Here’s how the final version of Atomic Society is coming along before we leave Early Access.
Christmas came and went with a few (more) personal tragedies which slowed us down unfortunately. It's been a rough winter, and being such a small team if one person can’t work, we have to limp on without them. But we're back together now, and started the New Year determined to get this project over the finishing line.
Rather than breaking up the next version, we’ve decided to squeeze everything into one update before we leave Early Access!
Next Version Is Everything
The next big update is the last, but we’ll keep supporting the game afterwards with translations (when we can afford them), and by fixing bugs. However, content-wise, I think we’re done after 2 and a half years on Steam and 6 years of part-time development in total.
Looking at how the game is ending up, I think we (like most devs) have been able to do about 70% of what we actually envisioned years ago. But sometimes you just need to say goodbye to a project and move on, and our time is nearly here.
I’d always wondered when Atomic Society would be “done”, as this was our first ever attempt at making a game, and nobody on the team had any past experience to rely on. It turns out we’re done when we can’t go on any more, physically, mentally, financially or creatively. It's the old saying that "at work is art is never finished, only abandoned."
But I’m still extremely proud of what we’ve achieved, or will be when I have time to reflect. Despite having no money and no clue, we actually made a pretty complex game that thousands of people have enjoyed, and that’s not a bad achievement.
Next Version Content
Here’s a look at the patch notes for the next update so you can see what we’ve squeezed into it.
- Unlockable Gameplay Modifiers. Now when you beat the goals on a map (which have also been improved) you will gradually unlock 18 gameplay changing modifiers. Some are beneficial, letting you cheat at the game, and others bring brand new challenges for replays, like radiation, trading a number of resources, or setting a number of laws in a specific way. The most complicated mod involves you building multiple town outposts on the same map and juggling 4 mini-towns instead of one central town.
- New Improved Goals System. We’ve completely remade the goals, and they now appear on the screen like a list of objectives. They will now guide you through 4 stages or chapters of the game, so you always have an target to reach for. We’ve also mixed up the goals and added in brand new ones to keep things fresh.
- Extended Goals. After beating the normal goals mentioned above, committed players can now try extended bonus goals that require you to make a gigantic settlement that is completely perfect. These “master” goals effectively double the size of the average town and should give you something to focus on if you just want to playing with your city. There is also a little cosmetic reward if you manage to complete the extended goals on a map.
- 95 New Achievements Added. We’ve finally added achievements and we might have gone overboard! 95 achievements are now up for grabs in the coming version. Many are aimed at new players, to help them learn the basics, but others create new challenges. If you like achievements, this should add hours of content.
- New Miner’s Shack & Refinery Building. As mentioned in a previous dev blog, the next version comes with two new buildings that must be researched. These two structures allow towns to become self-sufficient when possible. The Miner’s Shack can only be placed in difficult, hard to reach areas of the map – which may be a challenge – but it can produce an unlimited amount of unrefined stone or metal if you keep it supplied with workers. These 2 new resources can be converted at the refinery, meaning that you don’t need to go salvaging at all (if you can get enough wood from elsewhere). Hopefully this adds a sense of progress to the game, that you’re moving away from being a mere scavenging society.
- Reputation Feature. In order to keep the pressure on as your town becomes self-sufficient, it now has a reputation meter. This increases – or decreases - with population. The higher it gets (through 8 levels) the more migrants will find you desirable, though you can still keep them out with guard towers. This does make the game more difficult, but at the same time it makes it easier to form a big town and we’ve even had to increase the population goal to cope with this.
- Map Completion Stars. To go with achievements, every map now has a set of medals showing if you’ve completed it and on what difficulty. This adds a sense of completion and lasting progress to the game.
- New Improved Tutorial. We’re currently working on improving the tutorial to make it easier and more fun to learn how to play.
There are several other smaller changes coming too, like a new upgrade for the leader’s house, several bug fixes, and changes to how morale works, but I’ll stick them in the final patch notes.
We hope this, on top of every else added over the last 2 years, creates enough content for a satisfying game.
Right now I’m swamped trying to test all this at the moment (testing 95 achievements and 18 game-changing mods is a lot of work), but we’re getting there, one day at a time.
The Breaking of the Fellowship
Now things are winding down, we finally said farewell (sort of) to our 2nd part-time programmer Adam, who I think joined us back in October 2015 believing he was signing up for a year or two of casual work. But making a game took twice as long as expected (6 years instead of 3) so he ended up settling in for the long haul. He didn’t have kids when he joined us, now he has two. As I've said, it took us bunch of noobies a while to work out how to make a game.
At the start of the project I didn’t think we’d need 2 programmers, but we soon learned we did. We need 1 person to make the behind the scenes stuff (main coder Nick in our case), and 1 person to code the little gameplay stuff that players actually notice.
