REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM News

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

Hello again, Survivors.

In our last Dev Note, we said we'd be introducing the new narrative tone for our game.

So, this week, our Scribe who is working hard on the narrative framework is taking over Dev Note duties to guide you through this introduction!

Last time, we mentioned that the central theme of the narrative is "the desperate struggle of humans against creatures, as they inherit the knowledge and experience of the dead." Today, I'd like to talk about the process of finding the main material to convey this theme, and how we went about choosing it.


[h3]Exploring the Primary Source Material to Represent the Theme: “Olympic Torch”[/h3]
To find the right subject matter for the aforementioned theme, we looked at a number of stories.

The first inspiration was the Olympic Torch.



If you’ve ever watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, you saw the flame being passed from hand to hand, for all to see.

Watching this, you can feel the passion and hard work of those who came before was being passed on, a culture started long ago, and that the games being played under that flame were being made ever better by this relaying of experience and knowledge.

This really aligned with the "passing on people's knowledge and experience" part of what we wanted to convey in our game.

We wanted to create an experience within Remore, where someone's hard work and experience is passed on to others, and to show how a difficult journey can be eased by multiple hands.


[h3]Exploration of Primary Material to Represent the Theme: “The Fire of Prometheus”[/h3]


The next material of inspiration was "Prometheus' Fire".

Many of you will already know the tale, but here's a quick refresher.

Once upon a time, one brother of a pair of Titans was tasked with creating and populating the world with creatures. One by one, he gave each animal a gift, sharp claws, warm fur, or wings to fly. But he gave them so freely that when it was man’s turn, he had no more gifts to give.

The story goes that his brother, feeling sorry, gave them the flame that belonged to the gods, so that they could develop.

With this gift, humans were able to build and keep fires to chase away the cold and darkness and use it to create their own claws and scales which they didn't have, so that they could stand against the other creatures.

In this way, fire was the most "Human" of the gifts.


[h3]The Final Ingredient to Unleash the Flames in Our Game: Ember[/h3]
We thought that the above ideas of the “Olympic Torch” and “Prometheus' Fire” were great ways to illustrate how people pass on knowledge and experience.

But a “Flame” is without physical substance, so it's hard for someone to own it or represent it in any conceptual way.

That's how we came to the idea of the “Ember.”



An Ember is the last tiny breath of life in a dying flame, but it has the potential to reignite into a giant flame at any moment.

In many ways it is similar to human life.

When there are wars, plagues, and catastrophes consuming the world, when so many things are being destroyed and falling apart, when it seems like there's no hope at all, all it takes is an Ember to reignite the flame of humanity.

In the midst of it all, people continue to rebuild their lives by stoking these small fires. They build fires to feed their hungry stomachs, they nurture the flames with what little they have, hammering and gluing metal together to rebuild, and in time, their efforts will return the world to the way it was before the disaster struck.


[h3]How We’re Approaching this in Game[/h3]


These are still just ideas. We certainly don’t want the Olympic Torch Relay in Remore, or an appearance from Prometheus himself, but we want to convey the feel and emotion of those things to the people who play our game.

So, we named Remore's new core system the "Ember" and it has a number of abilities to convey a similar feeling.

An Ember is a mystical object that sparkles like a jewel and seems to have a flame within it.

This object transmits the memories and experiences of those who have died to the one who now holds it, just as the torch, passed from hand to hand, transmitted the stories and efforts of many.

Like the fire of Prometheus, the Ember provides the survivors of Remore with a way to sustain their lives, and heat to refine and equip them with gear they can rely on in the arduous fight against the creatures.

The Ember, like its namesake, starts out small and faint, growing as Survivors find other Embers to strengthen its power, but eventually becomes the key to solving the dark scourge that envelops Remore.


[h3]To Conclude the Introduction[/h3]
These are the main ideas we wanted to communicate to you!

There are still a lot of things we're working on, and we won’t spoil things too much. We want you to experience it for yourself when it's ready.

So, this week, we've focused less on the actual systems more on the narrative concept of the Ember and the experience and emotions we want to deliver.

Next week, we'll talk about how these Embers aren't just a narrative device, but how they tie into the game's character progression system, how they’re connected and how we’re making the game rules surrounding them fun.

Until next time!
REMORE

Hello Survivors,

The REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM Maximum Kill Event has ended! ​

The Community submitted lots of entries to the event, and we have spent the past week combing through every single one of them in awe of your collective talent. We’ve been blown away by your passion, creativity, and deep appreciation for all things. We're excited to present the Maximum Kill Event winner! ​

[Winner]​
[h3]꿀맛[/h3]

• Kills: 11
  
• Map: Tavern
  
• Difficulty: Despair
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[Note]​

1. The content involved in the winning works are derivative works of the players, and does not represent the actual plot and settings in the game.​
   
   
2. The reward will be implemented sometime after the Event Ends and before the Official Launch. We ask for your patience and understanding on this matter.​
   

Congratulations to Winner of the Competition! ​
Aside from the winner carefully selected. The entire Black Anchor Studio meticulously examined every submission. We were incredibly touched by the participants’ love and passion for REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM.

Once again, a huge thank you to everyone who participated! ​

Thank you,
REMORE