Hello all, it's Cassel, developer of .
This month, we focused extensively on the Shaman Leader theme. Finally, with the content now complete enough to share, I am excited to present it in this development diary.
As briefly mentioned in Development Diary #32, the Shaman theme involved discussions around various ideas. Deciding how to implement these ideas in an engaging way, and determining the direction and objectives for development, was no easy task. In particular, given the diverse perspectives held by both the development team and players regarding religion, it required a careful approach to integrate and balance all these ideas within the constraints of limited development time.
Regrettably, this also meant making difficult decisions to set aside some of the more compelling concepts. Before diving in, I want to sincerely thank everyone who shared their thoughts on the religious theme. Now, let me formally introduce the Shaman theme to you all.
Religion System
With the Shaman update, Ratizens who follow specific religions gain additional abilities. While the Scientist content focused on using structures to efficiently develop the city, the Shaman content centers around utilizing Ratizens to drive the city’s growth. As a result, the key to this theme lies in managing paths, schedules, and spaces to ensure that more Ratizens can adopt a religion.
The planning process for the Shaman theme was not without its challenges, as the variety of experiences we wanted to offer made the journey anything but smooth. Numerous requests to adjust the direction required us to clarify the specific experiences we wanted to deliver before moving forward. After careful deliberation, we established the following objectives for the Shaman theme:
- Incorporate elements that utilize deceased Ratizens
- Make the process of forming religions more engaging than simply completing them
- Design systems that are easy to understand (though we often feel like we fall short...)
- Enhance space management and Ratizen control mechanics
- Provide a unique experience through new mechanisms
- Enable creative applications through existing systems
- Offer players a variety of choices
In hindsight, these goals may seem overly ambitious. However, we felt that such challenges were necessary to ensure the theme update’s quality. Furthermore, rather than confining everything into a single religion, we decided it would be more enjoyable to split the content across two distinct religions. This approach allows for potential additions like religious inclusivity and conflict, making management even more engaging for players.
The basic progression in the Shaman theme is as follows:
Once the Shaman Desk is researched and constructed in your city, you can build the initial conversion structures for the Umbran and Purgon religions. When a Ratizen is assigned to a conversion structure, they will begin converting other Ratizens to their religion. However, since a Ratizen’s religious devotion is limited in time, mechanisms must be in place to ensure followers do not lose their faith.
As the number of maintained followers increases, additional religious structures and doctrinal bonuses are unlocked. These unlocked structures provide more opportunities to convert additional followers. The doctrinal bonuses include both positive and negative effects, requiring players to make careful choices. Furthermore, as the religion advances in stages, the city is at greater risk of facing crises, making balanced management essential.
After navigating these processes, you can fill your city with religious Ratizens and construct the Shaman Monument to achieve victory.
A richer religious tech tree.
Each religion has its own unique strengths and characteristics, and it’s possible to develop both simultaneously. While this approach offers optimal efficiency, it comes with slower growth and a higher level of management difficulty. As such, it can be an engaging challenge for experienced players or those managing a sufficiently stable city.
Now, let’s dive into the details of the Umbran religion. Initially, we planned to cover both religions in this diary, but as we began writing, the volume grew larger than expected. As a result, we’ll cover the Purgon religion in the next development diary. Thank you for your understanding, and for this diary, we’ll focus on the unique appeal and systems of the Umbran religion!
Umbran
The Umbran religion is a cult that worships darkness and harnesses the souls of living beings to perform shamanic rituals. Ratizens who witness its supernatural rituals or are inspired by its ominous idols become enthralled by the Umbran faith.
When Umbran structures are constructed, souls are generated whenever Ratizens, animals, or enemies die. These souls enhance the efficiency of Umbran structures, allowing the influence of the Umbran religion to spread throughout the city. As you research the Umbran religion, you’ll unlock mechanisms that generate even more souls, further amplifying its power and reach.
Conversion to the Umbran faith accelerates with each soul generated.
Initially, we designed souls to directly affect Ratizens who follow the Umbran religion rather than its structures. However, this approach risked becoming overly efficient as the number of Umbran followers increased. Conversely, reducing the effectiveness of souls made them significantly less appealing during the early stages of gameplay when soul generation is limited.
To address this, we restricted the use of souls to specific Umbran structures, ensuring that only select buildings could benefit significantly from the power of souls. This adjustment not only enhanced the distinctly religious atmosphere of the Umbran faith but also provided clearer feedback to players about the impact of soul generation.
On the flip side, this change restricted the utility of souls to a limited number of Umbran buildings. This felt disproportionate to the effort required to generate souls, as their influence seemed too minimal. To counterbalance this, we expanded the functionality of soul-utilizing Umbran structures by allowing them to provide bonuses to nearby Ratizens. This adjustment ensured that the effects of souls could influence the entire city more broadly.
The Ritual Cavern replenishes the stamina of weary Ratizens. These guys... were good guys?!
The process of increasing followers of the Umbran faith is relatively straightforward compared to the Purgon faith. By increasing the supply of souls to boost the efficiency of the basic conversion building, the Sanctum, or by constructing one of the five Umbran idols around the city, you can steadily grow your congregation.
Conversion system through the idols were added because simply enhancing the efficiency of the Sanctum felt a bit monotonous. Each idol has unique effects within its range, converting Ratizens without a religion during specific activities such as sleeping or eating. For Ratizens already following the Umbran faith, the idols help maintain their devotion.
