Technical data
Emergence New tools are finally speeding up development of Critias Empire after a long pause. Cinders After the last update, I spent a long time working on tools that would let me create and balance the in-game Decisions system more quickly. Unfortunately just making the tools th
Fire I added a new disaster to the game: Fire. It took longer than I anticipated but I'm quite pleased with the results. Warning: Flashing lights. Gifs in this blog may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy. Burn It Down When a fire type disaster occurs in Critia
Celebrations Festivals allow players to make medium-term tradeoffs, spending resources to throw celebrations and festivities, but with ongoing costs to match. Meanwhile, the game itself has been in a number of digital festivals on Steam. Throwing a Party There are various pre-def
Predicting the Future The decision system is finally implemented in the demo, heralding a new way to interact with the Gods. Plus the predictions feature is back! In this devlog I'll give more details on both as well as future plans for the game. Decisions Decisions God anger and
Tempus Fugit It's been a long time since my last update, way back in August. The second half of 2024 really pulled me in too many different directions; I spent most of my time trying to balance working on 3 different game projects and in the end, none of them made anything like t
Favours The decision system has been implemented and I'm now in the process of creating the content for it. In this update I'll preview that, and the changes I want to make to the tutorial afterwards. Think About I've talked previously about plans for the "Decisions" system in th
Tempest The latest version of the demo is out now. It comes with a new scenario, and a new disaster! In this devlog I'll be detailing the changes to the game, plus the facepalm-inducing bugs that I fixed and lots of other small improvements. Sea Change As covered in the previous
Distant Thunder Thank you once again for all the feedback on the demo. It's answered a lot of questions I had in my own head about what works and doesn't in the game. As well your feedback and bug reports have assisted in finding and crushing a host of bugs. Also in helping shapi
Set Sail The Critias Empire demo is out now! Go check it out (download link is on the Steam page ). The demo launch coincides with TurnBasedThursday Festival on Steam. I've also set up a discord server where you can hang out and discuss the game. Plus in this update I'll guide yo
Trials Back at the start of February, I put out a call on a few discord servers where I regularly hang out for people to privately test the Critias Empire demo. I am eternally grateful to those who gave their time to play it and give feedback! You've massively helped both from a
The Return After spending the last 3 months of 2023 travelling South America, I am back to working on Critias Empire. A lot (lot lot!) of bugs have been fixed, the demo is ready and there's even a tutorial now! Bugs Bugs Bugs Way back in August, I took Critias Empire to devcom co
Double Trouble In preparation for the demo, the game has once again been re-balanced, this time focusing on the gods Poseidon and Hephaestus respectively. With this has come new God related features, plus a lot of bug fixing and user experience improvements. Gods Get Tough After
New Sights While there's not much visually to show off recent progress on Critias Empire, a lot has been happening in the background. As well as taking a much needed vacation (2 short ones in-fact!), I've been polishing the game for pitching to publishers and an eventual demo. Tr
Disaster Optics Throughout the game's life, the disasters in Critias Empire have been limited to earthquakes and the terrain shifting they induced. As cool as they are, it's time to add in more different disaster types, which is the focus of this update. Eerie Silence It's import
Looking Better Improving the user experience and look of the game with both big and subtle changes has been the focus of recent work on Critias Empire, the details of which are covered in this update. Water World The water graphics in Critias Empire were created many many years a
What Lies There With the global bonus system implemented, focus has shifted to balancing other parts of the game, and the implementation of a long-planned feature - exploration! But how does exploration work in a game with no units and the map already revealed? All will be... rev
Global Good As the end of the year rolls in, development of Critias Empire continues to progress apace. The global bonus system foundations have been implemented, along with about half the planned bonus types. While I didn't (yet) start on to the UI improvements mentioned last bl
Land Ho! A number of people have mentioned disappointment when looking at the Critias Empire store page that the game only seems to have island type maps. Well be disappointed no more! The game now supports multiple map types. So far I have re-implemented the "Islands" map type,
Time Marches It's August! In fact, nearly the end of August, and this month, my provisional penciled-in date for when the game would be released has been and gone. While disappointing for all, it's not a bad thing in the long term. In this update, I'll explain why, and how develo
Rebalance, Replay Back in April, Critias Empire was looking in pretty good shape. It felt polished and robust. I knew the game needed rebalancing, but I also had a nagging feeling this meant more than just adjusting the numbers. A round of intensive internal testing confirmed a n