Hello guys and girls! How are you doing? I’m so happy to be back blogging again!
In this post, I’ll be showing you a little more of our UI and explaining some mechanics we’re using to provide the best gameplay experience. I was responsible for the art (which explains our absence in social media) and Ivan for coding it. Let’s now take a look at it!
Main Game UI
Here’s the main screen in a 2560×1080 resolution
There are two big structures – The God Panel in the bottom (where you’ll make most of your decisions) and the Nation Panel in the top (where you’ll check specifics for each country). Besides that, we have a ‘Menu’ button on the top right – I was so reluctant to do it because “OMG WHO DOES CLICK ON THE OPTIONS BUTTON INSTEAD OF PRESSING ESC?” But then I heard people saying ‘hey, I do’ and we decided to do it. We also have the news bar in the very bottom, which is now empty because some of our most wacky scenarios for governments all around the world became true 🙄 So now we’ll review all events a little closer to launch to make sure we get a more updated set of possibilities.
Less is More
Snippet took from a 1920×1080 screen. Look how much space between the panels!
The mantra here is ‘less is more’. The player’s main concern is conquering the world, right? So I wanted compact panels to provide the player a great vision of his evolution. When zoomed out, it’s possible to see the entire map and which countries are totally converted, which ones are still demanding efforts and those where the God hasn’t show his intentions yet. We still haven’t chosen a definitive color to demonstrate the God’s presence in a country but it will look something like this – there are three levels you need to reach so you can consider a nation converted. The color opacity will indicate in which level you are.
The God Panel
Another great concern of mine was to refer all structures to neoclassical architecture: So we have the God Panel in a shape that alludes to a portico facade sculpted in a beige-pinkish marble, all buttons and icons looking beveled in the structure (and I really adore the carven effect when clicked) and a nice little altar showing the picture of our beloved God in the middle.
The left side
The parchment button enables the player to send a priest to a nation – it’s impossible for a God to affect a country without the presence of a priest there. Deities won’t show themselves to mere mortals and humanity won’t know who’s causing all those events if nobody addresses who’s behind it. And the more priests in a territory, the bigger is the impact of the God’s ability over it!
The Vergilia’s Sun is one of the symbols of our game and also means ‘faith’. Faith is the currency of Anthropomachy and when you click over its button you go to a skill tree with all of its abilities and minor Gods to empower your main God. More about this specific mechanic in our next post. 😉
To look at how many priests you’ve sent and how many you still have left, just look at the number beneath the parchment icon. Same with Faith: the amount of faith you have to spend in new abilities (or summon a secondary God) is showed below the sun icon. To give you a little help and make your gameplay more fun, we’ve put the bar below both icons: when it’s full it means you already have enough of faith to buy a new ability! No need of changing screens just to see if you have gained faith enough to buy a new ability.
You see those small brown icons in the left side of Athena? These are the God’s traits and it’s your duty to evolve them according to your conversion strategy. They’re pretty important to maximize the impact of an ability and I’ll be talking about them in the next post too. 
(here’s the icon for cruelty – Ivan thinks it is cute in some way haha) (Ivan here, it is cute, reminds me of a Haunter).
The right side
The abilities you bought in the skill tree are showed on the right side of the panel. There are 8 slots available and a new tab can be opened if you bought more than 8 abilities and wants to organize them. When you click on an ability to impact a country, it becomes sparkling and illuminated. As we have told before, a God can send blessings or curses to a nation. It’s up to you to decide what’s the best for your God reputation and power.
The Nation Panel
Here we’ll show you what must know about a country to understand the best way to conquer it. When you click on a nation, its name will be showed here with some very crucial information. The bar shows you how much of the population is formed by worshipers of yours. (if you’re up to 90%, congratulations! You did it!) The green and red icons show you which country attributes are your best options to maximize conversion (red being an attribute that’s really low and green one thats higher than average). To know what’s causing them to be so vulnerable or strong, put your mouse over the orange flag. The parchment icon is here to show you how many priests you sent there. Oh, and FYI: You cannot relocate priests once you send them.
What’s next?
- Our ability tree is almost over! It’s full of nice little details and I’m pretty excited to explain everything you’ll see there! Our next post will come soon and be totally dedicated to it! 😀
- I heard some people really like Hera and are very excited to see her in Anthropomachy! YES – SHE’S TOTALLY IN THE GAME, WORRY NOT, BELOVED WORSHIPERS! But we might show the minor gods first and she’s a major one, for sure. So please be patient about her and enjoy the next ones… some of them are not very well-known!
- Ivan will be posting some stuff he’s doing on Twitter – and it would be very nice of you to follow us there and give him any feedback you want! I will also be posting art previews and asking for opinions. So go follow us on Instagram to check them out, Twitter for real time feedback and please check out our updates by subscribing on Reddit, Facebook or our newsletter (in the right->).
That’s it, guys! Being a small team it’s for sure a big challenge, but seeing things going well makes it all worth it!
See you soon!
