Update #7 Status Report
Hi everyone! We're now midway through development of our Villager Progression update. We are trying our best to have it available before the upcoming Steam Summer Sale this June. If we are unable to finish it by then, then it will be available by last week of June.
In the meantime, we'd like to describe some of the new features you can expect on the next update.
Currently, non-combatant Villagers typically share all Village-related tasks. Practically anyone can chop wood, mine, butcher, farm, etc. We want Villagers to have more varied lives as this will eventually open the game up to having more unique stories per Villager. To enable that, we split the existing Peasant class to various different profession-based classes - Farmer, Butcher, Logger, Miner, Crafter, etc.
As implied by these new worker classes, the tasks in the Village will no longer be shared by everyone. Instead, each Villager has their own specific job that they do. In fact, Villagers claim their own work structure and they "own" the products they produce there. So a Logger works at their own Lumberyard and keeps all the Wood that they gather there. For many situations, those that may need Wood must "purchase" it from the Logger. There are some exceptions that we allow to make the Village more survivable.
There is a system that allows Villages to know which type of worker it needs to prosper so expect Villagers to be able to change Class as necessary.
We are introducing Villager Talents to make Villagers more unique from each other. As they perform various actions, they gain experience on related Talents. Villagers unlock more abilities whenever they level up a Talent. For example, Level 2 Crafting allows the Villager to craft Armors.
The primary way that Villagers progress is by improving their Piercing and Resistances. They improve these in different ways depending on their Race. Humans gain personal improvement to their Piercing and Resistances whenever they level up their Talents, but the values they gain depend on what their current Class is. This makes their Stats vary by Class. Elves on the other hand, absorb powers from Energy Crystals that will now start spawning from monsters. When an Elf absorbs an Energy Crystal, they gain specific Piercing and Resistances that the Energy Crystal provides - and all elves in their Village gain that as well. This makes Elven villagers have more similar Stats based on what Energy Crystals they manage to absorb.
We still have to test these as we finish developing all the other intertwining features but the goal here is to have Humans and Elves progress differently as this is another way to vary what the player encounters and how they must approach each game.
Currently, Villagers living on the same Village experience very similar lives. If there are a lot of food, everyone is pretty much full. If there are no food, everyone starves. We want a simple way of having situations where there are rich and poor Villagers in the same Village. By introducing Coins and giving Villagers more personal ownership towards the products they create, we hope to have a simple economy that lightly simulates social stratification. As the player does not manage these Villages themselves, we don't intend to make this too complex or realistic. The important thing for us is to have varying lifestyles as this will pave the way for more interesting player social manipulations in the future.
Another pillar of Villager progression is Equipment. Villagers will now be able to craft and equip Weapons, Armors and Accessories. These equipment provide various stat buffs.
We're introducing more resources that may randomly spawn in the world. This would also allow for more varied situations - because Villages that have access to different types of resources will also develop differently.
Farms will also produce different crops depending on the biome they are built on. Eating different Food types provide different buffs. Villagers will now also desire variety in the food they eat, to provide them useful Mood boost.
Scenarios were added at the start of Early Access to provide content for early adopters while the game systems that will allow Custom to be replayable and fun were still unavailable. Now that we're slowly filling in the needed mechanics, it's getting harder to keep maintaining them every update as each one has different mechanics and victory conditions and we need to test and adjust each one extensively - which we sometimes fail to do for lack of time. We're strongly considering disabling them for the next update and just re-enabling them again sometime later once more of the final features are available so that they don't eat up too much of our development time each update. This will allow us to focus our testing on Custom - which is where the bulk of the new mechanics are most relevant. For existing players, we'd like to know if this is something that is acceptable to you.
Our publisher Squeaky Wheel is also a Filipino Game Development Team responsible for creating games like Political Animals and Academia. They have recently announced that they are ceasing operations. We've had a very fruitful relationship with them and we know that Ruinarch might not have had a successful launch without their help. We wish all members of their team success in their future endeavors!
We do want to emphasize that Maccima Games is a completely separate Game Studio and is not affected by this development. Progress on Ruinarch will continue as usual. Probably the actual main effect on us is that we just have to take over the existing shared discord server which will soon be primarily focused on Ruinarch.
