Growth Games update for 01-10-2023

Heya all! It has been some time but a LOT of work has been done on both games; let me talk you through it.

Summer Growth

As was stated in the last developer diary, the game has been worked on mostly by adding a ton of new writing. For almost every character we added new events which really dig into the meat of their relationship; Emma's relationship with her work and why she hides her bodybuilding career, Elena's shyness and how she slowly opens up, Kris's relationship with herself and the player and WHY she is so obsessed and finally Johan's awkwardness when he finds someone he finds so amazing.

An interesting part of it is that each of these stories has been planned out way in advance, and we are not getting to the meet of them. now of course the game has a rival, and the main story too. And trust me, we are getting to those. For example, what happens if the potions suddenly stop working...?

You will all have acces to a new beta today, so let me know what you think!  While I've been working hard on Feudal Growth, Wapeul has masterfully added all the new text Gabe has written. Working like clockwork!

Feudal Growth

So much work has been done here, it's insane. First of all, the map. We worked out this concept of the map, to be implemented later;

The lines are the general roads the player will send their armies and agents along. These might be made more detailed, but this is the general idea. The colored area represent the major factions there. The white dots are the cities and settlements to manage. The white lines represent the general area the player can interact with during each stage or act of the game.

the major factions:

• red: the crownlands, consisting of fairly standard medieval nobles, all very independent and petty.
• Green: the elven faction. nature focus, social combat, and against authority.
• Blue: the barbarian tribe faction. Big, strong, angry.
• yellow: Merchant princes. Political savants and filfthy rich.
• purple: bandit lords. All petty outlaws who became lords.
  

The game opens with just the red and the purple area's accessible. These count as the tutorial lands and explain the basics of the game. It will expand to the green once the player has proven themselves, and will open up to yellow and blue for the last half of the game. 

The player never manages all the cities in their region. Instead, they can send out agents there to perform actions; collect taxes, build structures, raise armies. How effective this is depends on how loyal the cities are to you, with only loyal cities giving any resources.

As work continued, that turned into this map;

With the city map explained, it's time to explain another new component; agents. Agents are the various knights, spies and wizards you send out to help manage your realm. Agents travel across the map on your instruction, and gather intelligence and reports for you while solving the various issues that come up. Agents have three stats; Physical, for fighting, Mental, for administration and scheming, and social for diplomacy. Each agent will be specialized in one of these, or might have special traits or abilities that make them unique. So far the following agents have been implemented;

Right now we are testing the core gameplay loop by making sure all of these agents work as intended, and are fun to use. So far it's going well, but there's always more to do!

Most of the strategy of the game comes from deciding where, and when, to send them. Agents only exist in limited numbers, and they take time to fulfill their tasks; sending a knight away to get the loyalty of a city might mean you cannot send him to take care of that goblin hideout. 

But who needs that when you yourself has grown massive....?