It is a myth. Some say it is a symbol of wisdom, the clarity of the collective human consciousness. They believe that the one who rests under it will achieve enlightenment and has the control of his or her own fate. Others claim it as a modern-pagan runaway port. They say it is just another tool of escaping from reality. Either way, the brain tree is shaping our world and dreams throughout history.

In this issue, you will find a small interview, our reporter Nick Shean made with Prof. Beinroff with an illustration from claimed artist Ada Mcnoun.

Prof. Beinroff, what can you tell us about the brain tree?
We know that it is as old as human history. My guess is it started to exist since man first began to dream. Archaeologists met with some of the first images of the brain tree, in the caves of southern Africa, dated back to 10.000 B.C. We can say that when people started to see this mythical figure, instantly they captured by the feeling and carved it on cave walls so they could remember it.

Isn’t it fascinating that this tree has been seen in precisely the same way to all its viewers? I mean there is always a chest and the lamb. What is your opinion on this?
I think this tree is the design of all of the human race. From the beginning to this date, we shaped it, gave it reasons to be. I don’t know if we did that with conscious or not, but that tree resembles something both very human and divine at the same time.
It is also exciting that most of the viewers saw the brain tree from the outside and couldn’t reach it. Maybe because they were not ready and were not allowed to.

By whom?
By themselves of course! I believe that the tree is the place where you are under full control of yourself. Remember the strong roots it has and how people describe them: “hands like claws holding the ground, not letting it go.” The ground symbolizes reality. This is a notion of “the mind that builds itself over reality.” This is what the brain tree stands for.

And the chest? The lamp?
The chest is the treasure of the mind; dreams, goals, quests, ideas, utopias all those shiny gleaming things in your head. And the lamp... Well, when there is light, there is hope…

One last question: Do you ever sit under the brain tree Professor?
I see it every now and then, but no. I am afraid not…

From Circadian Globe

Hello Citizens,

Today we will talk about the systems that define the gameplay of Circadian City. Most of these systems will be enabled for modding as well but we will talk about the vanilla game on this post.


If you played other RPG's or Life Simulation Games you should be familiar with need bars you see on the mainscreen of these games. You need to refill these bars before they get empty otherwise you die.

We did this part a bit more complicated. We have need bars that you need to keep on the positive and we have status bars that you need to keep on the negative. Overall we call them mood bars / system

4 mood bars (positive) are: Hunger, Energy, Social and Happiness
1 mood bar (negative) is : Stress

These moods are further broken to sub-moods that have effects on their parent mood. For example Energy is broken into Phsyical and Mental Energy. Sleeping can refill both but working drains mental energy and running / exercising drains physical.


The image you see above is our first draft of the UI

Depending on the percentage of your mood bar there are also various states. If your character's happiness is full, he is in the "full of life" state so his crafting skills and socializing is improved for example.

You will be able to see on detail UI panel all the things affecting each mood stat and a log for the past 24h

We want to work on a more dynamic system for moods so you can create your own moods for your characters in modding if we can make it. That's just an idea right now. Let us first see the feedbacks to the current flow of the game.


We started on working on the quests as hard coded pieces but later on, it seemed like a very cool idea to develop a layer where the content team can write their own quests without the need of programmers. This seemed even more cooler when we realized this would be a great tool for adding their own content to their mods for our community.

We decided to use a console to quickly create these quests, place objects on the map, create items, define the behaviour of these items and create dialogues + dialogue options. We don't know when this system will be available for modders as it's still on development but it will be available somewhere during the Early Access.



Items in Circadian City are classified regarding their behaviours. There are item classes like trees, ores, vegetables, tools etc.. You can for example use an axe on a tree type object or harvest a grown vegetable with hand. Furthermore we can apply tags to these items for other uses. For example we can create an item that will have an effect on "blue" items. A blue item can be from many classes.

Crafting tables are built for making a list of items, in that sense, the cooker in your home is a crafting table where you can craft food items and the expected behaviour of food items is their edibility. Thank you Mr. Obvious.



