Released: April 16, 2010

Welcome to the first entry of our development diary series where we will chronicle the development process of our first Facebook game, Epoch of Malice, based on our Valendera franchise. We hope to make this a weekly post series.

In this first part we are going to cover the social aspects of the game that we have planned for launch and beyond.

The world of Valendera was created by Jeremy Webb as a Dungeons campaign about 10 years ago. We all would play for hours on end whenever we got together, so with this game we wanted to bring as much of that social aspect that we could. Nothing will ever be able to capture that environment of the sound of dice rolling across the table, the smell of pizza and Mt Dew (and other drinks) but your friends will still be there.

Starting Out
We will have two options of registering for and playing the game. You can create a new account on the site or connect to the game via your Facebook account. What’s the difference between the two options? Nothing really. Both will allow you to play the game, create guilds, have friend lists, etc. However if you connect with Facebook, you will automatically have any friends that play show up on your in-game friend list. You will be able to invite your Facebook friends, ask them for help, or brag to them easier via wall post when you get that legendary artifact sword. Connecting with Facebook would give you an advantage from the social standpoint, but no advantage in the gameplay itself.

Social Media Features – Launch
At launch we plan on having the following social features:

Party – take on harder bosses and quests with your friends or make new friends by partying with others.

Facebook Wall Posts – Just slayed Merkle the Grey? Well then you should let all your friends on Facebook know, that way they can join in the fun!

Invites – You will be able to send invites to your Facebook and non-Facebook friends so they may join you on your quest to save the land from Evil (or save it from Good if you do desire…..more on that coming in a future post) Whenever a friend accepts your invitation, be it Facebook or not, their character will automatically be your in-game friend list so you will be able to contact them easier for parties or raids.

Chat & Forums – We will also have the two staples of any social media website, chat rooms and forums. Here you will able to chat with other players about strategies, form parties, talk about the latest episode of Caprica and more.

Future Social Plans
These features are ones that due to time will not make it into the initial release of the game. However they will be launched within the months following the release.

Guilds – Players will be able to form guilds with their friends and other players. The full benefits of doings so are still being designed, but we hope to have many. One thing guilds will be able to do is have a small portal on the Valendera community website to show off their members and achievements. Also the guild portal will allow the members of the guild to stay in contact with each other in one centralized location.

Social Network Community Website – Already in development with the possibility of being available at launch is a full social networking website where players can interact with each other on a more personal level and even organize Valendera campain games for Real-Life D20 systems.

Thank you for taking the time to read the first entry in our series. Next week I will go over the general overview of the game and what we have planned feature wise. And hopefully have some eye candy to share. Please post your comments and questions on our Facebook page. We are working on our comment system for this site.

Chip Lambert
Technical Director

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