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PC Game Concepts 2026-06-14

Thornwall Compact

Thornwall Compact
Prototype
Open standalone ↗
Design brief

You inherited a failing mercenary guild in a city where contracts are sacred and killing the wrong man is a capital crime — now survive.

Date: 2026-06-14 Genre: tactical RPG Platform: PC (Windows; keyboard & mouse, controller) Status: Concept

Target player

Fans of Tactics Ogre: Reborn and Disco Elysium who want their tactical decisions to carry genuine political weight. They love deep faction systems, flavor-rich world-building, and scenarios where following the rules might kill you — but breaking them might be worse. They're comfortable with complex UI and long planning phases. They've bounced off games that reset to status quo after every fight. They read every in-game document and are disappointed when the lore doesn't pay off in gameplay.

Core loop

30-second loop: Position units on a grid. Manage a two-slot action economy (move + action per turn). Before confirming an attack, the UI flags any active contract clause that action would breach. Execute — or call in your Advocate to attempt a mid-battle renegotiation first. Each unit has 2–4 abilities and one passive; ability choice is constrained by the contract's current clause set.

30-minute loop: Accept a contract from the board, read its clauses carefully, and deploy your team into a 3–5 encounter mission. Breach a clause by accident: absorb the reputation hit or use an Advocate pull to contest it. After the mission, file your report — the city's district control map shifts based on how the operation went and who witnessed it. Then choose next week's contracts from a changing board where rival guilds have already claimed some.

Systems

  • Contract Clause System — Every contract specifies legal constraints on the mission: lethal-force permitted or not, property damage limits, witness-contact restrictions, time limits, custody requirements. Breaches accumulate; three breaches triggers a Guild Tribunal that costs reputation and coin. Deliberate renegotiations cost Guild Coin and one Advocate action.
  • Advocate Renegotiation — The Advocate unit class can use an action to initiate a real-time contract rewrite mid-battle. Roll against the client's disposition (tracked per client): success changes the active clause, partial success adjusts it with a cost, hostile result flips the client into an active map obstacle for the remainder of the mission.
  • District Sovereignty Map — Thornwall's six districts each have faction-affinity meters for the three rival guilds. Post-mission reports and witness accounts shift district sympathies week by week, opening or closing contract tiers, changing enemy compositions in future missions, and unlocking (or locking) district facilities.
  • Guild Ledger — A lean economy: Guild Coin pays weekly wages, facility upgrades, renegotiation fees, and breach fines. Unpaid wages cause morale penalties; a unit at zero morale refuses dangerous orders mid-battle (moving to a safe position instead of the commanded one).
  • Unit Dossiers — Every unit has a backstory, a personal loyalty trigger, and a breaking-point condition. Push a unit past their breaking point and they quit, testify against you in a Tribunal, or defect to a rival guild — bringing their mission knowledge with them.
  • Investigation Thread — Evidence fragments surface across contracts: a witness mention, a forged document, a name in a ledger. Collected in the Journal, they build toward the truth of how the previous guildmaster died and who controls Thornwall's shadow economy. Investigation beats are paced at one per two in-game weeks.
  • Rival Guild AI — Three rival guilds operate simultaneously on the same city map, taking contracts and accumulating district power. They respond to player dominance: if you hold the Docklands for three consecutive weeks, the Ironveil Guild will begin undercutting your contracts there and recruiting from your talent pool.

Progression

The campaign runs in Seasons — each Season is 12 in-game weeks. Week structure: receive a portfolio of available contracts (primary and secondary tiers), choose one primary, optionally one secondary, execute missions, file reports, manage the ledger. Rival guilds fill in whatever you leave unclaimed.

District control evolves across the season. By Week 6–8, Thornwall's political center of gravity shifts visibly based on player actions. By Week 12, a Season Verdict event resolves the major political arc — who controls which district, what legal protections the Compact has earned, and whether the investigation thread has surfaced the antagonist.

Unit progression is milestone-based, not XP-based: units unlock new abilities when they survive specific scenario types (three extraction missions unlocks Improved Retreat for the whole team; two Tribunal testimonies unlocks Advocate synergy passives). Progress feels earned, not grinded.

Meta-progression across Seasons: retired units appear as NPCs who can vouch for you or testify against you; discovered evidence carries over; unlocked contract types persist; district starting affinity reflects Season 1 outcomes.

World & setting

Thornwall is a walled free city — neither part of the fading empire to the east nor the rising republics to the west. It survives on commerce and the Contract Compact: a body of law older than the ruling council that governs all guild operations and is enforced by an independent court of Arbiters. This legal infrastructure is both the city's great strength and its primary weapon in factional disputes.

Visually, the city is late-medieval noir: rain-slicked cobblestones, iron lanterns arcing over canal bridges, guild halls flying livery banners, and a skyline of competing tower-cranes hauling cargo from the harbor. The palette is muted iron grays, rain-wet slate, and amber lamplight — warm light as a measure of power and safety. The tone is grounded political drama: no demons to slay, no kingdoms to save, just contracts to fulfill, rivals to outmaneuver, and a city that will keep grinding whether you thrive or collapse.

