Note: these design diaries were originally published in spring/summer of 2025. The design, and definitely the screenshots, have changed a lot since then! I hope you'll find them an interesting look in the design and development process, and an insight into what does or does not change over the course of development. - nic
Factions are the last major component of Amberspire I've yet to go in detail in, until now! They are a vital component to the game, and the backbone of the event system.
In Amberspire you're fundamentally playing a dice game to build a city, but I wanted the overall experience to have narrative beats and events. These events are a light touch, and reflect things happening in your city and the solar system beyond.
The factions are special groups of people with political and material power in the world and are greatly affected by the events. They have special Favor and Penalty rules which can dramatically adjust the rules of the game, and these values are modified only through events.
An event is a special dice roll with outcomes, but you can spend influence to bypass the roll and choose one of the outcomes outright. In some cases this will be extremely advantageous, since events can roll multiple dice and result in multiple outcomes being chosen.
This overall sums up the events and factions. They are not the primary concern of the game, but more represent the world above and beyond what you can directly control. Just like how the city is built in a context of history and environment, so does the present provide a larger context with the various events happening around you. You can affect these and in turn are affected by them, but you cannot directly control factions or shape the direction of the entire solar system and the powers beyond it.
All this is to reinforce the ideas I've touched on in previous design diaries, that you as the player and the game together create this semi-random narrative of a city. Just like how terrain can influence the growth of areas in your city, factions providing favors and penalties add a certain texture to how the game plays and your city grows.
When factions favor you, everything comes easy. Dice go further, you have more rerolls, events are cheaper to manage. When factions turn away from you, the situation is flipped: everything is steeper and more costly. Naturally these mix together, and having a mixture of favor and penalties will create unique situations that will require creative solutions.
Further still, not every faction will be present in every game of Amberspire. On average you'll have two to four present at once. Below are all the factions in the game and a short description.
top: Chroan, Coral, Dais; bottom: Void, Gardeners, Frame, Lantern
art by Gryme
Chroan
A secretive collective of archivists, librarians, and time travellers. In impregnable vaults they store the memories of millions of beings, in small vials that can later be consumed to view them once again.
The Coral Monarchy
Hidden away in the folds of deep space resides a magnificent colony of creatures, held together as one entity. Throughout known space it expands its influence with shards of itself known as courtiers.
Dais
A small military order united in their belief of a long dead god, and bound to a lifelong search for its fragments.
Void Lineages
Clans of spacers, who take on courier, transport, and mercenary functions. Highly insular, they hold to a rigid familial structure that can be traced through several previous eras.
Gardeners
Wherever people go in the stars, their bodies must be adapted to the environment. Over the millennia, the Gardeners have perfected the art of genetic manipulation and organic restructuring, and they charge a high price for their services.
Frame
Travel through deep space is complex, perilous, and expensive. Frame are a small but extremely powerful organization, able to maintain the dimensional networks required through economic incentives and trade across solar systems.
Lantern
In the deep cloud layers of Amber lives a society of sentient creatures, thin translucent membranes surrounding huge volumes of gases, floating among the clouds. Eras past, a colony of humans grew within one of these creatures, and later grew into Lantern. The symbiotic lifeforms care for Amber and the wider system.