When we will enable the crafting system to modding, we expect the universe to explode.


Upcoming in Later Posts

Some other systems that will be explored on later posts are:

- Character system (Now you can customize your pixel art characters yay!)


- Interest / Skill System
- Emotion System
- World Generation in Dreams
- Day/Night and Seasonal Cycles

Stay well citizens, we're gearing up for Early Access !

Hi everyone,

This was a fabulous week for us. We had some beautiful results from the development, we continued to write new quests and created new zones, equipment, and items...

So, between all the work, meetings and several chaotic agenda we received some great news too!

First, we have been told that we reached 10K Wishlists here, on Steam. YAY! We didn't start doing any PR for the game, and we have some famous influencers that will help us get bigger for the first week of our Early Access. So we are expecting to have a much bigger community here and around the game.

Secondly, we translated our page here to our new languages: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese. It is fascinating that from now on, we can share our process with more people in their own language. We can say that more languages will join in the future.

We closed the alpha applications as they will start very soon. But you can still apply for the beta branch that will take place after the game is public. The release date is not set yet. But after a few weeks of tests, we think we will set a date for the first months of 2020.

Thank you for all your support. We really do appreciate that and although we have a great responsibility on our shoulders, no problem! Because (unlike Spidey) we know what to do; just have to work harder.

Thanks and cheers.

The Opera House's history goes back many years. It is said that singers and entertainers used to give performances there at nights, by the firelight.

In 1899, to honor their memory, the town council decided to raise the new opera house on the same ground.

It was created by one of the most skilled architects of days; Julius Fainfold. An artist generally known by his conceptual designs… For this project, Fainfold followed his habit and use 4 towers of the building as the four pillars of design and named them after for main elements: fire, air, earth, and water.

Sadly, misfortune shadowed this beautiful building from the beginning. After one month from the opening gala, flames danced and burned nearly all of the tower of fire. One year later, during the wild winter, storms blasted all the windows of the tower of air.

Then, of course, people started to talk. Every day fewer people came, and at some point, singers and artists refused to step up to the stage. They said the place is troubled, uneasy.

The building was abandoned after 5 years. For a long time, occupants were street animals and homeless people. During the 2000s the reconstruction of the city began, and mayoralty decided to use the building as a performance hall.

They opened up a small contest on naming it. The jury decided on "OH!". They said, "It is an onomatopoeia on people's surprise and excitement. It also serves as a reduction to the old name; Opera House."

A week later, newspapers wrote about a young man who suggested the name; Thomas Fainfold. He was the grandson of the architect.

And people raised their eyes from newspapers and said just one word: "Oh!"

Nowadays, more and more come to visit C.C, and they mostly surprised by the game culture among the citizens. In this city, man and woman from all ages spend at least an hour in games daily.

Sure, these days it is more about mobile, console or computer games. But before that, when there was nothing but the radio, or even before that, people loved games. They used to play in their houses with their neighbors, gather around the fireplace, and played games. It was funny, entertaining, social!

Most elder people says that this behavior comes from the early days of the foundation when there were 7-8 families at most. Back then, during winter times, each household used to play games among themselves. That was how they spent those long, cold winter nights. 

The spring was the time of the finals.  Each house champion competed in final games. 

In the end, the winner and his household were congratulated by every family. Throughout the years, the games they played changed, the rules changed, sometimes there were players, sometimes there were teams to play. But the only thing that stayed constant is the will to play and the smiles on the faces.

Now, in modern times, the city's population is high. On the streets, everybody is a stranger; people close themselves in their little friend and family circles. The basketball team may be the strongest bond between these people.

Yet, with the rise of technology and the gaming industry, people began to return their old habit. You can see some old lady playing Tetris on her cellphone, while youngsters play FRP at parks, some couples gather -like the ancient times- for game nights. During the last elections, one of the candidates promised "city game nights" in his campaign. That raised his numbers a few. (Sadly, he couldn't win)

This is the game-city, the place where you can learn how to win the last boss fight from your grandmother or how to lose a match in FIFA to your math teacher. Here, the game is the culture.

