Q&A Session #1

A bunch of curious players wanted to learn some more about our plans regarding certain features, so – welcome to the first part of Q&A!

To keep it short – we’ve decided to limit each one to 5 questions, but we will likely repeat it every once in a while. Here we go!

Q1: What do you think about the current crafting system? Do you think it needs more work?

New skills will be introduced and we are constantly working on balance, but the general mechanics of crafting are considered done and no major changes are planned. UI-wise, some quality of life improvements will be added as well.

Q2: Do you think getting random cards chosen in challenges is a problem? A lot of people seem to have a problem with it.

This indeed is an issue we plan to address shortly. If the group taking part in a challenge is bigger than 7, characters for your hand will be picked based on their estimated strength for that particular challenge. This should greatly reduce situations, where having 5 adults and 5 kids your hand is composed of 5 kids and 2 adults.

Q3: Should the way we obtain children become less random? Do you think players should have more control on how they obtain new characters? (Not asking about how classes are chosen)

At some point we would like to reduce the randomness and make obtaining characters relative to the current population and world progress. So additional characters would appear more often when your population is low. We are also considering a ritual that upon completion would give a chance of gaining a child.

Q4: Can you give us some information on how seasons are going to work?

Apart from visual changes, each season will have something specific to it.
Gathering of resources may be easier is some seasons but more difficult in others. There may be occasional rains which limit movement or winds that decrease sanity if you are too far away from your village. Winter will be especially harsh and may bring snowstorms that reduce movement and visibility range, increased fuel use, increased nest spawns and creature aggressiveness. So you will have to make some supplies to get you through the cold season.

We were considering resource depletion as part of the seasons mechanics but this would greatly impact settlements, in a bad way. So this idea will likely not make it into the game, unless we can find an interesting mechanics to counter that.

Q5: Can you give us some information on what you have planned for rituals?

Rituals design is not yet fully complete yet, but we do have a couple ideas on our list, apart from the one mentioned earlier:
– Totem upgrade – this would let you improve the settlement if you have decided to build one early on from basic materials,
– Reduce growing-up time – when you just can’t wait for your little one to grow up.
– Revive a character – when that special character you were very fond of dies, there may be yet hope of bringing them back.
Please keep in mind that the above may still change, some ideas look good on paper but not in practice.