Critias Empire News

After spending the last 3 months of 2023 travelling South America, I am back to working on Critias Empire. A lot (lot lot!) of bugs have been fixed, the demo is ready and there's even a tutorial now!

[h2]Bugs Bugs Bugs[/h2]

Way back in August, I took Critias Empire to devcom conference in Cologne, Germany. Mostly for pitching the game to publishers, but I also had a table at the show on which I had the game running. I got a huge amount of feedback from watching and talking to people who played the game.

There were a lot of bugs, UX issues and things which as the developer, I could ignore or work around, but which tripped up new players completely unfamiliar with the game.



Since returning from my travels at the start of this month, I've been hard at work fixing more small things than I could possibly list in this update.

More heartening was seeing people understand the game and enjoy it, and then start taking about all the different aspects of the game. That was a really big morale boost for me personally and a good sign the game is on the right track.

[h2]So, what do I do?[/h2]

However, I didn't have a tutorial in time for devcom, and so I had to babysit the stand and explain how to play to each new player.

A tutorial therefore became top priority in the new year, both for the game in general, and also for the more immediate aim of being able to put a demo in the hands of publishers, and not have them go "ermm... bwah?... what?" when they open the game.



The new tutorial is more basic than I'd like, both in terms of content, and in only giving the player one way to learn. But I'm quite pleased with how it isn't too restrictive. The player can mostly ignore it, rather than being forced to jump through hoops. I know many strategy game fans are the sort to learn by jumping in and making mistakes, so this is quite important.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

The demo is all set up on Steam and ready to be launched. I sent beta keys for the demo to many of the publishers I pitched to in the summer, and a few more beyond that. Waiting to hear back from them before deciding if and when to go live.

The plan is to keep updating the demo and building it "in the wild". Ultimately I want Critias Empire to be a living game that continues to evolve and improve. So aiming to get into that mode from demo launch onward.

Priorities wise, there will doubtlessly be bugs and issues to fix once the demo goes live. Beyond that, I have some ideas on how to make interacting with the Gods a bit more fun and less formulaic.

And after that, the long planned "Festivals" feature should also give players an extra dimension when it comes to playing into or against the Gods.

Lastly, I have started working on a couple of new games. These small projects are designed to give me a bit of a break from Critias Empire, and get something out on the store that can earn a bit of revenue and sustain development in case I'm not able to find a publisher for Critias Empire. For those of you following me on social media, you may see me talking about them very soon. But fear not, as work is still continuing on Critias Empire in parallel.

As usual, if you have any of your own feedback or thoughts on the game's progress, you can always contact me or leave a comment!

In preparation for the demo, the game has once again been re-balanced, this time focusing on the gods Poseidon and Hephaestus respectively. With this has come new God related features, plus a lot of bug fixing and user experience improvements.

[h2]Gods Get Tough[/h2]

After meeting lots of publishers at Develop conference in Brighton in July, I realised, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they all want to get their hands on a demo of the game. So they can see if it's fun, or at the very lease see that it has the seeds for something great in it.

To that end, I decided to rebalance the game yet again. This time however, the focus was on making a really great demo to convey the essence of the game to potential publishers. That meant making what was already in the game more coherent and less a bunch of parts that would "eventually come together". Then making that shine.

In particular, the connection between the gods and the disasters was weak.

I decided to take the two existing disasters in the game - volcanoes and earthquakes - and pair them up with two gods, each of whom would spawn just that one disaster. Hephaestus is the god of volcanoes (amongst other things), so naturally he was paired with volcanoes. Meanwhile the earthquakes in Critias Empire are all about changing the land and sea, so made most sense to give to Poseidon.

[h2]How Angry?[/h2]

All the previous work on disasters from months ago made it easy to set up and balance Hephaestus and Poseidon with their respective disasters. However there was no way for the player to ever see or get a sense of what was going on.

To solve this, the new "God UI" shows various indicators that the player's soothsayers and mystics have divined about the gods. The information is purposely ambiguous and mysterious, and the hope is that players will have fun figuring out the god's intent and behaviour from this.



The God UI also includes an "Appease" feature, which allows prayers to be spent to lessen a god's anger or increase their patience. I'm not sure yet if this is a good idea and whether it will remain in the game, but for now it's a nice way for the player to directly interact with the gods.

