A New Era for Creo God Simulator
Hello Creostriders! I hope you all have been having a great time growing your cities, gaining powers, and smiting some villagers.
I cannot express the excitement that I feel to share with you—and the tens of thousands of other Creostriders around the world—the news that Creo God Simulator has exited Steam Early Access! After years of development, feedback from gamers like you, late-night programming, and the occasional full game redesign, I believe Creo is finally at the point where I'm comfortable leaving Early Access. With this new exit from Early Access, Creo God Simulator will now cost US $9.99 to purchase.
This major event in Creo's life comes along with another significant component - the Story Update. The new Story Update is by far the largest update Creo has ever received in one go: this update adds the new quests system, which includes 16 new story quests, in addition to various procedural quests, which will challenge and reward even the lowliest Creostrider. It also adds a new lore and archaeology system, new building mechanics, and even a new tornado disaster! I'll go over these and other updates in detail below.
These exciting developments are part of a much larger vision for our little game, which I'll be going over in a detailed roadmap post here in the next few days. Suffice it to say that in the upcoming phases of development for Creo God Simulator, there will be:
- A new combat system with tower defense elements.
- A new day and night cycle, where the actions you take during the day impact the difficulty of the attacking foes at night.
- A significant amount of additional main story quests, each revealing a little bit more about the complex and rich history of the world of Creo.
- Steam achievements.
- Steam trading cards.
- Several new god powers, such as the "Extract Resources", "Accelerate Production", and "Wind Gust" powers.
- Many new randomized events and disasters.
- Several new buildings, such as the Sawmill, Smelter, and many new defensive structures.
Important Note for Existing Creo God Simulator Owners
Though all these updates can feel a bit overwhelming, I do want to clarify something for those faithful Creostriders among you who have already purchased or downloaded the free version of Creo God Simulator: you will get to keep the game—no need to repurchase. I deeply appreciate the support you loyal gamers have shown me and my game over the years, and I'm excited to continue working on the next stage of Creo God Simulator to provide you and all the new Creostriders with regular updates, content, and lore!
Now, let's continue to learn more about what the new Story Update has to offer!
Tne Quest and Dialog System
With all of the previous updates, I've always felt that the game was missing what I felt mattered most of all—the story. Every world needs to have it's why and it's how, and our world of Creo is no exception. With this in mind, for the Story Update, I set out to build that world and to do so in a way that made sense gameplay-wise, while also being interesting. The result was the new quest and dialog system.
Though it was a pretty significant challenge to get the system built out and to get all the lore written, this update includes a story system which I believe sets a good foundational piece of how lore will be delivered in-game. Quest missions will challenge you to perform an objective or grow to a certain point, while scripted events will introduce new mechanics and lore elements as well.
This update also introduces a new archaeology system—which I'll discuss in detail below—and a new ancient artifact collection system which will help you learn more about Creo's ancient and mysterious past.
This update adds 16 new story quests, in addition to 3 procedural quest types, all of which should add several hours of gameplay. I already have created many additional story quests and procedural quest types, which I'll be adding in as time goes by.
The Archaeology System: Discover Creo's Mysterious Past
Personal Record - 02: Entry from a Soldier’s Personal Diary Regarding the Corruption
Every night, I stand upon this tower defending our village. The hate and fear that dwell in the hearts of men gather in the shadows, far from the lights of our torches and homes. When the ringshine and starlight are the only things illuminating the forest, I can see them gathering within.
Almost every night, they attack our town, only to be beaten back and destroyed once again the following night. These accursed shapes of sharp stone come in all varieties, with unique and dangerous weapons, claws, and teeth. We sharpen our blades every day, only to dull them again in the night. Perhaps, we should change our hearts rather than develop new weapons.
The record above is just one of many different pieces of ancient writing you'll discover written on willpower fragments scattered around the world of Creo! The new archaeology system introduces the museum and archaeology archive, which you can use to collect and review many of the ancient willpower fragments you find.
I've created four categories of ancient records as seen above:
- Natural Science
- Literature and Poetry
- History
- Personal Records
I plan on expanding the lore with regular updates and I have a very clear vision for what I want the history and lore of Creo to be. Please know that there will be a rhyme and reason to the major mechanics of this unique and mysterious world!
All the Other Juicy Additions to the Story Update
Describing each additional piece of this update would make this post unbearably long, and to save you the headache of having to read that far, I've decided to go over two more additions that I consider noteworthy.
The New Tornado Disaster
Stay away from windows and find shelter - tornadoes have arrived! Creo's newest disaster is as dangerous as it is impressive. Be warned, there is currently no defense against tornadoes in Creo, but fortunately, they wander randomly around the world, and have a chance to never reach your city. However, it's not a bad idea to have your repair shops fully staffed, just in case...
