It All Began With an Image
So begins my developer blogs on Leviathans; not gonna promise a schedule as I’ve far too many plates for that but I will make regular posts
I’m hoping to keep these more reasonable in scope, as opposed to my legendary BattleTech blogs more akin to electronic tomes. But it’s been a long road and we’re finally getting some serious headway and that means excitment. And when I’m excited I tend to type…and when you type as fast as I do, the words pile up pretty fast.
I’ll be at this for months to come, I imagine, as the game isn’t scheduled for release until the end of this year. But I’ve found over the years that a community, even a potential community, appreciates the behind-the-scenes look such blogs bring. However, there’s more to it than that. While often game designers feel like alchemists, hiding in caves and crafting their masterpiece brew to unleash on the world, it’s far from the truth. Especially on something so complex as a new game line (as opposed to a one-off game). Authors, artists, fact checkers, playtesters…they all work together to help me bring out a game that’ll make Catalyst, and myself, proud. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, the community can be a very important part of that equation, even during development.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And in our industry that couldn’t be more true.
Two years or so ago (in my sick-encrusted brain–been sick for several days but can’t seem to stop working–I can’t much remember a few days ago much less two years) Catalyst Game Labs received a game proposal from John Haward. Now Catalyst receives game proposals on a regular basis and we take a look at every one of them. However, John Haward is one of those volunteers that greases the wheels of Catalyst and so we made sure to take the time and look at his proposal.
While the opening paragraphs of the description of the universe were compelling, it was the image he’d attached that sold us on the concept. It’s not something we could use as it was done for another game. But it was done so well and had such a great, epic feel to it we knew we’d be doing this game. Now the game mechanics that John proposed we took a hard look at and decided to set aside to completely craft a new game from the ground up. But that image and the Harry Turtledove-style alternate history universe concept we fell in love with and off I went.
Course that was near two years ago and the games gone through several complete iterations since then, not to mention the endless round and round on the art…but those are a host of blogs for the future.
See ya next duty shift.
Randall
Any chance we can see that proposal?
Huh…hadn’t thought of that. Yeah, could probably publish that…I’ll check in with the bosses about that and get back to you./
Randall
Very nice, I always wanted to see a game featuring flying armored behemoths like the ones from Iron Grip.
Oh yeah, any chance of making this site correctly viewable on Firefox?
We’re working on it…right now actually
Yay, it now works in Firefox! Thanks Catalyst guys!
Increase charge for 1,500 yards and bring us around to Nor-Noreast, Mr. Bills! Engines, full ahead!
Big thanks to Zac for helping to fix the Firefox issues!
Looking forward to the timeline guys
Tidbit of text from right above pic, with russo-jabanese air/naval battle.
Timeline says it been year 1896, but then all this incorrect
In year 1896, Togo Heihachiro been 47-old rear admiral and commandant of the Naval War College.
aforementioned battleship ‘Mikasa’ had been built in years 1901-1903, too.
Flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy then been the French-built pritected cruiser Matsushima, with Admiral Sukeyuki Ito (victor the Battle of the Yalu) at charge.
Hi Guys,
Small question…is this a miniature based game or board game?
Also any chance of a decent background image for my PC as images of the battleships on the main page are stunning!
Thanks
Madan
Leviathans is absolutely a miniatures game, but will also feel in some ways like a boardgame.
We’ll look into the desktop image concept and get back to you. Thanks!
Oh Wow! Love that fact that its a Mini based game. I loved the concept of Aeronef and the background but always found the ships kinda disapointing.
Now the ships seen here really look the part to me and I am very excited by whats to come…I only hope that they are not ‘small’ ie a 2 inch long dreadnought just won’t cut it with me.
I have bought heavily into Uncharted Sea’s as I like the size and scale of the ships better than I ever did for Man’O'War. Any chance of some size examples? Even plain old text will do if you cannot manage pix.
Best Rgds
Madan
The scale will be 1:1,200. I’ll get into the details of that scale and what it means for miniatures sizes in a later blog post.
Ok, I just checked out the USS Enterprise Carrier in 1:1200 scale and its 205mm long…
Consider me hooked!
many thanks
Madan
Is a french translation planned for this great game ?
I can provide help if needed
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