Soldak Entertainment’s “Hardcore Game Name” Detailed

After releasing the Orc Schism expansion for their latest RPG Zombasite, Soldak Entertainment is back to working on their next yet-to-be-named project. This new game will share the universe with Soldak’s Din Curse and the aforementioned Zombasite and will apparently have enough similarities with the former that there’s a chance it will end up being called simply Din’s Curse 2. In this game you’ll play as a Mutated character, an offshoot of Soldak’s Orcs, that will be able to mutate over time and then pass on most of their accrued powers to the next generation when they permanently die.

You can check out this developer blog post to learn more about this new game’s planned features:

So I’m thinking about the name for the next game. I really don’t like naming things; it’s a pain and I don’t think I’m that good at it. I’m actually more and more tempted to name it Din’s Curse 2 and be done with it since there are plenty of similarities with Din’s Curse. There are also some differences though.

A quick rundown of the next game: you play as one of the Mutated, characters are hardcore (permadeath) and mutate over time, the next generation of character is evolved from his/her parents and most of your total power carries over, you do have a lot of control of guiding your character’s development (picking parents, picking skills, getting rid of unwanted mutations, etc), each world has a random setup and win conditions, and your goal in each area is to prove to the world that the Mutated is a “good” and powerful race.

Similarities to Din’s Curse:

• Overall goal is to move to an area, more often than not to help the local people, and move on to the next area
• Both have same kind of resurrection mechanism thanks to the gods (Din in this case)
• Tighter focus than most of our other games (not controlling a clan)
• They are both cursed (DC your character is directly cursed by Din, in the new game basically the entire race is cursed because they are split off from Orcs)
• Random, dynamic world (this is also true of all of our games except Kivi)

Differences with Din’s Curse:

• You’re not playing a human, but a mutated (race introduced in Zombasite: Orc Schism)
• You’re not forced into redemption, but simply trying to prove your new race is good and powerful
• It’s not a true resurrection, but mutated and carry on from “parents”
• There are no direct hybrids, but guided mutations/evolution
• Not just a town and a dungeon (although many scenarios do this)

I didn’t start this game as a sequel, but it fits pretty well; mostly just a change from Humans to Mutated as the focus. So what do you all think? Do you think I should go the Din’s Curse 2 route or make this a separate game? Is it too different to be a Din’s Curse game? Or do you not care what I call it as long as I hurry up? 🙂