The Hedge Wall Tool
Now, it's easier than ever to beautify your city, whether that's decorating a new garden, lining a new avenue, or simply drawing property lines for your villagers' homes! The new hedge wall tool is unlocked with the "Basic Landscaping" inspiration and allows you to place hedge walls using the same system as road placement. This new system will be expanded to include stone walls, fences, and other decorations in future updates.
What's Next for Creo?
Though I'm certainly very excited to share Creo's newest updates and improvements with you, I recognize that there's still lots of work to do and improvements to make. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I plan on releasing a detailed roadmap post soon, which will describe the vision I have for Creo's next updates and what you can expect as a player and supporter.
As always, I want to share how deeply I appreciate the support all of you Creostriders have given me over the last few years—all of the feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for improvement. Creo is what it is today because of you and the insights you give me, so please, continue to share your thoughts and suggestions right here in our Steam community.
It's been a long journey to get here—I've put so much of myself into my little game, and I'm moved to see it be what it is today. Thank you for joining me as I've been building the world of Creo and bringing my vision to life—I'm happy that I get to share my world with you.
Onward Creostriders, onward.
- Esteban
Creo Changelog for the Story Update
- 01/23/2024
IMPORTANT NOTE: This update may cause bugs and issues if playing saves from previous versions of Creo God Simulator. Please create a new city using this version in order to experience the complete story experience.
Big Changes
- Created a new Dialog and Quest system and UI to allow for all kinds of new quests and conversations.
- Created sixteen new main quests, with a final megastructure and new gameplay mechanic.
- Created multiple new randomized side quests.
- Complete overhaul of the tutorial system: it now has interactive tasks, relevant focus indicators, improved copy, and Farabus the Scribe.
- The new archeology technology was created, which unlocks the museum building. The Museum allows players to collect and view willpower fragments containing ancient lore and stories.
- Created the new Archaeology Archive menu, which shows collected willpower fragments and artifacts. These collected fragments and artifacts provide lore on the world of Creo, and will also be used for Steam achievements.
- Large refactor of the trading system: now, a player can sell or buy any amount they like, and the game will auto-calculate the maximum available quantity to buy and sell. There is no need to specifically enter transaction amounts.
- Players can now open and close job positions for all buildings of the same type by holding a modifier key - in this case, the tab key - while pressing the ‘Q’ or ‘E’ keys.
- Clicking on a building with a work radius now shows the work radii of all buildings of the same type. This is to allow players to see their entire firefighting coverage, repair coverage, and resource extraction coverage.
- Added the new hedge wall tool to the decoration build menu, which uses a similar build system to the road tool in order to allow players to easily build beautiful hedge walls for parks, yards, and other decorative features.
- Added the new tornado disaster, which randomly moves around the map and can do tremendous damage to structures and villagers in its path.
- Added three new original soundtrack songs, “A Creostrider’s Journey”, “Ritual by Ringlight”, and “The Voice of the Ancients”.
- Restructured the procedural terrain mesh’s collider, which drastically improved performance on all hardware due to a significant decrease in collision calculations.
Small Changes
- Trade menu input values are now zeroed out after closing the trade menu.
- Added precise building rotation by holding the left control key.
- There is now a demolition mode pop that appears when a player is in demolition mode - this is to prevent erroneous demolition of structures.
- The recent events menu can now be vertically scrolled without zooming.
- Changed the farm’s collider to be taller to allow accelerated construction while still allowing farmers within to be scanned with the inspection tool.
- Answering a villager's prayer now increases their faith to 100.
- Slightly increased the collider size of the villager prayer icon.
- Made the small temple’s collision box much smaller and more accurate to the building shape.
- The Creostrider plaza can now only be placed on grass - this is to prevent placement on a small sandbar in the middle of the ocean and other unplayable starting locations.
- Farms and ranches now need to be placed on grass, and cannot be placed on sand.
- In the “New Game” creation menu, clicking randomize will now set the world sliders to a minimum of 30%, rather than 0% - this is to limit the number of worlds created with too few resources.
- Decorations no longer show repair icons if they are damaged and being repaired. This was done to limit the number of icons visible in large-scale disasters, such as earthquakes.
- Creoquakes no longer damage decorations at all. Note: decorations can still be damaged by certain disasters and god powers.
- Improved the villager chat conversion system, so now villagers will only be able to convert other villagers during conversations who are of a different faith, and the conversion event now has a 10% chance of success. Additionally, if the target villager is not already a believer in the player, they require at least 30 faith in order to be successfully converted to the player.
