Update #04 Note (0.83a)
Changes
Cuppy Tips
Commentary: From now on Cuppy will have some random tips to say. We have prepared 20 of those for you. Maybe it will be a good reason for you to not turn her off.
Tutorial IV
Commentary: After all, we decided to limit it (it won’t take more than 3 minutes) and trust that you, the player can use the knowledge and find a way to use it in practice. We were on the edge with the 4th tutorial because the new players won’t get any ideas how to use Black Market in an optimal way. Nevertheless, we decided to leave it without comments and suggestion about the player’s tactic. We feel that even without a good idea how to use Black Market player can still enjoy the game and win on easier difficulties, even if this feature is required to win the game on the harder difficulties.
Random Events - Old Letters
Commentary: The option to open old letter when a random event is linked to an older one event was always there, but we decided to place it in a better place, as a third option under the letter.
Press Favours - Hover with description
Commentary: Have you ever wanted to know what that thing for 5 favours does? Now you can just hover your mouse over it and see the tip.
Random Quests, Boosters Descriptions, Opponents’ Bios and more text corrections.
Institute Portrait in letters from the Institute in Custom Game
30 new names for the explorers
Commentary: We tried to add more names from Europe, like from Netherlands or the Czech Republic.
Legendary Explorers - Skills depending on their story
Commentary: We don’t want to make you believe that John Dillinger is a great Geologist. Their basic skill set from now on will try to stick to their personalities and history. Player still will be able to teach them whatever he (or she) wants.
Player’s Delay in Reports for Hard and Dreadful difficulty
Commentary: The player delay is an important factor and can change the outcome of an expedition. From now on the data will be shown in the reports. The Normal difficulty doesn’t have such a feat, because player’s delay doesn’t affect gameplay mechanics on this difficulty. Of course, you still can lose a random quest due to the time, but it doesn’t matter if you spend 20 or 25 seconds deciding who should do the thing. On Hard (and Dreadful) those seconds counts and the more you wait the harder the task will be.
Flavour Texts
Commentary: Yes, it is here. From now on every standard expedition will have 3 flavour texts. Every flavour text is linked to the place of the expedition and the third one will always be more specific about the course of events. Hovering over the flavour text will slow down the time and the flavour texts will appear in the reports. We have prepared 270 flavour texts for you. 90 per destination.
Summary
We are currently postponing the work with the voice actors due to the changes to the story. We have a lot of little bugs between the last update and this update because we need to change some things n the game structure. The tutorial V is also ready for you but we have hidden it because we feel that information may ruin your first experience with the game (we don’t want new players to start their experience with all 5 tutorials when after the full release the tutorials will be unlocked during the career).
We are running some tests focused on the story part of the game and it looks like it will take us more time than expected to find the sweet spot between the fun and the actual story. Originally the story was way too focused on facts and it used some concepts from the field of archeology and geology which don’t have to be known to everybody. We don’t want to give you a lesson on the topic about sediments or cartography, because that’s not the point, but also we don’t want to use deus ex machina solutions. We decided to change some plot twists and place them in alternatives. Yes, alternatives. After all, we needed to place alternative approach in one mission to keep things interesting for casual players, but also to leave something for the hardcore players (the ones who play the game to translate ancient documents and don’t mind spending time in libraries and analyzing some old writings).
At some point, we fund the story to become a little bit goofy, because we added a few choices which are not good examples how archeology works, but after a few tests, we have limited the amount of those actions. We believe we are close to the sweet spot to keep things interesting but also don’t push it too much. We still need more time to implement the animation clips (and wait for our animator to finish them) and test the whole story.
We also worked on the assets system, which allows the player to use supplies (and explorers) from last missions in the next ones. We needed to limit it at some point (like for legendary explorers) but it works just fine now. It has also caused a few minor bugs, but it’s all fixed now. But again, you won’t see this system till the full release.
We hope you understand that it takes time to polish the story. Have some fun with the new flavour texts and say hello to Cuppy!
Cheers!
Changed files in this update