Hello Citizens,
RELEASE TIMING
This is Burak, the lead designer of Circadian City. Our team is putting up an incredible effort while we're trying to make Circadian City ready for our Early Access release.
We are going to PAX East between February 27 and March 1, 2020. It will be our last public appearance before the release of the game. Although we are still avoiding to set a hard date for release, I can say it won't be much further after PAX East.
This is also your chance to playtest the game before the release and tell us about your ideas on how to improve the game. We will iterate Circadian City a million times after Early Access with feedbacks coming from the community, and that chance has already started.
We have a closed alpha going, and we're aiming to make the game playable for alpha testers by next Friday (January 24). You can follow the states of the game from our public Trello boards
HOW YOU CAN BE PART OF THE DESIGN
I have to say a few words about my design perspective. I'm a stubborn guy sometimes, but when it comes to Circadian City, I want everyone in our team and in our community (and the wall is quite thin in between them) to participate in the design process.
This doesn't mean I let every new idea in the game and implement them right away, but I listen to every feedback and try my best to implement new ideas with the best of my effort if it's possible. If it's not, I try to spend enough time to explain to you why it can't be made (it can be something technically not possible, or it might break some other mechanics already implemented, or it can breach the rules of our publisher) until we agree. I have never used my privilege to say, "I want this to be done this way" so far and hoping to avoid it in the future as well.
Join our Discord Server, and I'll be available to chat with you for the most time of the day.
Hoping to see you all join us in making Circadian City the best life sim game ever made.
INTRODUCTION TO GAME SYSTEMS
Interests and Friendship
Continued from the August Update post
I mentioned that we're going to look at the interest system in the game, and it is one of the areas that make Circadian City unique in terms of gameplay.
After the latest changes, there are 25 interest areas where you can improve. Currently, they don't all have unique gameplays (some of them do), but we're hoping to add new interactions for each of them during Early Access.
Every NPC in the game has four liked interest, and two disliked interest.
The rate you are gaining friendship with other people depends on your shared interests with them.
There are three interest levels for your character and three friendship levels for each NPC. If you share similar interests, time spent together with that NPC quickly boosts your friendship.
Interests and friendships decay in time, so you need to choose your interests and friends carefully. You can't befriend everyone in the game, and it's one of the core feautres that makes Circadian City what it is.
The cool and unique part is, every NPC unlocks some new items in your dream world. So you need to pick some interests that will allow you to befriend the NPC you want to unlock these items. You can have a few close friends in the game, and being close friends with someone will enable you to have access to powerful and unique items.
There are tons of different strategies in terms of interests and friendship. Should you go for many interests, making your character to have two negative interests from many people but also allow you to have lots of casual friends? Or should you go for some selected interests that would target a few NPC, become their close friend quickly, and reach those powerful items in the dreamworld? What about the synergies of those items in between them and with your personality type?
Having different solid playstyles is essential in Circadian City, and we will balance those paths together with you during Early Access.
DESIGN UPDATES
When we talked about the moods & states in the game, there were sub-moods in the game. Like, the hunger was made of fullness and nutrition, and the total of those two sub-moods was giving you the final mood score. We removed this from the game. It was complicating things too much, and we can implement some hidden moods instead that's even a cooler feature, I believe.
So if you start eating veggies, you develop your vegan state in time. This is not a mood on its own, but the state has its own benefits and problems. Or if you are hitting the gym 3-4 days in a week, you develop a "fit state." You can become a coffee or sugar addict in the same way.
We also changed the name of "Social" mood to "Motivation." The game allows introvert characters, and they can increase their motivation while watching movies or playing games instead of socializing. This was something requested from the Discord community, and it made sense right away.
Motivation is also affected by the dream world. We improved the link between the Dream World and the Real World. Stress is harnessed in the real world and changes both worlds. Motivation is harnessed in both worlds and affects the real world.
Some other minor changes are happening all the time, and as the game is not public yet, there is no meaning to list all of them in this post. But when the game is released, we will be publishing "Circadian City Post" once in two weeks to share with you all the design updates.