I know maybe it’s not a game everyone loves but this one sounds really interesting. Always wanted a aztec city builder like pharao or even caesar.
Aztec Empire, via @Kickstarter Aztec Empire by Growing Seeds — Kickstarter
I know maybe it’s not a game everyone loves but this one sounds really interesting. Always wanted a aztec city builder like pharao or even caesar.
Aztec Empire, via @Kickstarter Aztec Empire by Growing Seeds — Kickstarter
Looks like an Impressions Games clone set in a new and interesting setting… Count me in!
I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time, and I think it could be possible to make this in Stonehearth too. The sacrifices would make it R rated though, that would be a huge problem.
Unfortunately the developers decided to close the campaign
So no game
I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time, and I think it could be possible to make this in Stonehearth too. The sacrifices would make it R rated though, that would be a huge problem.
You mean a city builder like Pharao, Ceasar or a Aztec Kingdom (this is possible for modders) @TheRadPlane ?
It would be a mod and as far as I know mods don’t affect ratings. So bring out your voxel gore.
Sorry to hear they closed the campaign. I like those classics. @pingu have you seen Nebuchadnezzar ? I haven’t looked closely at it but the style sure is familiar.
Yes, like Wouter and Findersword’s Clan Muramasa mod.
Good to hear that, the Aztecs did some pretty horrific stuff.
ohh wow didn’t know this game. thx. really love this kind of games and an aztec builder will be awesome in my collection ^^
EDIT: in this chase an Babylon Builder. Also awesome
Ahh ok, yes it’s not easy to make a Kingdom Mod. I already tried once but cause of lack of time i didn’t finished it
Dig deep enough into history and you’ll find that everyone has done some pretty horrific stuff; and it continues to happen around the world… it’s just a question of how we frame it.
Even in Stonehearth we can do pretty horrific things – there’s still war/combat (actually I was impressed at the way the Goblin chief talks to the player after being defeated… no evil “curse you”, he shows compassion for Bluebell and fear in the face of mortality), animals are still slaughtered (although we use the more polite “harvested” and there’s no blood etc) right in front of their herds, hearthlings can be divided into castes if the player so chooses, and there’s nothing stopping the player from playing out any kind of discrimination or cruelty they care to role-play… I’ve personally done a town built around a “monastery” theme where I locked aspirant Clerics in rooms in pairs and left them to starve for weeks at a time to “foster compassion through self-sacrifice” (really: test out whether casting their healing spells directly game them XP or not by watching them heal each others’ starvation damage), and I’m sure every player has at least theorised about killing off some hearthlings to get tombstones to decorate their church/cathedral/etc. projects – particularly “undesirable” low-stat hearthlings. Save-scumming the incoming immigrants (i.e. save just before immigrants arrive, if you don’t like the one you get then re-load and try again) is another common one, which when you start to boil it down gets tied up in all kinds of ideas about the “value” of different lives… it’s basically a kind of “soft, gentle eugenics” where any hearthling you don’t personally approve of gets quietly erased from existence so that a more “worthy” one takes their place.
The point here: just because a game has a cute aesthetic doesn’t mean it can’t have some darker corners; and likewise, a game can have some dark subject matter or grim mechanics and still display them in a way that’s not offensive or off-putting. In fact, pretty much every 4X and Civ-style game falls into that category – off the top of my head, Stellaris (PG rated including the expansion packs) allows you to commit virtually every form of genocide and oppression that I can think of aside from sexism… and there’s a mod for that! If you think the Aztecs did some horrific stuff, wait until you hear about the conquistadors, or how the Aztecs’ modern-day descendants are treated right now. Ultimately, bad stuff happens… how we choose to portray it is simply a matter of whether we want to acknowledge that, or not, in the particular story we’re telling.
I’m sure that the devs for Aztec Empire would have presented things like human sacrifice in a way that’s palatable – probably the same way that the other Activision games that it’s based off of handled their sacrifice mechanics (everything happens behind closed doors – the priest goes to a farm or wherever, picks the sacrifice, takes it to the temple, and you get a blessing or you don’t)… it would simply be that the priest is going to either a house or a captured enemy, rather than a farm, to grab the sacrifice.
The “costume” makes no difference to the morality of an action – but if we hold up a game like Stonehearth as a “good” thing because “you can’t do any bad stuff”, we’re missing/erasing a whoooooooole lot of potentially harmful assumptions leading to that statement. Stonehearth is built explicitly as an escape from some of the grimmer parts of reality; a game we can play in order to relax and unwind… but we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that reality goes away when we’re playing the game. Everything in the game stems from some real-world inspiration (most of which has been “massaged” into a more comfortable picture), but then the game intentionally gives us the power to fix/control any problems that crop up from those real-world inspirations so that we don’t have to be made uncomfortable by them.
And that’s fine, I like having a place I can go to get away from the dramas of real-life and play out a fantasy of a world where I can fix any problems that come up with a few clicks and some smart planning… but we need to acknowledge that’s a conscious choice.