Critias Empire News

[h2]Emergence[/h2]

New tools are finally speeding up development of Critias Empire after a long pause.

[h2]Cinders[/h2]

After the last update, I spent a long time working on tools that would let me create and balance the in-game Decisions system more quickly. Unfortunately just making the tools themselves became a massive grind and I could feel myself getting burned out. That, along with a couple of other factors, led me to pause work on Critias Empire in the autumn of 2025.



However, I somewhat unexpectedly got accepted for Turn Based Thursday Steam Festival earlier this year and that spurred me to get back into development with the game in the last couple of weeks.

[h2]Bronze Seas[/h2]

Way back last year, there were two scenarios available in the demo. After making the Decision system and refactoring various other things, the Bronze Seas scenario no longer worked and needed updating. Revisiting it has been a useful way to test out the new tools.

At time of writing, I'm still testing the Bronze Seas scenario and latest demo build, but with any luck, it should be out in the next few days to coincide with the Festival.

Until then, be sure to check out the other cool turn based games in the festival


https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TurnBasedThursday2026

[h2]Bronze Tools[/h2]

The next big pieces of work for Critias Empire will be making a tool to help with balancing the core game (buildings, products etc). As well, I still want to implement at least two more disasters (climate shift and river floods).

In the meantime, if you have any criticism or feedback on the current demo, or have encountered any bugs, please drop a message in the feedback thread or grab my ear on whatever social media you see me lurking around. It's always helpful to hear your thoughts!

[h2]Fire[/h2]

I added a new disaster to the game: Fire. It took longer than I anticipated but I'm quite pleased with the results.


Warning: Flashing lights. Gifs in this blog may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy.

[h2]Burn It Down[/h2]

When a fire type disaster occurs in Critias Empire, it will spread flames over a number of adjacent tiles based on the presence (or otherwise) of vegetation and how the land is being used (i.e. are there any buildings on the tile).

This makes vegetation in the game, like forests and scrubland have a greater meaning than just giving slight bonuses or penalties to production and build costs. As well, fires create a subtle risk to concentrating buildings together, which is in tension with clustering buildings to get bonuses. Conversely, unlike other disasters, the player can see the relative risk of a fire when building their empire without having to get their oracles to make predictions.



[h2]Ashes[/h2]

I also tidied up the temporary tile modifiers system in Critias Empire, adding an "ash" modifier that gives previously burned land a bonus to food production for a limited number of turns after a fire.

This might not sound like a big deal but i'll use it for a number of other disasters and features, so glad it's now in the game. A fair amount of code tidy up came along with that, especially with how disasters work, which again should make a good foundation for implementing future disasters.



There's still a few more things to do. I need to source some sound effects for one thing, and also add a setting to turn off lightning flashes for photosensitive players. Plus test everything works, especially save and load working, both with fire disasters, and also old save files made with earlier versions of the game not causing issues.

[h2]Tempus Fugit[/h2]

Even just getting to this point with fire disasters took me far longer than I anticipated. Around 3 and a half weeks, which combined with a trip to gamescom means it's now the start of September and I've still yet to implement the rest of the planned disasters. Some of which themselves will require some tricky reworking of existing code.

Probably, releasing by the end of September would be a very optimistic timeframe at this point. Nevertheless, the game's development has good momentum right now, so my plan is to press on with making the remaining disasters and Gods, then on to balancing the "main" game, as mentioned in previous blogs. I should at the very least have a new version of the demo released by this time next month.

In the meantime, if you have any criticism or feedback on the current demo, or have encountered any bugs, please drop a message in the feedback thread or grab my ear on whatever social media you see me lurking around. It's always helpful to hear your thoughts!

P.s. The cover image for this month's devlog is a crop of Hubert Robert's Fire in Rome painting. Hubert Robert is a big inspiration for the art of Critias Empire. His capriccio paintings are part of a movement that broadly romanticised ideas about the ancient greko-roman world through European art.

