Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/firewogames/the-bustling-world
About the game
In ancient China, you can live a peaceful life: work, do business, have a family and make a career… You can satisfy your greedy: gamble, rob, steal, kill and form gangs… You can embark on a courageous journey, explore, adventure, solve puzzles, suppress bandits and recruit heroes… You can reach the pinnacle of power, establish a regime, plan cities, make policies, develop diplomacy and enlarge your territory…
The Bustling World is an open-world RPG game set in ancient China. You can farm, breed, craft, build, fight, kill, establish a regime, run a country, conduct diplomacy, wage war, create a city… Openness, freedom and limitless are the most important features of the game.
World and Resident AI
The Bustling World does not follow a predetermined path of development. Everything in the world will “think and decide” its own “behavior” based on the player’s actions.
The residents in the game have their own lives, families, personalities and social relationships. They will think and decide their own actions: work at home, go to work, go out for entertainment, relocate to other cities for money, avenge their families, escape from war, etc. These actions are determined by the NPC’s personality, family and the player’s actions. For example, if you offend some people with bad temper, they may sabotage your shop.
As a result, the cities in the game are also in dynamic change. NPC residents will decide where to live, what kind of house to build, and what type of shop to run. NPC regimes will also consider their relationship with each city, whether to establish diplomacy, trade or wage war, etc. When you return to a city you left many years ago, it may become unfamiliar.
World and Resident AI will give you unique responses to every action and decision, making every new game experience unique for the player.
Planting
Our game has more than 60 kinds of plants. Different plants have different requirements for soil, moisture and temperature. You need to handle different skills and tools to make your plants grow strong.
Animal husbandry
Our game has more than 30 kinds of animals, which can produce various materials for you. They can also help you fight or ride. In the process of breeding and training, animals have a chance to mutate and upgrade to higher-level species. You can also try to catch high-level species in the wild with different weapons. Be careful!
Production
Our game realistically restores the ancient Chinese variety of handicrafts, such as cooking, weaving, smelting, etc. Players can replace manual production with hired workers, or achieve large-scale production through a combination of production lines and transportation.
Architecture
The game provides a unique building system. With nearly two thousand kinds of building components, you can freely build any style of building.
All building components are realistically restored from paintings and classics since the Tang and Song dynasties.
If you are not familiar with ancient Chinese architecture, you can also build other types of buildings.
Social
You can socialize with any NPC in the game: neighbors, local officials, even the king. You can make friends with your neighbors, marry your admirers, bribe local officials, You can pay beggars to help you gather information, or beat up anyone you don’t like.
Home
You can trade your property in the game, and the price will fluctuate with market factors. The game restores nearly a thousand kinds of ancient items, such as furniture, lamps, vases, paintings, farm tools, etc. They can be used to freely place and decorate your home while using them.
Work
There are many kinds of work in the game. Shopkeeper, chef, porter, planting, mining, logging, etc. In the early stage of the game, they are good ways to make money.
Leisure activities
Our game has many leisure activities, such as Pet Fighting cards(a card game in The Bustling World), cooking contests, martial arts contests, Luban(an ancient Chinese master builder) building contests, horse racing, etc. Winning in the competitions will bring you honor and money.
Management
In the game, you can start your own business, such as restaurants, hotels, inns, pharmacies, banks, pawn shops, cloth shops, grain shops and various retail shops. You can compete with your peers by using promotional activities, hiring employees, opening branches and even some dirty tricks to expand the scale of your business.
Clothing
The Bustling Word is the first game in the world to restore the traditional Chinese clothing. The existing games on the market use three methods to simplify the clothing processing: bone binding, local physical simulation, and modifying the clothing shape, in order to prevent the cloth from penetrating the model. But The Bustling World can fully realize the physical simulation of clothes on the basis of completely restoring the ancient clothing.
The clothing in the game is all based on ancient Chinese paintings and classics.
Deep into the Gangs
Underground casinos, secret banks, wild bandits, martial arts, street beggars, among them there are many gangs hidden. Beggar Gang, Sunflower Sect, Red Clothes Sect, etc. Some of them can sell stolen goods, some can teach you unique skills, some can find out secret information that is unknown to others. You can choose to use, join, eliminate or even rebuild them.
After you become the king, you can still cooperate with these gangs to consolidate your rule.
Theft and plunder
Always pay attention to the NPC’s conversation, there will be a lot of useful information. For example, General Wang’s house has a rare treasure. You can choose to sneak in at night and steal the treasure, or you can directly break in and rob it in broad daylight. The passersby, caravans and even armies, etc., do you choose to steal or rob?
Wanted
If your crime is discovered, you will be wanted by the government. Depending on the different evil behaviors, the time, intensity and scope of the wanted will vary. Bounty hunters may also accept the government’s reward to capture you. You can evade the pursuit and continue to live here, or you can flee to the area where you are not wanted. Or you can take a risk and go deep into the government office, destroy your criminal records. You can even choose to bribe the officials, but remember not to be found.
If you are unfortunately arrested, would you choose to accept trial or escape from prison?
Walking the Jianghu
If you are an adventurer, you might as well walk in the Jianghu. Find eighteen kinds of weapons, get all kinds of martial arts secrets. Fight with wild beasts; become a bounty hunter, catch fugitives; wipe out bandits; explore temples, caves, ruins, relics, crack the mechanisms, find treasures; recruit Jianghu heroes to join your force, build your own mercenaries.
Establish a regime
Want to achieve your ambition? Find a piece of land that is not governed by anyone, and establish your own regime. Or just attack the city you like, the risk is high, but the reward is huge. Recruit soldiers and horses, upgrade your army, you can resist enemies and also expand outward.
Make Policies
To develop your country, you need to formulate relevant policies in various fields such as military, culture, economy, and scientific research. Unlock various policy cards through hero characters, power upgrades, relics. Reasonably match policy cards to achieve balanced development of the city. If you have multiple cities, you can also choose policies to let different cities focus on different areas of development to achieve mutual cooperation between cities. For example: cities adjacent to other forces should focus on military development; cities with convenient transportation should focus on manufacturing and commerce. Remember“Tyranny Is Fiercer Than a Tiger”， be careful of your people rioting.
Land Planning
If you are a king, you can build houses yourself for your residents or designate different types of areas for NPC residents to live in and build houses themselves. Each NPC has its own level, and NPCs with higher levels bring more city contributions, but they also have higher material demands.
Diplomacy
Do you remember the five major regimes? After you become a king, these regimes may have already changed due to war. You can use various methods to conduct diplomacy with them: peace talks, tribute, trade, condemnation, threat, war, military alliance, and separation. When choosing a diplomatic method, remember to consider multiple factors such as geographical location, military strength, and population scales. For example, when launching a war, you need to consider the transportation of war materials if the city’s defense is weak, you can seek refuge from a powerful country by paying tribute.
Pure hand-painted workflow
Our game is built entirely by 3D, but compared to traditional 3D games, we chose a purely hand-painted way to build models. Although the development cost of pure hand-drawing is much higher than that of other games, it can achieve more beautiful stylized artistic effects. At present, more than 5,000 textures have been drawn. We strictly prohibit the use of any AI generation technology in our development. Every painting is purely hand-drawn. Most of the textures are referenced from ancient Chinese paintings and books.
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