Hello everyone,
Six months ago I released the demo. Since then I've received a lot of important feedback from players and I'm truly grateful for all of it. Your feedback has improved the game tremendously and I can't wait for all of you to play the prologue and see for yourselves. Now let's get into the changes.
1. In Game Phone
This has to be the biggest change. All UI now routes through the phone. Your character has a phone in the prison and you can use it to call your gang members, read messages, and access other important information. No more annoying popups. You'll get messages directly whenever there are opportunities or literally anything worth knowing. Best part? It is smartly woven into the gameplay. As you can see in the gif, you're smoking while still using the phone. It just feels natural.
2. Autocranking Feature
All crafting machines now have an autocranking feature. You don't have to wait and manually crank to mix ingredients. You can let it crank while you go do something else. All six machines share a common power source so there's a power limit too. It is up to you how you distribute it.
3. Drones
I've completely redone the way policing works. Cops won't come inside the prison wings anymore. They will only patrol the yard. But the biggest change here is the introduction of drones. Drones will notice any suspicious activity and notify the cops. Not only that, they also have thermal sensors, so when you try to smuggle raw ingredients or make dead drop deliveries, if you have too much weight in the laundry sack they become suspicious. Think of it as a cat and mouse game.
4. Crafting Overhaul
Crafting has also changed a lot. The mistake I made with the early version is that I forced players to find recipes to make the best product possible, but I forgot... you're in prison, not a pharmacy. Each ingredient now adds some type of tell, good or bad. Your goal is to mask the bad tells using the right recipe proportions.
5. Trading
Trading has also changed significantly. It now detects context based options and presents them to the player. No more spreadsheet style UI. It gives you much more control. All responses are based on the prisoner's psychological profile, which plays a bigger role now.
6. Dead Drops
The game now has dead drops. When you buy anything from smugglers, they'll put it in the storage building. You need to go there with a laundry bag, pick it up, and store it in the stash room. Same goes for bulk orders. You need to manually make deliveries to the locker room area of each prison wing.
7. Lockpicking
There's now a lockpicking minigame too. If you want to steal something from other prisoners or plant something illegal in their cell, you can do just that. It's a unique and fun minigame. I'm sure you all are going to love it.
8. Loading Screens (Gone!)
I've removed the loading screen entirely after the game starts. If your PC is fast you will absolutely feel the difference. I've also improved general loading times by over 70%. I added a sally port style structure inside the prison that you pass through when moving between areas. To put it in numbers, the yard used to take over 30 seconds to load. Now it takes around 7 seconds.
9. Story Maker
This is the biggest change and I'm incredibly hyped about it. Think of it as an emergent story director that reacts to your actions in real time. For example, you made dead drop deliveries in C Wing. Tigers control C Wing. You didn't have a permit to sell your stuff there but you did it anyway. Now one of the Tigers saw what happened and sends you a message blackmailing you. You don't want to pay a 2x fine for selling illegally? Then you need to pay him 500 bucks, or he's telling the gang leader. What will you do? There are over 60 different events and they all sync up with each other. I'm sure you're going to love it.
There are still many more changes coming. I'm very hyped about it all because now I feel like the game is truly coming together.