Hey folks!
Today’s post was written by Mat again, as we recently started looking into adding achievements. We needed a preliminary design for these, and since Mat has done some of it, we pressured him into writing a bit about it. Just note that the achievement icons and requirements below are all WIP and mockups, nothing surrounding them is final yet.
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Achievements have become expected in most modern games and platforms, as a way to celebrate a victory or to let your player know that they did something noteworthy or rare.
To some players, it’s a neat surprise. To others, it’s sort of an objective to pursue in itself! Each game has its own design philosophy though. Here’s a bit on ours:
We believe that achievements work best as little breadcrumbs that you offer the players to let them know what sort of level of play can be expected if they want to become true masters of the game. Sometimes this is letting them know that a battle can be won without losing health, or that you can reach a certain level… Or hey, sometimes is just playing the game a lot, and in different ways!
In that space, we created 5 different categories for Achievements.
1) Tactical Skills
These represent complex combos or actions that take some effort to pull, but if you can do them consistently, you will have an easier time in the Tactical layer. We also add particularly impressive feats, here, like surviving a tough battle without losing a hero. Here’s an example:
A player that wins that achievement learned something neat: some of the abominations can be weaponized against their allies, and knowing how to do it consistently will help you out!
2) Strategy Challenge
With these, we want to celebrate unusual luck or resource management during your travels. These achievements will direct you to some expectations, but also let you know that you are having a noteworthy run.
Getting the fairies to cooperate is rough, but will pay off!
3) Grind
Sometimes, you’ve played the game so much and did things for so long, that we want to give you a bit of a thank you, it’s all - we hope you had fun!
4) Progress
Roguelikes can be a bit daunting, but part of the game is inching your way into a new zone or finishing an unlock. These achievements celebrate that!
5) Oddities
Finally, there are some events or actions that are just plain… unusual? Rare, hard to do, or just dumb! But hey, at least you got an achievement out of it.
But yeah! We have around 50 entries for launch being prepared, with their technology being implemented as we speak. Got any ideas? Any suggestions? Let us know!
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Working on achievements must mean we’re closing in on release, right? :)
Thanks for reading! Join our Discord server if you wanna make any suggestions. We’re all there and happy to chat.
Mat & MarkoP
https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/