Making survival mode fun - October dev diary
Loyal citizens, hi there and welcome.
Another month went by since our previous post in which I described Dream Engines' gameplay in more detail. Let me share some of what we’ve been up to since then. In this post I’ll tell you about some of what we’ve been doing and also share some insights into our thought process and reasoning behind some important design decisions.
My main goal this past month was to reach a point in which a collection of mechanics and interfaces ceases to be just that, and starts feeling like a game that is actually fun to play. I needed the game to become challenging, and allow players to create intrinsic goals (objectives that you set for yourselves, such as researching a certain key technology).
If you have any more questions, Feel free to ask in the discussions page or in our discord, and I’ll answer as best I can. And if you haven't yet, please wishlist & follow us to stay in touch!
For our first Early Access release, the main gameplay mode will be Survival mode.
In survival mode your goal is to survive, expand, and progress, playing in a different random generated world each time. While this mode will be mostly sandbox-style without a story to guide you, we plan to have one or more victory conditions which you can achieve to win the game. We plan to allow for different difficulty levels and perhaps other “modifiers” that affect how you play the game each time.
This mode makes most sense for the earlier versions of the game, since it has limited scope, is fairly easy to change, and provides a lot of replay value.
Most of the game plays on a “local map” that is randomly generated every time the city lands, until the player decides to take off and travel to a new location. One of the biggest questions we’ve had since the start of the project was “how long will players play on each map” before moving on?
This simple question shapes a lot of the game. Can players take their time, and move at their own pace? Explore a map and exploit all its resources before moving to a new one? Or should they be pressed for time, dealing with increasing threats, and always being on the move?
We finally came to a conclusion that the best way to create a feeling of threat and survival is through faster pacing. A faster pace also allows for quicker games, and more willingness to start over after losing, which is important for the game to be replayable.
Therefore each landing will have a very limited time window (10-15 minutes real-time) in which the player will race to exploit as many resources as possible, before being pounded by massive waves of powerful enemies. Every time the city travels, the game gets harder and harder, and if the city’s progress is too slow, it will very likely be annihilated before long.
Note that the game will still feature active-pause, so the faster pace doesn’t mean you can’t stop and think. It just means you have to be efficient and make wise choices.
One super important element in both making the game fun and in providing replay value is generating interesting maps. The map is one of the most critical random elements, and when not generated correctly, all playthroughs may feel similar to one another and replayability is lost.
This is a mistake I made in our previous game, Judgment, and am keen on avoiding now. While there are random maps in Judgment, they don’t really matter enough to affect your choices. Luckily we have other more interesting elements such as random survivors that make up for it.
So, I spent a lot of time this month in researching and testing new map generation methods. I needed both interesting shapes - providing interesting tactical choices - and smart distribution of enemies/resources - random enough to make playthroughs different from each other, but also making sure it’s always fair and balanced. Tough challenge.
The best solution I found was to build a map made of many interconnected “islands” of open territory, surrounded by blocked areas. This creates an interesting open-air dungeon-like map in which larger areas have limited access points that the player can defend or explore.
The way the resources are distributed on islands makes the map much more interesting and more uniform than our previous topography-based map. Players don’t just randomly move units anymore, there are now clear “paths” to explore, and points of interest guarded by enemies.
Before, the enemies that were scattered around the world and those that raided your city were there same. These enemies were fairly strong (as strong as 2 of your units, more or less), fast, and had relatively long attack range. These made for interesting raids, especially later in the game, because the enemy waves reached the city quickly and delivered a suitable challenge for the city’s stationary defences.
These enemies, however, made poor mobs on the map. They were so strong that the players had to send all their units in one big group to minimize loss. That made for slow-paced exploration, exploring areas one by one with a lot of dead time. Moreover, they were so strong that we had to keep their numbers small, and then a lot of the map was just empty.
Instead, we now have new types of enemies for spawning around the map (we don't have their art yet, so no screenshots here). These are much slower and short ranged. You can send smaller groups to explore several areas at once, and only send larger forces to clear areas that are strategically important. These enemies will damage and destroy your units in large numbers, but in smaller numbers all they do is delay and hinder your exploration.
A month ago, early-game attack waves were repelled using your mobile units, and you didn’t need to (actually couldn’t) build walls or turrets until later on. That did not work so well.
For one, you had to recall your exploring units to base whenever you were attacked, or leave your city defenseless. This added a lot of dead time in which you just watched your units traveling from their faraway locations to the city and back.
There was also a huge jump in your defensive capabilities when unlocking stationary defenses. It was very hard to balance attack waves around this, they were either too easy once you built defenses, or too hard before you did so.
So I added lower tier defenses that are unlocked from the start. They are also cheap enough so that you feel comfortable building them outside, protecting choke points leading to the city, and abandoning them when you take off.
On the art side, our artists Yoni and Peter made a lot of improvements and performance optimizations to our visuals, and are always creating new content for future use. Here’s some concept art of ancient ruins that we’ll be adding to the game. These will provide important benefits to those able to exploit them.
I now feel that we are finally there, and when playing Dream Engines actually feels like a real game - it keeps me interested and I no longer just play because I have to, I actually enjoy the challenge. Finally!
Now we will build on top of that, add content and features that will expand on the base that we have built, add more flavor and increase the enjoyment. This is definitely a big step in the right direction, but there’s still much work to be done.
I really hope to start external playtesting soon, we’ll be sure to let you all know when you can apply. If you’re interested in more frequent updates and peeks into our progress, you can join our discord and follow us on Twitter.
- Tomer and the Suncrash team
Another month went by since our previous post in which I described Dream Engines' gameplay in more detail. Let me share some of what we’ve been up to since then. In this post I’ll tell you about some of what we’ve been doing and also share some insights into our thought process and reasoning behind some important design decisions.
My main goal this past month was to reach a point in which a collection of mechanics and interfaces ceases to be just that, and starts feeling like a game that is actually fun to play. I needed the game to become challenging, and allow players to create intrinsic goals (objectives that you set for yourselves, such as researching a certain key technology).
If you have any more questions, Feel free to ask in the discussions page or in our discord, and I’ll answer as best I can. And if you haven't yet, please wishlist & follow us to stay in touch!
Survival mode
For our first Early Access release, the main gameplay mode will be Survival mode.
In survival mode your goal is to survive, expand, and progress, playing in a different random generated world each time. While this mode will be mostly sandbox-style without a story to guide you, we plan to have one or more victory conditions which you can achieve to win the game. We plan to allow for different difficulty levels and perhaps other “modifiers” that affect how you play the game each time.
This mode makes most sense for the earlier versions of the game, since it has limited scope, is fairly easy to change, and provides a lot of replay value.
Pacing
Most of the game plays on a “local map” that is randomly generated every time the city lands, until the player decides to take off and travel to a new location. One of the biggest questions we’ve had since the start of the project was “how long will players play on each map” before moving on?
This simple question shapes a lot of the game. Can players take their time, and move at their own pace? Explore a map and exploit all its resources before moving to a new one? Or should they be pressed for time, dealing with increasing threats, and always being on the move?
We finally came to a conclusion that the best way to create a feeling of threat and survival is through faster pacing. A faster pace also allows for quicker games, and more willingness to start over after losing, which is important for the game to be replayable.
Therefore each landing will have a very limited time window (10-15 minutes real-time) in which the player will race to exploit as many resources as possible, before being pounded by massive waves of powerful enemies. Every time the city travels, the game gets harder and harder, and if the city’s progress is too slow, it will very likely be annihilated before long.
Note that the game will still feature active-pause, so the faster pace doesn’t mean you can’t stop and think. It just means you have to be efficient and make wise choices.
Map generation
One super important element in both making the game fun and in providing replay value is generating interesting maps. The map is one of the most critical random elements, and when not generated correctly, all playthroughs may feel similar to one another and replayability is lost.
This is a mistake I made in our previous game, Judgment, and am keen on avoiding now. While there are random maps in Judgment, they don’t really matter enough to affect your choices. Luckily we have other more interesting elements such as random survivors that make up for it.
So, I spent a lot of time this month in researching and testing new map generation methods. I needed both interesting shapes - providing interesting tactical choices - and smart distribution of enemies/resources - random enough to make playthroughs different from each other, but also making sure it’s always fair and balanced. Tough challenge.
The best solution I found was to build a map made of many interconnected “islands” of open territory, surrounded by blocked areas. This creates an interesting open-air dungeon-like map in which larger areas have limited access points that the player can defend or explore.
The way the resources are distributed on islands makes the map much more interesting and more uniform than our previous topography-based map. Players don’t just randomly move units anymore, there are now clear “paths” to explore, and points of interest guarded by enemies.
Guards vs raiders
Before, the enemies that were scattered around the world and those that raided your city were there same. These enemies were fairly strong (as strong as 2 of your units, more or less), fast, and had relatively long attack range. These made for interesting raids, especially later in the game, because the enemy waves reached the city quickly and delivered a suitable challenge for the city’s stationary defences.
These enemies, however, made poor mobs on the map. They were so strong that the players had to send all their units in one big group to minimize loss. That made for slow-paced exploration, exploring areas one by one with a lot of dead time. Moreover, they were so strong that we had to keep their numbers small, and then a lot of the map was just empty.
Instead, we now have new types of enemies for spawning around the map (we don't have their art yet, so no screenshots here). These are much slower and short ranged. You can send smaller groups to explore several areas at once, and only send larger forces to clear areas that are strategically important. These enemies will damage and destroy your units in large numbers, but in smaller numbers all they do is delay and hinder your exploration.
Entry level defenses
A month ago, early-game attack waves were repelled using your mobile units, and you didn’t need to (actually couldn’t) build walls or turrets until later on. That did not work so well.
For one, you had to recall your exploring units to base whenever you were attacked, or leave your city defenseless. This added a lot of dead time in which you just watched your units traveling from their faraway locations to the city and back.
There was also a huge jump in your defensive capabilities when unlocking stationary defenses. It was very hard to balance attack waves around this, they were either too easy once you built defenses, or too hard before you did so.
So I added lower tier defenses that are unlocked from the start. They are also cheap enough so that you feel comfortable building them outside, protecting choke points leading to the city, and abandoning them when you take off.
Ancient Ruins
On the art side, our artists Yoni and Peter made a lot of improvements and performance optimizations to our visuals, and are always creating new content for future use. Here’s some concept art of ancient ruins that we’ll be adding to the game. These will provide important benefits to those able to exploit them.
What’s next?
I now feel that we are finally there, and when playing Dream Engines actually feels like a real game - it keeps me interested and I no longer just play because I have to, I actually enjoy the challenge. Finally!
Now we will build on top of that, add content and features that will expand on the base that we have built, add more flavor and increase the enjoyment. This is definitely a big step in the right direction, but there’s still much work to be done.
I really hope to start external playtesting soon, we’ll be sure to let you all know when you can apply. If you’re interested in more frequent updates and peeks into our progress, you can join our discord and follow us on Twitter.
- Tomer and the Suncrash team