Greetings, Citizens!

Are you ready for new insights into the world and the development of Against the Storm?

<heavy breathing intensifies>

The new devlog is here to introduce you to:

• Building Drafting System
• Exploding cores

Let’s get right into it!

Buildings’ deck

In our last devlog, we gave you a small glimpse of our new Building Drafting System, and some of you rightly pointed out that this design decision might cause some difficulties or unpleasant consequences for the player. We’d like to address these concerns in today’s devlog – but before we do, let’s quickly recap the core idea behind the Building Drafting System (to make sure we’ll all on the same page):

You start each game with a small set of basic buildings and get to pick additional structures during play. Every few Reputation Points (awarded for fulfilling your duties as the settlement’s overseer), you will be asked to select one of a few randomized Bonuses to add to your roster of buildings. As the settlement grows, so do its problems; getting to know them before committing to a build is crucial here.

Reputation Bonus

The three main potential issues pointed out were broken production chains, unavailable resources (or useless buildings without some resources), and the repeatability of player choices. To make things easier to explain, we broke these concerns down into three hypothetical questions: 

Q: Wouldn’t this randomized drafting system cause incomplete production chains in the player’s city? (for instance: you have access to grain and a bakery, but you don’t have a mill)

A: Simply randomizing building choices would cause a lot of problems with longer production chains. That’s why we introduced multiple recipes per building at the same time. In essence, this means that all production buildings in Against The Storm can make more than one good – for example, the Mill produces flour, oil, and paper, but paper can also be made in the Scribe’s Workshop and at the Clothier’s. Additionally, all these recipes have different levels of effectiveness. So in effect, as you add to your roster of structures, you establish multiple connections and ways of creating the goods you need (sometimes they will be super effective, and sometimes a bit less so). You don’t really end up with a production chain, but more of a production web. 

Recipes

Q: What about different resources on different maps? What if a player drafts a building that is only useful when a specific resource is available. Wouldn’t that make some structures useless on some biomes?

A: Similarly to production buildings described in the previous answer, gatherers also have a range of different resources they can focus on. For example, Foragers can collect Mushrooms, Reeds, and Vegetables. If a biome doesn’t have Mushrooms and Vegetables, you can still utilize the Forager’s Camp as a way of acquiring Reeds in your Coat production chain. At the same time, we are trying to make sure that no building is ever completely useless on a given biome, but you may find that some choices will simply be less efficient (and that’s ok, it builds on the feeling of making do with what you have in a harsh and unforgiving land).

Production focus

Q: The goal of the system is to introduce variety and encourage the player to experiment, but what if the player simply repeats the same choices each game and ends up with an identical city each time?

A: In the beginning stages of the game, when you still have very few buildings unlocked in your Capital City (read more about the progression system in our Devlog #4), it could be possible to end up with very similar settlement layouts, but as you progress through the game and discover new blueprints, your building decks will start to vary more and more. Additionally, Reputation Point Rewards only give you one choice (from a set of 2-3) – you are never given the full list of all available buildings to choose from.

In addition to all that’s been written above – we will be working on improvements to the semi-randomness of the blueprint choices in the near future. We want to make sure that each choice you get is in some form a viable option for the settlement you are building. We are aware that the Building Drafting System seems overly complex when put in writing, so we can’t wait for you to finally try it out in our new upcoming demo (more info on that soon, so keep in touch, follow etc.).

Rainpunk Foundry

We already talked about how exploration works in Against the Storm in our Devlog #1, so now’s the time to talk a bit more about some of the dangers you will encounter when cutting your way through the forest. And for our first showcase, we have something… explosive! (pun intended)

Rainpunk core explosion

When discovering Glades, be on the lookout for old Rainpunk technology. These structures are high-tech remnants of previous (unsuccessful) settlements and can be restored to produce unique and valuable goods, but if you ignore them for too long, they will become unstable. And after that, well… Better evacuate the area, because neglected rainpunk cores are explosive. The blast will destroy everything on its path – buildings, trees, resource nodes, and people.

Support our friend on Kickstarter

Our friendly developer, Erik Rempen, is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for an exciting city builder Kainga: Seeds of Civilization.

Kainga: Seeds of Civilization is an ancient village-builder set in a fantasy world full of surprises. Massive beasts, weather events or other tribes pose a constant threat, but perhaps you can learn ways to live with them?

Every time you play, your village’s culture, technology, and look will be different depending on the choices you make! Adapt to the environment, the challenge at hand and the resources around you. Choose how to develop your village to help your people survive and win in a variety of different gameplay modes!

Don’t miss

If you didn’t have time to check our social media from time to time (HOW COULD YOU!), we prepared a summary of the most essential news for you. Check it out:

Teaser Trailer

We prepared the new Teaser Trailer for #PitchYaGame competition:

If you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe for more gameplay.

Community Brainstorms

You can have your name included in the game as one of the villagers. We’re looking for your ideas for villager names and types of flora and fauna that can live in the world of Against the Storm. More details below:
Community Brainstorm – Pick a name (including yours) for the villagers!

With your immeasurable help, we were also able to pick a name for “Crimson” biome. It is now a Scarlet Orchard (a round of applause goes to AarkLight). You can find other ideas and overview of suggested biomes here:
Community Brainstorm – Pick a name for the biome! (results)

INDIEWAY Award

Against the Storm was picked the best indie game at INDIEWAY May! Yay!

GDWC Livestream

We participated in the Game Development World Championship livestream during which you could see around 30 minutes of gameplay with our commentary. Thank you everyone for joining and asking questions!

You can watch the recording of the livestream here:

Trivia on Discord

From time to time, we share trivia pieces on Discord. Do you know what Rainpunk is? Is there magic in the world of Against the Storm? Join and find out:

Small Farm preview

Yet another hand-painted building from our roguelite city builder. We updated the textures to make it more colorful and vibrant (it was all beige previously).

Coming up next

Oh my, we still have plenty of great topics to share with you. Tune in for the next devlog to learn about advanced production chains, caches located on glades, the voting system and more!

Time for your feedback

We’d love to hear what you think about the new features. Head to the comments section or our Discord server and start a conversation with us!

You can also do us a great favor by adding the game to your wishlist. It helps us grow!

May the storm be gentle on you.
Eremite Games

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