This will be our final post about earlier changes that happened before Infinigama received its Steam page. After this, we will finally move on to current news.
A year ago, the game had only one server: a planet where players controlled robots and gathered resources. However, the name Infinigama suggests a wide variety of different experiences, so the next major location was a spaceship. There, players controlled an astronaut, who was relatively easy to implement without complex animations. Players still quite reasonably ask why we did not at least add an animation of the astronaut floating in zero gravity.
A vending machine appeared on the ship, selling items that could be used on the planet, including territory flags, walls, and other objects. Previously, all these things somehow had to be sold directly on the planet, which did not make much sense.
Later, a hotel opened aboard the ship, where players could rent a room for a day, a week, or a month. The longer the rental period, the better the price. Inside the room, players could place a workbench, craft items, and store their belongings in a container. There is currently no inventory limit, so the container is mostly groundwork for the future. However, it can already be used to store some of your money and temporarily disappear from the richest players leaderboard.
A profile with skills was added at the same time. Previously, players could gather resources endlessly without feeling much sense of progression. Now crafting improves a skill, new levels unlock recipes, and some items become cheaper to produce. For example, crafting one infinum initially requires three resources, then two, and eventually only one. Developing your skills is therefore genuinely useful.
Creating a complete tutorial was another major undertaking. Players are guided through the entire process: where to go, what to pick up, where to take it, and which button to press. Instructions appear in the chat, while arrows and images highlight the required objects. Some players still managed to ignore the instructions and become stuck, but we hope to account for those situations over time. The tutorial’s main problem today is that it only introduces the spaceship and the planet, even though Virt is now also part of the game.
Virt first appeared as a New Year location with a Christmas tree and familiar characters. Every player looked like the same bald person, but they could explore the island and search for gifts containing random cash prizes. Each player could receive only one gift. Charging for entry was probably not the best decision: the ticket paid for itself in roughly 90% of cases, but several people still ended up losing money.
The new terrain took a great deal of time. The spaceship was assembled from separate premade pieces, the planet consisted of plain 10-by-10-metre squares, and the first version of Virt was built from one-metre blocks, almost like Minecraft, which did not look particularly good. For the new island, we created a continuous terrain surface with smooth transitions between grass, sand, and soil for the first time.
As the number of playable locations grew, we needed a separate main server where players could choose between them. A single game can consist of either one server or several. For example, the tutorial runs on one server, Virt is also its own game, while the spaceship and planet are connected. The system remembers where the player is located: if you travel from the ship to the planet, you will continue from the planet the next time you enter the game. The ship becomes available again after you return to it. We felt this made travelling between locations more logical and believable.
Virt was later launched as a permanent world. The Christmas tree and gifts were removed, while bushes with leaves, berry bushes, and trees that periodically drop branches appeared across the island. Two survival needs were also added: food and health. Food gradually decreases, and once it runs out, the character begins losing health.
At first, reaching zero health did absolutely nothing. We therefore brought back another old feature from Virt: the clouds. After dying, the player is sent to a location in the sky, where they collect hearts. Each heart restores 10 health, and once fully recovered, the player can press the tree and return to the island.
The cloud location required us to implement position saving. Previously, players appeared at one fixed point or at a random point from a predefined list whenever they entered the game. The server now has to remember that the character died and remained in the clouds. Even after closing the game, the character will continue from the same place on the next login instead of automatically returning to life on the island. It sounds simple, but required some fairly substantial internal changes.
Huts appeared in Virt, although they were mostly decorative at first. We also restored the word game. Some levels were transferred from older projects, while others were generated again. We still do not have enough completion statistics to arrange them properly by difficulty. A machine can count the number of available words, but it cannot understand how familiar those words are to an ordinary player, so the levels will eventually need to be reordered according to real results.
For a long time, there was no water around the island at all: Virt was literally floating in space. Water was eventually added, and characters can now go underwater. However, they currently continue running there at almost the same speed as on land. Perhaps we will finally reach proper swimming within the next few months.
The first ancient clothes were added after that: loincloths and leaf bras. Until then, every inhabitant of the primitive island had been running around bald and dressed in the same black outfit. After many requests, we also added female hairstyles to the shop. There are no male hairstyles yet, so the men of Virt continue to maintain a consistent bald appearance.
Emojis were the next social addition. They work much like they did in our older games: press a button, and the selected emotion appears above the character for ten seconds. Two emojis are available for free, while the others can be purchased. Full character animations were added later. They are currently quite expensive, but their prices will be reduced in the future.
We then finally added the ability to buy and sell huts. This required us to display property in the player profile so that players no longer had to remember when their rental would expire. We also needed to restrict item placement properly inside each hut. The property system was originally designed for rectangular plots, while a hut is round, so players could previously place objects in the empty corners of an invisible rectangle outside its walls.
Virt recently received its first bot: a guide. The guide walks around the island and shows players its main locations. If a player falls behind, the guide calls them several times. If they still do not return, the quest is cancelled. Previously, the guide abandoned the player after waiting only once, but it has now become slightly more patient. Completing the tour grants a reward.
A second minigame was also added recently: ancient drums. The player listens to a rhythm and must repeat it correctly. This mechanic was already used in our previous projects, but it has now returned in the updated version of Virt.
While most of our attention was focused on the island, the other servers continued to develop as well. A factory that produces fuel appeared on the planet. For a long time, fuel had almost no use, allowing players to accumulate thousands of units. Once it was finally added to crafting recipes, all those stockpiles immediately began flowing into crafting.
One of the most important systems, recycling, was added to the spaceship. Almost any item can be recycled, including damaged or spoiled ones, in exchange for infinum. This gave unwanted items a purpose instead of leaving them to sit permanently in players’ inventories, and made them part of the wider economy.
A limited visibility radius was also introduced. Everything beyond it is covered by a semi-transparent shadow that neatly hides areas the character should not be able to see clearly. This makes the world feel more natural and prevents distant objects from suddenly appearing at the edge of the screen.
Adding balance top-ups through Steam and Google Play was another difficult task. We had never worked with payment systems like these before, so we had to deal with many confirmation processes and unusual situations. We even found an issue where a player from Russia could add money to their balance without actually being charged because of regional restrictions. Cases like this also had to be handled separately.
That is roughly everything that happened to Infinigama over the past year. It is surprising how quickly the time has passed. Looking only at the list of changes, it may seem that we did not accomplish all that much. However, many features that appear small from the outside required weeks of thought, experimentation, and reworking behind the scenes.