A long, long time ago, there was a Giratakel that told you about Ultakia. It crawled happily across the sand dunes of game development and told you all about it. And then it crawled over a high dune, and then, yes, then it dove down, and what followed was a long silence, until now, and therefore:
Hello (soon-to-be) world devourers,
So, over the past few months, I've been busy implementing the feedback from the playtest and, in particular, revising the tutorial. It's now designed to give players more freedom while also being easier to understand—well, we'll see...
Meanwhile, the biggest change has been to the political system. Previously, there were ten parties that provided permanent passive effects based on their influence. Now I’ve replaced that system with a more active one: After an election, a government is formed, and only the effects of the governing parties are active. This makes the whole system clearer and, most importantly, more strategic. Should I now also include the Ecologists in the government to benefit from their boost to alien groats production, even if it means the government gets even bigger and all the participating parties become more dissatisfied, or should I avoid getting my hands dirty? This goes hand in hand with a revision of the decree conditions. Decrees are now selected anew each time a government is formed and represent, so to speak, the government’s political agenda. The basic tier is now available to all parties, which gives the player a lot more opportunities for specialization. In addition, every party in the government enables one additional party-specific decree. (So maybe I should bring the Ecologists on board after all??). Oh, and only the party with the strongest position in a governing coalition can pass the best decrees (a minority government only with the Ecologists???).
In my test game, all of this worked very well, and the game clearly benefits from it, especially since it’s tied to a rebalancing of influence when upgrading buildings. You suddenly start thinking, “Wait, I need stronger researchers, but there are no upgrades for mines that boost that. So should I build an extractor instead, where possible? But that produces completely different resources here…” But that’s not all: each of the 12 species has a unique form of government, which in some cases radically turns the political system upside down. Don’t feel like dealing with annoying coalitions? Dunklyostius makes it possible with a dictatorship—at least until there’s a coup... Or how about Shrunk’s insatiable thirst for growth, where the weakest party is kicked out of parliament every round, causing the influence of the strong parties to suddenly become more and more extreme until the next election...
[Government Formation]
I’ve taken this approach to make species even more unique a step further by giving each species 5 new, species-specific technologies! That brings the total from 10 to 15, and combined with some significant changes to certain species, they should all now feel truly unique and alien. With so many possible playthroughs, it’s also important, that the rest of the content doesn’t feel repetitive. So the game has now been enriched with new space creatures that come with awesome technologies and encounter events. (I’m sure you’ve all been eagerly awaiting the alien mosquitoes!!!)
[Alien Mosquito]
These content changes are completed by the introduction of alternative upgrade paths for processing buildings and a system that makes recipes cheaper when the building is constructed on a tile containing the required resource. This lowers the barrier to investing in processing and further exacerbates the shortage of these tiles...
[Alternative processing upgrade branches]
On top of that, there are major improvements in the game's performance, a loading screen, and tons of “quality of life” enhancements!
Therefore, I am now excited to announce that the time has finally come and we have reached “feature freeze”!
[Planet Frozen]
So what’s next? I’m primarily focused on two things before a demo is possible: implementing an encyclopedia into the game so that players can easily look up everything there is to know about Ultakia at any time. And the AI needs to be adapted to the new content so that it can actually make meaningful use of politics and its new species-specific technologies. In addition, further adjustments to the AI’s behavior are coming so that it becomes even more fun and can react better to the player, for example, if the player starts wars very early on... Once these points are taken care of, there will be a public demo. The plan is to have something ready before the start of “Steam Next Fest,” so in early October… The remaining time will then be used to implement “quality of life” improvements (I have a list with over 400 items, so the ideas aren’t going to run out anytime soon…). Apart from that, though this doesn’t affect the demo yet, there are still 3 or 4 of the 12 species whose balancing isn’t quite right; adjustments are still needed there, but that requires further test plays, which consume one thing in particular: time...
Once the exact date for the demo is set, I'll let you know, of course.
Until then, enjoy your free time and maybe give “Folk Emerging” a try, which came out yesterday.
-a happy Giratakel that hopefully won't collapse in the final stage