[h2]Celebrations[/h2]

Festivals allow players to make medium-term tradeoffs, spending resources to throw celebrations and festivities, but with ongoing costs to match. Meanwhile, the game itself has been in a number of digital festivals on Steam.

[h2]Throwing a Party[/h2]

There are various pre-defined Festivals in Critias Empire can be instituted by the player. Each festival runs for a fixed length of time and cannot be cancelled. Most festivals involve paying some resource every turn for the whole time the festival is running, in exchange for bonuses or other types of resources.

Players often end up with an excess of one resource that they can't easily or immediately do anything with. The idea behind festivals is to let players trade those resources in for something they want. But rather than a straight swap, the festival, and thus the costs and benefits, last for many years. In this time, the player's priorities might change or there might be a disaster for example. This means that there is a risk involved in starting a festival that may not be sustainable or become a drain on the player's resources.



I have finally implemented this feature after many years of having it planned, though I need to test and balance it before updating the demo to include it. Nevertheless, I'm really pleased with it, and I think it'll lead to many interesting medium-term decisions for players to make.

[h2]Of Gods and Mortals[/h2]

I've also added in a few more decisions. Even after having made myself some extra development tools for adding and editing decisions, the process of creating and balancing them is very long and involved. I'm hoping to add a further few more to the Glittering Isles scenario in time for the next update to the demo, but unfortunately the Bronze Seas scenario will remain disabled for the meanwhile as I try to churn out the decisions data for that also.

[h2]Building Steam[/h2]

Since Critias Empire was in the TurnBasedThursday fest on Steam, as well as June 2025 NextFest, it has received a lot of new followers and wishlists, and even some people making youtube videos playing the demo, which is super encouraging!


The game will also be in Steam's 4X fest this week, alongside a number of other 4X games by indie developers. We even have our own group for promoting each other's games, and I highly recommend you check out the others if you're at all interested in different and innovative 4X and strategy games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45670309

[h2]Road to Release[/h2]

The festivals feature took me a bit longer than I anticipated, but largely due to me getting back into the flow of working after being on vacation in July. (Aide: I was in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a fascinating part of the world that even had some ancient Greek ruins from the time of Alexander the Great and the successor states to his empire).

My aim is still to release Critias Empire by the end of September, but I will need to step up the speed to get there on time. My next aim is to implement all the remaining disasters and Gods that will be in the release version. I will share more details of those in the next update.

After that, I can focus on balancing the "main" game as opposed to the individual small scale scenarios that are currently in the demo. That will be the home straight and where I'll be looking out for assistance with feedback and testing. Follow the game here on Steam or stalk me on social media if you'd be interested in helping with that. Meantime any feedback and thoughts on the current demo is more than welcome, as it'll feed into my thinking about the balancing to come.

[h2]Predicting the Future[/h2]

The decision system is finally implemented in the demo, heralding a new way to interact with the Gods. Plus the predictions feature is back! In this devlog I'll give more details on both as well as future plans for the game.

[h2]Decisions Decisions[/h2]

God anger and patience, which affect when and where disasters are spawned, are now largely driven by the "decision" system - The little story snippets and choices you make as a player around them mean your actions and the mechanics actually correlate to the story of the game. It's much easier now to know a) when the Gods are angry and b) why!

It does though somewhat rely on my skill as a writer to weave this all together. I'm happy with the stories so far, though I'll be refining them over time to emphasise that Greek-myth feeling of big personalities and ironic twists.



The writing time needed is why the Bronze Seas scenario is currently disabled in the demo - I just didn't have time to add in the decisions for it yet. Hopefully I can get those in game and tested before Steam NextFest in June.

[h2]Foreshadowing[/h2]

I finally re-added the predictions feature to the game. You can now spend favour with the Gods to predict where on the map disasters may strike and their possible results.

It still needs a bit of balancing as right now it tends to give too-accurate predictions. I'm definitely looking for feedback both on how people use it and any suggestions on how it can be improved.



[h2]Early Steps[/h2]

After taking the game to various events and conventions and observing how players actually interacted with the game and approached the map and core loop, I've completely rearranged how the UI in Critias Empire works. It feels just that bit more natural to play than before, which is really encouraging for me, but I'll still be looking to see how I can improve the UI further in the future.



