The tutorial will need a complete overhaul at some point, but probably not for the first demo. As for training scenarios, probably not. There’s a roguelite philosophy at play here. The idea is that you try and die. Even successful games shouldn’t be too long in the end (maybe 10 hours for a “complete run”, though what constitutes a complete run will depend a lot on character choices). THe idea is to make that engaging by progressing the gameworlds timeline and let you play through the history from various perspectives. Obviously none of that is in there yet.
It’s definitely not for the “average gamer”, whoever that is. It’s gonna be some weird cross between roguelite, citizen sleeper and Vagrus, or so I hope.
The lore is not really intended to be front-loaded. The parts that might be helpful I’m referring to explicitly in the tutorial.I expected people to start reading it gradually when they start getting the hang of the mechanics and have some free cognitive capacity.
Wouldn’t that ever be nice… I don’t have the systems yet for that, I just wanted there to be something to show that there’s gonna be something to this world - it’s about more than rolling dice and making money. Yes, it should become a lot more organic further down the line, though “casual short sentences” is probably not going to happen except here and there.
You don’t really need to understand orbital mechanics. What is fairly important is that you understand the logistics network. THough it’s alright to just dig into the mechanics first and go bankrupt a few times before getting to that. And yes, a visual map would be extremely helpful. Not gonna get there for the first demo, unfortunately. That’s the thing with making early releases to see if people might like what you’re doing. You have to draw very painful lines, or you end up with the full package…
Close to a new release now, with a fully functional character progress system. Not a fully finished one, obviously, but enough to get invested a bit. This release will mostly constitute the feature set that is going to be in the steam demo. There’s a bit of graphics left (at least one), and some writing, a lot of playtesting, and that one bug that I know of that I really should fix, but we’re getting there.
I have to say, it’s not my kind of game. However, I have huge respect and admiration for what you’re doing. It’s a real achievement - you’ve made a wonderful thing. You should be proud.
You got that pretty much right, except for all the associations that would go with the term “flower children”. While they have a philosophy that is pretty much indistinguishable from a religion, it concerns itself predominantly with the emergence of order, which is not something the “flower children” were especially known for…
The station was built by Goldenrod InCo, a name I came up with by rolling dice on some tables. Goldenrod is a flower from the family of Asteraceae. The station is called Aster Aureum, which literally means “golden star”, but also references the family of the flower. Guess why the station looks like a golden flower… Though I guess it’s not that obvious from this perspective… that it more looks like a pod instead of the actual flower is something I didn’t realize until you mentioned it, so thanks for that!
Thanks a lot for the encouraging words. The time is nearing when I’ll (hopefully finally) learn if it is anyone’s kind of game. Let’s hope I can find an audience for it…
I don’t have the systems yet for that, I just wanted there to be something to show that there’s gonna be something to this world - it’s about more than rolling dice and making money. Yes, it should become a lot more organic further down the line, though “casual short sentences” is probably not going to happen except here and there.
Religious flower children 
