Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

I've been working on a kind of strategy game called Fall of an Empire (https://fallofanempiregame.com), it's a bit like a mix between Crusader Kings, Total War, Mount and Blade type games (just the overworld, not the battles), but rather than expanding you're trying to prevent an empire from collapsing.

It's a ton of work, especially with the number of systems - you've got combat, resource management, settlement development, food managment, espionage, diplomacy etc - these all need to play together well. And then you've got to add in the storyline, graphics, marketing -but I think I'm making pretty good progress.

I'm still using Unreal Engine 4 because I started work on that version and I haven't needed to upgrade to 5 since it's been released. I've got a free prologue that I'm releasing on October 1, so now until then is a lot of polishing to make it work well.

Looks really cool & quite in-depth, awesome project. Are you a solo-developer or a game studio building this?

Just me, I work on it in my spare time. I’ve contracted out for some of it - some of the UI elements and models, and the soundtrack.

All in all I’ve probably spent $5000 max on it.