Anamnesis, of Renascents and Monsters (Now at 10/27/17)

[getter77]

https://anamnesisgame.blogspot.com/

So...this is a bit different being more text-based for now at least, but seems to be fairly lively and moving on along---should jump out to some folks here I'd think:   Win/Mac/Linux

   

A simulation and role playing game of exploration, warfare, adventure and romance in a low fantasy, colonial, interwar environment.

The Game

Anamnesis attempts to recreate a Pen and Paper role playing experience in a single player videogame.

The game is driven through narrative and offers at all times a high level of freedom of action.

The elements of the game, such as plot elements, characters and locations, are manually developed, but their selection is randomized for each gameplay to guarantee replayability

In the colony in which the players are dropped, they are free to play a grand role as governors, a humble one as adventurers, or something in between as explorers. Once the game starts, it is solely the player's choice to develop militarily, economically, personally, romantically or in any way he or she chooses.

Features

    -A different, randomly generated world to explore in every game.
    -162 different units and locations (and counting).
    -Player character's gender and sexuality options with optional romantic content.
    -Adventure on your own or hire units to do the job for you.
     -Highly documented simulation of colonial early 20th century life, warfare and diplomacy, adding monsters, beastfolk and conjuration to the mixture.
    -Extensive use of the best graphic rendering tool yet developed, the player's imagination.


The Setting

The game takes place in a fictional cyclic world somewhat inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, although not directly drawing from them.

In this world, two loose entities known as "The Court of All Humans" and "The Outer Lands' Influence" are battling each other in a cold war. The Court advocates the prolongation of the existing meritocratic, anthropocentric government by an elected aristocracy.  The Influence, on the other hand, is a driving force behind certain individuals that seek the destruction of the meritocracy and the creation of a new society following the dictates of ancient, outer beings.

But these entities' cyclic squabbles are rather diminutive in scope compared to those of the Renascents. These individuals are imperfect immortals that can die of any cause other than age, but immediately reappear elsewhere retaining their eternal aspect, simply erased from non-renascent memories.

The player takes the role of a renascent aristocrat loyal to any of the two allegiances.

Latest changelogs:

Change Log:

    -Basic questing system.
    -52 semi-random quests to go along the actual terrains.
    -There are now standard and relic-related endgames, with 4 relics tossed in for now, although they have little effect in the game yet.
    -Unsuccessful characters now get permadeath.
    -Successful characters are now allowed to live for another journey.
    -Implemented the basics for colony population and its influence, the value now replaces the late Global Tension.
    -The player now gets a starting renascent at the beginning of each journey.
    -Renascents' capacities are now also shown for contests and challenges, just like in quests.
    -The usual bug fixing and tweaking.

     -2 new units and 1 new terrain.
    -Outside help cost in quests is now a little more expensive.
     -Fixed some minor bugs.

    -Fixed font issues on mac version.
    -Fixed crash when trying to Extract Arkhe with Captured units.
    -Fixed a few random crashes.
    -Fixed a few wrong values.

    -Replaced the largest font with a more readable one.
    -Duplicated terrains are now very rare, they will be rarer in the future once there is enough variety.
    -Completely removed duplicated enemy renascents.
    -Added a numerical display in the lower bars.
    -Removed a few unnecessary clicks here and there.
    -Arkhe collection now adjust to terrain reserves when extracting.
    -The new background on the main dialogue screen should improve readability.
    -Each unit's information can be reached more easily in the Forces menu.
    -Retrieve Piece is now an independent action accessible from the main territory's screen.
    -The player character starts a little stronger, has an excuse of a weapon, is more unlikely to lose stats, and more likely to gain them.
    -2 new units and 1 new terrain.
    -Lowered unit and land purchase costs by a fifth or so.
    -Several bugfixes, most prominently concerning sudden insta-endgames and wrongly displayed starting influenced renascents.

[Legend]

This does seem pretty interesting.

[Skeletor]

Interesting. The screenshots reminded me about the awesome Choose Your Adventure and Tunnel & Troll librogames I used to read in my childhood.

[getter77]

2/14/13

 

Previous savegames are not compatible.

It's the last possible day, but it's still the first half of February, so there. Besides this way it's a valentine's release, isn't that cute?

This release might feel in many ways similar to the old one, which might perhaps disappoint a few of you. The focus of this release has been on making the world surrounding the player livelier. There is plenty of new content in a variety of events, but it's given in small doses throughout each game, so it might feel similar in some aspects to the previous release. There are however a few more visible features like the ability to send combined forces into action that add some new interesting elements to the gameplay, so hopefully it will be worth it.

There might be some bugs in there because the testing has been a little hasty, but nothing should be gamebreaking. Some of you expressed your intention in the past to help with the testing so here's your chance, it's not like we're a ton of people left in here anyway.

You can send your feedback as well as bugs and typo reports either here or at vaccean at gmail dot com.

I hope you enjoy this release.

Change Log:

    -Units now generate events spontaneously.
    -These events can be punished or rewarded when performed by your units so you can avoid negative ones.
    -You can reach truces, capture or destroy enemy units to prevent their events from happening.
    -Your units can now be sent into battle as a combined force.
    -Units can now achieve strategic advantage for your side (or the enemy's), giving you a significant advantage (or disadvantage) in combat during the following week.
    -Added the ability to put your units into training to slowly raise their EX without danger.
    -Added an event log that stores most of your actions, those of your units, and the general game progress.
    -Added the ability to interact with collected relic pieces when staying home.
    -Relics now generate events similar to those of the units.
    -You can now interact with captive renascents and befriend them when staying home.
    -Lovers can now visit you at your base, and maybe find out about your other lovers.
    -Civilians can result dead during confrontations involving large amounts of damage.
    -Likewise, civilians might die because of the punishments of your units.
    -Changed the option "Fight Cautiously" to "Avoid Civilian Casualties".
    -Smaller units now suffer less damage in combat, larger units suffer more damage.
    -You are now asked for confirmation when disbanding a unit.
    -Several other tweaks and bugfixes.

[Vaccean]

Hey, mind if I barge in? I'm the guy that made this game. I was going to join in the first time I noticed this post but I wasn't sure if that would be correct etiquette.

I actually registered in these forums some months ago with the intention to ask if this weird little game of mine could be considered a roguelike, but I ultimately decided not to just in case. It was quite a surprise to see it posted here later.

So anyway I'll just go ahead and ask now. Would you say this could be called a roguelike?

A roguelikelike maybe?

I would hate to be calling my game something that it is not.

[getter77]

I'd say it has enough of the spirit of the thing interwoven within it, alongside the heap of other aspects you are bringing to the table, to be in good company and ample food for thought.   

So long as you keep at the fine work progressing on all fronts, all will sort itself well and true by my reckoning.

[Vaccean]

Cool. I might go ahead and put it on Roguebasin a few releases from now then.

Anyway, if any of you have anything to ask or comment about the game to me, feel free to do so.

[getter77]

Good deal.  If any lingering thoughts still persist, just shore up any Roguelike'ish elements further a bit in those releases to come prior to throwing up on Roguebasin.   

[getter77]

2/22/13

So, I have a working computer now, but no internet yet. As it turns out, my modem is no good for modern computers, so I had to contact my internet provider to request a router and blahblah. If you want to get an idea of how old my computer was, it still had a floppy disks reader. I was able to resume work and compile a new version,  but I had to go elsewhere to upload it.

In any event, this release fixes all reported bugs but also gets its own number because a tiny new feature and a relic found their way in.

Movement through water was kind of broken for stalwart units and pieces of relics identified themselves if you undertook another challenge after withdrawing from theirs. Not to mention that you couldn't actually fail some of the relic investigations, but that's all fixed now.

I'd also like to call your attention to a new poll about the game's difficulty on the right. I'd like to know if the game feels too hard or too easy in order to make adjustments.

Anyway, enjoy the release. Let me know if anything else is broken.
Change Log:

    1 new relic.
    Wages for manual work now vary depending on the terrain's Arkhe production value.
    Tweaked damage bonuses for terrains, shelters and refuges give you a greater advantage, but it is generally decreased for other terrains.
    Fixed self identifying relics and the occasional inability to misidentify them.
    Fixed water movement costs.
    A few misc minor fixes and tweaks.

[getter77]

5/7/13

Previous savegames are not compatible.

You can get it at your right under Downloads.

Now this is a release I like. There is still room for improvement but overall I'm satisfied with the new features.

The main focus this time was in justifying the neglected "Correspondence" menu option and introducing a solid ground for the political aspect of the game. You will now be able to shape the colony in more ways through politics and voting and, with patience, even to win the game in a new way by proclaiming yourself emperor/empress.

Right now, this will be extremely hard to accomplish, but of course there are missing pieces in the political puzzle that will see the light in future releases. I mean, what are politics good for without being able to blackmail and assassinate problematic individuals?

As per usual, please let me know any bugs or typos you find inside the game.

I hope you enjoy the release.

Bugfix 1 Released: Cancelling when navigating through the Correspondence menu was causing weird behaviours. If you experienced this problem please re-download the game.
 
Bugfix2 Released: This one fixes sold units that didn't disappear, a couple of crashes and other small things.

Bugfix3 Released: A few minor bugs were fixed and some persisting old afflictions were removed. Lobbies shouldn't be able to duplicate themselves anymore either.

Changelog:

    * Implemented basic politics and votes, with interchangeable favours, randomly selected lobbies and takeovers.
    * Allowed lobbies to pursue their goals through political and non-political ways.
    * Allowed the player to learn new voting proposals when visiting territories.
    * Added a new way to win the game by proclaiming yourself emperor/empress using political influence.
    * Implemented a basic system for economic investments through correspondence.
    * Added values for overall economy, immigration and political tendencies inside the colony.
    * Added 2 new information screens to keep track of them.
    * Added the ability to extort tributes from enemies using envoys.
    * Added decoys to expand the barriers' system (decoys are more effective against dumb units, barriers against weak ones).
    * Renascents will now occasionally want to go out on dates with you if you are involved in a romantic relationship with them.
    * Made anomalies less frequent and limited them to 1 at a time.
    * Made subsidizing terrains more profitable.
    * 18 new lobbies.
    * 2 new relics.
    * 2 new terrains.
    * 4 new units.
    * Many misc minor fixes and tweaks.

