Hello fellow co-conspirators!
This week we finish the main game loop (finally). This by creating our end game logic; in other words our victory & defeat screens! Without further ado, I present to you the end screens:
Ok so they are not much to look at right now, and that’s fair. This week the most important part was getting the logic behind them working. In Puppetmaster you beat a level the moment you convert the region’s leader to you society. These people can be easily identified by the star they have on top.
On the other hand, you will lose if the your exposure reaches 100%. Basically exposure is how many people believe in your society; if it reaches 100% then its basically a fact and you cannot operate anymore. Every turn you take and every mission you fail increases your exposure. I’ve prototyped different methods, but the one I’m happiest with is when exposure is tied to the number of connections your units have. This way the larger your network, the bigger your risk.
I also worked on creating a new unit menu. In playtest I realized that the old one, though cool, would cover other units if they were too close, becoming a pain in the ass.
The new menu, with the buttons pushed to the side, allows the player to have a better view of the map and better control.
Finally I’ve also set up a small tutorial. Why a tutorial you ask? well now that the game loop is done I can go back to test it with random people at game meetups. However, this doesn’t work well if they don’t know how to play. Generally I’d just let them figure it out, but this game doesn’t fit into a genre neatly, so players can’t use their previous knowledge to understand it. A bit of a helping hand helps speed the tests along. Right now its a bit heaveyhanded, but it does the job. I definitley will have to improve it later on.
This week however, it’s all about the playtests and polish. My goal is to present it in front of a few friends and strangers and see what confuses them. The results of all this…next week.
Happy conspiring!