REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM News

Hello, once again Survivors!

Over the past two weeks, we've talked about how we've been experimenting to create a new standard for making maps. We talked about how we tried to make "Outdoor" style maps to further reinforce the theme, but the playtime was overly long, and how we went back to "Indoor" style maps, but there were divided opinions on the difficulty level.

One of the key things we wanted to deliver in the Early Access combat experience was to "encounter a large number of enemies that feel intimidating" and then "be able to kill them all if you understand and utilize the game's mechanics well enough" - in other words, the "excitement of getting through a seemingly difficult situation" was one of our main goals.

In our earlier experiments, we removed the Caught Mechanic, which made it much easier for players to navigate situations, and the concept of surprised and surrounded increased the amount of unit firepower available to player characters.

While we all agreed that we had created a "simpler, more fun" system, we were divided on what kind of combat experience we wanted to build on it.


[h3]The Battle Debate: “Bland vs Difficult”[/h3]
The argument from those who felt the combat experience was bland was that unless the number of enemies you encountered (assuming you understood the system) was 1.5-2x that of the Early Access version, you wouldn't feel really threatened.

• Due to the damage bonus of the surprise system, mobs such as Knawers will not have a chance to react if they are successfully surprised.
  
  
• High HP enemies can still be killed within the same turn if they are surrounded by pushing, pulling, etc.
  
  
• Since there is no caught mechanic, if you don't think you can finish an enemy off, you can simply move out of their line of sight and end the turn.

The argument was that given the combat environment above, it's not that hard to clear a stage without taking a single hit with a full understanding of the system, and it's hard to call it "fun" if that's the base experience.

So, the argument was that in order to feel thematically "Threatened" in this situation, there should be a quantity of enemies that you can't possibly take out in a single turn, and that the main combat experience should be how to evade their pressure while still accomplishing your mission objectives and escaping (in fact, the gameplay of the board game Zombicide is close to this feeling).



On the other hand, the "it's still hard" side of the argument was also well-founded.

• Removing the caught mechanic and introducing the surrounded/surprised systems was to lower the barrier of entry, so making the level design harder to compensate just seems like going back to square one.
  
  
• It takes until mid to late game to fully understand all the mechanics behind surprised/surrounded/out-of-sight to not feel threatened, that shouldn’t be set as the “Standard experience.”

So, we decided to expand the number of testers to get to the bottom of these two issues!

We had limited testing of our experiments to those directly designing the combat system and content, but we decided to bring in others from narrative design and art teams to test the “Real-world” difficulty of our “Threatening" indoor maps.

Since all of our new testers had beaten the Early Access version all the way to the Manor House, they had some idea of what the game was going to be like. We decided to use their ratings as a baseline to see if they thought it was "too hard" or "too bland".

And all 3 testers declared... I wanna throw my pc out the window!

More precisely, the feedback was that there were too many enemies in too small a space, and that the system descriptions they were given in manual form (assuming the place of a tutorial), were not enough to reasonably deal with these battles.


The system for evading enemies once you're out of sight was not intuitive to use (even though it was in the documentation), and even then, you had to create space on the map to utilize it, which was not easy to do when you had a large number of enemies to deal with.

We agreed with the argument that enemies should be less dense and started making a number of maps for "continuous play" based on this.


[h3]The question remains: Is this good enough??[/h3]
Reflecting the shocking (?) results of our last test, we've started mass production of the map with a similar enemy spawn density to the Early Access version.

In total, we created three “Small Size” indoor maps and one “Large Size” map to test the sense of “continuous play” with new character skills and meta-games.



The focus of this build wasn't really on level design or combat experience. Rather, it was a situation where the standard experience of level design needed to be determined quickly in order to test other elements (more on those elements in a separate post!).

The enemy spawn density was scaled down to avoid the "unreasonably large number of enemies making progress seem impossible" situation and was expected to be an appropriate level of difficulty for the maps we would initially offer, with playtime of around 20 minutes for smaller maps.

However, there was still a sense of "is this really going to be good enough?".

The initial approach we tested was "kill as many of the enemies as you can, then move out of their line of sight and avoid attacking this turn", and the problem was that giving players this many enemies right from the start felt too harsh if not used to it.

The problem was that if the game starts with only enemies who are simple to kill, there was no guarantee that they would learn the patterns by the time we got to the mid- to late-game.



