I've had two ideas in my head from very early on: some way to do infinite research, and some way to have very loose meta progression. It turns out, I think I can thread both needles.
Happy Monday, let's get into the weeds.
Factory Roguelite?
Even when I see those words together it's scary. Factory game playthroughs are often dozens of hours long, so the idea of mashing it with Roguelite mechanics seems silly. But then again, how many different times do people reset their factory runs or try for a new achievement or just a new approach to the game for its own sake? I certainly do, over and over, all the time.
So with that in mind the next question becomes - if you do subsequent runs, do you get to take anything with you? Initially I had thoughts like:
- Keep your spells. Cool, but what do i do with those nodes in the research tree? Do I make replacements? What do they do? It gets messy quickly.
- Players choose a few researches to keep. Also cool but same problem as above. Plus do you get to start research half way up the tree?
- Stacking passives that persist. This feels like it has the same problems as the above. Or does it?
So it turns out that while trying to get hybrid research to be more interesting, I realized that hybrids are actually a better place to have infinite research live than the pure elements themselves. Sure I could say 10% more Solar Power but is that actually meaningful when you could just build a few more Mana Leaves and Mana Canopies? What happens if we start kitting after Combinations? Can we make infinite research not undermine other parts of the game?
Enduring Renewal
I think this might be a case where we can have our cake and eat it too. Let me introduce you to the 6 planned Infinite Researches:
- Life/Earth - Enduring Flora - Harvesting Flora grants you +1 additional Mote.
- Earth/Fire - Enduring Collection - Collectors have a 10% chance to perform an additional collection each cycle.
- Fire/Shadow - Enduring Ritual - Increases Runeshroom Ritual effectiveness by 10%.
- Shadow/Air - Enduring Reach - Increases interaction range by 1.
- Air/Water - Enduring Speed - Increases movement speed by 10%.
- Water/Life - Enduring Capacity - Increases Mana Capacity by 20%
The thing I like about this list is none of these can be gained in other ways through more building. Further, many players mention how much they notice losing movement speed and reach range when starting a new run, which leads us to...
Why not both?
All of the above have a few important things in common: they are generally useful, they don't break game balance, they are especially useful in the early-mid game when you aren't fully teched out yet, and they accelerate your early play safely. That means they are perfect candidates for the initial problem for "What do we carry over?"
I also like that half are player-centric and half are base-centric, so you can choose which you want to chase. And Enduring Flora is both great for early game resource gathering and the Collector bonus from Mystical Agriculture (yes the +1 counts for both). Making an infinite research check all these boxes robustly is super challenging, and I'm pretty happy with this suite overall.
Wait did you say Roguelite?
So the current plan is there are two ways to play a run. You can either go to the New Game menu and play any combination of custom foundations you like - create your own challenges and sandbox. Or, once you return to the Library from a playthrough, after congratulating you, the Master Alchemist will present you with 3 other worlds in need of your talents, each with a unique set of Foundations. If you do choose to continue the journey, your Enduring Research will carry with you.
I think these are in a sweet spot where you are happy to have them, not distraught if you don't, and just enough incentive to try a random run with a little boost. At least that's the hope, the Foundations Update is fast approaching, and you can try it for yourself very soon!
Back to the Lab 🌿
~CyanAvatar