It's been a busy couple of months in Guadelique, with a lot of big changes and upgrades to the game.
One of those is the fonts - the placeholder fonts I was using had drawbacks with readability and localisation. Given this is a text heavy game, and the setting is all about printing presses and typography, that was not acceptable!So I've been working with a brilliant font designer on a suite of bespoke fonts - there's a sneak preview of those here:
But in this dev diary, I'm going to show off two new in-game currencies that are going to be vital to building a successful newspaper. The eagle-eyed might have already spotted this little readout on the toolbar:
This shows your current stock of faction Favours (the coloured bars) and Trust (the white bar).
Trust is a measure of your reputation among the people of New Lyon. Are you a bastion of integrity, dedicated to pursuing the truth at all costs? Or a lying rag that'll say anything to get ahead? Or rather - which of those do people *think* you are?
You can think of Trust a little like the health bar of your newspaper. When it's high, everything is going to be that little bit easier. When it's low, you'll face extra challenges.
You gain trust by printing truthful headlines, or by picking honourable options in dialogue.
But you can lose it too. Many headlines can be twisted so far they become lies. Lies are often the most powerful headlines - extremely popular or persuasive. But every lie you tell is a gamble - if you get found out, your trust will collapse.
At the end of the day you'll have to wait as your headline runs the gauntlet of this lie detector to see if you're reaping the rewards or suffering reputational damage.
The other currencies are Favours. You have a stockpile of favours with each faction in game, and you earn or lose them by printing headlines that support or oppose that faction.
There are going to be more ways to cash in your favours, but the most important one is unlocking new regions in the map.
Here you can see at the start of the game every region except your starting region is locked. To deliver papers to a new region, you'll first need to establish a local distribution network there.
To do that, you'll need to call on friendly local factions to help you out. The cost depends on who has influence in that region. Want to expand to reach the miners of Bauxville? The Revolutionaries are powerful there, so they'll be the most efficient way in.
Of course, money talks, so if you're rich enough you can just bribe your way in, but it'll be costly.
It doesn't stop there - this basic local network can only handle so many deliveries. If you want to keep growing you'll need street hawkers, newsagents, maybe even a delivery depot. Build up your network in a region to establish a stronghold and dominate the opinions of the local populace.
There are other bonuses you get from upgrading a region - but more on those in another dev diary!