This raised a more fundamental question: "Isn't the rule that you can't be attacked no matter how close you are, as long as you're out of the enemy's line of sight, counterintuitive in the first place?", which led us to rethink our system design direction and enemy population criteria.

Then, a simpler solution was proposed: "What if we made the enemies appear in large enough numbers to be a threat, but easier to kill?"


[h3]Let's make lots more come out, and lots more die![/h3]
Up until now, the HP of the most basic monster object in our level design, the Knawer, has changed a lot. Let's say a one-handed ax with WP 1 has an average damage of 3.7,

• To make them even more zombie-like and difficult to beat, there was also a version with a base HP of 40 (!), so you had to really hit them with all your might or run away,
  
  
• In the early access version, the “Despair” difficulty had a base HP of 15 (which could be killed in 5 attacks on average),
  
  
• After several tweaks, the final "threat test” (version that was deemed too difficult for inexperienced players) had a base HP of 9.

As we watched the testing up to this point, our level designer thought, "Why don't we just make the number of enemies greater and shrink their HP to make them easier to kill?"

The new maps were based on the following principles.

• Bring back the concept of the abandoned Outdoor Map and organized it into something closer to Medium size
  
  
• Re-utilize elements such as "roamers" and "windows”
  
  
• Introduce as many enemies as the “Threat Test” version, but adjust the HP of the Knawer to 4.
  
  
• "Roamers" will have the same health as the original Knawer (HP 9), with some additional stronger enemies (HP 25+)
  
  
• Varying spawn behavior across buildings, with some buildings spawning tons of enemies and others spawning a small number of stronger individuals

When we removed the out-of-sight evade system from maps designed with the above philosophy, the game surprisingly(?) became much more fun.

• Enemies are more numerous but easier to kill, making them less unfair.
  
  
• The ability to kill two or three Knawers simultaneously with an AoE skill without necessarily surprising/surrounding them has increased the number of options in combat.
  
  
• At the same time, the value of surprise has increased, as it is now a guaranteed way to kill a Knawer.
  
  
• The threat and risk of not getting the kill has increased, as enemies still deal the same damage and cannot be evaded.

Since it brings the pros of the outdoor theme while greatly improving the drawbacks of being "time-consuming and frustrating" (the average playtime is around 30 minutes, which is longer than the existing "indoor" maps, but a difference of 10 minutes or so would be a more fun experience), the consensus was that this direction was better suited as a standard.

We also wanted to make sure that it wasn't just people who were already familiar with the system that were giving us positive feedback, so we asked people who had dropped out of the initial "Threat Test" version to test it again, and we were pleasantly surprised to get a "100x more fun than last time" rating.

The art team also told us that the outdoor theme was much more appealing and had a lot more room for expression, so we were able to unanimously set the standard for the new map.

This is the end of a long journey of experimentation that we went through to set the standard for our new maps. There were many points along the way where we wondered, "Do we really need to go this far?", and it was hard when the feedback wasn't great, but I'm proud to say that the results were worth the time we invested.

After this, it's time to introduce other elements that build on this standard combat experience, and after this post, I'll be adjusting my posting frequency to every two weeks instead of once a week for the time being.

The first and foremost reason is that the parts I'm going to be talking about are the meta-game and character parts, which are ongoing trials and errors that we've been going through alongside the map changes.

We’ve been enjoying sharing these posts, but now as we get cracking on putting all these changes into the game, there’ll be less time to dedicate to the dev notes. But fear not! We'll return to a weekly post once we're more organized enough to focus on parts of the game outside of the combat experience.

We'll do our best to bring you more polished content and a more compelling look at what we've been working on as soon as it’s ready to rock.

Thanks so much for your patience and trust in us, and we'll see you back in two weeks for another installment!
REMORE

Greetings Survivors,​

Do you have what it takes to become a Legend?
To have your name etched into the annals of Remore history?

We are seeking Legendary Survivors that have traversed Remore and are capable of pulling off amazing feats. This time we seek... the Fiercest Combatant!

The Legendary Survivor with a Cleared Video of Manor House without using a Single Tool will be Crowned, Fiercest Combatant and will have their Name proclaimed in the Credits of REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM! Show us your big brain moves!

Become a Legend, Become History!