Differentiators

  • Contract Clause System as primary tactical layer — legal constraints shape every engagement, turning each mission into a legal puzzle as much as a tactical one; the Advocate renegotiation mechanic is a unique mid-battle lever no current tactical RPG offers
  • Living city overworld with rival guild AI — three active AI factions operate simultaneously, making the district map feel genuinely contested; no battle resets to neutral; your reputation compounds across the full campaign
  • Investigative campaign spine — a whodunit mystery thread woven through every Season rewards attentive players with narrative payoff most tactical RPGs forgo entirely
  • Unit morale with stakes but without permadeath — units can quit, defect, or testify against you if mismanaged; roster management carries real consequences without the irreversibility of permanent loss
  • Morally grounded mercenary framing — you are not the hero; you are the institution trying to survive in a city that doesn't need saving, just managing

Monetization notes

Premium release at $29.99 on Steam, GOG, and Epic. Early Access model: Season 1 (12 weeks, one district arc) ships in EA at $24.99; full release adds Season 2 (a rival city campaign with an expanded cast) and a Contracts Editor that lets players author custom clause sets for mod scenarios. No cosmetic storefronts, no battle passes. A Season 3 DLC expansion is planned at $14.99. Market evidence: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles sold 1M units in three months at a comparable price point, confirming sustained commercial appetite for politically complex tactical RPGs. A studio of 5–8 developers with strong Steam visibility and content creator coverage can credibly target $3–6M lifetime revenue.

Accessibility notes

  • Fully remappable keyboard/mouse and controller bindings with preset profiles
  • High-contrast UI mode and colorblind-safe palettes (Deuteranopia, Protanopia, Tritanopia presets)
  • Adjustable UI scale (80–200%)
  • Slow Mode: adds configurable delay between AI turns for processing time
  • Clause Assist: automatically highlights any action that would breach an active clause before you confirm it (on by default; can be disabled for experienced players)
  • Full subtitles and persistent dialogue log for all voiced lines; selective voice acting budget makes text-first design the default
  • Animation speed toggles: 0.5×, 1×, 2×, skip-all
  • Contract time-limit missions have a difficulty-tier option to disable the clock entirely without affecting other mission parameters
  • No missable content: all investigation clues remain accessible through the Journal archive

Risks

  • Clause system frustration — if constraints feel arbitrary rather than interesting, players will resent them. Mitigation: every clause must pass a "two valid solutions" test in playtest before shipping; poorly received clauses are cut, not tuned.
  • Overworld opacity — district politics could feel unreadable. Mitigation: a clear Consequence Log and a visual faction heat-map are updated immediately after every mission report, with explicit cause-and-effect callouts.
  • Investigation thread scope creep — mystery writing is expensive and expansive. Mitigation: cap the investigation to one story beat per two in-game weeks; use dossier fragments and environmental storytelling rather than full cutscenes.
  • Rival guild AI producing unreadable chaos — three simultaneous AI factions could overwhelm players. Mitigation: AI operates on simplified decision trees (claim highest-value unclaimed contract in least-contested district), not full adversarial search; tuned for predictability over simulation fidelity.
  • Premium price resistance — $29.99 is above the impulse-buy floor for the genre. Mitigation: Early Access at $24.99 with a free standalone demo of one complete contract mission, structured to surface the clause system and Advocate mechanic within the first 20 minutes.

6-week prototype plan

  • Week 1: Core grid combat — movement, two-slot action economy, two unit types (Bladeward, Hexfire), line-of-sight, basic win/loss condition; deliverable: two playable test encounters
  • Week 2: Contract clause UI — five clause types implemented (lethal-force, property, time-limit, witness, custody), breach tracker visible at all times, clause-violation warning before action confirmation; deliverable: one full contract mission with clauses enforced
  • Week 3: Advocate renegotiation — mid-battle rewrite flow, client-disposition system (favorable / neutral / hostile), three outcome tiers (success / partial / hostile flip), timing and feel testing; deliverable: one mission with a mandatory renegotiation moment
  • Week 4: Overworld city map — six-district visualization, faction affinity meters, post-mission report flow that shifts sympathy, rival guild placeholder claiming one contract per week; deliverable: two-week overworld cycle with visible faction drift
  • Week 5: Investigation thread + Guild Ledger — three clue fragments surfacing from missions, Journal UI, ledger tracking wages and breach costs, one morale-break scenario (unit refuses order); deliverable: narrative through-line visible across two connected missions
  • Week 6: Vertical slice playtest — one full 3-mission contract arc across two districts, five unit types, complete clause system, Advocate renegotiation, rival guild pressure, one investigation beat; playtest with 8–10 external players and iterate on the single most confusing system

Genre references

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