The Power of Willpower
Hey there Creostriders! I'm excited to bring you Creo God Simulator's newest update: The Willpower Update! This newest update introduces several new game mechanics to Creo, specifically regarding the willpower resource and how it is managed/obtained. It also adds a few new buildings and other small improvements that I'll cover in this post.
The Prayer System
Yes, you read that right—your villagers can now have prayers that you're capable of answering. As a Creostrider, your goal is to help improve the lives of all the inhabitants of your town and Creo, and one of the greatest ways to do that is by helping answer the burning desires of some of your villagers!
You can easily tell which villagers have a prayer that needs answering by simply looking for a small blue flame above their heads: this indicates that they have a prayer in their hearts and are wanting an answer! Once you find someone with a prayer simply clicking on them will answer their prayer, and grant you with a randomized amount of willpower.
This mechanic has been added as a difficulty balancing aid in order to help you gain willpower faster while also keeping it random and not fully consistent—there may be times where many prayers will be available to answer, giving you plenty of free willpower, but there may also be times when barely anyone will have a prayer to answer!
Willpower Isn't Infinite!
I've been slowly developing the lore of the world of Creo—which I hope to one day formalize more into the gameplay itself—and I've come to realize that willpower is not some ethereal force that has no measure or value, rather, it is a physical force that must be conserved and used wisely.
On Creo, there is pure energy which the Gods have given mortals in order for them to reach them. This energy, when touched by a chosen mortal—known by many as a Creostrider—becomes obedient to the commands of the mortal, and can bend reality and perform incredible feats and miracles.
However, this energy we call willpower actually has a physical form: a light blue glowing liquid. Willpower being somewhat sentient must be contained within special structures that have been empowered and blessed to keep willpower in its place. These structures are simply referred to as willpower wells by many of the Creostriders before you. Though expensive, willpower wells are crucial in order to gain more willpower and unlock new technologies, powers, and continue on the quest to Godhood!
This all Sounds Cool, But Why?
A good friend of mine and playtester pointed out an extremely destructive exploit in the willpower system of the previous updates, in addition to helping see how the system was completely broken as you began to grow your city. We found that it was too easy to accrue the most important resource in the game, so I began thinking of a better way of balancing our special liquid power.
By making willpower a capacity-limited resource, and decreasing how often it is received from every second to every 16 seconds (or a season on Creo), it has become a much scarcer and more valuable resource. However, knowing how much more valuable it has become, I'm devising novel ways of being able to acquire willpower outside of just having your believers generate it.
I created the prayer system to be one solution to help balance it, but I plan on having other randomized events and situations that will give you willpower if handled correctly.
Overall, I believe that by making gradual improvements in balance and resource management, I can help Creo become a much more satisfying gaming experience, especially when you can create a successful and thriving city!
I'm excited to have many more people try Creo as of today, since the game is becoming free. I look forward to getting much more feedback on how we can improve the game, and how we can really create something special and fun. So please, leave reviews and reach out to me with helpful feedback and suggestions for what you would like to see in the game! And please let me know if you find any bugs or odd behaviors—I try my best to keep improving Creo as much as possible!
- Esteban
P.S. Here's a look at a new shop model I added in this update—I felt that the shops were all square, and we needed a long boi to balance things out.
Changes in this Update
Big Changes:
- Added willpower capacity mechanic - players now need to increase the capacity of willpower storage available to them by building physical willpower storage structures.
- Added villager prayer system - you can now click on villagers who have a prayer to answer their prayer for them. This will give you a randomized small amount of willpower between 20 and 100.
- Balance - Modified willpower system to accrue every season (16 days). Each follower generates 1 * (faith * 0.0025) willpower / season.
Small Changes:
- Integrated Steam API into main menu - will do more with this in later updates.
- Added tutorial section regarding the new prayer and willpower capacity system.
- Balance - Halved small and large temple's willpower production rate.
- Load slots now sort by most recent save to oldest.
- Added additional long shop model.
- Updated copyright year under MKSM company logo.
- Balance - Made it so only one instance of each power can be summoned at one time - this is to prevent power-spamming.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed bug where two instances of powers could be spawned at a time due to async issue in monitoring toggle.
- Updated town background sound to remove discernable words in Español.
- Fixed save slot rendering issue due to incorrect usage of sorting using Linq library.