Hello all, it's Cassel, developer of .
This time, following the previous installment, I’d like to introduce some details about the Purgon Order and share the challenges I faced during development.
The content is quite lengthy this time as well, so it might be a bit much for light reading.
That said, I’ll try to mix in some -style humor to keep things from feeling too heavy.
Purgon Order
The Purgon Order is a religious group that worships the sun, using Purifying Lilies that bloom from deceased Ratizens to summon spirits. In contrast to the secretive atmosphere of the Umbran Circle, the Purgon Order takes a more active approach to spreading their faith, drawing Ratizens to their Grand Temple and instilling belief in them. (No violence is involved.)
The conversion method of the Purgon Order was designed differently from the Umbran Circle to provide a distinct gameplay experience. Initially, I envisioned that a Ratizen appointed as the leader of the Purgon Order would directly approach other Ratizens to attempt conversions. However, as the city grew larger and Ratizens moved faster, this method often left the leader fruitlessly chasing after others.
Thus, the approach shifted to having Ratizens voluntarily visit the Grand Temple where the leader resides to become followers. This method appeared more straightforward compared to the Umbran Circle's way of secretly instilling religious beliefs into Ratizens near their idols.
One spot left in the Purgon Order. Ratizen #456, please come up!
However, using this approach meant I had to let go of several systems. Initially, I aimed to closely tie the conversion ability to the leader's skills, making the leader the central figure in the growth of the Purgon Order. I thought that by properly nurturing the leader and managing their movements efficiently, it would be easy to fill the city with followers of the Purgon Order.
If the Umbran Circle made it easier to secure followers by developing areas where Ratizens were concentrated, the Purgon Order took a different direction, focusing on specific individuals to secure followers more effectively.
However, this approach presented challenges when it came to having Ratizens visit the Grand Temple. After all, if Ratizens didn’t visit, no matter how exceptional the leader's abilities were, they wouldn’t have any visible impact.
Thus, I had to decide under what conditions Ratizens would visit the Grand Temple. However, it was difficult to determine this because there were very few conditions available for the Grand Temple.
For instance, making Ratizens visit when they lack specific needs like Joy or Hygiene, similar to other service buildings, could lead to strange strategic situations. For example, players might deliberately remove other service buildings to increase the number of Purgon Order followers.
Other ideas included conditions like low HP or low happiness, but these conditions faced the issue that Ratizens had limited means to fulfill them.
After much deliberation, I decided that Ratizens could visit the Grand Temple before starting their work. However, this condition and method, refined through changes from the initial concept, ultimately ended up being not much different from the Umbran Circle’s Sanctum.
To provide more distinction, I tried adding additional effects for Ratizens visiting the Grand Temple aside from conversion and significantly extended the time they spent using it. However, these adjustments only slightly altered the outcomes and didn’t fundamentally change the process.
Thus, the Grand Temple, the first building of the Purgon Order, was finalized as a feature that, unfortunately, left something to be desired in terms of differentiating the gameplay experience.
The mechanism for increasing the number of Purgons was designed to differentiate it from the Umbran Circle by using Purifying Lilies instead of souls. Purifying Lilies are a unique resource that grows in the Grave Garden, allowing the construction of more Purgon Order buildings and increasing the number of followers.
For novice leaders like myself, it's common to unintentionally create many corpses and graves while building a city. From the early stages of development, I wanted to find a way to make use of these graves instead of simply leaving them idle, tying them into the Shaman theme.
Initially, I envisioned a structure similar to the Sap Camp, where resources could be harvested near graves. In this system, Ratizens assigned to the building would collect resources from graves containing buried corpses at regular intervals.
Unfortunately, this design approach proved too complex to implement within the game, making it difficult to apply. After much deliberation, I came up with an alternative: the Grave Garden, a building that repurposes the existing Garden system.
The Grave Garden functions as a Garden where corpses can be buried, and Purifying Lilies only grow when there are buried corpses. This allowed me to achieve a similar effect to what I had originally intended.
I understand your desire to be helpful even in death!
Since Purifying Lilies require corpses, the difficulty of cultivating them was repeatedly adjusted to make it more manageable. Instead of planting Purifying Lily seeds directly, I decided to allow players to grow them by planting flower seeds. This change was made to prevent players from getting stuck if they couldn’t discover Purifying Lilies, the core resource of the Purgon Order.
