Infiltration

A turn based single player asymmetric game where player take control of an ancient one and manipulate the world · By gornova

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First impressions

A topic by BobbyTwoHands created Aug 06, 2018 Views: 354 Replies: 2

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BobbyTwoHands7 years ago(+1)

Hey,

Firstly, I'm really glad you're making this game, the genre of "evil being infiltrating a living world of interconnected NPCs" has huge scope and excellent potential. I look forwards to seeing how this game progresses.

Some thoughts and things I noticed from my first playthrough (I didn't win, but did get to 5 influence. Maybe I missed an event or something?):

-I like how complex the background simulation already is. It's nice to see the NPCs get involved with buying various places around the cities, and starting wars between guilds.

-I'd like to see more focus on slowly splitting the world between "owned NPCs", those you control, and "hostile/investigator/forces-of-good NPCs". I mostly just tried to convert as many as possible as fast as possible. In my approach to this game I was considering having some just be naturally immune to corruption, so you have to oppose them using your other NPCs, maybe sacrificing someone under your control to kill off an NPC who's causing trouble.

-The message system would be better, I think, if it colour-coded the messages, or allowed you to expand it to a full-screen window. I had trouble shifting through the reports about people paying 2 to gain influence in order to find the messages relating to my actions.

-The NPCs seemed to be involved in quests, but these were just names. To add flavour to the game, I'd suggest having some "quest log", similar to the events system, which gives a few lines of text about what occurred and which NPCs were involved, especially if they're an NPC who is under your control or who is opposing you (a character of relevance). Even if this is just to add fluff, it would add to the immersion.

-Similarly, the cities could be described, so you could have "Rich, safe and happy city, a jewel of human civilisation", or "This city is ready to fall into anarchy and rebellion, the citizens gather in the streets in angry mobs", and the descriptions change based on the city's stats. Again, this could add to the feeling of a living world, rather than a set of numbers.

Anyway, feel free to ignore any of these suggestions if they don't appeal to you, you've probably got a load of good ideas of your own.

Best of luck in the future, look forwards to seeing how this project develops.

gornovaDeveloper7 years ago

Thanks BobbyTwoHands for your feedback!
It's really important for me get feedback and from something like you that faced similar development issues, well.. it's cool!

0) I think you miss the "you win screen", well.. it's a prototype after all :D

1) Thanks for kind words! I've put some effort in build a sort of "tabletop game" behind the scenes and I believe that this kind of games will benefit from this "living simulation". I've read a book about gameplay design few months ago and found inspiring one of the key points: if you give to players some points to use as "hooks" for imaginations, their mind (your mind too!) will try to fill the gaps and the game will be more fun too!

2) you are absolutely right. This is something that I have to take in considerations for next releases. I want to mix it with "tag system" so special tags or traits will gave to particular NPCs more resistance (or not) to your powers. I have the feeling that also slow down the simulation behind a little bit will give player time to observe NPCs movements, what do you think about this point ?

3) thanks for feedback about this! I need for sure improve "simulation feedback" to players, so colour-coded messages are a good point too

4) yes, it will be on next release! Quests will be a key point "soon" (tm) when all key elements wil be in place

5) nice catch! I never considered before to change city's description, thanks!

Thanks again for feedback, feel free to add any ideas!

BobbyTwoHands7 years ago

I think the UI is definitely a very important part of this genre of game. There's just so much information to get to the player, I always found it to be the hardest part of my work. I never felt I was communicating enough. But you seem to be aware of all this, so you should be okay.

One thing I noticed in your version is that it starts "at the beginning". The NPCs haven't yet claimed anything or taken any actions. In my game the NPCs played 100 turns during world-gen, so that they'd already have a "history", and things would look like the world had existed for a long time. The advantage is that it makes the world feel more living, the downside is that it makes it harder for the player to learn the world, because it already starts very complicated, while your approach allows the player to learn it as it develops. Neither approach is right, I think, it's just an option to consider.

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Infiltration

First impressions