Update 1: Ostaria has a name
A few weeks ago, Varkan was just an idea: a game like the browser games of the 2000s, the kind where you attacked other players to steal their gold, but made for your phone, and for people who have three minutes a day instead of three hours.
Here's what exists today:
- The rules, written down. Combat, economy, spying and sabotage, four nations and the Varkani, every formula in a document.
- A simulator that plays a full era with 1,000 fake players using different strategies, to find the ones that break the game before a single screen exists. It's on its 33rd round of tuning.
- The world and its tone. Ostaria, its four nations, and the night they shut their gates.
- The app, on the iPhone. You train your army and you can already fight: other lords and the Varkani camps. For now it runs on TestFlight, for the team only.
What I learned: one small rule changes who wins. Losing to a Varkani camp used to cost nothing, so attacking without thinking paid off. Now losing costs weapons, and the simulator showed that only the most aggressive players pay that price: the careful ones never lose to a camp.
What's next: opening a closed alpha for a few real players, through TestFlight. I want to see how the game plays when the attacker is a person and not a bot.
— Rob
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