Cheers

In the year of our lord 1680, two brave men, Captain Garret and Captain Allen, set on a course to find new land to settle. The expedition began with two sailing ships whose crew were their' families and several other adventurers who seek a new place to call home.

On the 30th day of their journey, after several misfortunate events or as they said years after "by the wrongdoings of sirens and gods of the sea," they lost the coastline. Two days later, they ran out of food and water. The sun, with its bright light, began to take others; energy, strength and tolerance. There was no wind to blow the sails. The crew and the families were exhausted… But then a curious thing happened. They heard the watchman at the top of the sails: "Storm!"

Suddenly clouds filled the sky. The storm came dark, loud and gigantic. Surviving from that, without any severe casualty was simply a miracle. At least it was first of them…

When the clouds began to draw away, and the sun started to spread a ray of light here and there. The water became silent and calm. Smoke began to form on the water. After a while, a big silver-colored fish jumped out of the water. It started to circle around the first ship.

Then it disappeared. The next time they saw the fish, it was on the starboard. The captains gave the order to follow the fish through the mist.
Time passed, and the chasing continued.

And just when the mutterings among the people were loud enough to be heard by the captains, they all rose to their feet with another shout: "Land!"

It was a beautiful shore where every shade of blue and green meets. They named it Deepsend for they believe it was the end of their troubles. They build small houses, started a new life, and their grandsons and grandaughters continue to live in this paradise. And thus, the foundation of our city began; with hope, trust and courage...

Cheers to the souls who built Circadian City...

Hi,

This week, we want to share recent demographic information about Circadian City with you guys. Here are some basic facts of our City…

It is a home for every kind of people with different (or unique) choices to live. Because of this open-minded policy, it applies an enormous impact on media, business, craftsmanship, art, and fashion. It is a small, but a global city and everybody needs to come here and have a “colorful standard of living.”

The first recorded population count for our City was 50.000 in 1876, after 200 years when Captain Garret and Captain Allen decided to settle in the south coast of the country. They founded our City with their families. Since then it grew at a slow rate and became a city of 500.000 by the beginning of of the 2000s.

The latest research shows that people who live in here have a higher life expectancy than the rest of the country (thanks for all those sports and vegan trends). In 2010, the life expectancy of a person living in here was 81.3 years of age. This is 1.7 years longer than the life expectancy of the entire country.

The income disparity between the citizens of Circadian City is not vast. According to the latest census, the median household income for a wealthy citizen was $99,654 per year, and the poorest median income was reported at $51,801.

Our population is expected to reach 800.000 by 2050, based on recent projections created by the City. Among the 8 main zones, the growth in Oakes is projected to be the highest at 3% between 2020 and 2030.

80.41% of the residents speak the same language, while 20.59% speak more than one language.

FACTS ABOUT OUR CITY:

1. 8,321 sorts of life have been found in the Thornwood forest (some not so friendly but harmless life forms)
2. Since 2014 the City is working on a project for producing its electricity from solar power.
3. Its citizens set a new record recently: In the 2018 basketball league finals, 98.09% of the population watched the final match between C.C and Mostown, live from TV.
4. The City has the lowest crime rate in the country
5. We have been voted for “The Most Free Minded City” since 2015.

Peace and cheers!

It's true. From Skywalker to Wayne, Mononoke to Nemo; every hero has his/her own journey. And these journeys are formed by their big personal goals and small tasks along the way.

They do what they feel is right and walk on that road.

There is a large literature on this subject, and we like to have our own unique share from this subject: the quests in Circadian City. According to your life goal, we created different kinds of quests which will pop up on your daily life, career, romantic relations an even in dreams.
We have been working on this for weeks, but neither the job nor our interest and enthusiasm is finished. Nowadays, we go over 4-5 main courses. One of them is quests of interests…

We want to create different tasks which will boost your chosen interest throughout the game. So, if you have an interest in conspiracy, you will get tasks like "being accepted to a secret book reading society," "creating a blog upon lizard people who are controlling humankind"" or ""deciphering ancient books from town library"", along some basic stuff like reading, watching, talking etc.

