Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox News

Back in April we shared our plans for an Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox content update, you can read them here. Today I'm really excited to launch our experimental branch!

We decided to give you access to the content update as we build it because (1) we think the improvements we have made so far will allow more people to enjoy the game and (2) we want to get your feedback as we go. We can't push this patch into the default branch because, since the controls have changed, we will need to re-write the tutorial.

To download the update go to Intelligent Design in your Steam library, right click it and select properties. Then click on the Betas tab of the window which appears and select the Experimental Branch from the drop down list. The experimental branch will store game saves in a different folder, if you want to copy over existing saves into that you can, there is a button in the system menu (in game) which opens up an explorer window in your save game directory.

Here are the main changes:

• General performance improvements
  
• The controls have been reworked so they are entirely mouse driven. You now left click on the menus to select a unit or building you want to create, then right click on the map where you want to create it. Move the camera with WASD, shift, ctrl and hold the middle mouse button to move it.
  
• We have added a time acceleration slider. This was something you could unlock if you completed all of the performance targets, after lots of thought we decided to make this available right from the start.
  

You can watch a video of Dave and I discussing the new controls below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cXhnqeXKYI

The best place to discuss and give us feedback about these changes is in our discord, we would love to hear what you think!

Finally, I want thank everyone in the community who continues to support us at Pill Bug Interactive. We are both continually humbled that so many people enjoy this weird abstract genetics sandbox.

You may not be aware but for the last 5 months, 14 days and 6 hours players of our second game Cycle 28 have been working hard to solve a mystery in the game.

The ARG-esque community puzzle involved hunting through ship logs, hidden stories, local libraries, and artisanal coffee videos.

We are extremely excited to announce that a member the Cycle 28 community, Sam from Australia, has claimed the first ever Pill Bug Golden Ticket by solving the mystery!

Having solved the mystery of Cycle 28, Sam explained step-by-step how they broke Flight Lieutenant Olivia Bergen - the game’s protagonist - out of the time loop, becoming the first person to see the end credits. Sam was very grateful to many members of the Cycle 28 community in helping them reach the solution. As well as a bunch of Pill Bug goodies and prizes, Sam will get every Pill Bug game we ever make!

We’re not going to tell you exactly how the mystery was solved, that’s up to Sam, but we will say all the community’s hard work in finding the codes, cracking the cipher, and keeping each other going made a huge difference. If you aren't part of the discussion already, check out our Discord channel:

https://discord.me/pillbugint

To celebrate Sam’s achievement, we are putting Cycle 28 and Intelligent Design on sale on Steam from August 27th to September 3rd!

Hot off the tails of our recent launch of Cycle 28 on Nintendo Switch, we turn our eyes to the next update for Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox.

We have been working on some UI updates which we wanted to share, you can watch Dave and I chat about them below. Let us know your thoughts.

EDIT: You can now try this out yourself... To download it go to Intelligent Design in your Steam library, right click it and select properties. Then click on the Betas tab of the window which appears and select the Experimental Branch from the drop down list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cXhnqeXKYI

This week Sean and I were lucky enough to be invited onto the Tanked Up Cast. We talked craft beer, game development, and future plans for ID. We also went pretty deep into the development process for Cycle 28 too.

It was great to sit down with Ben and Aadil and talk about life as game devs, including what we've learned over our two releases.

What will quickly become clear is we can never call ourselves beer connoisseurs! Perhaps the biggest takeaway was that we need to listen to Tanked Up more - as do the rest of you!

Check out Tanked Up episode 115, available wherever you get your podcasts!

The dust has started to settle following the launch of our second game Cycle 28 and Dave and I have started to draw up plans for the next Intelligent Design update.

We sat down today and read though every review for the game to find common themes we can address based on your feedback.

Based on that we've decided to work on the following things in the next big update:

1) UI and controls

When I first designed Intelligent Design I wanted it to be a relaxing couch experience, which to me meant controller support. The constraint I put on the design by wanting to retain controller support was a bad decision. We are going to rethink the control scheme by removing that constraint. Our plan is to have the game control like most other management style games, a simple menu where you click to select what you want to build then click in the world where you want it to appear.

2) New player experience

There is a lot to take in for a new player in Intelligent Design. Sometimes it is unclear what impact your choices have on the game world. To help this we are going to scrap the current tutorial and start again. The improvements to UI and controls will help us with this, making it easier to include context aware tooltips.

3) A new map

More maps can only be a good thing right? :D

We can't give a timescale on these updates, but we will continue to let you know how it goes. To get the news before anyone else be sure to sign up to our mailing list (which also comes with a free copy of the Cycle 28 soundtrack!)