In the meantime, we'd like to describe some of the new features you can expect on the next update.
New Villager Classes
Currently, non-combatant Villagers typically share all Village-related tasks. Practically anyone can chop wood, mine, butcher, farm, etc. We want Villagers to have more varied lives as this will eventually open the game up to having more unique stories per Villager. To enable that, we split the existing Peasant class to various different profession-based classes - Farmer, Butcher, Logger, Miner, Crafter, etc.
As implied by these new worker classes, the tasks in the Village will no longer be shared by everyone. Instead, each Villager has their own specific job that they do. In fact, Villagers claim their own work structure and they "own" the products they produce there. So a Logger works at their own Lumberyard and keeps all the Wood that they gather there. For many situations, those that may need Wood must "purchase" it from the Logger. There are some exceptions that we allow to make the Village more survivable.
There is a system that allows Villages to know which type of worker it needs to prosper so expect Villagers to be able to change Class as necessary.
Villager Talents
We are introducing Villager Talents to make Villagers more unique from each other. As they perform various actions, they gain experience on related Talents. Villagers unlock more abilities whenever they level up a Talent. For example, Level 2 Crafting allows the Villager to craft Armors.
Race Based Improvements
The primary way that Villagers progress is by improving their Piercing and Resistances. They improve these in different ways depending on their Race. Humans gain personal improvement to their Piercing and Resistances whenever they level up their Talents, but the values they gain depend on what their current Class is. This makes their Stats vary by Class. Elves on the other hand, absorb powers from Energy Crystals that will now start spawning from monsters. When an Elf absorbs an Energy Crystal, they gain specific Piercing and Resistances that the Energy Crystal provides - and all elves in their Village gain that as well. This makes Elven villagers have more similar Stats based on what Energy Crystals they manage to absorb.
We still have to test these as we finish developing all the other intertwining features but the goal here is to have Humans and Elves progress differently as this is another way to vary what the player encounters and how they must approach each game.
Coins
Currently, Villagers living on the same Village experience very similar lives. If there are a lot of food, everyone is pretty much full. If there are no food, everyone starves. We want a simple way of having situations where there are rich and poor Villagers in the same Village. By introducing Coins and giving Villagers more personal ownership towards the products they create, we hope to have a simple economy that lightly simulates social stratification. As the player does not manage these Villages themselves, we don't intend to make this too complex or realistic. The important thing for us is to have varying lifestyles as this will pave the way for more interesting player social manipulations in the future.
Equipment
Another pillar of Villager progression is Equipment. Villagers will now be able to craft and equip Weapons, Armors and Accessories. These equipment provide various stat buffs.
More Resources
We're introducing more resources that may randomly spawn in the world. This would also allow for more varied situations - because Villages that have access to different types of resources will also develop differently.
Farms will also produce different crops depending on the biome they are built on. Eating different Food types provide different buffs. Villagers will now also desire variety in the food they eat, to provide them useful Mood boost.
About the Scenarios
Scenarios were added at the start of Early Access to provide content for early adopters while the game systems that will allow Custom to be replayable and fun were still unavailable. Now that we're slowly filling in the needed mechanics, it's getting harder to keep maintaining them every update as each one has different mechanics and victory conditions and we need to test and adjust each one extensively - which we sometimes fail to do for lack of time. We're strongly considering disabling them for the next update and just re-enabling them again sometime later once more of the final features are available so that they don't eat up too much of our development time each update. This will allow us to focus our testing on Custom - which is where the bulk of the new mechanics are most relevant. For existing players, we'd like to know if this is something that is acceptable to you.
Farewell to Squeaky Wheel
Our publisher Squeaky Wheel is also a Filipino Game Development Team responsible for creating games like Political Animals and Academia. They have recently announced that they are ceasing operations. We've had a very fruitful relationship with them and we know that Ruinarch might not have had a successful launch without their help. We wish all members of their team success in their future endeavors!
We do want to emphasize that Maccima Games is a completely separate Game Studio and is not affected by this development. Progress on Ruinarch will continue as usual. Probably the actual main effect on us is that we just have to take over the existing shared discord server which will soon be primarily focused on Ruinarch.