in C++ using ECS for maximum performance and using raylib for visual debugging. That means the game simulation is completely decoupled from visuals and should technically be able to plug into any game engine that supports C++. Once the simulation is in a solid spot, I intend to hook it up to Godot's backend as GDExtension and build the visuals for the game with Godot's tools. I'm envisioning the visuals to be 2D for now.

Stay tuned for a webGL build of the simulation. No player interactions yet other than inspecting what squads and cities are doing, but still cool to see this little world evolve on its own. 


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