As well, the gods now have a positive or negative affinity with certain land-uses (buildings). I am also undecided as to whether this is something the game should be be so explicit about, or whether to instead have more subtle clues (spooky noises and vfx perhaps could be cool, but could also be missed by players? Rather than unambiguous big fat up/down arrows as currently in the UI).

[h2]Favour with the Gods[/h2]

To support all of this, the gods each get their own prayer points resource. This concept has actually been lurking in the game data for years, but was never used until now.



How this works with rescuing and repositioning in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is still being worked out. The current plan is to have the rescue cost in prayer points of each god be a combination of the god's affinity with a particular land-use, plus which god spawned the disaster now threatening that land-use.

If there's a volcano, then praying to Hephaestus is going to make most sense (and therefore make rescue cost in Hephaestus-points cheaper). After all, the gods are nothing if not egotistical, and anything that will make the citizens of Atlantis (and the player) pray to them more is surely a good thing.

Likewise, Hephaestus is probably going to want a hefty price for rescuing the temple of another god (say Poseidon). Whereas Poseidon will want any temple dedicated to his name to be preserved, and so make the rescue cost cheaper.

The only thing still to figure out is the UI for letting players choose whose favour they want to spend. Once that's done, I will be working on implementing this next.

[h2]Protection[/h2]

Another element of interacting with the gods that needs a revisit are shrines. These protect the land around them from disaster, but are frankly overpowered. The current thinking on this leans towards the idea that each god has their own shrines, and that these only protect against disasters spawned by said god.



How useful this actually is though will need testing. The hope is it will combine well with the plans for the prediction feature (aka prophecy UI). This feature has suffered greatly from constant changes to how disasters are implemented. Hopefully there will be time to finally re-implement predictions soon.

[h2]Floating[/h2]

In addition to pitching the game to publishers at Develop conference, I will also be pitching the game at devcom/gamescom in Cologne next week! In preparation, I had a few close friends play the game, and wow! There were a lot of issues. Lots of small user experience issues, rough edges and misconceptions. Plus a hatful of balancing problems. Though not many programming bugs or crashes, which is a good sign.

The results mean it doesn't make sense to have a demo for Steam Strategy Fest. It's a shame, but no point in releasing the game with so many problems. Not to mention the complete lack of tutorial.

However, of the very long list of things wrong with the game, I've already made some progress fixing them. More bad things are red, there's more feedback on why players can't do things, and there's even little floaty text boxes to show materials spent when building.



[h2]Roading[/h2]

The road placement UI also finally received somewhat of an update. It now shows the cost of placing a road section and will be expanded to include the benefits of placing road in a specific place. The plan is also to let multiple road sections be built without having to re-open the build UI every time.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

Top of the priority list are: The rescue cost revamp, shrines revamp, prediction feature re-implementation, finishing the road placement UI, and a whole lot of small UI things.

The aim is to get all that done at least by the next update, plus re-balance the exploration feature and refine the existing balance.

Which is a lot! Especially since I will be away travelling from mid September until the end of the year, and unlikely to get much work on the game done in that time.

That said, I am quite proud of the progress made on the game in the last two weeks, so I'm optimistic I can get at least some of that done. I came very close to burning out at the end of July. I took a break from work, cleared some existing commitments that were stressing me out and things have been much better since. (This is also why this update is a bit later than normal).

As usual, if you have any of your own feedback or thoughts on the game's progress, you can always contact me or leave a comment!

While there's not much visually to show off recent progress on Critias Empire, a lot has been happening in the background. As well as taking a much needed vacation (2 short ones in-fact!), I've been polishing the game for pitching to publishers and an eventual demo.

[h2]Trailer Time[/h2]

Critias Empire has evolved over the past year and a half since the first trailer was released. It was high time a new trailer with updated graphics was made, and that's exactly what happened in June.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

For those of you who haven't checked out the Steam Store Page recently, you can also see new screenshots of the game, in addition to the new trailer.

[h2]Pitch Perfect[/h2]

I'm currently looking for a publisher for Critias Empire, and I must admit I underestimated the amount of effort that goes into the process. Not only does the game need to look great (which benefits everyone), but putting together all the disparate thoughts and underlying ideas behind the game into something both coherent and presentable has taken a lot of effort. Think multiple powerpoint presentations, each for a different situation or potential publisher, detailing every part of the game development process.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

Road building is scheduled to get a new UI in the coming month. Also on the cards is laying the design and code foundations for eventually making a tutorial. Depending on the time, I also want to circle back round to the exploration and prophecy UIs and make them both more visually appealing and more useful.

