Back Into the World

Welcome! This is the first official devlog from Pharaoh Hound Games for our game, Sons of Ra. We’ve been somewhat silent on this front since our time as a class project came to a close, as only a few of us, myself (Jeff), Mark, Michael, and Joe (Brown) were able to stay on board, and we’ve been BUSY working hard to make this game the best it can be. Now that we’ve become more established, we decided that we wanted to be more consistent about updating you guys with our progress and keeping you on the inside track so you can see all the awesome stuff the team is working on. So, let’s dive in!

Rebirth

For anyone who has seen or been involved since our early days, you would know that our game used to be known as The Two Powerful Ones. After much toil, feedback analysis, and external testing, we decided to re-christen our game Sons of Ra. Along with this came a number of rebranding elements, even for PHG as a whole, to give us a more established look. Said elements are already present for you to see on our site and social media!

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Patron Deities

Sons of Ra has, from the beginning, included a mechanic referred to as “blessings”, powers of the gods that the players can invoke to turn the tide of battle. We have taken this mechanic and run with the thematic elements of it to create the “patron deity” system. Now, before a match, each player will pick from a selection of gods to pledge to in return for access to a unique set of powers based upon that deity’s domain. For instance, Montu, aspect of Ra and god of war, has a set of blessings that focus on offense and using the power of the sun to bolster your attacks. Each patron offers an “ultimate” blessing that is expensive and game-changingly powerful and a “signature” blessing, which are both unique to them, as well as two basic blessings that can be seen present in the ability sets of multiple deities.

Base Expansions

During our first few months of development, we saw in matches that if players did not choose to use currency-based towers like the Temple and Mine, they were effectively handicapped and frequently were at a disadvantage. We felt that this was negatively affecting gameplay, so we chose to embrace a new system. Rather than choosing which towers to bring into battle, players will have access to all towers from the start. However, the Temple and the Mine have had their effect increased, and will be available as base expansions instead of as towers. Base expansions provide strong passive bonuses to the player in exchange for a large investment of gold and favor. There are two expansion slots which can be used by the player they desire, either for two different expansions or two of the same. There are plans to add two more types of expansion, which we think will lend themselves to some really cool playstyles.

In Closing

These are the biggest changes and updates that we are ready to talk about at this time. There are plenty of things that we did not have time to note, like UX and FX improvements, but we will be including these things in future updates when there is less major information to discuss. If all goes according to plan, next week’s devlog will also have some really exciting stuff to talk about, so we hope to see you back then!