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Like I said before, I like your approach in general and also this new update is really "dense", maybe too much ? You should try to explain and test every mechanics separately, so you can learn if they are fun or not!

For example I'm not sure if the player can keep track of all circles and relationships in order to manipulate them, I mean I can see some sort of "information overloading " ?

One of my problems with SBTT was the interface and all the stuff happening together. I suggest you to take a look to Europa Universalis IV from Paradox, or Crusader Kings 2, where player Is able to follow a lot of things together because of the real time pause, of course, but also because of the interface.

My suggestion here is to work a lot on the UX and UI, maybe with some prototypes, to find the better way player can interact with such complex world you have in mind!

BobbyTwoHands6 years ago

You're entirely right about your worries, and I genuinely do feel there's a decent chance this approach to the game won't be fun, or won't be playable due to the information load required. I consider this new direction to be an experiment. I can't tell what it'll play like, it's too different from what I've seen or tried before for me to judge. On the other hand, it may succeed, and could be great if it does. I had a bunch of ideas which came about from Shadows, so wanted to try them out to see how they played.

If it succeeds I'll continue, and move over stuff from the older approach to this one, to create a better whole. If it fails I'll take the ideas which seemed to work from the experiment and continue with the previous version.

As to the UI, I assure you I don't deliberately ignore the UI aspect. In fact, I'd say that at least 75% of the current experimental build has been UI work. The AI and internal systems were relatively easy to design and implement and were done a couple of weeks ago, while the UI is still being assembled. The issue may simply be that I'm not a very good UI designer, and that this project is difficult to design UI for. That said, the Shadows UI has slowly been improved over time, as I realised issues with it from testing gameplay and fixed them, so there's still hope even if the first version is a bit difficult to use.

gornova6 years ago

Thanks for quick answer!

From an outside perspective, seems that you were too much focusing in adding more and more content ( I'm referring to SBTT ). My advice is to focus on the core mechanics and when that one is really good and you have a lot of feedback from players, move to other mechanics .

Do you have UI to show to potential players? I mean, me :D You could get a lot of feedback without code anything, I think is right approach!

Btw, good work, I'm following you because I believe in this kind of games and with the right mix of gameplay elements could be really interesting !

BobbyTwoHands6 years ago

I don't yet have anything, but I'm getting there. I should, hopefully, get something testable in the next couple of weeks. It'll just be the politics/intrigue part, not the world map, so you can have a look at it and comment, so it can be improved and polished before the world map is connected up.

gornova6 years ago

Sure! If you have Just a mockup i think Will bene great too

itch.io

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