Then we have quests for romance, yeah! We have so many broken hearts within our crew, but we still believe in that old joke; love. More, we believe that you have to fight for it. That's why in our city you have to have that walk… and that talk of the lover. You must prove yourself to your partners (of course you can expect the same thing from them too, it is your choice). You will choose your gender interest (you may change it) and fly like a free bird. Sometimes you will have quests like "making that risotto he loves" or "bringing her that business data that is forbidden to share." Oh, you know.... All those things you do for love.

There will also be quests for your own inner peace. Those will make you feel happy, quiet, tranquil. "Purchasing a beautiful picture," "gardening your neighborhood," "helping a homeless lady" these kind things…

You will also deal with the quests for your career and dream world, but they will be the subject of another letter.

Peace and cheers!

Hi Circadian City Citizen,

What a week! We have been studying over NPC relations, their interactions, stories, secrets, and meaning of being a friend, an acquaintance, a dude, or what so ever. During one of the meetings, someone said: "dialogs are too long and tedious in most of the games, we need to stay away from that..." True.

After a while, we come up with an idea of chat mechanic. During the game, you can chat with almost anybody. But, as you know, the nature of chatting is easy, light… Smooth. You don't throw away your secrets, precious things in this kind of conversations. Yet, the magic of chatting is this; in time it makes you feel more outspoken and then in the middle of a sentence, you start to talk about the real you, your story, etc.

So, in our game, the more you chat with an NPC, the more you get close to learn about his/her real deals. And the best part is you don't have to waste your time reading all those daily, shallow mumbo jumbo words.
Here is what happens; when you see an NPC, if you want to chat, the game will fast-forward to half an hour, and you earn several social points for this. You also become closer to this NPC and maybe the next time you chat with him or her, perhaps s/he will tell you about his/her childhood, first love, a secret about another NPC. Only this, you will read in a dialog box!

What is next?

This precious knowledge can affect your future dialogues or your behavior towards others. Because some may lie to you (and you will know it) some may play with you (and you may fall for it). The more you get to know the people, the more you uncover the backstories.

Or

You may just live and let live; go to work, sleep, and repeat.

Cheers!

Last week was like a dream. Not just because it was terrific and all, but because we worked on "dreams." First, there was a lot of reading and talking, especially about Carl Gustav Jung. You see, Mr. Jung saw the mind, the body, and the feelings as a whole, working together, named them all as one; psyche. And he saw dreams as this psyche's way to communicate to the individual. 
He also believed that dreams are an essential part of the development of the personality and that they express themselves through the use of symbols. That's what we do as well! 

Ok. Then how is this going to work in our game? You will play a character in Circadian City, and during day time, like all of the rest, you will go to work, meet friends and… you'll know what to do.

But, when the night comes, you close your eyes, then comes an opportunity to back up your daily motivations. What do we mean by that? We are designing a dream country where you can plant your courage (to invite the girl/boy you like), gather self-esteem from the fields (for your next business presentation), or maybe trim the crops of fear (of being unsuccessful)...

"I have noticed that dreams are simple or as complicated as the dreamer himself."
C. Jung

At the beginning of the game, the dream-world will be simple, and on a small scale. But when you start to build your personality and focus on what you want to do in your life, this place will be open to you...

Remember that we mentioned before choosing life-goals? Well, each of these life goals will demand a different personality type and different motivations. Your dreams will supply these motivations so that you will be able to focus on your life-goal with your body, mind, and feelings together (aka psyche). As you proceed, you will be able to build more advanced items/feelings.

There will be a lot of features in this part of the game; quests, new NPC's, items and crafting materials (and surely they will all have their pixel-dream-of-a-pony-style).  

Here is to the dreams and the masters of the dreams...

Cheers!

"What power would hell have if those imprisoned here would not be able to dream of heaven?"
Neil Gaiman, Dream Lord, Preludes& Nocturnes