Favours
The decision system has been implemented and I'm now in the process of creating the content for it. In this update I'll preview that, and the changes I want to make to the tutorial afterwards.
Think About
I've talked previously about plans for the "Decisions" system in the game: Various player actions have a chance of spawning a story snippet, that asks the player to choose between a number of options, each with various possible outcomes.
Which is a very dry way of saying that the Gods are now much more reactive to how you play, throwing you tricky conundrums which you need to respond to. I'm hoping this will make the game feel much more connected to the ancient Greek mythological theme and be a much more intuitive way of interacting with the Gods.
I've finally implemented this! I'm pretty happy with how it works, but it does mean I need to now go and write a whole bunch of story for the game, which is part of the reason I'm not releasing this feature just quite yet.
What Now?
However, I've noticed another problem with Critias Empire:
Some people don't know what to do...
This comes from me watching people play the game at live events, on youtube/let's plays, and is also hinted at in the analytics data recorded about how people play the game. I've known for a while that the game has a couple of problems for new players:
Firstly: There is often nothing to do from turn 2 to turn 4 or 5, as players use up all their stone in their first turn and then have to wait to collect enough stone to build another building.
In most strategy games, players can at least move some units around to explore the map during these very early parts of the game. Typically they'll get random rewards (a.k.a "goodie huts" for those familiar with the Civilization series) from things players find scattered about. which both feels like progress and then enables further decisions. Things such as where to send a newly spawned scout unit, or what to build with the hoard of materials pilfered from ancient ruins.
(As an aside: I think Humankind does this the best of all the 4X games I've played. It's Neolithic era is dynamic and interesting and has lots of fun decisions to make. It's a lot more than just picking a direction and sending the scout that way).
Since Critias Empire doesn't have units, and exploration doesn't work in the same way, I think players get confused and put off at not having anything to do - neither being asked by the game, nor being able to find something themselves.
I plan to use the decision system to get players over this hump and not only give them something to think about, but also give rewards/resources that then enable them to do more things in the following turns also.
And Why?
Secondly: The tutorial does not explain why players' choices are important (or why the tutorial is asking them to do something). It just teaches them how to do various things. For some, that's fine because they enjoy figuring out stuff for themselves. But for others it fails to give them a sense of what to do immediately after they come off the tutorial rails. It also leaves players without an idea of what their short and medium term goals should be.
I always wanted to have a more sophisticated tutorial with gifs and multiple ways of explaining things, but I've realised the content of the current tutorial is also missing this "why" element.
And So
My plan, after creating the initial batch of content/stories for the Decisions system, is to re-make the tutorial. There's a business priority here as well, which is that right now, the median demo play time is 14 minutes, and that's way shorter than it should be - A few people are playing much longer, which is great, but ultimately I want more people to really get stuck into the game and reach the later stages, then go on to wishlist the game. Not just get wiped out after the second disaster because they didn't really know what they were doing (as I've seen happen a few times).
Fortune
The last couple of months have been a bit strange. After going on holiday and unsuccessfully pitching my games to publishers at develop conference in Brighton, I first injured myself while running, then got covid, from which I've only recovered properly this week. I'm quite pleased with myself at merely having got back to doing some normal programming, with the Decisions system, after barely writing a line of code since some time in June!
I'll be at gamescom in Cologne next week, (so come say Hi if you're there also!) though I won't be showing Critias Empire except at a side event (Courage Cologne on Tuesday). Once I get back from that, expect another update some time in September, where hopefully I can talk about the tutorial changes and push the Decision system live / to the demo build.
In the meantime, any thoughts or feedback on the game or this update are most welcome, and you can always contact me on social media or leave a comment below!