About Ludus: Blood & Sand (Patreon)

Hey folks,

I hope you had a great 2023, and I hope 2024 has started off well for all of you already.

Today, I want to ask something to all of my Patrons. As you might recall, a while ago (in July 2022), I shared this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxCSIiGZuU

It was about Ludus: Blood&Sand. A mod that was almost completely separated from the actual Bannerlord, following a storyline with cutscenes and so on. The main idea was for you to play as a gladiator, ranking up through a series of fights in arenas, buying gear and food to continue that progression, and eventually triggering a riot and escaping from your Ludus. It was a mix of Spartacus' and Arminius' stories. However, when I was working on that, it hit a major blocker on the engine side, and I had to stop. The issue was related to not being able to have a proper 24-hour day cycle - because the game was resetting the terrain, and it was breaking the cutscenes. A few months ago, while I was experimenting, I did find a workaround for that, and technically, it can be completed. So I went ahead and fixed all the issues this weekend, and now it's running on the latest Bannerlord version, more or less identical to the one in the video. However, I have my reservations. I had this hesitation when I first planned the story as well, but right now, given the amount of effort it requires to finish, I feel like I should make sure that it will be something that is fun to play.

The question I want to ask is this: Do you think it would be fun to play with?

Because after the introductory mission that you saw in the video, the rest of the game will basically consist of rest will be basically waking up -> going to doctore for request to fight in arena or sparring with other gladiators -> each will spend some daily stamina, and you can either participate 2 fights in a day or have 4 sparring with others -> when stamina is depleted you have to go back to bed and iterate over next day -> repeat the same until story continues. As you might guess, this becomes repetitive very quickly, which is not exactly a formula for fun. And if I shorten it by creating a finisher story epilogue like a breakout mission, then the entire mod becomes a very short mod gameplay-wise as well, and I'm not sure if all that effort is worth it or not. And to be clear, this is A LOT of effort. This is not a standard mod; it requires me to handle a lot of things, even basic things like the dialogue system, which is written from scratch for this purpose. So if this does not have long-term replayability, then I feel like the effort will be wasted (and could be used on another mod project instead).

Hence, I want to ask what you all think about this. I know as Patrons, you guys usually choose to go with a hands-off approach to my work, and I truly appreciate that, but in this instance, I would like to hear your thoughts.