Siberian Dawn News

When I released Siberian Dawn back in 2018 I had a choice of doing it as Early Access or Free and I decided to make the base game free as I thought that would be the best option for players to see the game, and then if they liked it they could buy the Mission packs. Well this free version has not gone as I thought it would back then with a lot of negative reviews for this free taste of the full game, which I don't think would have got so much if it had been Early Access where players might have been more understanding of this first release. So despite having made a large number of improvements to the game since then, and recently adding extra training missions that give several hours more game play, the free version wasn't working.

I had a comment from a player who must be the world's number 1 Siberian Dawn player with the hours he has put in and the great feedback he has given me over the last few months, that the game doesn't fit a free game scheme and this was also something that I had been thinking about with adding new content and all the plans for it. I was adding more and more for free but, apart from the world's number one player, I wasn't getting any response from players apart from a few thumbs up. So I have now made the base game a paid game and plan a number of additions to the game on the road to 5.0.

So getting back to the free versus Early Access, you could now think of Siberian Dawn being "Not So Early Access" and here is the plan for what is to be added to the base game.

- A set of Missions comparable to the Missions in the Mission Packs, set before the Siberian Dawn story
- Skirmish mode with the new content of the Base game, DLC will then add extra content to this mode
- Crisis mode with the new content of the Base game, DLC will then add extra content to this mode
- Ark section that will contain various unlocks and uncover the secrets of Siberian Dawn

We already have the Training missions added recently that provided a lot of new material and completed the player's path to learning the game, while also allowing a lot of replayability, and with the above items the base game will provide a better experience at a paid price. It is also at a lower price for now than I expect it to be when it hits 5.0 and had all that was planned above added.

Winterflood

We are back with another update for Siberian Dawn, and 4.6 brings a lot of new content and improvements to the game to continue towards making it a better experience for you.



This update adds 3 new Training Missions to the game and these are all available for free like Training Run, so everyone can enjoy them. It also adds 3 new VBots that are featured in these new missions.

"Training 1 : First Run" is an easier version of Training Run to get players started with the game after they have gone through the Tutorials, with the final objective being to kill only 2 of the weaker VBot MK2.



"Training 3 : Union Units" is a mission that adds some of the Union units from the Core game with a set of objectives that make use of their advance abilities. This mission and the next one also add 2 tougher VBots to the game.



"Training 4 : Guild Bond" is a mission that adds a selection of Guild units from the Core game and also gives the player the Bond for the Animus to use, with objectives designed to show the player what can be done beyond the Conflict Zone.



Training 3 and 4 are designed to give the player a better transition from training to the first full mission of the game, Anarchy Rising.



With this update there is a new Training Menu and the Tutorials, Training Run, and Orientation have all been moved to this menu along with the new Training Missions covered above. Training Run has now become Training 2.



The End phase has now received a communication update to bring it up to the standard the other phases have been updated previously. Influence gained from deployed units is now shown on the units, Bond Yield and level increase are shown on the Bond, and loss from having 0 Glory in End phase is shown on a site.



The resolving of 0 Glory has also been moved to before Influence gain so that if a unit is on a site closed for 0 Glory they will not add Influence.



When the mission auto saves that is also shown during the End phase, so this phase is now a lot clearer with what is happening.



There were a number of other minor changes to improve the game and as always you can see all of this in the Update section in game, but a couple of other highlights are the moving of the HD/SD switch to the new Graphics menu in Options, and the News window now becoming a summary window for the menu you are currently in.



I hope you again enjoy the additions I have added to Siberian Dawn, let me know what you think in the comments and on the Road to 5.0 discussion, as the feedback there has helped form a lot of what has been added here. And if you are enjoying the game maybe leave a review to let others know what you think and get Siberian Dawn a more positive reflection of where is currently stands.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/922880/discussions/0/3191359938377209761/

Winterflood

Welcome to the third instalment of our journey towards Siberian Dawn 5.0 and the work that has been done to improve the game experience for everyone.

With this update we have a few more additions to the game and keep reading as we have a surprise stop on this big journey that you should find interesting.



Above the Resolve Pod you will now find a bar that shows what phase you are currently in and you will also see it has a number of dots on either side of the phase title to show where this phase fits into the round.






I have now done all the text for the new Help overlay with many of the items on the screen having more than one page on the Data display giving the vital information about that item and any other important connected rules. As it does when you select a card these pages can be moved through by clicking the Data Display, which also shows in the top right corner how many data pages there are.






