Deities & Demigods Face Lift - Need A New Title!

When getting serious about the production of Deities & Demigods, I had to face certain realities about the theme:

Tropes vs Cliches

On one hand, using a familiar theme is useful, because tropes are like pictures -- worth 1000 words. People can recognize things like "Ares is the one that moves your troops" because of what they already know about the Greek gods. Knowing that information up front reduces the cognitive load on the player, who can spend their cycles thinking about whether they want to build stuff rather than having to think "wait, what does Hephaestus do again?" Read this whole twitter thread for a good, technical description of what I've been thinking for years, but didn't have the knowledge or vocabulary to express properly:

Oh, boy, I keep hearing people use the term "trope" like it's a negative. So let's talk about tropes and cliches.

— Jessica Price (@Delafina777) February 6, 2019

On the other hand, gamers tend to complain when a theme is overused. To be honest, while that complaint does come up at times, I suspect it's more of a complaint that the theme was used poorly than that it's really overused, because there are several popular themes that occur in many, many games every year that don't receive that complaint. However, a bigger issue may be presentation...

Looking at the many Greek mythology themed games out there, they all look exactly the same! The typical (maybe stereotypical) depiction of the Greek pantheon may be a good example of a "trope" that has become "cliche." It's difficult to tell any one of those games from another just looking at the artwork. Santorini does a good job of setting itself apart, with the awesome chibi-style artwork, but that's a rare exception:

The chibi style is cute, and works very well for that game, but (a) I'm not sure that kind of style would work as well for Deities & Demigods, and (b) it's been done already!

So how do I make Deities & Demigods stand out from the crowd? I had a few ideas about this...

1. Allocate a large art budget, so that if the game had to look like other, similar games, maybe it could look better. However, looking at some of the Greek mythology art from recent games, it appears they've already done that!

2. Change pantheons, moving from Greek mythology to something less commonly used, such as Egyptian mythology. For a while I thought this would be the right decision, as the art could look different, and people could comment on the unusual theme rather than the same-old same-old of the overused Greek setting. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that while the outfits would look different, the artwork would still probably look similar to the Greek games, and I wasn't finding Egyptian gods that fit as well with the game action.

3. Find a new style, like Santorini did. I came across the art for SPQF in the portfolio of one of the artists I was considering, and it got me thinking. SPQF is a card based civilization building game, with very nice art of anthropomorphic animals. There have been a couple other games with anthropomorphized animals lately -- one might even say it's the start of a trend, however I don't think we're there yet. This led me to consider a cross between Clash of the Titans and The Lion King... what if we re-imagined the Greek pantheon as animals of the African plain?

Clash of the Titans meets The Lion King

In the end, I liked the sound of this third option best, and have decided to go that route -- re-imagining the pantheon as anthropomorphic animals. This allows us to keep the tropes of Greek mythology, but use art that differs significantly from other Greek themed games, and could look pretty cool.

Photo of SPQF cards by BGG user lovemyfire

My initial picks for animals to represent each deity looked like this:
Zeus (king of the gods) -- the obvious choice is a lion
Hermes (messenger of the gods) -- a macaw seemed like a good choice
Ares (god of war) -- an elephant, or possibly a wild boar
Hephaestus (blacksmith to the gods) -- an ape of some kind (the opposable thumbs could help him build)
Hera (Zeus' wife) -- at first I thought maybe a peacock, but probably better would be a tiger, jaguar, leopard, or cheetah

With a change of theme, a few details will have to change as well. For example, animals have no use for gold, so perhaps food would be a better thing with which to show devotion. That said, perhaps Artemis (goddess of the hunt) would make more sense than Hermes, and as an added bonus it would get more goddesses into the game (something I'd been wanting to do anyway). To represent Artemis, perhaps a bird of prey would make sense.

For the player boards, I figure smaller animals would make sense, something like meerkats, gazelles, monkeys, and I don't know, some bird species perhaps. These are animals that are found in packs or groups, so it would make sense that you have 12 of them under your control. To represent your troops on the board, a regular meeple doesn't really evoke animals, so I've been thinking of something better. One thought is a sort of generic "animeeple" -- a 4 legged something-or-other which is not necessarily related to any of the player boards. The graphic designer suggested a paw shape, which could be cute, and would stack well, but might not be as fun for players to move around the board.

I'm open to suggestions for a meeple shape that would be good. I don't think it can really relate to the player board animals, or else (a) the player who insists on playing red all the time would always have to be meerkats, and (b) if we add more player boards with player powers in an expansion or something, we'd have to add 12 meeples to go with it!

What's in a name?