I'll also be at develop conference in Brighton, gauging publisher interest and getting feedback on the game.

As usual, if you have any of your own feedback or thoughts on the game's progress, you can always contact me or leave a comment!

Throughout the game's life, the disasters in Critias Empire have been limited to earthquakes and the terrain shifting they induced. As cool as they are, it's time to add in more different disaster types, which is the focus of this update.

[h2]Eerie Silence[/h2]

It's important that the player knows when a disaster is imminent. Not only so they can prepare, but just as importantly, to give them a sense of tension and anticipation. Already in the turn before a disaster, the music changes from baroque/romantic classical music to an eerie ambient background track. But that can be easy to miss if music volume is turned down, as can other signals such as the disaster countdown turning red.

To fix this and add extra immersion, the map now gains a grey pall, the seas turn a stormy grey and the clouds that fringe the game map turn to brooding thunderclouds. All in the turn before disaster strikes.



In the turn immediately after a disaster, the clouds and seas remain dark, while the lighting intensifies to reflect that the world is suffering the aftermath of disaster.

[h2]Then Boom![/h2]

Nothing says disaster like a volcano. Especially when we have the very real historical eruption of Mount Vesuvius, that famously destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, as dark inspiration. Ironically that eruption helped preserve and inform much of what we know about the ancient Mediterranean world today.

In fact, the cover image of this update is of a later (probably fictionalised) eruption of Vesuvius, by painter Joseph Wright of Derby, which matches the broadly Romantic art movement style of much of the art of Critias Empire!



In terms of how volcanoes affect the game, clearly anything in the path of the volcano or the lava streams it sends are going to get destroyed without intercession of the Gods. I.e. spending prayer points to relocate those land uses and buildings in the turn immediately after the disaster. Just as how it currently works with earthquakes that leave cities, farms, mines etc underwater.

I would like to at some point make separate shield and stratovolcano disasters. The latter would rain down ash and send out pyroclastic flows, rather than flood the land with lava streams. However that will have to wait for later.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

For the time being, I'm going to concentrate on updating the steam store page screenshots and making a new trailer. There's also still a bit of tidying up the volcano code to do.

I'm also going to stop making predictions about when a demo or the game will be released. This month I was hoping to work on Critias Empire much more than I was eventually able. Suffice to say, there will be a demo at the point where I feel the experience can really shine and give an authentic flavour of what the final game will be like.

To that end, I also aim to begin a new round of balancing before the end of May, and will most likely be more of a fine tuning of the existing balance rather than anything radical.

As always, if you have any feedback or thoughts on the game's progress, do get in contact or leave a comment!

Improving the user experience and look of the game with both big and subtle changes has been the focus of recent work on Critias Empire, the details of which are covered in this update.

[h2]Water World[/h2]

The water graphics in Critias Empire were created many many years ago, to the point that some people were commenting that the game has a retro feel. Whilst the game was never going to compete with the latest AAA graphics, the visuals of the game were not supposed to look that old!

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I decided any one of the many water graphics packs that are available off-the-shelf would be a significant improvement on what was being used before. After some experimenting, I eventually found one such water plugin that I liked (and works with the technical limitations of the game).

[h2]Are You Experienced?[/h2]

The UI is finally starting to improve in line with the plans I've had going back months. The visual upgrade is nice but, more important are the user-experience "UX" changes. No longer does the game try to bombard you with every single stat it can at every opportunity.



Instead, the game is more streamlined in its approach to information - giving you just the important "headline" stats that you need for making the decision immediately before you. The detailed stat breakdowns are still there for advanced players, and I've been careful not to hide away access to them too deep into the UI. They're just no longer clogging up screenspace when they're not needed.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

The UI / UX revamp still has some way to go, but already the game is looking and more importantly, feeling much nicer to play. It's also having a nice side effect of making it obvious where there are balance issues.

Looking further ahead, the trailer and screenshots on the Steam Store page are now more than a year old. I want to update them to show off all the progress made since then. The plan is to do this to coincide with (finally) releasing a demo, which I anticipate will be around early to mid May.