Hey everyone!
Marc here! It’s been a while since the last dev log, and Primordial Empire has evolved a lot! I’ve been doing a lot of work on the strategic parts of the game, including a new strategic AI that will try to destroy your Collective and an Expedition feature that lets you expand across all the biomes of the world map. Let’s have a look!
Strategic AI
Enemy colonies (“nests”) would spread over time, searching for the player’s colony. Each nest will have a different behavioral "archetype" (e.g., balanced, stagnant, expansionist, aggressive, psychotic etc.) guiding its expansion, with a global “agitation” level (calm - agitated - hostile - frenzied) to further influence how the AI behaves towards the player.
Once they encounter the player, these enemy nests will be driven by increased agitation to build up their dominance level. They will start attacking the player in waves and prod the player to retaliate, turning the primordial soup into an active war zone. These images below show how the enemy nests can spread over a 120-minute time span. Their expansion is relatively slow right now as I’m currently fine-tuning their growth rate to keep the enemies challenging without feeling overpowered and spread everywhere like cancer.
Note: Excuse me for the messy text. They are the debug overlay and will be eventually removed.
Expeditions
With new locations introduced, the Collective will need to launch Expeditions to explore and expand across all the new biomes. Remember the Scout Cells and Assault Tardigrades from the last dev blog? This is where they’ll come in.
The Scout Cells, as their name suggests, can be sent on scouting missions to probe enemy nests. They will reveal crucial information, such as enemy strength and attack success chances, to help you make the most informed decision on how to expand.
If you decide to take the fight to the enemies, the Assault Tardigrades can transport combat units to enemy nests for an Expedition. The more tardigrades you deploy, the bigger the army you can field as they haul your units across the primordial soup. Also, don’t forget they have a powerful shooting attack for taking down enemy structures!
Other than world map-related features, I’ve also been incorporating a bunch of demo feedback (thank you for sending them in!). One of them is the collapsible mini-map – can’t really call this a proper strategy game without one. Players can keep an eye on their entire colony at all times, or they can hide it and admire their colony without hindrance!
New Background Artwork
Players will be travelling across various biomes in the world map gameplay, which is why I wanted to get some new background art for each biome and give them a more distinct visual identity. While I did draw all the cells and plants myself, large-scale background just isn’t my speciality. Thankfully, I found help, and here’s a piece of new background artwork by the amazing Ihor Vitkovskyi:
This colorful and alien landscape is rather fitting for our primordial soup, don’t you think? More will be coming soon for all the different biomes!
OST Playlist
By the way, if you enjoy the music of Primordial Empire, you can check out this playlist by our composer HZSMITH:
His soundtracks have been perfect for the game, fantastically capturing the ancient, primordial feeling of our microscopic world. A big shoutout to his incredible work, and I hope you enjoy the music as much as I do!
That’s all I have today! Let me know what you think about these new features I’m working on, and please look forward to more news from the primordial soup. I sometimes share new development progress on Discord, so if you’re interested, do check out the game’s official Discord server! And stay tuned on my socials for more news!
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