Engineers - Eyes and ears!
As most of you are probably aware, we read every SINGLE review that comes through. Fundamentally, we think that if you have taken the time to put down your sincere thoughts for the game we've made, you deserve the time it takes for us to absorb it.
Even in the positive reviews, there are often really important criticisms that we can extract to make the game better. And some of those criticisms have been hard to field. These are things like:
The gameplay loop is too simplistic
The RNG feels too capricious
The graphics, as a whole, are too simplistic
The tutorial is too long, tells you too little, and onboarding is too onerous
These things require a fundamental rethinking and reordering of how the game presents itself and functions. It's a huge amount of effort, and to do it correctly would require a level of effort akin to our big lifts simply finishing the game in the first place.
....
So anyway, we started fixing.
Yeah, we did it. 1.2 is the culmination of about a year of work. This post is going to hit the highlights of the changes, and there will be followup posts on the fine specifics as the beta goes on - with notes on how everything has evolved thanks to players giving us feedback on the beta!
How to join
The beta is public on Steam right now. Simply right click on Endless Dark in your library, go to Properties, and look for Betas on the left hand side. You want "1.2publicbeta".
How to contribute
Talk to us! Give us your feelings, your thoughts, and ESPECIALLY any bugs you find! The discord and the discussion forums are both ideal. The forums in particular will be playing host to a 'beta updates' thread that will document all the changes as they happen, rather than the timeline being updated every time.
What to expect
It's really not an exaggeration to say that you should expect a completely different game. The narrative has not been touched too much, but almost everything else has.
The rest of this update is going to go over, in a pretty quick way, the biggest changes that are in the beta. Subsequent posts over the beta period will drill down these things more.
New graphics
Almost every single tile used in the game has been redone from scratch to fix perspectives, add detail and character, and better articulate what the thing does and is. The Custodians have also gotten a complete overhaul. Check out Robbie:
Less RNG
This is a big point that begs a bunch of questions about other changes, but for now, just accept this bullet list:
Damage to major systems is no longer random. Systems are ONLY damaged by flying into space weather. Random damage attacks the new subsystems instead, which makes costs more predictable, and doesn't bother certain Custodians as much (Robbie's Perfectionist negatrait only cares if a major system is damaged - it doesn't care about subsystems).
Overclocks are no longer random. Systems that are overclocked will STAY overclocked until they are damaged or turned off.
The Director's applied pressure has lost a lot of its random element. While its methods are still very varied and very random, it now has a much better algorithm for perceiving how much pressure it needs to apply, and pushing it.
Risks of damage and other hazards are much better surfaced by the Command console, so you know what risks you are taking.
New subsystems
One thing that we established when we set about the redesign was that we wanted to eliminate problems that were 'this turn' or arbitrarily more urgent than others. The Reactor taking a hit was an immediate and critical problem because everything would turn off. This contrasts distinctly from Engines or Cryo taking a hit - you had until the end of the turn to deal with those things before you suffered any consequences.
To help with this, 3 new ship systems now have subsystems.
Shields
The Shields system now charges Capacitors, which are what actually provide the protection to outside disturbances. Capacitors absorb damage and discharge at the end of every turn, and Shields charges the Capacitors at the beginning of every turn. So if Shields takes a hit, but your Capacitors are charged, that's not necessarily something you care about until next turn.
Capacitors can be damaged by the Director, and will need to be repaired in lieu of fixing Shields like you used to. Capacitors can also be discharged into the Custodian to relieve some Fatigue. You know. If you need that little extra boost. I'm sure you're rated for that.
Reactor
The Reactor system now charges Batteries, which are what actually provide power to ship systems. Batteries lose their charge at the end of every turn, and the Reactor's output charges batteries at the beginning of every turn. So if Reactor takes a hit, but your Batteries are charged, everything is totally fine and you don't suffer a massive blackout. If you don't repair Reactor by the time the turn ends, you will have fewer charged Batteries next turn, but hey, at least you can prepare, right?
Batteries are not targeted by the Director, but can be targeted by random events. If you have some spare power, you can discharge the battery into yourself too. It relieves some Stress, but a hit like that will definitely get you, er, seeing things differently.
