Hello, Heroes!

We’re back with another dispatch from the development floor. While we’ve been busy tweaking code and balancing economies, we have some major news that you’ll want to hear. 😉

🥁🥁🥁Drum roll, please…

Open Beta is Around the Corner! 😍

That’s right. From September 13th to 15th, we are hosting a limited open beta. This is your chance to get a hands-on look at the latest build and show us what you’ve got.

We’re opening the doors because we need your sharp insights. Your gameplay experiences and feedback are essential for us to refine the game before our official demo in October. We want to know what strategies you discover, what challenges you face, and how it feels to build your empire from the ground up.

A quick heads up: beta slots are limited. We will be sending keys out on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you’re ready to put your strategic mind to the test, you can secure your spot by requesting access right here: http://eepurl.com/hL3Qvv

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what’s new.

New Game Setup Screen

Every great business plan starts with a clear understanding of the landscape. Your game setup screen should be no different. Here is the old version for context:

We felt the old design was a bit cramped. Now, your career begins with a redesigned screen that gives you a much clearer tactical overview. The new, spacious layout and richer color palette make it easy to see your starting conditions. Critical factors like weather forecasts, starting capital, regional GDP, and current interest rates are displayed prominently. You will immediately understand how each one affects your journey.

We also introduced a new difficulty gauge that visually represents the challenge ahead. This also fixes a small but important usability issue where players, eager to dive in, tried to click the old static indicator to change the difficulty.

Preventing Unintended Consequences

Have you ever ordered a massive shipment of coffee beans, only to have a stroke of genius for a new tea-based product moments later? In a complex system like this, a small change can create big problems. Altering a recipe after an ingredient order is placed or switching research priorities midway can accidentally sabotage your own carefully laid plans.

To help you stay in control, we’ve implemented smart alerts. These new pop-ups will appear when you’re about to make a decision with significant knock-on effects. They will explain the potential consequences of your action, such as having a truckload of unwanted inventory, and ask you to confirm your decision.

This feature ensures a simple oversight does not undo your strategic genius.

Other Improvements & Fixes

For a full list of our smaller tweaks and bug fixes, you can read our short weekly update on Steam.

That’s all for now. We can’t wait to hear what you think of these changes.

Chat with us on Discord. 💪

Cheers 🥂

Don’t forget to Wishlist the game if you haven’t: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429080/

Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Kunal & team

Hello, Heroes!

Welcome back to our latest update! The last two weeks have been quite busy as the team worked tirelessly to implement several key features we’ve been discussing.

From the ordering system to inventory management and introducing new gameplay challenges, there’s a lot to cover.

Here’s how the ordering system looks in manual mode. We shared the difference between manual and automatic mode here:

Discarding Inventory

A longstanding pain point has been the management of surplus ingredients that take up more storage space than necessary.

Previously, the only solutions were to either incorporate surplus items into recipes where they didn’t really belong or to cease ordering them all together, hoping to balance the stock manually over time.

Neither approach was particularly satisfying or realistic.

To address this, we’ve implemented a new ‘Discard Inventory’ function that allows you to delete either a portion or the entirety of any ingredient that’s cluttering your storage.

Gameplay Discovery

The first version of the basic challenges is now being tested. As mentioned in the last episode, their purpose is to help you discover the game’s mechanics by doing.

In future updates, completing missions will earn you research XP. You can use this XP to decrease the time it takes to unlock research items.

Other Improvements & Fixes

For a list of other improvements and fixes, check out our short weekly update on Steam.

And that’s a wrap for today!

Your feedback is crucial; we’d love to hear your thoughts about these improvements.

Chat with us on Discord. 💪

Cheers 🥂

Don’t forget to Wishlist the game if you haven’t: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429080/

Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Kunal & team

It’s another Friday, and you already know it’s time for the latest development update on our progress.

We will be discussing the work the team is doing around the tutorial system today. But, before we get into that, just incase you missed it, we announced our demo date in this tease trailer:

Now, to the tutorial system. 🙈

Design Challenges

Designing a strategy game’s tutorial system isn’t the most straightforward task, especially when trying to cater to the needs of both Achievers and Explorers, two prominent types of strategy gamers.

Achievers often appreciate structured guidance and clear objectives. Meanwhile, Explorers enjoy discovering game mechanics on their own with little or no handholding.

To balance these preferences, we divided our tutorial into two parts consisting of a navigational guide and gameplay discovery.

Navigational Guide

The first part is a skippable navigational guide that introduces you to the game’s interface. It highlights essential areas such as the top bar, play controls, and more.

Why is this important? Strategy game UIs are notorious for being overwhelming for new players. For instance, the first time I saw the UI for Stellaris or Civilization, I felt quite lost.

While the game is on a much smaller scale than those examples, playtests have revealed that there is a real potential for the UI to be slightly overwhelming.

By offering a navigational guide, we hope to help players quickly understand where everything is, reducing frustration and making the game more accessible.

However, recognizing that some players might find this unnecessary, we made it skippable from the very first playthrough.

Gameplay Discovery

The second part of the tutorial is more hands-on and interactive. Instead of handholding you through each mechanic, we set mini-goals and provide tips that help you discover the game’s mechanics by doing.

As you complete these challenges, you gain experience points, which can be used to unlock items in the research tree.

This tutorial style allows players to retain information better because they are actively involved in the process.

We believe this method works exceptionally well for tycoon and management game players, as it mirrors the decision-making and strategic planning that are core to the gameplay.

Core Considerations

While designing the tutorial, the following considerations are front and center in our minds:

• Player Autonomy: Giving players the freedom to skip or tackle things at their own pace.
• Reward System: Making the entire experience rewarding. Linking tutorial completion to experience points and research tree progression is an example of this. We’d love to hear your ideas for more ways to improve this.
• Clarity and Simplicity: Ensuring that all aspects of the tutorial are clear and straightforward with minimal cognitive load.

Work in Progress

As usual, the system is still in development. Some variation in the final version is to be expected.

Overall, our goal for the system is to provide essential guidance while respecting your autonomy. We hope this dual approach will allow players to discover the game mechanics efficiently without feeling overwhelmed or constrained.

And that’s a wrap for today!

Your feedback is crucial; we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can improve the tutorial system.

Chat with us on Discord. 💪

Cheers 🥂

Don’t forget to Wishlist the game if you haven’t: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1429080/

Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Kunal & team