What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . This short holiday-time dev diary introduces a new mechanic: a moddable implementation of "points of divergence", a term known from alternate history ci…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Somewhere between 2007 and 2009, the Jordanian intelligence agency (GID) arrested a local doctor connected to al-Qaeda. After three days of interrogatio…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Counterintelligence - the art of hunting spies - is the backbone of real intelligence world, Cold War history, and spy fiction. Therefore, it should be…
In spirit of April Fools' Day, this dev diary will be on much lighter side. Don't worry, it's not a hoax or a joke - instead, it's a collection of bugs that we encountered over the years: ---
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . After two diaries about the map ( DD#35 & DD#61 ), it's time for the third diary that covers all the other features of the map in this map game . Dynami…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Vocabulary intro for beginners: a "mod" is a set of modifications of the game, prepared and shared externally by the players themselves (not the develop…
What's happening / TLDR: This is a small developer diary, a teaser , about Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Short intro: as always, we are posting a special dev diary on Christmas Eve. This time, it's a middle ground between previous AARs (after act…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Grand strategy games have no universal objectives or victory conditions (unlike almost all other video games). Instead, players pursue open-ended gamepl…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Nested tooltips, iconic part of UI/UX of modern complex strategy games, were invented by a solo indie developer: by Jon Shafer for "At The Gates". It's…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Today we're continuing our journey through the interface of Espiocracy. While the title of this diary is "User Interface", in practice it's just a conti…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Welcome to the series of technical developer diaries about Espiocracy. We begin with user (player) experience: interactions, rhythm, and cognitive optim…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Video games have complex relationship with realism . In their evolution from arcade machines in 1970s to 100GB and 100h experiences in 2020s, games cycl…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Secondary what's happening : This is a small AAR, "after action report", where "action" means gameplay. Based on 30 minutes of recorded gameplay. All sc…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . As we finish the fourth year of development of Espiocracy -- the main game build with working map and buttons was compiled for the first time in June 20…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Grand strategy games (GSG) can be described as a deep/wide exploration of three main aspects of statehood: military, diplomacy, and economy . Espiocracy…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Espiocracy is a map game: the map is the primary interface, present almost always on your screen, and in development receives a lot of care. It's also u…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Welcome to the second nuclear diary of Espiocracy. Once again, to quote the first installment from late 2022, we meet at a very strange time in world hi…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . (Disclaimer: Naturally, the topic, and therefore this diary, is controversial. Do note that it's all about a game, not the real world. Interpret every s…
What's happening / TLDR: This is a small developer diary, a teaser , about Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Short intro: after 58 developer diaries (longer than an average book!), standard format of mechanics-describing posts got a little bit stale.…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Between two parts of Vietnam after-action-report, we'll make a small detour. As I reviewed the previous diary and prepared the next part, I realized tha…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . Today, we'll dive into gameplay - in the form an AAR, after action report - of the nation chosen by votes on the Espiocracy discord server (invite link…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . --- Many topics near the Cold War and espionage deserve a full separate game. Espiocracy, out of sheer necessity, has to narrow down such topics into a…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . --- There are two layers of diplomacy in Espiocracy: between countries and between intelligence agencies . Nominal diplomacy has been described in DD#51…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . --- A game featuring true espionage has to feature true information - existing, propagating, interacting in the game world. How can we achieve this? In…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . --- Who is the player in a game? Who you are? (Linguistic disclaimer: this dev diary usually replaces "player" with "you". Apologies to readers who dete…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . --- Hello there! Espiocracy always have had stormy relation with intelligence operatives. Does a grand strategy game need such individuals at all? How s…
Espiocracy is participating in Digital Tabletop Fest: Roll of the Dice , hosted by Auroch Digital. This annual festival celebrates tabletop-inspired games and the dedicated game studios that make them. From March 7th to March 11th, you'll find demos, previews of upcoming titles, panels from developers, and game discounts too. Here's a title for those of you who play rogues and other shadowy cha…
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary ( The Vision ) and find out more on Steam page . --- Welcome back! Today we will explore diplomacy, an absolute master of the Cold War, and a supremely important subject for Espiocracy. (It's probably…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.