[Event Period]​
Apr 9 ~ Apr 23 (PT)​

[Winner Announcement]​
May 2

[Submission Form]​
https://forms.gle/iZ9h4TR4xBPDresA9


[Event Details]​
Clear a map without using a Single Tool​ (Pebble Tutorial do not count)

[How to Participate Event]​

1. Record a Video of clearing Manor House without using a Single Tool.​
   
   
2. Upload the recorded Video to a server where it can be viewed (YouTube, Google Drive, etc.).​
   
   
3. Fill out Event Submission form (https://forms.gle/iZ9h4TR4xBPDresA9).​
   
   
4. Check that there are no missing or corrected parts in the application before submitting it.​
   

[Rules]​

1. Please ensure your Video Link is correct. Any issues with the Video Link may cause your application to be void. ​
   
   
2. If you edit the Video in any way to "deceive" the rules, your application may be considered Void.​
   
   • You may include an Intro and Outro in your Video, but Gameplay Footage of the Event Requirements cannot be altered in any way. ​
     
3. The Video should start from the part where you run the saved file. (to check your difficulty)​
   
   
4. Game difficulty should match with submission form.
   
   
5. Winners will be determined in the following priority. ​
   
   • The higher the difficulty, the more points awarded.
     
     • Vengeance < Suffering < Despair
       
   • The higher the map, the more points awarded.
     
     • Blackthorn Village < Monastery < Tavern < Barracks < Grocery < Manor House
       
   • Taking fewer or no damage will increase your points.
     
     • Armor is not calculated.
       
6. In an event of a tie, Winner will be chosen by Development Staff.
   

​
Thank you,
REMORE

Greetings Survivors,

We have just made Hot Fix to the build, please check following details

[h3][Change Log][/h3]

• (User Bug Report) The game freezing after moving "Edwin"(Militia) in a barracks mission.
  
  
• (User Bug Report) An issue where if the player closes the Inventory with the C button while the Weapon Modification UI is active, they may use the materials but the enhancement has not occurred.
  

Thank you,
REMORE Staff

Hello, Survivors!

In last week's post, we showed you how we were experimenting with maps for "Outdoor" spaces, and while there were some positive elements we talked about like "Windows" and "Roamers", there were also issues with an overlong playtime and fatigue.

This first version of the outdoor map, dubbed the "X-Large Map", was tested by a group of designers who were familiar with the game's logic but despite that, not a single person besides the level designer himself was able to complete the map (!), the average playtime for testers who were "close" to completing it was over an hour.

The problem was that this version we were testing was not trying to be some high difficulty boss fight, but rather a "standard for general level organization" for a game that would be procedurally generated, so we decided that no matter how thematic the experience, it would be hard to set this as the “standard.”

Solving this problem wasn't straightforward so today we’re going to show you the rest of our experimentation.


[h3]Second Attempt at Outdoor Maps: Reducing Space Size and Adjusting Difficulty[/h3]
The first impression of the “Outdoor” map was definitely a good one, and it fit the tone and theme we were going for, so we started looking for ways to keep its strengths and fix its weaknesses.

• Reduce the space by about 70% to decrease playtime.
  
  
• Reveal mission objective locations at the start of the map (in our first attempt, we hid mission objectives altogether to give a sense of "exploring uncharted space", unlike in EA).
  
  
• ● Enemies are now more spaced out and have less HP, reducing the amount of time spent in combat.

We named the second outdoor map "Large Map" and made the above changes.



There was a consensus among the dev team that the smaller maps were much more "doable" than the "X-Large" version.

The average playtime for the Large version was between 40 and 50 minutes, and many of our testers were able to complete it with ease. Compared to the X-Large version, the reaction was much more positive.

Except... It was still longer than we were aiming for as the “Standard Experience.” Beyond the simple issue of playtime, there was a lot of feedback about fatigue – “I don't think I'll be able to get through this and then do the next map.”

So, we thought, "What about reducing the size even further?".



[h3]3rd Outdoor Map Attempt: Smallest Size Attempt[/h3]
Actually, before moving to the outdoor maps, there was nothing particularly problematic with the “Indoor” map. The playtime was a decent 20 to 30 minutes, but we had decided to try the outdoor version simply to bring a little more variety and just see how it felt.

After two rounds of testing, the thematic benefits of outdoor maps were clear, but there was a lot of concern: "Are we making the game too inaccessible to keep these benefits?"

So, we tested a version of the outdoor map shrunk down to a similar size as the indoor map, to see if we could reduce playtime and fatigue, while keeping the thematic strengths.