Deities and Demigods was a title I was kind of OK with, but it was always only a placeholder. 90% of the people who play the game point out that there's an old Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook with that title, which I don't actually think matters. In any case, I've always wanted a better title.

About 4 months ago, I finally put some effort into finding a better title, but didn't come up with anything fantastic. Some of the options were:

Titan's Tribute
Divine Interest
Quid Pro Quo (change pantheon to Roman deities)
Chrysos (Greek for "gold")
Favor of Olympus
Buy The Gods (pretty good, but maybe too "cute" for a real/serious title)

And for a good laugh:
In Gods We Trust
Invest In Vesta

However, now that the game is about animals in the African plains or Savannah, I don't think any of those would really work anyway. I could really use a title for this game, and the sooner the better so the graphic designer can make a logo for it! Please comment with your suggestions.

So far, the only idea I've had that I like at all is Pantheon of the Plains, but I'm sure there could be something better...

[Hackaday] Now Toto’s Africa Is Stuck In Our Heads

Now Toto’s Africa is Stuck in Our Heads

Game 105: Rome: Pathway To Power - Introduction (1992)

Written by Reiko

Rome: Pathway to Power is a bit of an odd duck. It's a historical adventure set in Rome, of course, in AD 92, which was also its other sub-title. But its main screen uses an isometric perspective, and at least one level involves controlling whole armies rather than just one character. This quirkiness reminds me a bit of the Dune adventure game that I reviewed a year and a half ago, which was a hybrid adventure-strategy game. I hope Rome has as good a blend between the adventure and strategy aspects.


According to the official blurb: "Ancient Rome, AD92 - an era of ambition and political intrigue. You will take the part of Hector in this huge, role-playing adventure. Starting as a humble slave, you have the opportunity to fight your way to the top!" Apparently Hector wants to go all the way and become emperor. That's going to be tricky for a slave.

The US cover for the game.

The European re-release cover for the game.

Millennium published Rome in Europe in 1992, first for the Amiga and then for DOS. But in the US, the game wasn't published until 1993, by Maxis, a company much more famous for its later Sim games, especially SimCity 2000 (also from 1993). So there are at least two different versions of the box. Then the next year it was re-released in Europe by another publisher called Kixx XL.

The European re-release cover for the game.

The primary designer was Stephen Grand, who designed the isometric interface used for Rome and Robin Hood. Later he designed and programmed the original bio simulation Creatures. I had trouble finding much about him until I started searching under "Steve Grand" (the programmer, not the country singer, of course). The documentation is credited to Ann Grand, who, I finally determined from his entry on the Creatures wiki of all places, was in fact his wife, but I get the distinct impression they divorced at some point, because nothing even close to recent mentions any family in relation to him.

Cover of Creation: Life and How to Make It

Grand also has published a book called Creation: Life and How to Make It, which is about how he developed his creature AI. AI, especially the kind that learns, seems to be his specialty. I suspect some of his ideas were already being formed when he designed the behavior of the numerous NPCs in Rome as well. I'll have to keep that in mind as I play.

Grand's co-designer for both older games was Ian Saunter, who has a long resume of design and production credits spanning over a decade, including some of the Creatures games.

The developer is listed as a company called Firstlight, but I can find nothing about them now, as it's too generic of a name. The isometric interface was apparently also used for The Adventures of Robin Hood, an action RPG previously published by Millennium Interactive in 1991. If we were covering RPGs, maybe Alex would have reviewed that one already.

The title screen of the game.

I fired up the game in DOSBox and played the first few minutes of the game. The isometric interface is interesting, but it's actually pretty difficult to control. Mostly Hector kind of roams around aimlessly until you tell him where to go, and then he meanders in that direction. Most people move around in real time too, which makes it hard to click on them to talk to them. The area of ground that's visible is very small, too, and it doesn't keep Hector centered.

The townspeople react to the volcano's threat.

Right away the pressure is put on the player when the nearby volcano begins erupting, and lava begins covering the map from the north. The docks are in the south, with someone who owns a boat offering places on it for three sesterces. But Hector is a slave and has no money. How will he escape!?

Map of the first level.

There's a map, but nothing's labeled and I don't know where anything is or even what's useful, so I guess I'll have to start out just wandering around and see what I can find, reloading if I run out of time and the lava engulfs the town.

Speaking of the town, it's supposed to be Herculaneum in AD 92. However, any quick search will tell you that the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed both Pompeii and Herculaneum happened in AD 79, so the game starts out right away being historically inaccurate by thirteen years. We'll see how other historical aspects stack up.

If you want to play along, the game is available for download in multiple places and can be played online on the Internet Archive.

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