Hello, This is Burak. Lead designer of Circadian City (CC)

Today I want to talk about our design decisions and where they come from. Before saying anything else, I think I have to mention that I'm a compulsive player of the genre and I have no shame :) You might think of this post as a design manifesto but I will try to keep it as short as possible.

While working on CC, I've talked with hundreds of players of the genre and tried to understand what they like and they didn't like in those games. So I will also talk about player tastes a little as well.

Let me start with common features of the genre and what we've done in CC.

PLAYER METRICS

Most Life Sims have an energy metric for the PC but they all work in a different way. For example in Sims there are 6 different metrics and keeping them at the lowest point for a long time ends up killing your character. It's a bit weird but it gives the game a "sense of urgency"

In Stardew Valley (SDV), the energy is there but it also works as hunger, you can top it up by eating and no matter what you do you need to be in the bed before 2 AM or you lose money and items. When the energy bar is low you can't do most of the actions. There is also a health metric to keep track of when you go to mines. They all help create some sort of "soft tension" in the game.

In Graveyard Keeper (GK), the energy works similarly to SDV, you can fill it by eating and when you go slashing creatures your health metric becomes visible as well. But there is no end of the day. You can work 24h until your energy is used so much that eating won't save the day so you go to sleep for an hour and come back. Normally I would say this would create a lack of sense of urgency in the game but game progress and quest dynamics make GK a unique and a bit stressed game I believe.

Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH) stands out in the genre by not using any visible metrics for the player, not even the energy bar. The game goes by in real time, so your character sleeps when you do. There is no way to pass the time forward in a faster way and there is no sense of urgency at all. Players preffering a really chill and casual play prefer ACNH over the others.

Rimworld, although a colony management game is using player metrics in a different way. There are some tresholds on the metrics affecting the behavior of the characters. It inspired us to use the system in Circadian City. Each level of the metrics in CC puts the character in a different "state" and that state has some outcomes.

In CC we have 5 different metrics for the day time and 1 metric for the dreamworld that works as energy. In the early days of the design, energy and hunger were vital stats and when they reached 0 player was passing out and player were losing some money, interests and friendships. Later on we found this was a bit too hars so we removed this from the game. We locked some of the actions of the character when these metrics are low and everything works as normal.

We also introduced stress, motivation and happiness to the game that have various effects on the game depending on their level. These metrics start becoming important when the player progresses in the game. Motivation helps the character to use time more effectively and happiness dictates the quality of life and work in general. Stress on the other hand have effects in the dreamworld and slows down the personality progress.

CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION AND CAREER PATHS

Having a character customization panel in the beginning of the game is a nice feature to have. Sims, being an AAA title have great options on that front. Animal Crossing and Stardew are doing ok and Graveyard Keeper lacks that function totally. In CC we will have a panel and it will include a few options as well.

The main fun though is within the game, when you start picking careers and start customizing your farm & house. Sims, again have incredible options when it comes to customize the house of your character and also have very different careers in the game you can follow. You pick some personality traits for your character and you can play as a casanova, a hardworking scientist or a game addict sitting at home most of the time. It's truly sandbox gameplay with tons of options and every new DLC is adding a lot to the base game. That gives the game a huge replayability bonus.

SDV on the other hand is another great example. You can customize your house to some extent but you can also customize your farm and it gives a lot of freedom wether you want to play the game as a fisherman, a miner, a farmer or an artisan. This also changes the gameplay as well. So lots of replayability again.

ACNH have a catalogue as large as Sims when it comes to decorations and customizing your house. There are lots of special events in the game and from each event you can collect some items to further customize your character & house.

In Circadian City we will have a single career path in the game in the beginning of the game. During Early Access we want to add the option of leaving work and starting a new career. We have a few career in mind but we want to discuss this with players before adding them.

The character customization in CC is the personality part. Player can choose personality paths based on the Briggs-Myers system. Introvert/Extrovert, Feeling/Thinking, Judging/Prospecting and Intuitive/Observant . These choices affect how the player can earn motivation, happiness and what stresses their character.

You can't do much for your home in the realworld but you can customize your dreamworld quite a bit. We also want to enlarge the dreamworld by adding biomes (procedurally generated islands that work like mines in Stardew Valley) during the Early Access.

FRIENDSHIP & ROMANCE & QUESTS

I really like the heart events of Stardew Valley. They make the characters very real and its great content. On the other hand the way we earn friendship with NPC's is a bit weird. Giving them gifts and completing some random daily quests is the only way of earning hearts. Friendship might turn to romance and marriage in the end. But most of the time friendship is there only for roleplaying reasons.

Graveyard Keeper relies on quests as well to improve friendships. Some of those NPC's show up only once a week and the days prior that they arrive makes the player speedrun their quests. It's fun for some players but also a burden for many. I enjoyed it to be honest. Progress in the game is related to friendships as well.

In Sims NPC's don't give quests but the player character has its own "inner quests" once they befriend or romancing another character. Some content becomes available, like inviting your friends or giving a party once you have friends. Also your "social" metric depends on time spent with other people. So it's a necessary feature for the game.

In Circadian City, this is one of the areas we've gone a little wild. As the designer I'm both proud and also anxious about our way of gaining friendships.

You can gain friendship by chatting with NPC's in the game. But if you don't have shared interests, this gives almost no friendship points. Most of the NPC's have 4 interests they like and 2 interests they hate. If you advance in the areas they like you gain friendship much faster and if you have some interests they hate your progress with them slows down. There are 26 different interests and you need to spend either time or money to advance in those.

It's up to the player to pick their friends strategically or just for roleplaying reasons but you can't friend everyone (because of negative interests) and every NPC unlocks different items in the dreamworld.

There are tresholds in the friendships and to pass those tresholds you need to complete a specific scripted quest for that NPC.

There are more than 50 unique NPC in the game and we want to add more during the Early Access. Some of them are bachelor so you can romance them according to their gender preferences.

STORY & GAME PROGRESS

Graveyard Keeper has the most scripted story among those I played and Sims is the most sandbox one without story at all. In that sense, GK is the only game with an "ending" but it still lets you keep playing instead of ending the game.

SDV has a clear story progression wether you choose the Joja Markt path or the Community Center (which 99% of the players choose I believe and hope) but it doesn't show you an ending whatsoever. Each NPC final heart event feels like an end of that storyline and satisfies the player a lot from a storydriven perspective.

In Circadian City, there is huge amount of written content but story bits are everywhere in the game and we can't talk about a "main story". Although, once the player advances in their personality and chooses their ultimate personality type, they unlock a "life goal" event that feels like the ending of the game in a sense.

In the beginning of Early Access we only have one life goal but we want to add a new life goal for each of the 16 personality types later on.

I hope you enjoyed this comparison with other life sims and if there is interest I might write more about it in the future.