To enhance clarity, each idol incorporates the animal motifs of existing shrines.
The five idols of the Umbran faith are unlocked progressively as the religion’s rank increases. This was designed to prevent an explosive growth in followers due to the idols’ probabilistic conversion effects and to let players experience the gradual process of expanding their congregation alongside the development of their city. In short, we wanted players to consistently and strategically think about how to grow their followers step by step.
Once converted, Umbran followers undergo attribute changes depending on the doctrines they follow. As the number of followers increases and the religion’s rank rises, these doctrines become more powerful. The doctrines of the Umbran faith offer significant bonuses, such as greatly enhancing the growth rate and work efficiency of followers. However, these benefits come with downsides, such as increased craving for joy and a higher propensity to commit crimes. Most importantly, converted followers gain the ability to be assigned to Umbran buildings.
There is an exception for the Sanctum, the first Umbran conversion building. Since it operates by assigning Ratizens, even unconverted Ratizens can be placed in the Sanctum, and they are converted upon assignment. This was a deliberate design to prevent situations where the absence of followers would completely block progress in religious content.
However, this exception led to unintended scenarios. Leaders could repeatedly assign and unassign Ratizens to the Sanctum, effectively forcing conversions and artificially inflating the number of followers—a method that went against the design’s intentions.
To address this issue, we've rolled back the exception, and implemented a system where Umbran followers could naturally emerge through city entrances or specific events if no followers currently existed in the city. This approach felt much more organic and aligned with the game’s design goals.
Another problem arose due to the restriction that only Umbran followers could be assigned to Umbran buildings. When a follower lost their faith, they would lose their job as well, becoming unemployed and idle.
Even during a performance, Owen suddenly quits his job. Is he fleeing from reality after realizing the truth?
The inclusion of probabilistic elements in the process of converting and maintaining specific Ratizens as followers made these situations nearly unavoidable, even with meticulous city planning. This created inconvenience and dissatisfaction, particularly among players who preferred automation and stability. Players were often left thinking, “It doesn’t matter who gets assigned!” and would either randomly place any available follower or wait for new Ratizens to convert if replacements were unavailable.
To alleviate this issue, we considered applying the automatic assignment feature from beds to the Umbran buildings. If unemployed Umbran Ratizens were available, they could be automatically assigned to buildings. However, this method frequently resulted in unintended assignments, forcing players to fix inefficient placements, which only added to the frustration.
Ultimately, we addressed the problem by designing the system so that Ratizens assigned to Umbran buildings would maintain their faith, making job continuity predictable for assigned followers. While this appeared to solve the issue of unassignments, it introduced the potential for a new problem: players constructing large numbers of Umbran buildings to artificially sustain their follower count.
To prevent this exploit, we reviewed the possibility of limiting the number of each building that could be constructed. However, imposing such limits risks restricting player freedom, making it critical to find a balanced level of limitation. A system where construction caps are gradually lifted as the religion’s rank increases seems appropriate, but since this requires additional development work, we plan to observe the situation without implementing caps for now. Hopefully, building a large number of structures to compensate for a lack of followers will prove to be an unnecessary concern.
What’s the point of the Umbran if we can’t operate a massive army of necromancers?
To construct Umbran buildings, players must produce exclusive resources: "Scrolls" and "Grimoires". These resources can only be produced at the "Spirit Workshop", an Umbran-exclusive production building, which requires higher workload and longer work hours compared to other resources. However, since the Spirit Workshop is a building that increases efficiency with the use of souls, players are encouraged to think about ways to increase soul generation if the production speed feels insufficient.
The purpose of introducing this production chain was to regulate the expansion speed of the religion, preventing it from becoming excessively rapid, while ensuring that players don’t feel bored during the expansion process. Given the simplicity of the Umbran conversion mechanics, players who had already secured enough resources and sources of souls could easily expand their religion simply by building idols and waiting. By adding continuous steps through a production chain, we aimed to enhance the experience of being a leader devoted to fostering a religion, making the gameplay more engaging than just passively waiting for growth.
To ensure smooth production, the leader goes on patrol once again.
The issue was that these resources, once produced, were used solely for construction and then left unused. It was necessary to create additional ways to continuously utilize these resources even after building Umbran structures. With this in mind, we devised ways to make these hard-to-produce resources provide ongoing bonuses. For instance, we considered adding features like rituals that offer consistent benefits to Umbran followers or the ability to permanently modify the characteristics of Ratizens.
Let’s "Normalize" Ratizen characteristics through soul remodeling!
The feature to modify characteristics was intended to consume not only Grimoires but also accumulated souls. This was aimed at expanding the usage of Umbran-exclusive resources and diversifying how souls could be utilized. However, due to difficulties in implementing a system that consumed both Grimoires and souls simultaneously, we ultimately decided to create a building that only consumed souls.
With the limited use cases for Umbran-exclusive resources, it became clear that more diverse buildings were needed. However, since we also needed to work on the Sanctus, we could only add a few basic structures for now. Even after the Shaman update is released, we plan to continue updating this theme. If you have ideas for additional buildings or features, please feel free to share them with us—we’ll gladly consider them!
In addition, we’ve developed various elements tied to Umbran rituals, including new leader equipment, milestones, and events. We hope you enjoy the Shaman update, which is set to release in mid-January. Wishing you all a happy New Year, and may 2025 be a year full of health and happiness for everyone!