The Future of Captain Forever
Hi,
It feels super weird to be writing this. Just one year ago I was sure that the Captain Forever series was finished. I'd done everything I thought there was to do and was busy working on other projects. The removal of Flash from browsers really bugged me though - it made it very difficult for anyone to play the old builds of Captain Jameson (aka The Dawn Star, aka Captain Forever Universe). And so, as a holiday treat for myself and the quiet little community on the Captain Forever discord, I wrapped up the buggy, incomplete pieces of that game into a standalone executable and snuck them into an unannounced beta branch of Captain Forever Trilogy. And then people played it. And some of them played it a lot.
That's all it took to convince me - I should finish up this nearly-complete project over the next month or two and send it out into the world. Soon two months became four, four months became more, and, well, now here we are. It's about a year since that first build snuck out, and after 18 releases, a name change, a graphical overhaul, some critical bugfixes, and multiple changes to the shape of the universe, it feels like Captain Forever Universe is really coming together.
So what's next?
Well, two things. The first is what I'm actively working on right now, and I expect the second will happen some time after that.
Right now I'm redesigning the universe topology. Again. The 15 series of builds are a lot of fun, and I love that the community are working together to explore and find all the kilo modules so they can build their behemoths. On the other hand, it seems almost nobody is actually doing that - we're mostly playing through the first sector (a meaty 5+ hour experience for most first time players) and calling it a day. My theory is that playing through more than one sector doesn't currently feel like progression within the same game. To use the original Legend of Zelda as an analogy, it doesn't feel like moving to the next screen, it feels like New Game+. I adore the first Zelda game and have finished it a bunch of times, but I've never bothered with New Game+, so I get it. If I want players to check out the game beyond the first sector (and I do! There's so much design space left to explore!) then that needs to feel like part of the same quest. My plan then is to turn the game into something like this:
A finite, maze-like grid of interconnected sectors with multiple quest locations and an endgame location locked away in the middle and called out from the start, There'll be some amount of narrative and motivation tying it all together, but for now all I'm sure about is the shape. By making the universe finite I can easily add interesting one-off occurrences and be sure that they will be found while also knowing they won't appear in a glut, both of which have been problems with the 15 series infinite universe builds. It also gives your progress through the universe substance and weight - it feels a lot more meaningful to complete 10 of 20 sectors than 10 of infinity. Finally, if there's interest in it, I'd like to add back in the idea of New Game+. Even though I'll decide what goes into a universe, I still want to use procedural generation to decide where it all fits, which leaves open the door for any players who complete the first universe to go visit another, and another, and another, if that's something they'd like to do.
The second thing, which I'm hoping won't be too unpopular, is at some point I'd like to draw a line under the Captain Forever Universe beta builds in Captain Forever Trilogy and start releasing them as a new game. All the builds released under Trilogy will remain there and can still be played by anyone who owns it, but ultimately in order for new players to find CFU it needs to become its own thing. I don't expect it will be expensive, and of course if supporters from the Captain Forever website days want to get in touch with me I'll find a way to get them their copies.
Please let me know if you have any questions - I'll check here occasionally and I read the Discord nearly every day. I'm genuinely excited about the future of Captain Forever and can't wait to explore this new universe together.
Farbs
It feels super weird to be writing this. Just one year ago I was sure that the Captain Forever series was finished. I'd done everything I thought there was to do and was busy working on other projects. The removal of Flash from browsers really bugged me though - it made it very difficult for anyone to play the old builds of Captain Jameson (aka The Dawn Star, aka Captain Forever Universe). And so, as a holiday treat for myself and the quiet little community on the Captain Forever discord, I wrapped up the buggy, incomplete pieces of that game into a standalone executable and snuck them into an unannounced beta branch of Captain Forever Trilogy. And then people played it. And some of them played it a lot.
That's all it took to convince me - I should finish up this nearly-complete project over the next month or two and send it out into the world. Soon two months became four, four months became more, and, well, now here we are. It's about a year since that first build snuck out, and after 18 releases, a name change, a graphical overhaul, some critical bugfixes, and multiple changes to the shape of the universe, it feels like Captain Forever Universe is really coming together.
So what's next?
Well, two things. The first is what I'm actively working on right now, and I expect the second will happen some time after that.
Right now I'm redesigning the universe topology. Again. The 15 series of builds are a lot of fun, and I love that the community are working together to explore and find all the kilo modules so they can build their behemoths. On the other hand, it seems almost nobody is actually doing that - we're mostly playing through the first sector (a meaty 5+ hour experience for most first time players) and calling it a day. My theory is that playing through more than one sector doesn't currently feel like progression within the same game. To use the original Legend of Zelda as an analogy, it doesn't feel like moving to the next screen, it feels like New Game+. I adore the first Zelda game and have finished it a bunch of times, but I've never bothered with New Game+, so I get it. If I want players to check out the game beyond the first sector (and I do! There's so much design space left to explore!) then that needs to feel like part of the same quest. My plan then is to turn the game into something like this:
A finite, maze-like grid of interconnected sectors with multiple quest locations and an endgame location locked away in the middle and called out from the start, There'll be some amount of narrative and motivation tying it all together, but for now all I'm sure about is the shape. By making the universe finite I can easily add interesting one-off occurrences and be sure that they will be found while also knowing they won't appear in a glut, both of which have been problems with the 15 series infinite universe builds. It also gives your progress through the universe substance and weight - it feels a lot more meaningful to complete 10 of 20 sectors than 10 of infinity. Finally, if there's interest in it, I'd like to add back in the idea of New Game+. Even though I'll decide what goes into a universe, I still want to use procedural generation to decide where it all fits, which leaves open the door for any players who complete the first universe to go visit another, and another, and another, if that's something they'd like to do.
The second thing, which I'm hoping won't be too unpopular, is at some point I'd like to draw a line under the Captain Forever Universe beta builds in Captain Forever Trilogy and start releasing them as a new game. All the builds released under Trilogy will remain there and can still be played by anyone who owns it, but ultimately in order for new players to find CFU it needs to become its own thing. I don't expect it will be expensive, and of course if supporters from the Captain Forever website days want to get in touch with me I'll find a way to get them their copies.
Please let me know if you have any questions - I'll check here occasionally and I read the Discord nearly every day. I'm genuinely excited about the future of Captain Forever and can't wait to explore this new universe together.
Farbs