Unfortunately, after testing this version, codenamed “Medium,” we concluded that it was the worst of both worlds.



We needed at least 3 squares per grid to give the outdoor map a "street like" feel, and 5 squares to give it a "spacious" feel, and if we reduced the size of the map while maintaining this street feel, we would end up with too little space for meaningful gameplay/combat.

The way we dealt with “Roamers” was that you had to take risks to get around them, like entering a building to end your turn, which became overly restrictive as the overall space was reduced.

The play of looking through a “Window” to see what's going on in a room and deciding whether or not to enter also felt pointless in a small space, as you'd have to enter every room anyway.

Eventually, we realized that the "Outdoors" theme would not allow us to use small-sized maps, so we wondered which direction we should go.


[h3]Back to the “Indoor Map”[/h3]
We’re summarizing the process here, but in any case, experimenting had already gone on for so long that we were nervous about continuing in uncertainty.

We knew that we wanted to use a combat system centered around the "Surprise" and "Surrounded" systems, but we needed to decide quickly on "What kind of combat experience do we want to provide through that system?" so that the art team and other parts of the team could work smoothly.

So, we tentatively decided, "Let's just say we never tried an outdoor map," and started designing the final experience with an indoor map style in mind.



The overall room size and design philosophy was similar to the first indoor map, and we experimented with removing the “Windows” and see if we could keep the “Roamer” element.

Also, the first indoor map had a level design that assumed mid-to-late gameplay for a moderately skilled player, with a "very large number of enemies" to navigate through, so we experimented with reducing the number of enemies, as feedback from the first version suggested that the experience of being trapped in a small space was frustrating.



The first indoor maps were designed to encourage players to take advantage of situations like the one above, where there were a large number of enemies that were "virtually impossible to defeat" and you had to "minimize your route" to get to the mission objective and then escape. We added the "stay out of sight (to avoid being attacked next turn)" rule to encourage players to take advantage of this.



On the new indoor maps in contrast, we've adjusted the enemy placement to a "I can kill them all" density compared to the initial build, assuming you're not yet familiar with the game.

At this point, once the combat experience was finalized, we planned to start commissioning full-fledged map objects from the art team to match the new narrative.

However... while the actual playtime was at the targeted level of 20 minutes and fatigue was not an issue, the feedback that the combat experience felt flat after reducing the number of enemies was too much to ignore.

The opinion was split between "this is appropriate for the early stages when you're not familiar with the game" and "it's still a problem if the game feels boring early on".

Again, we had to make a decision, whether the issue was "the team members who are constantly testing new maps are too familiar with the game and suffer from the curse of knowledge" or "we haven't yet found the right balance between tension and difficulty” ...

Fortunately, we've come to a pretty positive conclusion on this issue, but this post is already longer than intended, and there are a few more episodes that I don't want to skip over, so I'm going to save the final conclusion for next week.

Looking back at this post, we went back and forward a lot, but it's an important part of the process, so I think it was worth explaining in detail.

We'll be back next week with an introduction to our finalized map criteria!

Until then!
REMORE

A warm greeting once again Survivors!

About two months ago, we introduced our Experimental Process for creating procedural maps.

We've been prototyping ever since, of course, but we generally mix up the topic of our posts to keep things interesting for you readers...

If you've been following along, you've got a good idea of where we’re headed now, from the “Surprised/surrounded” combat system we introduced, to the original intent and current direction of the narrative...

This week, we’re going back to talking about Maps, and want to show you how we experimented with a base environment for creating “Procedural Maps.”


[h3]Experimenting with "Room" Based Representations[/h3]
In our last post on procedural maps, we mentioned that we were experimenting with randomized rule generation, but after discussions with the art team, we started redesigning with the goal of creating indoor maps where specific places like “living rooms” etc could be more accurately expressed.

We needed a level design that would allow this “better representation of indoor areas” to work with the new “Surprise/surround” mechanic, while also aligning with the narrative requirement that players can gather “Memories of the Dead” through “Embers.”



As such, our first experiment in creating new maps was designed with the following goals in mind.

• Design a room with a specific theme, such as a Hunter's House or a Forge, following suggested room rules.
  
  • Enable drops that match the theme, such as Throwing Daggers (Hunter's House) or Equipment Repair Tools (Forge).
• Place a variety of obstacles in small spaces, allowing for the "Surrounded" mechanic to be used well.
  
