Aztez – A Game of Conquest and Brutality
10Apr/126

Welcome To The Aztez Development Blog!

Hi! This is the development website for our game Aztez, a hybrid of two distinct game types: sidescrolling real-time beat 'em up gameplay (the deep and expressive kind) and turn-based strategy gameplay (like a board game). This website serves two purposes; a technical journal on the analysis and creation of combat heavy beat 'em up games (table of contents here), and a news source for development and progress of Aztez.

VIDEO UPDATED ON March 4th, 2013!

Filed under: Making Aztez Leave a comment
  • Ruth

    I’ve been looking through this blog, and am getting increasingly frustrated. YOU NEED TO GIVE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR GAME.

    Write a description of the game somewhere, with a comprehensive list of features. Don’t force me to look all over your blog and try to piece together fractured bits of information to scrape together something resembling a full picture. You say there’s a turn-based strategy mode for this game? Okay, cool.

    So… what?

    You’re… uh… going to tell us how that mode works, somewhere?

    No?

    Ah. Okay.

    For God’s sake, make a website, or some central place where people can come and get a full explanation of the whole game, all at once. Don’t force us to read through an entire blog filled with incoherent, sporadic information mixed in with comparatively irrelevant personal musings about mostly unrelated subjects.

    • I’m going to ignore the fact that you boldly stepped into MY space, made snap demands, and went off on a needless tirade because your frustration is an expression of love and I actually really appreciate that. Also, I like absurd boldness in my fellow humans.

      Firstly, there is no comprehensive list of features because the game isn’t done yet. I could trumpet the features I’d LIKE to have in the game but that would be naive and unprofessional. No game ever possessed all of the features the designer wanted it to possess and doing that would be a silly exercise in disappointment for myself and fans of the game. Secondly, I’m not forcing you to read anything. This is my devblog and it only exists right here at aztezgame.com. I didn’t email it you.

      Since you care enough to kick open my door and scream at me about the thing I’m trying to make for you, I will now tell you all I can tell you.

      The game is one part turn-based strategy game. You’re looking at a map of the Aztec empire circa 1500AD, which is essentially a huge network of independent city states. Your job is to assimilate as many of the cities into the Empire as you can before x turns have elapsed. Every turn 3 things will happen: you’ll earn income from all of your tributaries, you will make/move/manage/maintain a couple different unit types, and political events will occur in random cities. You address these political events with beat ’em up gameplay. For example, if the event is “Rising Political Opponent” the beat ’em up gameplay will involve you in the city environment trying to eliminate a specific combatant while his cronies try and take you down. Regardless of whether you are successful or not, the event will have distinct ramifications in the turn based strategy portion of the game.

      Wanna see what it looks like? Here you go!

      There will be more explanation when there’s more game. I promise you that the two of us are making it as fast as we can.

  • Fernando

    Hey you know good job on this blog. I had seen your game on Kotaku a while ago, like months ago, and I remember thinking it was interesting but then I completely forgot about it.

    Then today I saw it on RPS. There was a video there and I thought “okay this seems interesting but I can’t recall exactly what made me remember this game in the first place”. It was interesting but it wasn’t hooking me.

    However RPS did link to your blog and here I ended up reading a lot of your posts. The stuff you post is just the kind of stuff I tend to think about. So now instead of seeing it as another DMC inspired 2D brawler with a twist I’m now seeing it as a work of someone who gets the genre.

    I like the way you pick stuff apart and tries to see what really is the point behind certain mechanics, something more developers need to do. It seems there are a lot of games that use certain things without even understanding why they’re there in the first place.

    • That means a lot, thanks! And I totally know what you mean about developers not really knowing why they create the mechanics they create. It’s honestly why I’ve written a lot of these articles; it’s because I want future beat ’em up creators to really think about what they want and then to know how to do it once they know. But we’ll see. Thanks again and I’m glad you’re enjoying my work!

  • Alvin Ly

    Give us an updated build!

    oh man I can’t wait to give this a try and find something to break.(I was that “shield cancel” guy at evo).

    the game’s really looking good with all the new moves and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

    The posted date is still the 10th of April 2012. You gotta keep us more updated!

  • Loved this vid and the progress. I really like how you telegraph the air-game by having the enemies slow at the peak of their knock back motion. Great solution.

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Aztez is being made by Ben Ruiz (Designer/Artist) and Matthew Wegner (Programmer/Business), formerly of Flashbang Studios. It's set for a PC/Mac/Linux release in summer 2017 (consoles to follow).

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