Jul 20, 2023

Orb of Creation - MarpleGames

Hey Ponderers!

I come today bearing some exciting news: Orb of Creation v0.6.0 will be available on August 17!

Now this comes with a few caveats. First, there is a 50/50 chance that this will come out on a steam beta branch, depending on its overall completeness. My goal is that I want the v0.6.0 to get at least as far as v0.5.0 in progression before releasing the patch in full. For example, there is a chance that rituals might be disabled in this beta release. So for those of you wanting a more polished version, you may have to wait a bit longer.

Additionally, once v0.6.0 is fully released, Orb of Creation's cost will go up. So if you've been interested in picking up the Steam version but held off, now may be the time to get in.

That said, for those itching to get into it, here's what's been going on:

Progress Report

Developing this game has been a challenge. I've been in the trenches for so long its hard to know if what I'm even working on is fun anymore. Staring a project and nitpicking it for a year doesn't really leave much room to experience "fun". But I think that's the beauty of art, in a way. You get a vision for what you want and you execute and see what happens. You don't really get to know if its going to be "good" or not. So no matter what, when your being creative, you kind of have to just take a leap of faith. Trust yourself and trust that what you've been doing is for the best. Moving in anyway other way than trust and surrender just ultimately sucks and is way more painful.

And so I've been just gently holding my own hand and walking myself through this. And its taken awhile, but I've carved out the entirety of the content for section 5 of 6, putting me at the start of section 6. I've filled in most paths, creating and designing most of the artifacts, spells, alchemy, and researches you'll encounter in the game, sort of capping off the content you'll see up to the end of alchemy.

With that cap in place, I feel ready to share what I've been up to!

Part of the uncertainty about this patch for me is that lots of the mechanics I've introduced in this version are in the right direction, but still need minor tweaks. They don't feel quite 100% right yet. Something, hopefully, your feedback will help with!

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One of these mechanics was spell casting. Even in v0.5.0, at a certain point, the impact and feel of spell casting gets lost. Its one of the most fun aspects of the early game, but as you get later and later, its relevance gets diminished. This is for a few reasons:
- Mana Capacity way out scales Mana Generation and Spell Cost. Eventually, you stop caring about how much your spells cost because of the sheer scale of your orb.
- Spell Cost imbalance means certain spells can cost a lot and others being negligible. Your Attune Orb could cost 20K mana, while your Conjure Space might cost 100B.
- Alternative resource generation sources out scale spells. Why bother casting resource spells when alchemy just crushes every resource in seconds.

The alternative resource generation is something that can be solved with balance, and I think v0.6.0 does this pretty well, but the exponential nature of OoC leaves the other two issues unsolved. I don't think these are necessarily bad things either, as most incremental games tend to move through phases with elements becoming more and less important with time. Spell casting though, remains one of the most fun phases of the game that eventually dies and I think the game would benefit if it stayed relevant throughout your playthrough.

So I have a solution I've been playing around with.

In v0.6.0, I'm introducing two new global modifiers and changing how spell leveling works. The first global modifier I've introduced is Mana Reserve Level. You can choose to reserve your maximum mana capacity in order to gain more Spell Power, Spell XP, and improve all passive generation. This is balanced and set up in a way where reserving your mana is almost purely beneficial.

This gives the player a desirable way to keep how much mana you spend on spells constantly relevant. Managing mana and spell costs and spell cooldowns is now more a part of the late game. However, this doesn't fix the problem that your Attune Orb can cost 1000x less than your Conjure Space, so I made one more important change.

I've taken the current spell leveling system and moved it to a global modifier: Spell Output Level. Changing your spell output level changes the level of all of your spells at once, making your entire loadout more powerful and cost more. With that, I've taken the old spell leveling system and changed it to just a purely beneficial, minor boost to that spell. (Something like +5% power, +5% cooldown speed for every level.)

This definitely changes how the game functions in a few major ways, and I'm testing out how it all feels. It may even bleed into how Alchemy works if it feels right. But again, it feels like one of those movements forward that may need some tweaking and balancing. Something that will be good to get some feedback on.

With that said, I've got a few more things I want to showcase in this version!

v0.6.0 -- Scholarism, Druidry and Weights, continued

So many new things are here in v0.6.0, and while I don't want to spoil them all, I do want to share some of the excitement!

Druidry

One of my original visions of the game back when I started two years ago was to have an tightly bound incremental in which you swap between panels, optimizing every section of the game, using every section of the game. One of these panels in my original vision was a garden in which you harvest herbs that can be refined into components that improve the other sections of the game.

v0.5.0 introduced this concept slightly with the alchemical process: Herbalism. And while it was sufficient, but it didn't really scratch that itch of "growing something in a garden". So I decided to rip it out and transfer it to an entirely new section of the game: Druidry!