  
• ● Deploying Special Enemies/objects that carry an "Ember Shard," and allow them to have an Area Effect on all Enemies/allies, significantly altering the play of each map.
  
  • For example, if you have a special object that has the effect of "increasing your 1-hit critical strike chance by 50% each turn," your ability to "kill enemies in one hit" is enhanced on that map.
    
  • Conversely, if you have a special object that has the effect of “reducing enemy/allied vision by 1 space”, it will narrow your allies' vision, but also narrow the enemy's vision, enhancing “Surprise” play.

The test results for this map were positive, especially since the playstyle was significantly different depending on the type of Ember Shard, so we knew that creating multiple types of objects with special effects and making them appear randomly across the map would greatly diversify the experience.

However, there was some concern about whether this would be enough to continue to deliver a diverse experience.

First, since the size of the space itself was pretty small, we figured there was a good chance that the experience would be similar, albeit with small variations due to randomness.

We realized that while the differences in enemies and special objects could provide a slightly different experience, it would be difficult to maintain this considering the amount of maps we aim to make.

We received a lot of feedback that the hallway spaces felt cramped when it was just a single space, and when we increased it to two or three spaces, it was difficult to distinguish the size of the actual rooms from that of the hallways.



As we were discussing solutions to these issues, the idea came up, "Wouldn't it be more fun to have the stage be outdoor-centric?"


[h3]Experimenting with "Outdoors" Based Representations[/h3]
The board game Zombicide, which we've mentioned as a reference several times, has a play scenario where you move down large streets, stopping at buildings you need to visit to complete the mission before escaping.

We thought that it might be better to have "multiple buildings" to wander around instead of "one big building" to capture the "apocalyptic feel" and create an experience closer to the initial theme.

In this case, the basis for procedural generation would be to generate and place multiple building modules...



For the new maps, unlike the solely indoor ones, we made the following changes.

• Create streets instead of a single "corridor" and have each building be separated by these streets.
  
  
• The streets are patrolled by roaming enemy types, whose alarm range is two to three times that of normal enemies.
  
  • Instead, they have lower HP and are easier to kill, especially using “Surprise.”
• Each building has a "window" that allows you to check out enemy placement before entering the building.

The main intention was to create a more "exploring the space against unseen threats" experience. We assumed that this would be a level design direction that would be more in line with the FOG OF WAR system and scavenging content in existing games.



First of all, the reaction to the new content like “windows” and “roamers” was very positive. It was already a game where “vision” was important, but ultimately it felt underutilized outside of whether or not to set off an enemy alarm, and now it felt much more used in pre-combat situations.

(Of course, the window in the current example image is a dummy resource! Creating a new element called a "window" for gameplay would be quite expensive, so the plan was to first validate the gameplay implications with a dummy resource before creating it.)

The presence of Roamer creatures roaming the streets also adds tension and makes it clear that you need to take advantage of the new “Surprised" system; if you end your turn on the streets and are spotted by a Roamer, you'll be greeted by a massive wave of enemies, giving you a stronger reason to carefully enter the buildings.



However, despite very good first impressions with windows and Roamers, we received a lot of feedback that it would be impossible to use this map as a "Standard Map".

Initially, it was nice to have the feeling of “exploring the map,” but the playtime was too long and player fatigue was too high. We were concerned that “if the Dev team, who are already familiar with the game, felt this, wouldn't it be worse for new players?”

Our game doesn’t have separate "Movement and Combat" parts like Darkest Dungeon, but instead requires you to spend TP in every movement situation and to keep track of your characters' positions and vision, so while the "exploration" element definitely works well, we felt it was too fatiguing to play for a long time.

Also, the difficulty of combat itself outside of movement/exploration felt overly long and tiring, as the enemies you fought in the previous "small maps" still had the same health scaling.

We were faced with the decision of whether to further experiment with the outdoor maps to address their weaknesses while retaining their strengths, such as windows/roamers, or to revert back to the more "tried and true" indoor maps.

Since then, we've experimented quite a bit, so we’ll share all the outcomes in a post soon!

Last week, we said we would introduce the "Character System" and its relation to the Embers, but since that part of the game is still in development, we didn’t want to jump the gun. The maps and combat system are at a point where most of the development and decision-making has been completed, so we're going to introduce them first, and then work our way through the details.

As always, thanks for sticking with us and we’ll see you again next week!
REMORE