I'm putting out some blatant marketing feelers today because one thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the type of games I want to focus on making the most but more importantly what type of games do I actually play the most? The thing that smacked me in the face a lot was how much I enjoy grand strategy type games.
The problem with that is of course, there aren't that many of them out there that I haven't played to death and the ones that do exist are created by companies that are trying to wring their playerbase dry as much as possible like Paradox Interactive and Creative Assembly.
So with that in mind I've been wondering about the type of grand strategy game people would want that doesn't have the DLC garbage spammed everywhere. What sort of features would you want to see? As for the setting, I'm kind of thinking of having a fantasy setting but allow you to control Romans as part of the main story.
Sort of like the anime GATE but in the reverse and I'd have it where Rome ends up invading a fantasy world which would be hilarious I think but also somewhat interesting. There are also frequently used features in grand strategy that I find very annoying which I would probably remove or fix somehow like diplomacy spam for example. I do know that Age of Wonders exists, don't get me wrong but boy did that game need to be optimised, don't know if they've fixed the issues yet.
Jokes aside, that is genuinely a solid green flag in an obviously Western developed game for me. It's wild how hard we've flipped from games trying to use sex appeal to make up for not caring about gameplay, to sex appeal being a solid indicator that the dev has a vision for their game and will not compromise on the quality for trend chasing.
All bets are off if it's Asian though, they're still happily using big tits to sell hot garbage all the time over there, especially China.
Obviously adding sex appeal if it isn't actually part of your own personal vision isn't going to work as well. Other green flags are games that make fun of total pacifists, have savages that are simply savage and not noble, or have antagonists that are obvious wolf in sheep's clothing manipulative faux virtue signallers.