In Black Skies, cold doesn’t just drain a meter. It makes your body work harder to stay alive.
Your body uses food and water to produce heat, recover stamina, and heal. The colder you become, the less efficiently it can do those things. If your body needs energy and none is available, you start taking damage.
That is the core of the physiology system in Black Skies.
With Steam's PvE Survival Game Fest starting today, and Black Skies 30% off for the event, this seemed like a good time to show what is actually happening underneath those survival meters while you play.
The environment determines how quickly you lose warmth.
Temperature, wind, shelter, clothing, and other conditions all contribute to that loss.
When Warmth drops, your body tries to replace the lost heat by consuming Hunger.
So food isn't just something you eat because a meter is getting low. It is the energy your body uses to keep itself warm.
The harsher the environment becomes, the more heat you lose and the more energy your body needs to replace it.
A fire, shelter, or better clothing reduces that demand. Your body simply doesn't have to work as hard to maintain its temperature.
That is why getting warm early matters.
Hunger represents the energy available to your body.
Several systems consume that energy when they need to do work.
Producing heat consumes Hunger.
Healing consumes Hunger.
Recovering stamina consumes Hunger.
As long as energy is available, those systems can do their jobs.
If Hunger reaches zero while your body is still trying to perform that work, it can no longer meet the demand.
That is when you begin taking damage.
Starvation therefore does more than leave one meter empty. It removes the energy several other systems depend on.
Water is directly tied to that energy use.
Whenever your body consumes Hunger, it also consumes water.
This abstracts the hydration required for transport and the metabolic processes that allow your body to turn stored energy into useful work.
Anything that increases your energy requirements therefore increases your water requirements too.
If you're cold and producing more heat, you need more food and water.
If you're recovering from exertion, you need more food and water.
If you're injured and healing, you need more food and water.
Hunger and thirst aren't two unrelated countdowns. They're both part of the same metabolic system.
Running consumes stamina. When you stop running, your body tries to restore it by consuming Hunger.
If enough energy is available, stamina recovers normally.
If there is no Hunger fuel available, your body is trying to recover without the energy required to do it.
Recovery stalls, and your stamina stays where it is.
That means exhaustion while warm and well-fed is very different from exhaustion while starving in severe cold.
The same physical effort can have very different consequences depending on what condition your body is already in.
Health follows the same basic rule.
When Health drops below 100 percent, your body tries to repair the damage.
Healing consumes Hunger.
If the energy is available, Health can recover.
If it isn't, your body cannot support the healing process and you begin taking additional damage.
The same thing happens when your body is trying to warm itself without any energy available.
This creates an important distinction in Black Skies.
You don't take damage simply because you're cold. You take damage when your body needs to correct that cold and no longer has the energy to do it.
You don't take damage simply because you're exhausted. You take damage when your body tries to recover and cannot support that recovery.
Health is where the consequences appear when the rest of your physiology can no longer keep up.
Your current Warmth also affects the efficiency of the entire system.
The colder you become, the more energy your body needs to accomplish the same amount of work.
Producing heat becomes more expensive.
Recovering stamina becomes more expensive.
Healing becomes more expensive.
And because consuming food also consumes water, those increased energy demands increase your water use as well.
This is why cold can become dangerous long before your Health starts dropping.
You may still be functioning, but your body is burning through its remaining resources faster and faster.
Getting warm doesn't just solve the immediate problem of being cold. It makes the rest of your body more efficient.
Mental works differently from the rest of the physiology system.
What you do, and what happens to you, changes a set of underlying neurotransmitters.
Running affects them.
Resting affects them.
Finding warmth affects them.
Dehydration and hypothermia affect them.
So can something as simple and personal as stopping to look at a photograph of your dogs.
Those neurotransmitters act as modifiers throughout the simulation, much like the efficiency changes caused by Warmth.
They also combine into higher-level states representing how you currently feel.
For example:
Motivation = Dopamine - Cortisol
Excitement = Dopamine + Glutamate - GABA
Other combinations contribute to states such as calmness, alertness, focus, endurance, and stress.
You never manage any of those chemicals directly.
You run. You rest. You get cold. You find shelter. You become exhausted. You see something that matters to you.
The mental system responds to those experiences, and those changes feed back into the rest of the simulation.
Most of this is already happening in Black Skies.
The problem is that the game currently doesn't show enough of it.
You might see Hunger falling quickly without realizing your body is spending that energy trying to stay warm.
You might recover stamina slowly without understanding that severe cold has made recovery less efficient.
You might suddenly be consuming much more food and water because several systems are demanding resources at the same time.
When the simulation is invisible, correct behavior can look arbitrary.
That's why one of the current roadmap items is Clearer Physiology Feedback.
I'm not looking to add a pile of new meters or expose every formula running underneath.
The goal is simpler:
You should be able to understand what your body is doing, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.
The simulation can stay complicated underneath... Playing it shouldn't be.
Black Skies is 30% off during Steam's PvE Survival Game Fest.
Thanks for playing.
Adam
Metacortex Studios