Malmyr is a story-driven building game about production chains and automation. It is heavily inspired by games like the Settlers, Anno and Factorio. In comparison to these you are not meant to build a huge city or factory. The goal is to take a puzzle and logic oriented approach into solving the missions at hand. It looks easy on a quick glance but gets very complex and harder with every mission. A big part of Malmyr is the constant, rather slow pace and the fitting sound design.
The feature standing out are the quite unique logistics of Malmyr. To be able to construct buildings (and for production chains), resources need to be transported to the respective buildings by road. Instead of "just" connecting two buildings, the direction of the resource flow on the roads needs to be set (and constantly adapted) manually, so that you have to learn how to handle the complexity coming from that.
You are sent to the forgotten lands of Malmyr by your King and his Court Magician. With an advisor by your side it is your task to explore Malmyr, mine its ores, process them and fill your King's treasury. While doing so you will find ancient ruins and magical runes left behind by the previous occupants of Malmyr: The dwarves. With each mission you will learn more about the dwarves and the dark secret behind their disappearance.
In each mission you are given story context by written dialogues between the NPCs. A mission has multiple sub-goals to fulfill which have to be handled differently in each mission. The maps of the missions have different rules. An example would be that you are missing a crucial resource that needs to be sourced in another way, like from a certain special delivery building or by transmuting other resources. But there are also environmental hazards in some missions, like a lava wave you have to "outrun" or fires triggered by lightning strikes.
Features:
* A main campaign with a continuous story, consisting of 3 acts with 4 unique missions each.
* A freeplay mode, where you progress through an increasingly difficult mission. You will unlock new buildings by finishing mission steps. In the end you will unlock a building unique to this mode and face a final task.
* A sandbox mode, where you have most buildings available and start with copious amounts of resources.
* Over 50 buildings.
* Over 50 resources.
* 12 Magical Runes and 3 special Runewords.
Planned release: Q4 2020 - Q1 2021
State of development: Feature complete, currently polishing and improving UX
Price: USD 14,99$ / EUR €12.49 / GBP £11.39
Platform: Steam (PC), https://store.steampowered.com/app/1470320/Malmyr/
Multiplayer: No (Only Singleplayer)
You can find some more information, a presskit and an up to date demo on https://www.malmyr.com
Direct links:
* Demo https://www.malmyr.com/demo/demo.zip
About the project and team:
This project was started by us in April 2020. We both have a master's degree (Game Design / Computer Science) and always wanted to make games. Our initial plans were to earn some money to be able to use it as a basic budget for our first project. The current situation of the job market and our personal situations resulted in an adaptation these plans. We didn't want to waste the "free" time given to us and started developing Malmyr without a real budget. With a couple of assets for some bucks, a lot of dedication, willingness to learn skills not covered by our degrees and love for detail (and coffee) we were able to create Malmyr. Our vision is to make dreams come true, the dreams of our players, but also our own dreams.
If you need anything from us (more assets, screenshots or similar) feel free to contact me (rene@ziegler-gamedev.de or contact@malmyr.com). I am always available for interviews.
We would be glad if you consider covering Malmyr. We feel that we made a very solid game with intriguing gameplay and a pleasing audio-visual aesthetic. Malmyr can not offer hundreds of hours of playtime and it certainly is not for everyone, but looking at the positive feedback we got from almost all playtesters, we believe that it has (given some visibility) an audience.