It is with great pleasure that I present to you an update to the Builders of Egypt game, bringing with it a number of expected changes, as well as some that no one expected, but were worth adding to the game.
You'll be able to see all these changes for yourself:
- this Saturday [16.12.2023] at 6:00 CET when the patch will be rolled out
- this Saturday [16.12.2023] at 3:00 CET on Steam and Twitch, where you'll be able to watch Emi once again as she takes on the new challenges!
Twitch -> official Twitch channel
If you want to know more about the full version and the expected release date of the game, scroll down. Without further ado, here is the presentation of the changes!
Note that I'm mainly comparing the changes to this year's [Playtest], which I'll refer to as such, but I'll also mention [Prologue], which I'll refer to as such, and for which the list of changes is particularly relevant.
1. [Prologue] New map and major revisions to the 1st and 2nd maps.
There is a new third map where you will face more challenges. There are new buildings and the ability to use them to satisfy parameters that did not affect the game in previous missions. You may also find that the police station finally has a sense of existence in this game.
2. [Playtest]&[Prologue] Scripted Events.
Scripted main events have appeared in which there are various tasks to complete. Usually these will involve delivering or collecting products, but in later missions where more mechanics are revealed, things get a lot more interesting.
What do scripted events mean? Firstly, they will not always appear during the game. Sometimes the player has to "overdo it" [annoy Pharaoh and you'll quickly see what I'm writing about here] to trigger an event or reach the appropriate level of city development.
When such an event is triggered, it must be completed to complete the mission. Completed does not mean successful, an event can just as easily fail and then it is also completed. And what effect this has on the rest of the game you will find out in the full version!
3. [Playtest]&[Prologue] Side Quests.
An all-new feature that makes waiting for various events or mission completion more polite. From time to time, a person in town will ask the player for the location of a person or item. As you progress through each mission, the variety of tasks increases significantly. In other words, almost every building has a quest associated with it, which can be triggered at different times. These tasks are not mandatory, but they can provide tangible benefits, sometimes disproportionate to the task at hand 😊
4. [Playtest]&[Prologue] UI changes.
A big problem was understanding what was actually happening to the city and what was affecting the changing parameters. From now on, all parameters of the city will be additionally described, but most importantly they will have their own graph. On the basis of such a graph, it is possible to estimate the trend of changes in a particular parameter. Each resource also has a graph showing how much of the resource has been stored, bought and sold, so you can see what has happened to a particular resource over time.
The second major change to the interface is the ability to change important mission parameters. It is now possible to turn off fires completely, or to turn off Desirability - the rating of neighbouring buildings by houses. The latter feature has been a major point of contention in discussions about its legitimacy or how it works. It has been corrected and better presented in the House tab.
The same goes for the Sentiment parameter - it was previously presented in a very obvious way, which has now changed. Of course, in addition to the hints that appear, the house itself will tell you why it doesn't want to raise its level or why people are fleeing. The inhabitants themselves will also have more to say.
5. [Prologue] Advanced Tutorial.
Most of you will already be familiar with this, but for Prologue players it will be something of a novelty - in Missions 2 and 3 you will be able to complete an additional tutorial that explains how to complete the mission and solve the problems that await the player in general. This tutorial, unlike what you saw in Mission 01, allows some freedom in planning the construction of individual buildings, while also explaining the super-important relationship between buildings, especially between Production Buildings and Stockpiles.
6. [Prologue] Adding voice actors.
Seemingly nothing, and somehow it made loading missions more enjoyable. Still no matter that the huge text is assimilated faster, but reading the text is not mandatory and out of respect for the history of Ancient Egypt we could not write less there than you see yourself 😉
7. [Playtest] Restoration of language versions.
Some of you accidentally discovered that the blocked language versions can be bypassed using Prologue. Unfortunately, the effect of this was that the game then was partly in English and partly in the language of your choice. We are now restoring all languages. The quality of the translations has been improved but it is still not perfect, and sometimes probably far from the ideal we would like to achieve. Quite a few errors have been corrected, especially inconsistencies between building names and, for example, commands in the tutorial. No less professional translations and additional proofreading at a level we can find in AAA games is costing 1/3 of the total BoE budget, which, to say the least, we can't afford.
In view of this, if you see a glaring translation error - let us know! I now have a total content lock and a dedicated person to implement all corrections, so any corrections will go much faster than it was before.
8. Builders of Egypt release.
A few words about the current state of Builders of Egypt and its expected release. After longer than planned testing of the Prologue update that this post is about, I'm left with a few tweaks to the code, and the whole game will be handed over to PlayWay QA for testing and tweaking. This means that realistically we are about 3 months away from release. This is subject to change as testing all 39 missions is difficult to estimate.
Take care!
Jacek
https://discord.gg/mhT7sqHKk3