Hello,
another two weeks have passed and here we are mere moments from new update of Microcivilization demo.
Actually, I'm not sure how many moments it will be, still a few test runs need to be done to verify no regression issues have popped out and that the balancing feels OK-ish. But bear with me, it wont take more than a few days before you can try all the new stuff in the new Demo Update. Here's a little more on what's coming.
Ascension challenge
Demo is a vertical slice of the game right? This slice of the cake would be missing an essential layer of marmalde if it had no actual boss fight. To fix this I decided to include a very simplified version of a full game feature called Ascension challenge.
Ascension challenges are game mini-scenarios with special rules that will test your nation-building (and survival) abilities. In full game each challenge will be a gateway to the next difficulty tier (not in demo, we don't have difficulty tiers here) so it effectively works like a super-unique boss. The challenge I chose for demo is one of the oldest myths known to mankind - the Tower of Babel.
For simplicity's sake the challenge is replacing the original 'final technology' end of demo and so is currently your only way to finish the base game and reach ascension (The flow in full game will be slightly different). Also the Demo version of Babel tower is only a tiny version of how full game scenarios will be structured (simply put they will be longer).
The update also brings a few new fun ways to die, like the Storm Debuff, which amplifies all Crises temporarily, unblockable attacks, increased speed of crises when there are too many in queue and a few others.
World map update
as described in older posts, quest system has been upgraded to a more complex strategic feature as it not only allows you to voluntarily destroy your own kingdom in pursuit of wealth and neglecting risks, but it now also lets you expand your territory by 'improving' tiles. This can substantially boost your workshop production provided you're able to fight through the Crises.
Crises fought directly on the world map are now also level-scaled to the tile's level, not to your technology level (expect for risk-based crises - those are still tech-level based). With all these it introduces many new ways to integrate your expansion playstyle with your hero build and workshop choice. Demo has a size limit on the map and also some of Tile types will yet come in future.
Demo version of Ascension Tree
I've removed the old teaser mockup version of the ascension tree and replaced with a more pragmatic version of demo tree that you can actually unlock completely. Among the selection are damage boosts, resource production boosts or starting gold boosts. All of them tiered to several levels, in case you feel like grinding.
Now, it's important to say that this is not how full game tree will look like and so the overall look of the ascension will change in future updates so that the both full and demo tree are somewhat similar in structure (just with most nodes locked in demo).
Rebalance and UX changes
A number of items small and big has been fixed (appx 50 issues). The full list would be too long and probably more boring to read than to write it. But the main areas were these:
- Bonus stars
- New tutorials
- Music issues
- Graphical issues like 'black pies' or z levels
- Crashes during Social crisis not caused by research
- Persisting Score
- Warning indicators for things that seem easy to miss (mainly observed in Youtube streams)
- Difficulty balancing for Levels 8+
- Tweaking hero drops
- New merge recipes
What's next
The great news is that we have hit a 10,000 wishlist mark for Microcivilization a week ago. I'd like to thank each one of you for expressing interest in my game. That puts us in a relatively good momentum to reach a 'releasable' visibility (whatever that is) over next few months and allows me to now focus more on coding and artwork to prepare Early access for Q4.
First part will be closing down all 'material' gaps in Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial and Modern eras. A number of sprites need to be finished and a few promotional features (like the steam train!) fully integrated with the game so that the 'visual experience' is completed.
That will not only make a beta branch somewhat playable, but will also allow me to make a new update of Trailer, store page screenshots and all materials that have grown old since November when I opened the store page. It's a bit of tedious work but unfortunately necessary. That said I do plan to release a few minor updates to the Demo still in the following month. Not just because of bugfixes but also to introduce a few small content features.
That's all for this time. In case you run into issues, please use discord bug reporting thread to notify me, or email me directly at [email protected]
Cheers,
Ondrej