At this point, the game had enough moving parts that it needed proper long-term progression, not just local interactions and isolated unlocks. So it was time to finish up the projects tree.

The projects tree is like your usual tech tree in most strategy games. Our has a twist though: historical personalities produce works through inspiration - which is a currency produced by your cities and various developments. These works coagulate into projects - which are whole fields like “celestial mechanics”, “steam power” or “chamber music”.

This setup, coupled with the fact that the player doesn’t have enough time to complete the whole tree and/or conquer all of Europe make replayability attractive. Maybe on this playthrough you wanted to go more into science - so, unlike other games where “you just invest into that part of the tree”, here, you also need to expand to the cities that hold the personalities required by that section of the tree.

In order to glue all of this together, we had to make lots of adjustments and tests to make sure that at least some of the paths are straightforward - for players who are not in the mood for weird detours just to complete one branch.

This also meant another round of tightening the data. Because a progression system like this can’t have any bloat or it will break. Which obviously meant cutting some more while also sacrificing some art that was already made for things that won’t be making the final cut.

Why cut? Because the tree was already bordering “scary”, and we know how quite a few players generally react when they see Path of Exile’s infamous skill tree. Spoiler alert: it’s Alt+F4. And while we love POE, we are aware of the fact that it’s either an acquired taste or a niche one.

So this phase became a lot more than “click here to insert projects tree”, because we needed to make sure it actually works within the game context.

While at it, we also added the “real” art for the project tree, elaborate frames and various other UI elements, as well as precisely 2.65 buckets of icons. We also implemented some material effects and that was that! We finally had the whole game assembled!

Oh wait… The 3D art…

(May 2026)