[AgingMinotaur]

Nice. I did have a quick look at an earlier version, and found it very promising then. Not a tactical RL, the game struck me as highly originial in trying to bring some principles like random content generation into a genre that's more of a strategy/text adventure hybrid (a lot of interaction happens in the form of multiple choices, à la the old Choose Your Own Adventure-books). Definitely doing some important field work on mostly uncharted frontiers of procedural generation game design (semi-random prose, etc).

As always,
Minotauros

[getter77]

5/13/13

As per usual, here is a tiny stabilising release to address the bugs that emerged during the last few days, with some token content thrown in for the sake of it. There were relatively few bug reports this time around, so I guess that's something to celebrate.

It can't really be called a new feature, but furniture now has an actual use too. Whereas getting a fountain or a library formerly simply wasted your hard earned money, now they will gradually reduce weariness from your units and your base each week.

Unless something else is terribly broken, I'll start working on new features tomorrow.

Enjoy.

Bugfix 1 Released: Fixed a display problem for weekly weariness reduction under the forces menu. This was a display bug that had no effect on the course of the game, so if you downloaded the previous version and can't be bothered to download it again, it should still be fine.

Change Log:

    -Furniture can now decrease the weariness of units on stand-by and the weariness of your base itself.
    -1 new relic.
    -The Birdwatcher's Association actually works now.
    -Fixed some influenced immigration issues.
    -Other minor tweaks and fixes.

[getter77]

10/25/13

Previous savegames are not compatible.

Sorry for the delay. Not only for the long term one caused by my change of heart midway through the outcast mode workings, but also because of some issues these last few days that delayed the release a couple of days.

As always, please report any bugs or unusual game behaviour you encounter. There shouldn't be any game-breaking bugs though, or at least I hope there aren't, because it's late and I'll spend the next few hours sleeping instead of bugfixing.

I'll now spend the following day waiting for serious bug reports. If none arises, I'll either resume some light development while waiting for minor bugs or take a couple of days for rest. Then I'll move on to serious development and a revision of the "Development Goals" page.

The download links to your right have been updated. I don't know what else to say that hasn't been already said during the development these last months, so I'll let the changelog do the rest of the talking for me.

I hope you enjoy the release.

Edit: So, it looks like I left some dev stuff in the game folder.... that's late night compiling for you! If you were fast enough to download that release during the 30 minutes it stayed uploaded, you'll see a silly note and a traceback in the game's main folder, but you don't have to download the game again for now.

Bugfix1 Released: Just a little fix for an unlike bug on a lobby and a silly typo. I think I'm going to start adding new content tomorrow unless there is some sort of catastrophic bug report during the next hours.

Bugfix2 Released: This one fixes sold units that didn't disappear, a couple of crashes and other small things.

Change Log:

    -Players can now start as or become outcasts during the course of the game. Forcing them to wander the different territories while persecuted and exposed to greater dangers.
    -Every territory has new dangers for outcasts and 2 new encounters for all players in addition to their 10 old ones.
    -Each territory has an ability, trade or skill that the player can learn while visiting and employ in the future either at home or while visiting other territories. Players will be able to do anything from conjuration rituals to experimenting on corpses, prophesying the end of the world or drawing action comics.
    -Seafaring skill has been changed into Ferrying. Representing each unit's capacity to carry goods and individuals overseas rather than the unit's seaworthiness.
    -Added maritime trade. You can now buy trade licenses and use units with Ferrying value to engage in overseas trade. Local Tendencies and other fronts' variables influence your profits.
    -Preliminary oversea fronts are now realized and visible in the "Colony" screen.
    -Explorer players have been changed into Merchant Venturers. They start with "a battered freighter" and a Ferrying value of 35, allowing them to engage in maritime trade right away.
    -You can now export units that you manufacture and train. The return will depend on the unit's Size, it's Experience and other oversea fronts' values.
    -Instant afflictions have been replaced with an expanded Weariness system. You won't lose stats automatically anymore, instead your character will have to have over 100 Weariness before afflictions can take place.
    -Certain actions can now lower your Weariness and the Local Tension while visiting territories or staying home.
    -Renascents will rarely become unavailable when staying at home, providing more flavour.
    -"Hanging around" with a renascent is not completely useless anymore. It will lower your Weariness depending on how generally nice the renascent in question is.
    -When losing at the Shelter/Refuge, you will be kicked into outcast mode instead of automatically losing the game.
    -Lovers will now miss you while you are outcast. This will show you different flavour messages but will bear no real effect.
    -4 new lobbies were added to the game.
    - Lots of important bugfixes and minor tweaks.

[Zireael]

This sounds really interesting, I will be sure to check it out.

[george]

Having dl'ed this a couple releases back I can say with certainty that it is really interesting. You won't find too many games like this one.