Devlog #0 - Cold Engines

The first, pretty obvious question that comes to mind is ...

How did we get to developement of Cold Engines?

It is a little bit funny what role could coincidences play in our lives. Actually we (David and Martin), did not know each other before spring 2019, when we met first time in the city where we live.  The amount of luck involved there is still quite mind blowing - two people sharing the same passion met in the small town and even the smaller group of 5-6 people at english lessons, with the skills that complements each other.

Our friendship started there pretty quickly and as time goes we found out that we also have the same dream - David already working as an 3D artist in the game industry for years, always wanted to make his own game, and Martin with the same vision and long lasting passion in games and programming.

So, let's make a game

You know what every indie gamedev always wanted to make - big RPG! We were a little bit less insane (even though I am still not sure at this point :)) ) and as we both loved the old RTS strategies like Red Alert or Dune, the choice was pretty fast here. Fast forward, the 17. of november 2019, we started to work on our game.

The first concept we start with was of course very simple, based just on few mechanics. Actually, we were happy when we had few tanks that player could control and they were able to destroy each other ... and it was absolutely ugly of course :))

Ancient times - beginning of the Cold Engines

Not much enjoyable of course, and with pretty big amount of work to do. We spent many days discussing the game itself, what mechanics and gameplay we want, creating different backgrounds for the world and some story that will shape the game.

Few months later, we had our game design document - about the game where we combined RTS elements of old games we always loved, with some unique mechanics and concepts based on survival games.

Instead of classic RTS where the players fight each other, we designed game, where the whole world is the enemy, and RTS genre is pushed from "mine, build, make plenty of units and crush the opponent" style, more to close battles, where it depends on many different aspects and even the smaller things could play big role. And of course, if you win the battle, it does not mean you win the war (game session :) ) - primary because of "post-battle" phase, that is as important as battle itself.

We have two factions with different playstyle ready and many features planned, but the most important are two of them, which can also best describe the game itself.

Frozen world

If you want to make players struggle due to environment, you have plenty of options - you can place a ton of enemies in the world, make it harsh like the most dangerous places on the world we know (hot deserts, or the opposite - frozen antarctica), and make it harder to survive, due to lack of resources, knowledge, manpower etc.

We loved the idea of the post-apocalyptic frozen world, with some safe warm areas. That alone makes the game, where players strategy must be about occupying resources or passages, same as about logistic and taking the environment itself in mind.

So, we have it - the world where your units must fight to survive, where everything depends on how good you are in reducing the effects of low temperature, or avoiding it for long enough and the key element here is of course some fuel. If you could not maintain the safe spots and supply line and hold your units warm, they just froze.

Every unit has its fuel tank full, but its volume is limited, the temperature can go lower depending on the area where you are, or the units can be struck in snow storms. All the different aspects can raise fuel consumption very quickly. Without fuel supply provided ... well, you know what happens.

Stealing the units

The frozen unit is not an unit anymore. It turns to something different - the sweet, yummy popsicle ... eeeh, I mean nutritious source of metal, the second resource the players have lack of in the ruined post-apocalyptic world.

But they made their ways. They know how to steal the wrecks, both frozen, or damaged, and drag them to their base. They don't need tractors for this, even though one faction have the war tractor as unit in the game ;)

There is a lot to write about here too. And we will. But let something to other blog posts too. If you do not want to miss any of them in the future, go and subscribe to our newsletter. We will notify you of every new blogpost there.