- Inspecting villagers now shows if the villager believes in the player and their faith and fear values.
- Replaced the 2D pixel-art villager spirit which spawns upon villager death with a 3D model.
- Willpower fragments will now spawn less frequently.
- Willpower fragments will now only begin spawning after the “Echoes of the Past” quest is completed, or when the Archeology technology is unlocked.
- Increased the quantity of trees, stone deposits, metal deposits, and mountains on map generation.
- Removed Creobrine.
- Improved the randomization of all randomized variables, such as villager name generation, UUIDs, game start variables, etc.
- Increased the effectiveness of hovering over a building speed up construction, but also increased the willpower cost to do so.
- Added tracking of all resources sold and bought, allowing for unique quests and challenges.
- Added proximity sound effect to the accounting center building.
- Multiple structures can now be demolished in a row. Demolition mode is now exited by pressing the right mouse button, rather than whenever the left or right mouse buttons are clicked. NOTE: Please always use caution when in demolition mode.
- Updated the position of the hover info box in the in-game UI to have more distance from the UI element being hovered.
- Updated the terrain generation script to have more green area and less sand.
- A colored gradient background was added behind the game map.
- A subterranean mesh was added to the map to make it appear more solid.
- Limited the max scroll distance the camera can move away from the map.
- Farms: Crop types now rotate upon every harvest.
- Balancing: Made positive events, negative events, and quests occur more often.
- Balancing: Added villager emigration random event if starvation is present (if food drops below 0).
- Balancing: Increase how often villagers will lose faith and fear.
- Balancing: Decreased the villager birth rate slightly.
- Balanced: Villagers may now lose their faith if it is at or below 20.
- Balancing: Decreased the base and accelerated construction speed of all buildings.
- Balancing: Increased willpower cost of Smite to 1000 WP.
- Balancing: Increased willpower cost of Rain to 1500 WP.
- Balancing: Increased willpower cost of Place Trees to 2500 WP.
- Balancing: Increased willpower cost of Place Stone to 3000 WP.
- Balancing: Increased willpower cost of Meteor to 4000 WP.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug where villagers would spawn in mountains and go flying.
- Fixed food consumption exploit where if a player had a ranch or kitchen, the food would never drop below the daily production rate of that facility.
- Fixed camera bug where zooming in and out beyond the max zoom in and out limits would cause odd zooming behavior and temporarily freeze camera zoom functionality.
- Fixed bug where certain icons, such as the firefighting, cat herd, and locust icons would still appear if they were created after the “show icons” toggle is disabled.
- Fixed bug where cat herds and locust swarms would not be destroyed after their age exceeded their age limit.
- Fixed bug where workplaces would animate more employees than actually worked there.
- Fixed bug where willpower production per season was inaccurate due to the small and large temples' production timing. The small and large temples now produce willpower on a seasonal basis.
- Fixed bug where the shop and market would add their trade capacity before they finished construction.
- Fixed bug where you could place both the “Place Trees” and “Place Stone” powers could be used simultaneously.
- Fixed bug where randomized events would not begin after the tutorial is completed.
- Fixed bug where autosaving would “pause” the game, requiring a player to pause the game to reset the game speed.
- Fixed bug where inspection mode would not turn off by clicking the button after it’s been activated - it can now be turned off by right-clicking when enabled or by clicking the button again.
- Fixed bug in “New Game” world creation UI where input fields were multi-line - changed them to single-line.
- Fixed bug where building supports would not despawn if a building is being repaired and is destroyed during repair.
- All villagers will now only spawn on land, and will not use water tiles as walking destinations.
- Fixed bug during building placement where the UI would become locked and disabled if a player holds shift and right clicks to cancel the building placement.
- Fixed a major bug in the trading system: when a player bought or sold resources, those resources would not directly impact the storage capacity of the shop/market. This led to an exploit where saving and loading a game would reset the stored resources.
- Fixed bug in the Tech/Inspiration menu where the Accounting Science tech was not being disabled if the prerequisite techs were not yet unlocked.
- Fixed bug where the accounting center and other buildings would show a work radius when being placed, even though they did not have an area of effect impact.
- Fixed bug in the Tech/Inspiration menu where the category titles would not immediately update upon a language change.
- Fixed bug where the pressurized willpower well could be built without unlocking the “Pressurize Willpower Storage” inspiration.
- You can no longer demolish the Creostrider Plaza, which used to cause a game over and return to the main menu.
- Fixed trees from spawning on sand.
- Fixed bug where zooming the camera out too far would cut off the bottom of the map.