Civitas: City building game

[Brannigans Law]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...city-of-your-d

What is Civitas?

Civitas will be a revolutionary, open ended, community driven, highly moddable city building game, where you are not only responsible for terraforming the land, zoning, and building the structures, but you will also be able to manage many other aspects of your civilization. Civitas can either be played as a single player game, or you can play online with other city builders to make entire regions, share resources, and compete for citizens to build the largest city. We will not limit you to one or the other, both will be full featured and complete. Feel free to play it whenever, wherever, and however you want. Civitas will be available for Mac and PC through various digital download services.
The word "Civitas" is the Latin term for "citizenship" or "city-state", which is a great description in itself for what you will be able to build from the ground up in this game.

The very basic flow of the game will follow this design:

• Terraform the land
• Zone the land for your city
• Build the structures that make up your city
• Manage all aspects of the city for everything from transportation, utilities, emergency management, natural resources, and commerce.
• Continue to grow your city. Meet the demands of the civilization you have created and respond to natural and unnatural disasters to make your city as great as you want it to be. Civitas will include a fully featured day-night system for added realism

As soon as I'm home I'm going to plunk down the 25 bucks to be part of the beta when it comes out and show my support. This is exactly the kind of alternative to EA/Maxis I've been hoping would pop up.

Update since SimCityVillage came out

Update #1:

We have been getting a lot of people messaging us asking about three major features that have been missing from SimCity and other city simulation games. We had already addressed these issues in our current plans, so I want to just add this info to help clear these two issues up to let people know they will be in our game.
1. Will Civitas feature curved and custom roads? This question is coming up because other simulation games do not offer this.
Answer: Yes. Civitas was planned for this from the beginning. You will be able to lay out your roads any way you like. This is the only way you could truly clone a real city using Civitas, and we want to make sure you can do this. Also, when you zone an area, for instance a residential area, you can put a big curvy road straight through it if you want. You will just have to be careful to make the land still be usable for buildings. This is the type of freedom Civitas will feature. We will have automatic roads for people that are lazy, but its not forced on you.
2. Will Civitas feature public transportation?
Answer: Yes. We are already planning for trains, buses, monorails, and of course the big one subways. We will add more as we can. Subways is a big one because you cannot logistically even build a large city without them, yet SimCity has removed them.
3. Can we save our city so that we can destroy it with natural/unnatural disasters, and then just reload it?
Answer: Absolutely! This is what made city simulation games of the past fun! Our game is not online only, you will have local saves, and can save and reload your city at any time. HAVE FUN WITH IT! Why would anyone remove this feature?

I also really like how they stick it to EA with no punches pulled. I hope lots of people get on board with this.

[Zulu29]

I've always hoped for a nation sim. Control everything from the military and immigration to foreign affairs and domestic affairs. I know the CIV franchises kind of touched on it but I want something more in depth. Maybe even pick current nations and change them to how you want?

[Top Shelf]

They need another 225,000 in a 3 weeks? I suppose its possible, but do you get a refund back if they don't? I would assume you would....

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by Top Shelf

They need another 225,000 in a 3 weeks? I suppose its possible, but do you get a refund back if they don't? I would assume you would....

Kickstarter doesn't take your money if the project doesn't meet 100% of the funding.

[Keselke]

Pretty lofty and unreal expectations to expect this to "be a sim city killer"


Looks semi interesting, I am skeptical on the ability to deliver a polished experience

[Regorium]

Has any kickstarter funded game actually delivered yet?

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Has any kickstarter funded game actually delivered yet?

Check out FTL on Steam. Probably my favorite example of a successful Kickstarter.

[AR_Six]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Has any kickstarter funded game actually delivered yet?

Didn't the new Mechwarrior go live a while back? Never played it.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Didn't the new Mechwarrior go live a while back? Never played it.

MW:O wasn't KS funded, they just had a "buy-in early for these bonuses" drive, which netted them about 6.5 million.

So far, only a handful of KS games have released, but none of the big ones. Double Fine Adventure is supposed to be out soon, but we haven't yet seen Star Citizen, Wasteland 2, Tex Murphy, SpaceVenture, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.

KS funded games are a big deal, but the industry still has yet to see if any "big games" can pan out in the long run.

The big problem with a lot of these KS games (CIViTAS especially), is that all the games without a big industry name behind them (Tim Schaefer, Al Lowe, Brian Fargo, etc.) are kind of a crapshoot whether the guy(s) know how to create, produce, and distribute a game successfully.

[Brannigans Law]

http://www.civitasgame.com/

Civitas got private funding and no longer will be using kickstarter (despite lots of money being raised).

BETA plans will be announced soon. Lets hope this is a winner!

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

http://www.civitasgame.com/

Civitas got private funding and no longer will be using kickstarter (despite lots of money being raised).

BETA plans will be announced soon. Lets hope this is a winner!

Nice.

Hope it turns out good.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Check out FTL on Steam. Probably my favorite example of a successful Kickstarter.

You're right, FTL was a pretty good success.

I'm wary of kickstarter. I HATE the concept of crowdfunding.

I'm glad there's enough ballers out there to just throw money around, but I'm not willing to do that. I'll just buy it when it comes out for a lower price than the backers.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Regorium

You're right, FTL was a pretty good success.

I'm wary of kickstarter. I HATE the concept of crowdfunding.

I'm glad there's enough ballers out there to just throw money around, but I'm not willing to do that. I'll just buy it when it comes out for a lower price than the backers.

i paid $30 for the Star Citizen Kickstarter. there's no way you'll get a copy of that game at release for less

and why do you hate crowd funding? without it, games like Star Citizen or other niche market games would never be made

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

i paid $30 for the Star Citizen Kickstarter. there's no way you'll get a copy of that game at release for less

and why do you hate crowd funding? without it, games like Star Citizen or other niche market games would never be made

Likely because with a couple notable exceptions, not many have been made, despite Kickstarter being around for ~4 years.

That said, I can't wait to buy an Oculus Rift retail edition.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

i paid $30 for the Star Citizen Kickstarter. there's no way you'll get a copy of that game at release for less

and why do you hate crowd funding? without it, games like Star Citizen or other niche market games would never be made

Right, I guess the key word is "at release". Most indie games are not worth their at-release prices, and are generally incorporated into humble bundles/steam sales extremely rapidly. I've also seen a lot of cases where the minimum backing is the exact retail price of the game, so perhaps you got into a decent kickstarter.

I also don't like crowd funding, because it shifts the risk from the developers to the backers, without the backers gaining anything from it.

Whereas with a venture capitalist, they at least get a stake in the project, backers basically get nothing. It's basically a pre-order for a product that has no reputation, no investment to actually succeed, no history of success and no guarantee of quality.

I understand the desire for this to happen from a developer perspective. Heck, I'd love to get an interest free loan for a promise that I never have to pay back or deliver on. I guess I just don't understand it from a backer perspective. To me, it feels like a scam from the developer, and there's been pretty significant scams on kickstarter already.

[HPLovecraft]

I don't kind it for niche projects like Project Eternity, Wasteland, and the new Torment. Can't wait for those.

[octothorp]

I like kickstarter for a lot of things particularly with physical objects, especially those where the concept has been built or prototyped and it's just a matter of crowd-sourcing to bring down production costs. But that doesn't necessarily transfer to computer games, where the bulk of the work hasn't been done yet. I do hope that the high profile games that have been kickstartered turn out to be awesome though, because it could really change the way the industry works.