Navigation
Navigation now collects telemetry from individual Scanners, and the state of the system determines how far out you can see - there's no longer a way to see the entire map at once, the best you can do is overclock Navigation and make your plans. Navigation collects Telemetry at the end of every turn, so if a Scanner is offline, it will be unable to get that data. This will result in dust, rad zones, or EMP zones simply disappearing from your map until you get everything functional again.
As part of simplification and RNG busting, Navigation no longer provides a speed boost, and hazard avoidance has been removed from the game entirely.
Overclocking changes
As stated, Overclocks are no longer random - well, mostly. Overclocks now last until the system is damaged or turn off, so you will not need to re-overclock systems on a regular basis.
Overclocking does provide a small ongoing chance to damage the overclocked system and the reactor at end of turn. Currently, the chances are in the ballpark of 2% for both the system and the reactor, with the reactor's chances stacking for each overclocked system. So if 3 systems are overclocked, the reactor will have a 6% chance, every turn, to take damage. Shields will NOT protect you from this damage.
Since major systems no longer take random entropy damage, the overall effect of this is that it is now much simpler to keep a couple critical systems overclocked consistently.
Weather changes
Space weather is now MUCH nastier, and something you want to much more aggressively avoid. In addition to all of its usual effects, weather now has an 85% chance to damage certain systems. We've attempted to put in a certain logic to it - for example, Dust will try to damage Engine and Navigation, while Radiation will damage Cryo. Charged shield Capacitors will help protect you from this damage.
Grav anomalies don't damage the ship, but they still disable Navigation - and without Navigation, you can't steer. When choosing pathways, keep in mind that you may end up hitting an oil slick and try to think a bit ahead.
Because all weather damage? It stacks. If you path into both radiation and EMP, expect all of Cryo, Command, Replicator, Shields, and Reactor to test damage. And if you path into all 3?
Uh. Don't... don't do that.
Information, onboarding, and fact-checking
Getting into the game has been overhauled and is now much faster. You simply choose your Custodian and chapter as usual, and choose your memories (if applicable - it's now skipped entirely if you don't have any Memories). The difficulty switches are still there, but are now part of an optional 'advanced options' task that we don't force you to look at every time.
In addition, there is now an in-game encyclopedia for every object and every action in the game.
Walking up to any object will now point out what it is, and give you something you can hit to get more information on it.
This also works when highlighting any menu option in a context menu.
Hitting HELP will get you an explanation, along with a few links to relevant topics. Because one thing we absolutely needed in this game is the experience of wondrous, mystified obsession with clicking random links in Wikipedia.
In addition, the system displays themselves have been overhauled to answer some of the most common questions about them - including the famous one: "What does overclocking ACTUALLY DO?"
Overhauled systems
Certain systems have been tweaked or overhauled as part of the revamp. As alluded to earlier, Navigation lost its speed bonus and its hazard avoidance bonuses, but now its state affects how far out your Scanners can scan, and how easy it is to steer the ship. Observation has also picked up a stacking Stress cure for using it. Early on, it will only cure a point or two of Stress, but as you consistently use it, it can become a very powerful way to handle your blue bar. There's always a small Psychosis cost, but even that is now thought of very differently. On that note...
Scoring changes
The Score screen is something that has changed a lot over the course of our time making this game. In the first betas, it was a joke akin to a corporate performance review. Many big companies use these performance reviews explicitly as a way to generate ways to fire otherwise good employees if need be. By design, you are not expected to excel at these performance reviews (because THAT might imply you deserve a raise).
As time went on, though, and the game became more fully featured, the Score card increasingly became a meta-narrative thing, a subtle hint as to what was happening inside the Custodian, and what would ultimately happen in the final chapter of the game.
We've completely redone how Score is calculated to bring it in line with this idea. Most notably, Psychosis is no longer purely considered a negative by Score. It CAN be, under certain circumstances, but under others, Psychosis will actually INCREASE your Score.
New Achievements and Memories
We've added 10 new Achievements to Steam, and all of them have associated Memories in-game. Two of them are Dangerous! One involves Annie tapping its temple.
And on, and on...
Believe it or not, this post COULD keep going on. There's even more to talk about that we haven't here, even in the very brief way most of this stuff is covered.
And that's why we will have a series of Beta posts over the next month or so as we head up to full release. For now, what are you waiting for? Opt into the beta, give it a shot, and talk to us about it, already!
If you've ever forgotten where a place is supposed to be, you can now check a strategic map that one of your robot forebears has sketched out in Command.
