Aemon Games, LLC is seeking level designing talent for our story heavy monster tamer game.
The game (a very short summary)
Aemon takes place in the near future in the Tanaman Archipelago which was almost depopulated during the "Old War" where humans used Aemon (AI enhanced monsters) as weapons, driving humans to retreat to a nearby continent. Those which remained have rebuilt settlements in the island in relative isolation for the past several hundred years. Now others are returning to the island to recover lost technology, forgetful of the devastation caused by AI and genetic engineering. You will explore a story rich environment seeking for historic relics, interacting with various political and religious factions, and discovering hundreds of Aemon.
The game is geared towards veterans of the genre and seeks to correct institutional problems and shortcomings of the genre while providing players new and meaningful choices in team and move set composition. We are striving for a more serious story than other monster tamers while still maintaining a healthy humor making it accessible to everyone.
The Archipelago, the main explorable region, consists of four main islands of varying but comparable size, and many smaller islands. Small islands chained together provide navigable paths for players to island hop between main islands when desired. The Archipelago was created by volcanic action in this region and will be filled with dormant volcanoes now covered in lush environs, active volcanoes surrounded by more sparse and new environments, and cold southerly winds and a brisk current bring cold climates to the southern main island. Each island will be populated with ruins and the detritus from the Old War in addition to new settlements from recolonization. There will be much to explore and learn about the islands of the archipelago.
Scope of services sought for
We are seeking a person or persons to aid with overall world map development and level design. As noted above, we have a good understanding of major world elements to be included in the game and are looking now to hone in on the actual relationship between these elements and begin producing levels for gameplay.
It is expected that each level (map region) will contain elements similar to other games in the genre such as NPCs to interact with, towns, individual houses, hidden items, and areas which are hard or soft gated by game mechanics and storyline progression. In addition to these elements, Aemon specific elements include story areas such as explorable ruins, political / religious faction buildings, natural resource harvesting locations, and hidden lore documents and structures scattered throughout the world. Areas of the world will be connected by roads/routes which are populated with encounters and explorable content.
State of the game
The dev team currently consists of twelve team members, primarily comprised by artists.
The game world lore is well established and the game design document draft is complete nearing 70 pages. We continue to work through the design doc refining mechanics native to the genre and new alike.
The current goal of the team is to create an internal alpha build / demo by next summer to begin testing and working out more marketing materials. To do so, we’ll need to begin progressing level design for at a minimum the areas to be included in the demo.
As noted by the header, the project is a revshare project with the team working at their own pace due to “real” jobs and life. I try to keep workload realistic and ensure family and health is not hindered by game development on the side.
Sounds interesting
If you are interested in working on the game please send me a dm and we can chat. I can provide more details to specific questions and send info from the game design doc upon request.
If you are interested in the game for work or to follow along, you can join our discord at the link below which is also the best place to DM me for a quick response. https://discord.gg/HhXfqSQtbW