As we’re inching towards release, I thought I’d start to talk a bit more about some of the features in the game. I mentioned about that there are about 300 items available – that only refers to physical items, not intangibles. But intangibles are more than somewhat important, of course. Especially:
Information
In the game, information is crucial important, and used for all sorts of things. The basic type is "Rumours", which are specific to each area. So you have:
You’ll typically have a couple of dozen up to about 100 of each. But if you have too many, they’ll decay over time (they become less relevant if you don’t use them). Also specific to each area are "Hard facts" and "Supply and demand". The latter are specifically for the Working the streets mechanic of buying, selling and generally hustling. You can, of course, convert between the different types, but results vary a lot. Certain drugs and neural interfaces help you get more from your trades though.
There are also some types of information non-specific to a given area. "Patterns" are useful in that they’re mainly used for converting into whatever you need. They’re rarely used directly. Also very useful are "Detailed plans". Hard to come by! They’re used in the execution of bigger jobs. Lastly we have "Mysteries". Better not to say too much about those right now…
So, another week, another big chunk of new stuff. Just hit 900 storylets too! (By my admittedly fairly rough count).
The big thing this week has been some reworked mechanics (as well as some new story content).
For a long time the game as had a system around the idea of hunting down and taking down random people who have done you wrong – simple stuff like pickpockets who have stolen your roll. However, it was never all that satisfying as the cash you got back rarely reflected what was taken and by the time you found them you’d often forgotten who they were in the first place. All that’s had a lot of work now, along with some new options for taking them out (such as using some third parties instead of going after them yourself).
On a related note, there’s an entirely new system that replaces people randomly breaking into your strong box and taking your stored cash (and you then having to hunt them down, etc). Instead, you still get people sniffing around, but it starts a game of cat and mouse that plays out over quite a while (probably real-time days, at least), while they plan their robbery and you plan how to stop them.
There’s also a new short, dynamic scene that sees you getting caught in them middle of a gang-related shoot-out in the slums. It also has some follow-up content depending on the NPCs that you know. Plus there’s the start of a long, meandering story that will lead you all over the city and back: The Executive’s Daughter.
Just done another fairly sizeable release. It was all mechanics this time, pretty much, but it was good to clean up a lot of stuff that had been hanging around half-finished. Should be more story content next week!
In the meantime, there’s always room for just one more tester. It’s more of a beta really now than an alpha.
Just released another small batch of new content. Just a couple of cards really – food stalls in the market (lots of things to buy) and a “Hanging around” card. These are highly randomised with lots of branches. There’s one for every place that you own or rent, plus a few other key locals.