Realm Raiders currency and upgrade system is based on the concept of offering souls to the Gods.

For me, game development is also borrowing souls. Not literally, but metaphorically. I pull influence from all other walks of life: other fun games, philosophy, history, etc. Today, I'll talk about part of the game's philosophy.

You might think what I wrote above sounds pretentious for a cute game about killing little monsters. But how many times have you seen cookie cutter fantasy RPGs, carbon copy FPS or the same damn idle clicker? Theres nothing wrong with them; I used to like them but now I prefer when a game has a soul.

Kill monsters and harvest their Souls for power

Realm Raiders core story mainly serves as a vehicle for fun gameplay. Gameplay is king. However, part of the story's philosophy is derrived from a personal interest in a book called the Four Agreements.

I'm not advocating for this belief system or anything, but keep in mind the point is: it makes for an interesting story.

Essentially, some old doctor goes into a cave for a few days and has a life changing vision. His egoism vanishes and he stops percieving himself as a singular entity, but rather a fragment of the universe/god/nature (whatever you wanna call it):

"This is what he discovered: Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God. Everything is God. And he came to the conclusion that human perception is merely light perceiving light. He also saw that matter is a mirror — everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light — and the world of illusion, the Dream, is just like smoke which doesn't allow us to see what we really are. "The real us is pure love, pure light," he said.

This realization changed his life. Once he knew what he really was, he looked around at other humans and the rest of nature, and he was amazed at what he saw. He saw himself in everything — in every human, in every animal, in every tree, in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, in the earth. And he saw that Life mixed the tonal and the nagual in different ways to create billions of manifestations of Life.

He could understand everyone very well, but no one could understand him. They believed that he was an incarnation of God, and he smiled when he heard this and he said, "It is true. I am God. But you are also God. We are the same, you and I. We are images of light. We are God." But still the people didn't understand him."

Maybe the old doctor was tripping balls. Maybe he was crazy. Or maybe he was on to something. But for now, suspend disbelief and just accept this view for the first component of Realm Raiders' soul philosophy.

Goddess, hands extended to accept your soul offerings. Concept by @BLITZWUFF

The second part of the game's philosophy is an examination of power. A policitian must rally the souls of his constituents to get the vote. A dictator must force submission. A religion's tenets thrive on the faith of its followers.

All of these forces of power require the rallying of souls- through influence, resonance, violence, threats or otherwise.

All of these philosophies are really just a good excuse to make a fun action game.

In Realm Raiders, you offer souls to the Gods for your buffs and upgrades. So far, I think the most fun buff is the Lightning sword enchant.

"Nice enchant, where did you get it?"
 

That's all for this weeks influence post. I'm going to be posting twice a week: once about actual development of the game, the other about the decisions and influence and more personal things (like this).

If you want to see more, follow our twitter at REALM RAIDERS