Monday Musings #43 – Tutorial Foundations
Short and sweet today because I have a lot of things to do!
While working on Foundations, I read some feedback that talked about the pain of random resource distribution and (so far) lack of knobs/sliders for world generation. It's always been sort of on the todo list, but Foundations feels so much richer than simple sliders that I wanted to see if I could address the feedback in a more deliberate way.
[h3]New Foundation: Twinseed[/h3]
One of MoteMancer's core hooks (and initial challenges) is that every resource patch you find is already a choice. Do you use Motes of Water as themselves? Or do you grind them into Salt for other purposes? So when you find a patch of Life and Water next to each other, it's sort of like a cheat code. You do have to deal with intermingling on collection, and there isn't space between them to work, but there's still a certain joy to doing all that combination work right on site.
So Twinseed is a new Foundation that institutionalizes that setup. Every single Mote Field will spawn with an appropriate twin right beside it. This creates a series of yin-yang-esque patch setups across the world, which is definitely an advantage but also fits more deliberately inside MoteMancer's world building and alleviates one of the early onboarding challenges with the game. It subtly teaches you the structure of the world, instead of just saying "Mote Fields are twice as frequent".
[h3]Why stop there?[/h3]
The lesson I took away from that bit of feedback wasn't just "I want sliders" (though I'm sure some still do), but more: what other Foundations are new players looking for that might help them get comfortable with a complex hexagon-shaped sandbox?
Here is the set I landed on for now:
I chose these five specifically because they all solve a specific friction point while still creating gameplay of their own. Like I could have made 'peaceful mode' but - Ancient Spindles achieves the same thing, honors the world kit, creates a unique geometry puzzle, and still lets you engage with the adversary if/when you choose to.
I have always been a stickler when it comes to 'choose your difficulty' in games, but that is largely because Hard is such a relative term and doesn't mean anything out of context. Here I can at least give you the shape of the knob you are turning, and the agency to choose your own adventure.
[h3]The Bigger Picture[/h3]
Foundations are predominantly meant to add depth to MoteMancer, but that doesn't mean they need to strictly be extra challenge. The above 5 will be shown during tutorial selection next to the choice between Life and Fire, and then when tutorials are turned off, will be part of the larger pile of all Foundations available. This makes for a clean targeted introduction to the system hopefully without overwhelming a new player, and greasing their wheels as they learn. Later once familiar, they will be able to confidently dive into all the additional puzzles that the feature provides.
Alpha testing on the experimental branch is still going strong, if you'd like to join the Discord, leave a review, or send an in game bug report with your feedback, I read it all :)
Happy Monday! Back to the lab 🌿
~CyanAvatar
While working on Foundations, I read some feedback that talked about the pain of random resource distribution and (so far) lack of knobs/sliders for world generation. It's always been sort of on the todo list, but Foundations feels so much richer than simple sliders that I wanted to see if I could address the feedback in a more deliberate way.
[h3]New Foundation: Twinseed[/h3]
One of MoteMancer's core hooks (and initial challenges) is that every resource patch you find is already a choice. Do you use Motes of Water as themselves? Or do you grind them into Salt for other purposes? So when you find a patch of Life and Water next to each other, it's sort of like a cheat code. You do have to deal with intermingling on collection, and there isn't space between them to work, but there's still a certain joy to doing all that combination work right on site.
So Twinseed is a new Foundation that institutionalizes that setup. Every single Mote Field will spawn with an appropriate twin right beside it. This creates a series of yin-yang-esque patch setups across the world, which is definitely an advantage but also fits more deliberately inside MoteMancer's world building and alleviates one of the early onboarding challenges with the game. It subtly teaches you the structure of the world, instead of just saying "Mote Fields are twice as frequent".
[h3]Why stop there?[/h3]
The lesson I took away from that bit of feedback wasn't just "I want sliders" (though I'm sure some still do), but more: what other Foundations are new players looking for that might help them get comfortable with a complex hexagon-shaped sandbox?
Here is the set I landed on for now:
- Apprentice Kit - A Simple Chest appears on your first Plane that has a few early Elemental logistics tools that will allow you to get a feel for them and experiment freely before researching them.
- Twinseed - As mentioned above, makes your early bases a little easier and more proximate.
- World Veins - Mote Fields are smaller but last forever, removing the pressure to find new resource patches or the anxiety of them eventually running out.
- Prism Portals - Usually portals take Keystones to unlock which are a significant tech and time upgrade from Prisms, but if you want to get on with exploring Planes sooner, this one is for you.
- Ancient Spindles - Preplaces giant structures that prevent Entropy from spawning. Destroying them releases Rifts, letting you engage Entropy on your own terms.
I chose these five specifically because they all solve a specific friction point while still creating gameplay of their own. Like I could have made 'peaceful mode' but - Ancient Spindles achieves the same thing, honors the world kit, creates a unique geometry puzzle, and still lets you engage with the adversary if/when you choose to.
I have always been a stickler when it comes to 'choose your difficulty' in games, but that is largely because Hard is such a relative term and doesn't mean anything out of context. Here I can at least give you the shape of the knob you are turning, and the agency to choose your own adventure.
[h3]The Bigger Picture[/h3]
Foundations are predominantly meant to add depth to MoteMancer, but that doesn't mean they need to strictly be extra challenge. The above 5 will be shown during tutorial selection next to the choice between Life and Fire, and then when tutorials are turned off, will be part of the larger pile of all Foundations available. This makes for a clean targeted introduction to the system hopefully without overwhelming a new player, and greasing their wheels as they learn. Later once familiar, they will be able to confidently dive into all the additional puzzles that the feature provides.
Alpha testing on the experimental branch is still going strong, if you'd like to join the Discord, leave a review, or send an in game bug report with your feedback, I read it all :)
Happy Monday! Back to the lab 🌿
~CyanAvatar