Survivors, it’s been a while since you’ve last heard from us (unless you follow our social channels), so we’d like to give a small update on what’s going on.
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Voting for features
As a means of getting more structured information about our players and their preferences, we recently introduced the voting system where players can vote on the features they’d like to see added to Judgment. We’re happy with it’s reception, with over 100 unique voters, these are the 4 most wanted features:
- Improved world exploration
- Equipment upgrade
- Interaction with other colonies
- Scrap unused items
We're already working on #1! More on this below.
Parallel work on full version
Most of our efforts are working on Alpha 12, but in parallel, we’re slowly starting to work on some full release content. This content will not be available until we release the full version of the game. Since we plan for the full release update to be a huge one compared to previous updates, we have to work on it in parallel to the regular updates, to prevent a situation where there are many months without any releases.
We started working with Rick Gush, who will be writing the awesome storyline for Judgment’s full version. We are also creating new game content such as items and creatures that will not be added to Alpha 12 despite being ready.
Alpha 12 Progress
Down to business, here are the two biggest changes that we’ve been working on for alpha 12. Both these features are a result of much feedback from you, our Early Access players.
World Exploration - The highest voted feature in the voting system also happens to be our next big feature. A brand new, much larger, more colorful, and more diverse world map is being added. This new world will consist of several biomes, each with it’s own unique locations and resources. An overhaul to how you explore the map is also included, in which you create taskforces and can directly control them on the world map, instead of going back and forth. You provide them with supplies, and go in search for technology and treasure. But beware, strolling around during the apocalypse is not as safe as it used to be; sending a lone explorer is no longer a smart choice. Enemies are abound, and you never know what will happen as you travel around...
Complete Re-balance - There have been a lot of issues around balancing and the difficulty curve. Up until now the game’s balance has been mostly intuition, trial and error, and iteration. It wasn’t very structured, and even though it achieved it’s goal, it had many issues, and fixing each one created new ones. Now, we have a much more organized system, with formulas and a clear progression graph that guides us. It’s easier to add new stuff and make sure they don’t break the game, because we have guidelines that connect an item’s benefit, it’s costs and research availability. It’s easier to add new enemies, because we have a guideline to connect the enemy’s difficulty, to when it should appear and how many of it. Bottom line, we changed almost all the numbers in the game to create a smoother, frustration free (well as much as possible, it is still tough surviving the apocalypse…) experience. We also tweaked the lower difficulties so that casual difficulty is much easier.
These two are the main changes, there are many other smaller changes accompanying them, some related some not. These two changes are so big that there is no part of the game that is not affected by them, base economy, combat, exploration…
The bad news are that these two changes, being as big as they are (there is no part of the game that is not affected by them; base economy, combat, exploration…), are taking longer than expected, and we still have our work ahead of us before we are able to release alpha 12. We plan to release it in May, but it’s probably going to be later in May than we hoped.
We appreciate your support and your patience, and we hope you’ll be happy with all these upcoming changes!
Fort Triumph Kickstarter
Last thing for this update, we'd like to mention a Kickstarter campaign by friends of ours: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forttriumph/fort-triumph-tactical-rpg/updates
Fort Triumph is a tactical RPG, X-com style, taking place in a fantasy world with emphasis on environment interaction. The game is already far in development, with a demo available, and knowing the team personally, we believe they are capable of creating a great product.
If this kind of games interest you, check it out!