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Project Overview

Kings Keep® is an exciting medieval card game. Players wrestle over lands, purchase vitally needed cards and go for full-on conquest. Each player must manage their kingdom well and be courageous in battle to have any chance of survival.

Organisation

Chamberlin Games

Team

Music
Joseph Tawadros
http://www.josephtawadros.com/

Watercolour Artwork
Peter Sly
http://www.findart.com.au/petersly.htm

Project Development
Appscore International

Project Management – Richard Gregory
Programming – Jonathan Head
Preliminary work – Hannah Gibson

Graphic Design
Michael Thomas (Edamame Design) - UX Direction

Sound effects
Mike Koenig (Soundbible.com)
Freesounds.org (Creative Common 0 Licenses)
Blastwavefx.com (Catapult sound)

Heraldry Vector Graphics
http://123Freevectors.com
(Heraldry Vectors)
via DeviantArt user
http://caponehun.deviantart.com/
http://xooplate.com/
for sword vector (Creative Common 0 License)
http://dezignus.com/heraldic
for more heraldry vectors (authors site closed)
http://garcya.us/
front page vectors (extended premium member)

Game Creation, Design and development
Matiu Chamberlin

Project Brief

Medival England, AD 500

With King Arthur as the newly crowned king, England is suffering from instability from internal wars between competing barons and landlords. Some landlords and knights are trying to provide peace for thier people whilst others are bent on conquest, with the intention of defeating King Arthur and becoming England's king.

After the death of your father you have inherited his castle, army and lands. It was his dying wish that you would protect the people that are now under your care and also keep the honour and integrity of his name. In an effort to find peace you have negotiated with local knights to try and foster alliances to bring security and unity to your region. Unfortuantely, they have seen you as weak and vulnerable after the death of your father and have marched out against you. You must protect your people, your land and the honour of your father's name. Challenge these local knights in battle and bring safety to your people and peace to your region. Be courageous, wise and valiant.

Project Need

Kings Keep is an original and innovative card game quite unlike any other card game around. It takes both excellent strategy in battle and shrewd financial management to successfully complete the game.
Innovative features of Kings Keep Include-
• Heraldry
Starting the game as a Squire with your own name and a custom made coat of arms that adheres to the laws and requirements of medieval heraldry.
• Feudalism
Managing your own feudal fiefdom, you can train your peasants to become an effective and powerful army that protects the villages and towns under your care. Peasants can train to man Siege Engines or become Soldiers, Archers, Knights or even Legendary Champions (if they survive long enough!). The more Land you own, the more potential income you receive, the stronger your army can become.
• Legend
The game is initially set in AD 500 during the time of King Arthur. You have the opportunity to meet Sir Lancelot, Sir Mordred and Sir Galahalt on the battlefield (to name just a few) and learn about the legend and exploits of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.
• History
As you progress through the game you also have the opportunity to learn about medieval champions of old. You eventually face many famous and infamous leaders on the battlefield. Richard the Lionheart, Robin Hood, William Tell, Joan of Arc, Sultan Saladin and many, more...
• Challenging
Time will tell whether you can advance through the game and defeat Emperor Charlemagne.

User Experience

Kings Keep is a card game that immediately starts with a story. This engages the user into an experience that goes deeper than just playing and winning a card game. The storyline parallels along the legendary storyline line of King Arthur - which is arguably one of the the most well known medieval legends ever told. This helps the user to gain an awareness of medieval folklore and culture. The game is also set in the social system of feudalism so it immediately helps the user to experience and understand some of the dynamics of medieval heirachy. Each player gets the opportunity to create their own coat of arms and also recieve a title (starting at Squire) which also engages them in a learning experience that is interactive and fosters ownership. To help a new user learn the game, Kings keep has a clear set of instructions that are immediately accessible once the game is first loaded. Experience shows that people learn much better when they get to ask questions so Kings Keep also has a facebook page that has been set up to recieve any feedback and questions. Questions can be answered by a blurb, screenshot or video. This feedback page is essential to help provide future gamers with a better gaming and learning experience through subsequent updates. It is our hope that we can enlarge the game to include an online multiplayer experience in the near future.

Project Marketing

Our marketing strategy was very simple.

Firstly, we worked very hard to get the game looking, feeling, playing and sounding as a high quality product. You can market all you want but if you haven't put the hard effort into making the game stable, looking great and enjoyable you will be peddling backwards before you know it. We didn't rush and were very thorough with game testing and reviewing every aspect of the game before uploading. in fact I would happily say we were fussy with it.

Secondly, we wanted to set up avenues of interaction and communication for users to ask questions, 'like' certain things or share things if they desire. The Facebook page is the first step in this part of the marketing strategy. Providing good support enables customers to then more readily share positively about the game. Positive feed from friends is porbably the most powerful marketing tool around because it has an immediate trust element to it. If you support your customers well and don't treat them like a number or just a sale then you are setting yourself up to grow your business, perhaps slowly at first, but exponential strength is potentially just around the corner if you can do service and support well.

Thirdly, we are enganing in dialogue with professional companies and organisations in the field of App/Card/Strategy games who can help us publicise and market the game for mutual benefit.