You no longer cast spells to generate wood in v0.6.0. Instead, you must grow and harvest trees in order to acquire the important workshop-related resource. Trees take time to grow though, and harvesting them will slow down their rate of growth. It becomes a decision of which garden element should I harvest and produce more of?

But it doesn't stop there, magic is involved! If you wish to generate more plants and trees, you'll have access to a variety of spells and equipment that modify and improve how your plants are harvested and grown.

Scholarism

An untapped part of the game in v0.5.0 that I wanted to try leaning into was the Attributes mechanic as a whole. (Attributes being the repeatable upgrade in the game.) Attributes are fairly straightforward. They define your progress; you buy attributes, get stronger, so that you can buy more attributes. That is still true here, but I wanted to explore all the ways that I could play around with them. So I added an entirely new section: Scholarism.

Scholarism gives you access to lots of fun attribute modifying effects. Resource generation after developing attributes, attribute cost reductions, and one of my personal favorites that isn't introduced till much later: Enchantments.

Once you've unlocked the ability to create Ink, you'll be able to create Scrolls. Scrolls consumables that provide permanent buffs or enchantments to a specific attribute of your choice. These effects come in a few varieties: bonus levels, power bonuses, cost scaling reductions, and more. But the real joy is choosing which attributes you want to buff. Now that there are over 150 attributes in the game, and because scrolls are costly and time consuming to make, you'll need to choose how you use them carefully to get the most value out of them.

Artifacts

In the last teaser I posted, I mentioned every section of the game was getting hit with the weight system from Alchemy. Artifacts is one of those sections. In v0.5.0, you had access to 4 types of artifacts, with 4 artifacts in each section; 16 artifacts in total. In v0.6.0, you have access to over 40 artifacts, with several different and new types, and with entirely new restrictions.

You still can only equip one conductor at a time, but now you also have Artifact Slots and Artifact weight to define what your loadout can be. In the start, you can only equip two different artifacts, and with a maximum of 6 weight. But as you invest into Expert Artificer you gain more slots and maximum weight, enabling you to equip more artifacts and stronger artifacts.

The weight system works here because of one final change to artifacts. You can equip the same artifact multiple times into the same slot, essentially "leveling up" that artifact. Blast Staff, for example, is a conductor that costs 4 weight. If you equip it four times it'll cost 16 weight, but its effect on spell power moves from x2 to x4, a gigantic boost.

With this new system, artifacts are a much broader and customized experience. As a player, you able to hone in on certain aspects, like spell power or passive resource generation, across multiple artifacts to create incredibly strong combos.

A refined experience

v0.6.0 is a massive polishing patch. A lot of the key systems have changed and tweaked for longevity and creativity. Systems like spell augment glyphs now constantly scale with you through out the game, making your spell loadouts always relevant. Even simple systems like charm spell effects are designed in a way that will get you scratching your head at the best way to use them.

There's a lot of new things to play with, and a lot of of old things have a new a face, and I'm excited to finally be getting it in your hands again. Come back and check out the new version on August 17th!

-Marple

Jul 20, 2023

Fighting burnout during heatwave

Soulblight - abraksil

Hey, everybody! Kuba from My Next Games here.

Not sure how this summer looks in your part of the world but for us here in Poland it’s hot. The temperatures are so high that most of the days everyone is just trying to hide from the sun. Maybe it’s just me spending too much time with our game's time manipulation mechanics but it seems like everything is happening in slow motion. Nevertheless I enjoy this change of pace. Between Digital Dragons and Summer Steam Next Fest, the last few months have been extremely busy. Now I can finally sit down and focus on making Hank: Drowning on Dry Land…

This unfortunately means that, besides solving some coding problems, there is not much to talk about this month. Don't worry, I won’t be boring you with some programming details. Instead I’d like to share with you some glimpses of what we’ve been planning for the upcoming month.

Right now our main focus is Hank. Although working on an ambitious time traveling game like that is fulfilling, it is also very exhausting. Who would have thought that making everything perfectly rewindable would take that much effort ;P What is the most discouraging is the fact that sometimes one day’s progress is so small that you feel like you haven’t moved at all.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2277670/Hank_Straightjacket/

Hank: Straightjacket, a free little game we made a few months back as part of the grand form CRPK, reminded us how refreshing it is to create something playable in two weeks. The game was very short and from the programming point of view it was held tougher with spit and duct tape… Making it was a lot of fun though. The whole experience was so invigorating that we decided that in the future whenever we feel burned out we will repeat this exercise.

In the weeks between Digital Dragos and Steam Next Fest once more we felt exhausted…

And so… we took a break and created this:

It’s called Starship Murder and we’re planning on launching it next month as a free game. If you want to know what it is and how you play it - stay tuned! I will be talking about it more as we get closer to the release.

Cya Around,
Kuba

Jul 20, 2023

Fighting burnout during heatwave

Hank: Straightjacket - abraksil

In the weeks between Digital Dragos and Steam Next Fest once more we felt exhausted…

And so… we took a break and created this: