Aberration Analyst News

A few changes that will effect how players gather evidence...

With the last update I introduced "sightseers" in the tabloids. In these cases, it was not an incident that occurred in the city itself, but someone in that city was out on vacation when they encountered the "thing."

So in these cases, the tabloid gave some evidence as to the location of the city in question. However, this has now been changed.

[h3]Sight-Seers and City Specific Evidence[/h3]
The tabloids of this type are now very general, talking about a person on a drive or visiting friends, with no information about the city being visited. However, if you are able to send a team to interview the holiday goer, and it turns out to be a real headline, the specifics will now appear in the report and be shown under "evidence" instead of "tabloid" in the city folder.



It adds a bit more complexity to the game, and also changes how some aberrations might be discovered. The main difference between this kind of evidence and other types, is that it could appear anywhere on the map, not necessarily near to an aberration. It also (I think) makes the game world a bit more self consistent, where the tabloid headline will influence the kind of evidence you can gather.

City-specific evidence like this can be categorized by approximate location on the map, population, longitude/latitude, year founded or even the name of the city itself (rare). When you are able to identify a few of these kinds of witnesses, it can make it much easier to narrow down the exact location of an aberration.

The additional change is that when interviewing travelers, your team is not in as risky a situation, so they are far less likely to get ambushed. But always take precautions! The tabloid itself could be fake, and just happen to be in an aberration city. There is always risk :)

You won't find any obvious new content here but much has been changed under the hood so to speak.

[h3]Patterns & Lore[/h3]
There are now different patterns for each aberration type, and a bunch of new lore to help you identify them.

[h3]Danger![/h3]
Sending teams on investigations is also a bit more dangerous now (as it was in the original demo) to keep things more interesting and challenging.

[h3]New Tabloids[/h3]
I have also included a brand new tabloid generation type so expect to follow a different kind of story that should help you narrow down the locations you seek.

[h3]Retry[/h3]
On completing a session, you may now still exit the game, or you have the option of returning to the main menu and trying again.

[h3]Gameplay Loop is (more or less) Complete[/h3]
I've completed the core gameplay loop. Now instead of picking a general or specialized team, you will have to go to the rolodex and select 5 team members from a list. This is where you can choose to include a specialist or not.



[h3]Training[/h3]
In the current, standard game, you will start with one of each specialist type in your roster of team members. However, it's possible through carelessness, to lose one of these people during a mission, and you will have to train a new specialist to take their place. In the rolodex interface, you will see a training button that will allow you to do this. However, you have to think strategically, as it can take up to 3 days to train someone in a new specialty.



[h3]Colors[/h3]
I am working on tweaking the colors. It is no longer black and green only, but a light green and a darker green to make things a little less stark to look at.

[h3]More Work[/h3]
There is still a lot to do. I have to make sure all the menus are scaling and being positioned correctly (they are not right now), some of the text really needs updating to match the new gameplay, and I want to include a wider cast of team members (I already have graphics ready for these) as well as more complex behavior for the aberrations themselves.



The send team and report screens will also get even more of an update, giving more information on what transpired on a particular mission. In addition to training periods, team members will also become unavailable to work after a certain number of missions ... they need a break! This will become an important part of the gameplay, causing players to have to think more strategically about who they are sending and when. In addition to death, team members may also experience injuries, requiring recovery time as well. There is a lot that can potentially be done here that I've only started thinking about.



I also envision just expanding the variety of things like newspaper headlines, police reports, city names, maybe even aberration types, to make each play through a more unique and memorable experience.

[h3]Early Access[/h3]
I am hoping for an Early Access release soon. I have a couple more dramatic ideas that I really want some specific feedback on, and I am unsure whether to incorporate them at all. More on that later...

I finally figured out (thanks to some fantastic player feedback) how to utilize the Rolodex in a meaningful way. I have added names and information about each team member. You now have to choose which team members to send. The specialists will also appear hear, and they will be limited to one per type of aberration per day. So if you send a vampire specialist and he gets killed by a Wendigo, you will have to wait until the next day to send another one...



Currently using the mouse wheel to scroll up and down through the cards ... I will also probably add navigation buttons of some kind.

[h3]GREEN[/h3]
If you notice, the green color has been modified from the previous build (see in the store page screenshots) and it is a bit softer to look at and hopefully easier on people's eyes. I'm not 100% settled on the color, but I think it is getting closer.

[h3]CYCLOPEAN[/h3]
I made a small dungeon crawler for the Dungeon Crawler Jam 2024. In it I tried to go for the same visual aesthetic, to see the reactions.

Overall, feedback has been positive, but having the stark green against black was troubling some players. This prompted me to adopt the softer light green against darker green approach. You can watch a video of that game here: https://youtu.be/c9U9Z6Y0BNA?si=B3wbM6Y8LazrXxh8

I had put this game on hold for two reasons. First, I was inspired to make my Middle Eastern themed Dungeon Crawler "Islands of the Caliph" which was released in September of last year. Second, because I could not think of any interesting ways to finish this game.

Well after finishing Islands, I started thinking about Aberration Analyst a bit. It occurred to me that most of what I wanted the game to do was already there and working. It just needed to be rounded out with some additional features, and polished up a bit.

So I made a list of things to add or improve upon and I am making good progress on it.

[h3]Tabloids:[/h3]
So far I have made some major changes to how the tabloids operate. They still fulfill the same basic purpose. However, instead of getting a list of headlines on one page, I have a different "newspaper" for each headline that the player will have to sort through. They will still be able to mark the headline on their map for reference.

Additionally, when you click on a city in the map view, the appropriate headline for that city will show up in the notes at the bottom of the screen, so you will not have to go back and forth between the tabloid view to remember which headline was about which city.

The headlines themselves have changed too. They no longer all follow the same sentence structure. I now have two basic sentence structures, but plan to add more before I am done. It is really an aesthetic change, but I think that aesthetics are an important part of the atmosphere of this game, so it was crucial to include this.

Other aesthetic improvements include different formats and titles for the various tabloid magazines. It's no longer just "The Brobdingnagian Gazette" but there are over twenty different periodicals to look through.

Here's an example:


[h3]Other Stuff:[/h3]
I have other plans for how the game functions. The rolodex will provide a list of hunters that you can call on, instead of just selecting "aberration specialist" when sending a team. The general team will also not be capturing or destroying aberrations, but collecting physical evidence and interviewing witnesses.

Successful captures/destruction of aberrations will also give you lore, which will appear in the books. This will be a kind of meta progression, and allow you to benefit on your next play-through.