I hoped that the Grave Garden would enable a city to recover in situations where many corpses had accumulated. After all, if corpses were overflowing throughout the city, it wouldn’t make sense for players to leave the city in search of Purifying Lilies.
Additionally, I addressed the issue where Purifying Lilies, being plants, would not grow during winter, halting the expansion of the Purgon Order in that season. To avoid forcing players to wait until winter passed, I made an exception: as long as a Grave Garden contained buried corpses, Purifying Lilies could still grow during winter.
Furthermore, I incorporated feedback to relax the conditions by allowing Purifying Lilies to grow slowly even without corpses. This adjustment ensured that players who managed their cities well wouldn’t feel compelled to "produce" corpses unnecessarily.
As the difficulty of cultivating Purifying Lilies was reduced, I became concerned about whether the original vision of utilizing corpses would be properly realized. Instead of players managing a few Grave Gardens efficiently by burying corpses in them, it became possible for them to build large-scale Grave Garden farms in a corner of the city and operate them without using any corpses.
To alleviate these concerns, it was necessary to introduce a mechanism to counter large-scale Grave Gardens. If Purifying Lilies were fully grown but left unharvested, a pest called the Feather Beetle would appear and start devouring the flowers.
This design ensured that operating large-scale Grave Gardens would require a proportional amount of labor, preventing the strategy of simply building massive Grave Gardens from becoming the definitive solution.
Beetles thriving on Purifying Lilies.
The Purifying Lilies produced in this way are processed in the Purification Workshop and used to construct various religious buildings. Among them, the Purification Center, which provides Hygiene to Ratizens lacking it while converting them to the Purgon Order at a certain probability, and the Chapel, where Purgon followers gather to replenish their faith, are the representative expansion buildings of the Purgon Order.
Prayer is the washing of the soul. Scrub away your worries and concerns like soap.
The Chapel is an unmanned building where nearby Purgon followers gather for worship at specific times. Initially, I envisioned it as a building where the leader would deliver sermons while followers gathered to worship. I felt that leaving out a scene of Ratizens gathering to praise, like in , would be a missed opportunity for this theme.
Systemically, I planned to utilize the existing bell tower mechanics to gather nearby followers and then apply specific effects to them.
However, buildings that require players to repeatedly use them to be effective didn’t align well with the essence of a management game. Increasing the interval to reduce the frequency of use made it important to provide clear guidance on when the building would become available, which in turn increased complexity.
As a result, it became necessary to separate the direct-use effects into a different building called the Podium. The Chapel was revised into a building where followers gather on their own and recharge their faith without requiring direct player interaction.
This week’s sermon topic is how to find a good romantic partner.
The methods for expanding the Purgon Order are not limited to buildings; there are also ways to utilize resources. For example, Ratizens without a religion can eat the Holy Supper produced in the Purification Workshop and convert to the Purgon Order. Additionally, Purgon followers can use essential items like the Dream Catcher and Relics to sustain their faith for a longer period.
However, producing these resources requires considerable effort, so the system was designed to require strategic spatial arrangements and policy adjustments to ensure they are effectively delivered to the intended targets.
Leader, the Umbrans are stealing all the Holy Supper! Declare a holy war!!
Additionally, there are ways to bring in Purgon followers from outside or even generate followers within the city. The Poorhouse is a building that supplies additional Purgon Ratizens, rapidly increasing the city’s population.
This building can be used to quickly restore a city filled with corpses due to disease or invasion. It can also be combined with the newly added Altar building to convert Ratizens into beneficial effects for the city. It’s a thoughtful building that fulfills both faith and practicality.
However, the Ratizens emerging from the Poorhouse start with nothing and cannot survive without care. This design goes beyond simply supplying Ratizens to the city, encouraging players to think about how to provide aid and support for them.
The Marriage Monument is a building that allows two Ratizens to marry and produce a child who inherits the traits and religion of the parents. However, since it takes time for the child to be born, expanding the Purgon Order through reproduction is not particularly efficient.
Marriage is not directly controlled by the player; instead, Ratizens who fall asleep near the Marriage Monument at the same time have a certain probability of forming a pair. This was designed to encourage players to think carefully about the placement of the Marriage Monument as they design their city.
