Hello fellow co-conspirators!
This week I worked on one of the most experimental parts of the game… at least design-wise. As we’ve mentioned before, each unit has a series of missions they can go on. In the prototype, these missions were determined by the unit type; in other words, bankers would always make their connections rich, politicians could always corrupt others, and media could always charm them to your side. In my my mind this would help units be more identifiable to players….but it hard the opposite effect.
Each unit had one “conversion” ability, one “passive” ability and one “active” ability, which in practice was just way too much for players to wrap their heads around. It doesn’t sound like much, but with all the units on the board, it became difficult to remember who did what.
This needed to change, and my solution was to give the power back to the players…
Now Units have two modes: Sleeping (as in sleeper cell) and Active. When you capture a new unit, they go to Sleep mode, in which they have no abilities other than connecting to other units. However, once activated, players can choose 2 abilities for them. Now it’s up to the player to see what they need at the moment. Do you want a unit that is good at converting, or maybe one that is great support? You decide!
Here’s the kicker though, the list of abilities the units have is pseudo-random. Think of it like a deck of cards; each unit has their own deck based on type and which players can expand as they progress in the game (hello meta-game!). I find this gives it a bit of a rougue-like feel, as you’re never really sure what weapons (abilities) you will find in the field, players must then adapt to what they see out there.
Right now the mission select screen is super ugly, but thats so I don’t forget to make it snappy later in the polish phase.
Before that though, we need to make sure the game can end. Victory and lose conditions are next on the block.
Happy conspiring!