In the same way I have done already with the Tactics phase any blank screen during the Resource phase now has a useful prompt screen letting you know what you can do in this phase. You have a prompt for when the Market is shut and a series of prompts for when the Market is open and which part of it you are currently in.






I said in the introduction that there was a surprise in this update and you may have already noticed this on the game, but I thought as the road to 5.0 is going to probably be a long one and as I had already made a number of significant improvements, and it also probably wasn’t fun for you to sit there and just read about all the things I was changing, we would take a little pause on this journey and update the game to version 4.5.

So all of the additions I have talked about so far in these Road to 5.0 updates are now live in the game. Hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think and if there are any unintended special features that have also crept in, bugs.



A few days ago I created a discussion thread on here so we can all talk about the journey to 5.0 and I have included a link below. So let me know what you think of the additions in the 4.5 update and your thoughts about what else could be done on the road to 5.0, as getting feedback is always helpful in improving the game, and its good to talk.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/922880/discussions/0/3191359938377209761/



And that is that for this update, I hope you enjoy the 4.5 update and the improvements I have made so far and I will return with a new post about this journey towards 5.0 when I have more to share about the work improving the experience of Siberian Dawn in 2022

Winterflood

Welcome to the next instalment of our journey towards Siberian Dawn 5.0 and what I have been working on to improve the game experience for everyone.

There are 2 phases in the game where the player has the most to do with choices to make, these are the Resource and Tactics phases. As these phases are where the most information is given to the player they are the most important phases I need to focus on improving. In this post I am therefore going to detail the improvements I am making with one of these phases, the Tactics phase.



Tactics actions with 5.0 will show clearer what their effects are going to be when they are set on a deployed unit, specific to the related action of that unit. So in the examples below we see how it would look when a tactic card is played on a Unit to set their Subdue action with the current data screen shown on the left and the 5.0 version shown on the right.




As shown 5.0 will show the effect of Set being done on the unit and the possible effects from this successful action. Subdue Target will only happen if the acting unit has a higher Rank than the target and if they don’t then this line of the Set display will not be shown, so the player is getting an accurate display of what will happen in that situation.

The line showing the Fate decks that can be used for this action is also being changed from “Resolve” to “Fate Decks” to make it clearer what it is talking about. And the tag line at the bottom of the Data Display has also been reworded to make it clearer what the current result of the action will be if Set.




Currently when you have to pick a fate deck to draw from it just says “Pick Fate” but with 5.0 when you select one of the Fate decks available on the action pods, Fate IV for example, it will then say “Draw Fate IV” to make it clearer what you are going to do. It will also say “Fate” under the fate value on the card in the Data Display to make it clearer this is the Fate value, so the example here shows this below the “?”




Any bonus or penalty from the fate draw will also be communicated on the data display. This needed a bit of thinking to do as a penalty could result in multiple values changing. So in the example of a Fate draw doing 1 damage to the attacker if the Unit was only on 1 life then they would die and you would lose Glory for their Rank and then if you didn’t have enough Glory you would lose the Excess from Vitae. So in a situation like this the Fate bonus line will go through a sequence displaying the various effects.



With 5.0 the Support stage of an action you perform with a unit will give a lot more information about what is happening. Currently you have to know what Support is either from the rules or tutorial but with 5.0 it is giving you more information in case you forgot or skipped reading any rules or tutorials.




In the example above you can see the cards in hand that give Support will have a white cross overlay shown on the column on their right side, matching the white plus shown above the acting unit, giving you a visual link between the cards and the action. When you select a card it will also show on the bottom of the Data Display what the card is going to add to the Result with this Support, so if a card will not add Support it will still show the cost to add it but make it clear this card will not affect the Result.



During the Tactics phase where currently it will have the Data Display empty when nothing is selected with 5.0 it will now show a prompt message telling players the options available to them as shown in the picture below. This will give the player a prompt about the various actions they have available at that point and give them better guidance on what they can do during that phase of the game.




With 5.0 the End action will follow other actions in the game and when it is selected will show on the Tag line at the bottom of the Data Display what it will do and the next phase that will be launched when End is resolved, as shown the picture above. Again this is giving the player a clearer picture of what is happening and where they are going next.



So with this update I hope this shows how the Tactics phase is going to give a lot more information to the player, allowing them to enjoy the game more. As always let me know what you think of these improvements and I will return with a new post about this journey towards 5.0 when I have yet more to share about my work improving Siberian Dawn

Winterflood

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