I therefore naively posted an ad on Reddit in October 2015 asking if anybody wanted to work with a bunch of nobodies and Adam signed up. I don't think he'd ever used Unity before, but he was a quick learner and afterwards he became our go-to “little task” guy.
It’s weird spending 5+ years working with someone and you haven’t ever seen them beyond a photo or a voice on Discord. I want to thank him in person, but unless I’m willing to fly to America that isn’t happening. Anyway, thank you Adam! We couldn’t have got this far without you.
Looking to the Future
I finally have a new idea for a game, though I’m surprised I want to make another game after this. To be honest, I’ve been playing fewer and fewer games lately, as I just don’t have time for big 50+ hour experiences while making a game, and so many modern games are (in my view) worse versions of games that came out 20+ years ago.
Aside from that, being a self-employed game dev isn’t easy. This hobby definitely has perks (you’re earning a bit of money from making games!) but it can still wear you down. You come home from a day job which pays the bills, then spend evenings doing a lot of tedious tasks in a game engine that loves to crash (we haven't updated Unity since 2017 as it would break everything). You also have to work with others and explain complex things awkwardly over long-distance. And you’re perpetually on the verge of going broke and making bad design/business decisions because there isn’t a right or wrong path (except perhaps in hindsight). Meanwhile deadlines slide as things inevitably become too complex or too buggy.
I must admit, there have been plenty of times when I’ve wanted to give up over the last 6 years. I usually want to bail when the next update is half-broken, or I’m sick of playing AS, or all my “great” ideas turn out to be less than amazing. At times like those I was sure there had to be a better hobby/side income out there than making games, especially when it feels like a thousand new games come out every day. Who wants another game?
But now we’re at the end of Atomic Society, the game-making excitement is flowing back and 1 new game idea out of the 100s I've had simply will not go away, no matter how much I've discovered about the pains of making software. I think the appeal is the potential of applying 6 years of hard-earned lessons and believing that next time we'll really hit it out of the park.
Making Atomic Society has been a lot like a bad relationship. We went into it blindly with a lot of hope and naivety, but without realising how hard it would be or all the implications. It was really guessing what to do most of the time and the fact the game has turned out to be slightly decent is astounding.
Wisdom is the main thing we’ve gained from the project. I'm looking forward to cashing it in on a new project later this year.
A Look Into the Past…
Coming to the end of the project is also the right time for reflection and one of the biggest battles I’ve had making this game is with my own personality, as these dev blogs prove. I often sound like I’m on the edge of a nervous breakdown when I read them back.
I just don’t feel at all suited to running an indie studio and I don’t think I’m even a born game designer. But here I am, weirdly making a game and co-running a “studio” (if you can call a corner of my lounge a studio).
I love creating things, but I rarely release them. For example, I’ve written big novels that nobody has ever read. I just put them in the drawer. I like the process, not the selling. I like making games but whenever I try to be a business guy, I get so stressed it’s literally bad for my health. I either feel super-excited or extremely anxious and that’s a dangerous combination. It can (and has) led to self-medicating just to calm down.
I’ve personally enjoyed the last 3-4 months because most people out there seem to have forgotten we exist. The forum is quiet. Reviews trickle in but they’re mostly positive. This lets me just focus on my game without the stress. I feel free again as I haven’t since the early days of the game.
I’m saying this to myself because with the end of Early Access coming, I’m growing tense about the amount of "extroverted" stuff I should be doing. I was so emotionally burnt out by our Early Access launch that I still get a queasy, sick feeling when I think back to those days.
I guess I’m trying to accept that I just need to stay within my emotional limits, to stay in the calm zone even if that means switching off or losing out. If I was more outgoing and practical, we’d probably be richer, but I’m an introvert, working with 2 other introverts, and we’ve still managed to make a game that took the financial strain out of life for a year or two. Hopefully we can get by in the future.
Can you run a lasting business as an introvert? Probably not. But you can make a game without becoming stressed or addicted, at least that's the plan.
Next Update Guesstimate!
I’ve never been remotely accurate about a release date projection since I started writing these blogs years ago so it would be pointless to do so now! However, my least favourite rule to take your estimate and double it is true, and my personal estimate is 6 weeks to release… Which means 12 weeks.
Which would mean first week of May. That sounds stupidly far away so I hope it’s a lot sooner than that. We cannot keep the lights on that long. But somehow we'll manage. We’ve never given up as people know by now, despite how bumpy the road can get.
I will be in touch when we’re ready to flip that "leave Early Access” switch and I’ll keep checking the forums, emails, etc when possible (even as an introvert).
Thanks for reading this far. Can't wait to share this final version with you!