We are finally ready to release a new version of the Myriads: Renaissance demo! This version focuses on the onboarding and, in general, on the way to teach the game mechanics to the player.
New tutorial:
After we released our demo in September, we received a lot of feedback saying that it’s hard to understand the game mechanics including the shard addition or the colonisation. Hence, in the last months we worked hard remaking the tutorial from scratch. As we have already announced we decided to add a new quest system to help the player going through the game. However while adding the new quests, we realized that we needed to guide the player more, at least during the first few turns. We took the Civ6 tutorial as a reference and we made a step by step tutorial (build a farm, end your first turn, change the game view, …). As an example, here is a short video focusing on the fight which will take place during the second turn.
We really hope that this brand new tutorial will help the players understand what Myriads: Renaissance is about: the lack of space on the capital island and the various ways to deal with it (adding shards or the exploitation colonies for instance).
However, for this update, we did not only work on the tutorial. Here is a list of all the important changes we’ve made to the game, from new GUI features to the way we deal with the raiders and the game over.
Other major changes:
*The player will now get 2 citizens at start instead of one. As suggested by some of your feedback, this will help the player settle faster, especially in the event that he does not build a farm early enough.
*Ships now have 3 movement points instead of 2 making lighthouses more effective, even when the player built only one.
*The starting capital island size has been decreased from 15 tiles to 12 tiles (3 wetlands, 3 forests and 7 mountains). The starting maximum island size remains 15. In addition, we’ve added a “Add shard” quest which, on acceptance, gives a free Tug and starts a short tutorial (if enabled). That way the player is able to (and feel the need to) extend his capital island much earlier in the game.
*Towers now deal 60 damage to enemies’ health and cost 50 gold per turn.
*Raids no longer increase the threat (ie. the level of the enemies) but instead deal damage to the colony they are raiding. When the colony life reaches 0, the colony is destroyed and the player loses control over the full archipelago. In the case of the capital island, if its life reaches 0, the player will face a game over. As a consequence, even if the player ends up being heavily raided, it does not mean the enemy will get stronger and stronger, effectively reaching a game over without the game telling it so (as we observed during some playthrough). Instead, the colony will be simply destroyed, which is a simple step back telling the player “it was too soon, try again when you are more prepared”.
*We now print the path the corsairs will use to raid the colonies. It will help the player decide where to place his defense towers.
*Going under 0 Gold no longer causes a game over. Instead random regiments are disbanded until the Gold balance is restored. If no regiment can be found, random galleons are destroyed. If no galleon can be found, random towers are destroyed.
New features for the understanding of game mechanics:
*New GUI elements to help the player manage his capital island's population showing occupied and available house spots.
*New GUI elements to help the player understand why he can't add a shard to his capital island.
*Tooltip explaining why the player can't place a building on a tile. This was one of your requests.
*Most buttons now have a tooltip to explain what the button is about.
And also:
*Production cost tweaking.
*Reverse camera rotation option
*Help button for most game panels opening a dedicated help panel.
*New help panels
*The camera now focuses on interesting events during the enemy’s turn
*New world-map background. Circles were added around the wind rose to help the player get his bearing on the map.
*New controls, another of your requests. Controls are now based on the Total War games. Left click to select, Left click on an empty space to close the current window/selection, Right click when an army is selected to move/attack/exchange troops. Construction mode on Capital island remains the same and is based on city-builders: Right click to build, Left click to unselect the building/exit the construction mode.
Note that previous save files will be lost.
We really hope that all the changes we’ve made will help the players to better understand what our game is about. Now that the tutorial update is finally pushed, we will start working again on the mid and late game. We’ve actually prepared another news article explaining more in detail where we are and what we plan for the future. We will post it in a few days.
In the meantime, you can still follow us on twitter for more frequent news: @MyriadsRGame. We oftenly tweet about the progress we make in development.
If you did not try the demo yet and are interested in: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1737220/Myriads_Renaissance/
Any feedback is welcome, don’t hesitate to leave a comment on our steam community hub https://steamcommunity.com/app/1737220/discussions/.
And if you liked the demo, please wishlist our game!