The Road to 5.0 – Part 1

Welcome to the first part of the road to 5.0 where I will share what is currently happening with the development of Siberian Dawn and the things going on in my head with this for improving the game and fixing the problems players are having.

As I have mentioned in updates previously a lot of this work is looking at the feedback I have received and interpreting what has been said and the trouble that people have had with the game. Currently I decided to focus on two particular pieces of feedback that have come up several times - “The game is too difficult” and “Having to learn the game again after not playing it for a while.”

“The game is too difficult” is something that has probably come up the most, but what are they talking about? How I interpret this could lead me down widely different paths with looking at what needs improving. Are they talking about the Game? or are they talking about the Game? What?



Examining Siberian Dawn we have two different games. We have what you could call the original, physical game, if it existed physically. Then we have the digital version of the game, how the original game has been presented digitally. Now as there is no Physical version of the game you might be thinking what the hell is he going on about, there is only one version of the game. Despite it existing from the start digitally I still designed it as a physical card game in my mind and it could easily have been a physical game originally. So when making it I kept the game close to what a physical card game would be, without too much of the digital extras added. Keeping this physical mindset you also keep the way people learn and play physical card games, read the rules, and follow what is on the cards, but when it is digital this isn’t the case. A digital version of a card game can be jumped into easier, and without a lot of information feedback the player could quickly find themselves with no clue what is going on, as the computer is doing a lot of the rules enforcement for you, so you could just end up throwing a lot of cards around without a clue to their effects.

Following the above I believe that when someone said the game is too hard they were talking about the Digital delivery of the game and not the actual physical, but not physical, game. I don’t believe Siberian Dawn is a hard game, it is just playing cards and that can’t be that hard, but it is getting lost and made harder behind the communication of the digital game.

So by breaking the game in two, in my mind, I could then start to think about the problems clearer, the original game design is not where the problem lays. Since the launch I have been improving the communication of the game but this has been bits here and there. Now I am having a close look at all the parts of the digital game to find where it can be upgraded and how to make the experience better for the player.

This also ties in with the second piece of feedback I mentioned earlier “Coming back after not playing for a while I have to learn the game again.” This again fits the communication problem and not the design of the original game being too hard. Players who have been enjoying the game probably took the time to read the rules and learn how the game worked and what it was going on about at times. Then when they returned later they had to read the rules again to familiarise themselves with the things happening on screen, but if that extra layer of communication was there then they could instead quickly get back into the game and remember how it worked.

So concentrating on these two pieces of common feedback I am currently adding this extra layer of communication to the game that covers the whole digital game and I will cover some of these improvements below.



I believe a rule that might often be overlooked is when a value in the game has to be changed and it can’t be. In this situation the excess value is always taken off the Vitae value instead. So if you had to lose 5 Glory and you only had 2 Glory then the extra 3 would be taken from Vitae. This deduction of excess is only shown by the values changing, so if you missed this then you might have no clue what something did.




With 5.0 all changes in stats will be shown on the pod that displays the letter for that resource, and the Threat and Influence tracks will also have these overlays. So for example if you lose 3 Glory the G pod will show -3. Any excess value will then be communicated on the V pod, so when an effect resolves you get this true value feedback on the values affected. In the image above you can see the effect of a card has gained the Union 3 Influence on both Influence tracks and the Hostile force has lost the 3, you can also see that 5 command has been lost from the cost of playing the card.



The above display of value changes is just a part of this new layer of communication and with it more use will be made of the Data Display screen, looking at any silent spaces it might have and where I can add information to aid the player in understanding what is currently happening. Below are some more examples of areas I have looked at for 5.0 and how they are going to change.




Drawing Anarchy at the start of the Tactical Phase will also be upgraded in 5.0 with this extra level of communication to make things clearer. When you draw any Anarchy cards the Data Display will show the effects for the amount drawn but if the full cost of one of these effects can’t be paid then the excess taken from Vitae will be shown below the effect, and this excess will be taken off the value of the effect. So in the image shown here Threat should have increased by 2 for the Anarchy drawn but it was already on the maximum of 9 so the 2 was taken as excess from Vitae. The Anarchy cards affecting the Anarchy Draw Effect will also glow with red borders in the hand of cards to show what is going on clearer. The example here also shows the Command loss of 4 shown as -4 overlaid on the C pod.



Currently when a Hostile unit performs a successful action it only says Action Victorious and the effects just happens, with you having to notice these changes with your knowledge of the rules. With 5.0 it will show exactly what the effect of the action was along with the value changes shown on the stats as mentioned before. In the example image you can see the Hostile action gained them 12 Influence on the Left Flank, the Result of the action, the Fate draw also gained them 1 extra Influence as shown by the third line under the Result. The Hostile force could only gain 6 on the Left Influence track as they were already on 24 so +6 is shown on the Influence track and the extra 7 is shown as Excess -7 Vitae, which will also be shown as a -7 on the V pod, for the amount that couldn’t be gained.




All of the actions in the game still need to be gone over and checked, making sure they are consistent in communication, so this layout shown here may change before 5.0 is finished, but it shows how this update will add more information in a way that is helpful without adding any unneeded complication or additional steps to the game.



With 5.0 the default Help overlay will be a number of question buttons for each part of the screen. When you click one of these buttons the details about that item will be shown on the Data Display. This new idea breaks the information presented down into smaller parts rather than the previous version that was one overlay showing all the details, which might have been overwhelming. This new version also allows the Data Screen to present multiple pages of data for an item if needed, the same way it does when a card is selected.




The old Help overlay will still be available and can be switched to in the Options if you preferred that way of getting information as there was no need to throw it out of the game.



So in the first part of this update about the current development of Siberian Dawn 5.0 I hope I have shown how I am tackling some of the information problems in the game currently, and with changing the way I was looking at the game and what I believe players were talking about with their experience. If anyone has any thoughts about what I have covered here then let me know in the comments as that all helps to show me if I am heading along the right path or if there are still other avenues I am missing. And I will give further updates on the road towards 5.0 as I go along.

Winterflood