The tutorial needed to be completely remade as a result of the UI changes, and I'm reasonably happy with how it shaped up. It has a similar narrative arc as before, but takes more time to explain the underlying game concepts, so players know a bit more why they are being told to do various things. Next step will be to put a skip option in, and add tips/advice pop-ups for some of the features not in the tutorial, like the Survey and Oracle screens.

[h2]Bugs Ahoy[/h2]

Whereas last year I was making lots of regular smallish builds, the latest demo has lots of big changes, some to foundational parts of the game like disasters and saving. I therefore anticipate that, even with testing, there'll be plenty of bugs lurking in this build.

If you do find any problems, please report them using either the in-game button or via the Bugs Thread. I'll also make a new Feedback thread, so if you have any suggestions or comments on the game (from difficulty and balance to general frustrations or feature suggestions), definitely drop them in there.

[h2]Nearly There[/h2]

In the last devlog update I spoke about the final push to get Critias Empire ready for release. Amazingly, I'm only a little way behind where I wanted to be by this point. Beyond what I already mentioned in this devlog, all that's left are to add the remaining disasters, and then balance the "main" game. That will come in August (I'm out of the country in July) and add another dimension to the game which is missing in the smaller limited scenarios right now.

Before then though, Critias Empire will be in TurnBasedThursday Fest on Steam. The organisers have done a great job putting the fest together and I'm honoured and excited they let me join in again this year. If you're a fan of turn-based games, be sure to check it out.

It's been a long time since my last update, way back in August. The second half of 2024 really pulled me in too many different directions; I spent most of my time trying to balance working on 3 different game projects and in the end, none of them made anything like the progress I wanted.

[h2]Shorter Focus[/h2]

Partly for financial reasons, and partly for my own sanity, I've started 2025 by focusing on smaller games. I've managed to finish Ambient Dark, which will come out until March. And I've a second small game that will be announced in the next few days, that similarly is close to completion and should release in the next couple of months.

Both those games will be in Steam NextFest, alongside Critias Empire. My plan is to spend February before the festival on Critias Empire, finishing up as many features as I can before NextFest, with a view to release the full game a couple of months later. For those not aware, Steam NextFest is a big deal and a game can only ever be in the festival once, so I want to make sure the game is as good as it can be. But also I'm hoping this will be the push needed to get the game within sight of the finish line, instead of something I'm forever tinkering with.

[h2]Road To The Finish[/h2]

To get Critias Empire where it needs to be for that, I am going to have to be a bit ruthless with features and concentrate on the things that are really vital for the game. That means Festivals feature will get moved to post-launch update. As well, making new disasters, while fun, is something I can shift to after the "main" game is finished, and just keep adding in post-release.

That "main" game will have much larger maps than what are currently in the demo scenarios, with longer play times, more Gods, and more wonders. I've also concluded, after much thought, that the game is best served by having fixed balance settings / difficulty levels. I will therefore balance the game to give specific experiences. Currently I am thinking along the lines of:

• A genuinely chill game where disasters are more helpful than hurtful.
  
• A more narrative focused game where the impact of decisions and God-Player interactions really ramps up.
  
• A game that is far more of a mechanical challenge with much harsher limits on things like worker bonuses.
  

I should be giving updates on each of these as I implement them. In the meantime though, I'll be finishing off the Decisions system and re-implementing the Tutorial, so expect to see those in the next update.

[h2]The Legend of Atlantis[/h2]

Finally, I'm excited that Critias Empire is part of the Myths and Legends festival, which starts today! (Jan 29, 2025). The legend of Atlantis might be one of the more well known stories to have been handed down from ancient times, but the fact only the first half of the story has made its way down through history to us is telling about all the possibilities it sparks in the imagination.



My hope with Critias Empire is that it can be a way for people to explore a bit further some of those "what if..?" type scenarios and imagine what the ancient world was like in the spaces between what records and archaeology can tell us!