Epicinium - strategy wargame with environmental mechanics

[Jubal]

Let us know when your crowdfunding campaign is ready and the Exilian twitter etc can shout about it a bit

[SLiV]

Thanks, will do!

[beebug_nic]

Wow, I've just noticed this project - it looks really interesting! Am following it with great interest :-)

[SLiV]

Thanks!

[SLiV]

As our crowdfunding is approaching, we decided to bring the open beta to a close, in exchange for a closed beta centered around our Discord server. Starting with version 0.29.0, a beta access key is required to join the server. People that played in the open beta automatically gain a key if they enter the Discord, and we give away keys to active community members as well. A couple of people with very low account ids came back to join the Discord, and we got some legit key requests from press as well, so that's nice.

Keys can be entered in the main menu. We spent probably too much time improving the text input fields by adding copy and paste functionality, as well as the ability to select text with the mouse or with the shift key. UX is hard work, who knew?

 

We also worked on improving the pathing, so that unit figures walk around buildings instead of through them. There are still a few quirks, though, and sometimes a newly spawned unit just bugs out and starts dancing up and down the tile before moving to its spawn position. Huh.

All in all, the switch to closed beta seems to have been a good step, as we're having a lot more activity between players than before. I'm having one of those "if only I had known this a year ago" moments, but yeah. Probably not the last one I'll get before this whole thing is over.

[Jubal]

In case you hadn't seen, got this into the latest updates:
https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5773

[SLiV]

Yeah, I saw. Thank you for writing them, Jubal! There is always a bunch of cool stuff featured in it.

[Tusky]

How is the impending crowdfunding campaign coming along?

[SLiV]

It's coming along well, but our deadline is getting closer and we still have some things to finish. Lot of half-baked goods waiting for other things to get done first.

We shot footage for the crowdfunding video yesterday. This is the second session, because we weren't happy with the script we used last time (which was a couple months ago?). We also shot a lot of B-roll last time though, so that's good. We're currently getting help with writing our marketing texts from a member of the only other Dutch gamedev coop, and came down from the Far North to help shoot as well. So now: onto editing!

[Jubal]

It's interesting that there's only two... not that you have time currently, but sometime I'd love to have a chat with you about the process of that and write it up, having some good articles on how to set up co-ops is something I feel Exilian could usefully do

Hope the footage editing goes well!

[SLiV]

Well I believe that there might also be one or two coops for boardgames, and maybe one subsidiary of a major Dutch gamedev company that probably only exists for fiscal reasons.

I'd love to talk with you about that, but yeah, maybe in 2019?

[Jubal]

Given my schedule, yes, 2019 sounds about right :p

[SLiV]

We just announced our Kickstarter date: November 1st! Here's a little gif of us preparing the kickstarter video last week (I'm the one in the checkered shirt):



This leaves us with only two weeks of frantic editing, gifmaking and navigating awful wysiwyg textfields, but we haved managed to squeeze in one more game update: beta version 0.30.0. We implemented a lot more visual cues to help convey information and in general just make the game stand out more. For instance we updated the lighting system; the lighting now also changes with explosions or gunfire, and we highlight the active unit during the Action phase. Another thing we did was dim the building lights when a tile is occupied, with a little flicker effect to further emphasis the sudden change.

 

We've also added visual markers to the damaging weather effects such as Frostbite or Firestorm, because it was sometimes hard to see which tiles were affected and which were not. At the same time, we saw a lot of players struggling with the large volume and unpredictable placement of Firestorm, opting to keep their units safely inside for the entire Summer. In combination with Frostbite during the Winter, this caused some games to stall out for longer than intended. We drastically reduced the number tiles that receive Firestorm, but made them always hit "flammable" tiles (Grass, Forest, Soil, Crops and Trenches) if possible. This has multiple benefits: it makes the placement more predictable so players can anticipate where it will be, even in the fog of war; it drives gunners out of trenches but does not deter units from crossing deserts; and it remains an effective tool to lower the number of grass tiles (and hence the score).



I think there are more issues with the pacing of the game, but they are harder too tackle without extensive prototyping, so that will have to wait until after the kickstarter.

[Jubal]

Excellent! And yeah... theoretical thought, it'd be interesting to try doing an experiment where you gave people the same mechanic with different names and visual effects and saw if it affected their gameplay more or less. I wonder if some are actively scarier than others.

[SLiV]

Oh for sure, perception probably plays a huge role. You'd need a huge audience to do that kind of A/B testing, though.