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[Greipur]

New Commandment System and Interface
The commandment system has recieved an overhaul, here's a mockup of what we'll implement in the interface in the coming days. Mechanically it's already there.






Writing Commandment
There will always be an empty box on top and when you click it "If" will appear and then you'll be able to select what human value you want. And when you've filled that part you'll be able to get more parts. We've decided that clicking is the main form of input, since testing showed that people in general didn't like writing it by hand.

Focus Commandment
Simply a way of keeping track of individual followers, so when you select them you can see what commandments they focus on. This is illustrated with a stroke effect.

Corrupted Commandment
These are the ones your people have retooled to their own purposes, this will be illustrated by a scratching sound (a herald rather than continous cacophony). But it will also be shown with the help of changing the font. I acquired a font called Paper Johnny which had two variants I liked. The "cleaner" one is "god speak" and the other "human speak". When the commandment is beginning to change the font will slowly change with some letters at the time.

Old Commandment
Some commandments will be forgotten, the more saturated it is the closer it is to oblivion.


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By the way, we'll release the prototype on the 7th July!

[JobLeonard]

You sure you want to use the word "increase" there? It means that it can only go up. I mean, that might be actually what you want, allowing you to choose between "increase", "decrease" and "change".

[Greipur]

You sure you want to use the word "increase" there? It means that it can only go up. I mean, that might be actually what you want, allowing you to choose between "increase", "decrease" and "change".

You're right! We've still the old wording, we've planned to have something like "change" as you proposed. But I guess the old ways went with me when I did the mockup.

[Greipur]

Commandment Corruption and new Wording
Here's a mockup of how the corruption can look like. In this case "greed" has to do with the workload and how much food they are entitled to. God's word is more general, while corrupted commandments is more specific, they've taken part of what constitutes the greed commandment. They've nitpicked the word of god so to speak. So "If your chastity is low, change greed to high." became "If chastity, take more food from storage.".





At first I thought it would've been neat that the letters would change, as a slot machine sort of. But that would mean that it would be unintelligible in the transition. That won't do. But I think the player can notice the difference as shown below, and still be able to read it. Take note that it would (at the moment) take up to 40 seconds for a commandment to change completely.


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We've secured part of our funding (from our municipality) by the way and aquired a small office space. So we've more hope for the future now, and have better working conditions. We're still aiming for a crowdfunding campaign in the end of July though.


Edit: Changed the gif.

[JobLeonard]

Because it loops I can't really tell what's before and after in that gif, could you please explain?

[Greipur]

Because it loops I can't really tell what's before and after in that gif, could you please explain?

I've edited the gif. I hope it's more readable now. The player's commandment is transformed into "humanspeak".

[JobLeonard]

Yeah, that helps, thank

[Greipur]

The deadline looms closer. We're focusing on completing the embedded feedback, overhaul on the commandment system (as I've explained before) and I'm mostly doing fluff such as the menu.



Since we will release the prototype weeks before greenlight and crowdfunding we'll have temporary links that will reroute the user when the campaigns are up.

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In other news I've been doing some research on trailers for more slow-paced games such as strategy and simulation games. I'm looking around for inspiration for a more laid back approach to a gameplay trailer. If you've any recommendations I'd gladly read them.

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We're also looking for a producer, if you're fluent in Swedish you should read this.

[Maliii]

This sounds super awesome and very unique. Can't wait for the prototype.

[Greipur]

Thanks Maliii, I hope you'll enjoy it.

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Here's a new screenshot, this is very close to the version we will let people play in two days. Hopefully we'll implement the printout, but we have to give priority to the most important feedback.




Here's an example how the world system works by the way. I think it's fascinating to watch desert turn into forest and vice versa. And when the people's influence is taken into consideration it can become very interesting. This is one of the systems we use to shake up things for the player.



If the people overtax the land the drought will be upon them, which theoretically can create a chain reaction. But most of all the people (and rather the player) needs to be aware of that one shouldn't live over one's allowance when it comes to the natural world. One needs to respect what the ecosystem can support. So if there's a drought coming to the farming communities outside of the cities the player would need to hamper productivity or they'd face severe consequences. This will have repercussions on the society as a whole, and that's why we've chosen to make this an important part of our game. We want to give the player interesting consequences arising from the procedural world.

[Greipur]

The public prototype is now available!

[JobLeonard]

Downloading!

[Greipur]

I'm looking forward to hear feedback from you, JobLeonard (and of course the rest of you too!).

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Here's our new trailer by the way. I've also added download links and new images to the original post. We will update the game before our campaign starts on 28th July, so feel free to point out bugs and the like.

[Greipur]

We released a patch for the game yesterday which fixed some bugs and other minor issues (patch notes). We're planning on releasing another patch in the coming weeks that address some of the balancing issues. Other then that we're mainly focusing on preparing our crowdfunding campaign and reaching out to let's players, press and other media.

And as I've said before, please point out balancing issues and bugs if you see them. We want the prototype to be as stable as possible when we start our campaigns.

[JobLeonard]

Sorry, downloaded it but then didn't have the time to play it at all!  Will try again this weekend.

[Greipur]

Sorry, downloaded it but then didn't have the time to play it at all!   Will try again this weekend.

Looking forward to hear your opinion. And be sure to get the new patched version, so you're rid of some of the pesky bugs and problems.

[JobLeonard]

This is hard! I tried

"If you have high chastity you should have high fertility"

... which mutated into

"If you have high fertility you should live a short life"

NOOOOO!!!

Overal, the tutorial explains way too little beyond how to interact with the world. How does the village economy work? I can't indirectly influence a system, if it's nearly impossible for me to understand how the system works. It has to be made learnable somehow.

[Greipur]

The tutorial might be too minimalistic in its current form, yes. If you've more concrete suggestions on what to cover we would be happy. Though, I'm thinking that it might be the feedback that hinders you from making working mental models of the mechanics too. But we're aiming to make another patch soon, as I've written. So we might be able to address smaller problems.

Regarding your first remark about it being hard it depends on how much faith they have in you, and how progressive or conservative they are. Of course reinterptretaion is a cornerstone of the experience, but you're able to soften the fall somewhat if you encourage certain behaviours. And sometimes the rewritten commandments can be useful too. Usually when it gets tough I add help commandments to try and circumvent the corrupted one.

[JobLeonard]

The problem is that it's not clear how the different systems are interrelated, and the aforementioned lack of feedback makes it very difficult for me to connect cause and effect

[Greipur]

The problem is that it's not clear how the different systems are interrelated, and the aforementioned lack of feedback makes it very difficult for me to connect cause and effect

Thank you for your input. If you will try the game again in the future I would look forward to hear more.