If poorly planned, unexpected couples might form, leading to various amusing outcomes that could become lighthearted talking points.
Marrying an Umbran who snuck in? I oppose this marriage!
While marriage alone makes the Marriage Monument a sufficiently attractive feature, its primary purpose is citizen reproduction. Many players have long shared their thoughts on the reproduction system and trait combination mechanics, and with this update, I considered how to provide these systems in a natural way.
At the Marriage Monument, if there are married Ratizens, players can use the "Have a Child" button to obtain baby rats. While it might feel a bit unnatural that the birth rate depends on the leader's finger, this approach was necessary to prevent rats from reproducing infinitely, which could paralyze the city and the player’s computer.
Initially, I planned for baby rats to be generated as regular Ratizens, similar to how migrants are received, allowing them to start working immediately. While it would certainly be nice to add animations and events related to the growth of baby rats, I was concerned about the numerous bugs this might introduce.
Even if the baby rats were to grow, the growth period couldn’t be made too long, which meant the development efficiency wouldn’t be very high.
However, the idea of a rat with a bushy beard the size of its parents appearing with a "goo-goo" cry felt undeniably awkward. To add more charm and naturalness to the presentation, I decided to include a growth animation for baby rats.
Of course, fixing the many bugs that occurred during the baby rats’ growth period was no easy task, but in return, players would be able to enjoy the simple joy of watching their adorable baby rats grow.
A sad bug where baby rats could be conscripted or even start rebellions. Welcome, it’s your first time in Ratopia, isn’t it?
The Purgon Order offers far more diverse ways to expand their religion, to the point where the Umbran Circle might feel overshadowed. I think it’s necessary to consider adding more elements to address the potential dissatisfaction of Umbran followers.
The increased number of Purgons benefit from doctrine bonuses that specialize them in manual labor. Unlike the Umbran Circle, the Purgon Order's bonuses enhance Strength, Moving Speed, and Mining/Gathering Efficiency, encouraging players to choose religions that align more efficiently with their Ratizens’ occupational traits.
Additionally, the Purgon Order has buildings that enhance the combat abilities of Purgons, giving them advantages when serving as soldiers for hunting animals or defending against enemy invasions.
Using the Battle Totem makes soldiers’ attacks brutally powerful.
The Purgon Order’s soldier units were not newly developed since the Temple of War soldiers already matched the same theme. Instead, I decided to introduce a new feature: Guardian Spirits that can be summoned using Purgon resources.
The Guardian Spirit Sanctuary is a building unlocked once the Purgon Order reaches a certain level of development. While a Ratizen works at the sanctuary, a massive Guardian Spirit is summoned to protect the city. As such, timing the Ratizen’s work to align with the occurrence of battles was designed to be an important management element.
In the initial design phase, the Guardian Spirit was intended to showcase an unparalleled, powerful strike that could not be rivaled by existing soldiers. To make the Guardian Spirit Sanctuary a symbolic building of the Purgon Order, its construction was limited to just one per city.
However, issues arose where the Guardian Spirit's slow movement could lead to comical situations where it missed enemies entirely. Additionally, the challenge of timing a Ratizen’s work at the sanctuary to align with battle events made it difficult to utilize effectively.
The gap between optimal and suboptimal usage was too large, leading to a high likelihood that the defense performance would fail to meet players' expectations depending on how it was utilized.
Ultimately, several major adjustments were made to bridge the gap between expectations and reality. First, the Guardian Spirit Sanctuary was changed to a building that operates continuously without requiring a Ratizen to be assigned. Additionally, the Guardian Spirit’s stats were lowered, but players were allowed to build multiple sanctuaries.
Through these changes, while the Guardian Spirit lost some of its grandeur, it transformed into a more reliable and accessible defensive tool that players could utilize with ease.
Would placing the Guardian Spirit on the front lines help it find peace?
The development of all Purgon Order buildings involved countless discussions during the implementation process. Beyond what has been introduced, there were also intriguing concepts like religious conflict elements and inquisitors, but unfortunately, these were excluded after reviewing and organizing various possibilities.
After refining and organizing numerous ideas, we were able to create a lineup of well-rounded and diverse buildings. Even so, there’s still a lingering desire to add more structures that would suit the Purgon Order perfectly.
We’re always open to attractive ideas, so if you have any great concepts in mind, please feel free to share them in the comments!