We always knew we wanted to not only allow players to manage the day-to-day running of their cult but also make decisions about how it interacted with the wider world. The missions system is the culmination of this – it allows you to choose which events to undertake and who and how they will be undertaken. They range from stealing ancient artifacts from the local museum (that can be used to decorate your base), to taking part in protests at Town Hall to advance your PR rating.
There’s a large amount of information to convey to players when they are choosing which missions to perform, as well as a number of options to decide. For example, people need to know what skills are relevant to a mission’s success, what cultists have those skills and which of those Cultists are available. This posed a number of challenges and saw us completely redesign the UI.
To enable players to quickly view all of the nefarious missions available, we’ve put them in to a scrollable list. This means you no longer have to click through the various locations to get the basic idea of what missions are available. You can still navigate the missions through the on-screen map that is still available, but the list view really helps provide the relevant details quickly.
The assignment of Cultists to a mission and the planning of any Covert Operations (which improve mission success chance) have also been streamlined. When selecting Cultists it also makes it clear what skills the mission needs to succeed and highlights them in your Cultist roster. This means you no longer send out unqualified Cultists on missions who will at best: fail the mission quietly, at worst: end up severely injured, locked up in jail, and/or creating a huge amount of heat through a catastrophic failure.
Once missions are completed, a summary is given to the player to show exactly what happened to the Cultists that undertook the mission and what rewards/consequences have ensued. New items that are received are helpfully highlighted in the build system (these could previously be hard to find, given the large amount of buildable items).
We'll be back next month with another dev update!
Until next time, stay faithful.