Hey Ponderers!
Since we are so close to getting Orb fully released, I'm going to drop a monthly update until the magic is back in your hands, letting you folks know where this project and I are at!
Lots of time went into Alchemy and various quality of life things this month. Like I said in the last dev log, the content portion is always the weirdest to estimate because there is just so many content holes to fill and you don't see them until you are actually working on it.
Additionally, its really nice that I'm giving myself the time and space to work on these sections. Its pretty clear combing back through alchemy adjustments I made for v0.6 just felt uninspired for me. From my current perspective it feels like I was focused on finding whatever solution to game design problems I had so that I could push it out the door. That may sound a little harsh or perfectionistic, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that approach either, but there is a certain charm that I want every pillar of the game to have. (Wizardry, Druidry, Artificer, etc) My goal is for players to WANT to try different builds; to see a cool research or upgrade and be like "holy moley, what if I went for that first on my next playthrough?" or "What happens if i invest in that tree first?"
I've achieved this with the new version of Druidry. (I actually think Druidry might even be too cool now, and it might be even stronger than current Scholarism >.>, we'll see.) I've also made Expert Potions (now renamed Expert Items) far more interesting and given it some really cool combos with more than just Alchemy. Storm and Arcane have a lot more fun tools and unique stats upgrades that only they have access to.
But Alchemy is still alluding me a bit. Back in original design I had for this game, Alchemy WAS passive resource generation. But since Auras + Generators exist now, passive generation is no longer a niche thing, so Alchemy is missing a lot of its uniqueness. In v0.6 I kind of went with "mechanical complexity" as its unique trait, but honestly, that doesn't work that well.
That all said, I have been dabbling a little bit and arrived at some fun ideas. First of all, I made Alchemy is far more consistent and far easier to understand. No more "overdriving" and free usage slots. Instead I've made the alchemic capacities (Alchemical, Mechanical) dynamic, and reorientated alchemy's design towards "equivalent exchange" ( 😉 ), pushing the idea forward that: "if you want to generate an x-type resource you need to deconstruct a different x-type resource first"
I've also added in a lot more slots again, and added some type-specific ones, like brewing, so that you never have to feel like brewing a potion means your missing out on a transmutation.
Finally, this section of the game where I start to really ramp up the resource complexity, and I'm leaning into that quite a bit in the release version. The resource chain lengths are longer and really powerful resources are going to take quite a bit more work to generate.
Alchemy's uniqueness not withstanding, it feels about 80% done which means I'll likely start combing through ritual content this month and then after that it'll the new game+ content and then this phase will be complete.
In other news, I've had the opportunity to consult with a friend who has successfully launched a few games and I've got a lot more understanding around the work that will be required in the final phase of this release. With that information my timeline goals have shifted a little bit. Instead of shooting for a end of year release, I'm just aiming to have Orb content complete by the new year, with its full release following 2-3 months later. Again this is not an official timeline, I'm just being transparent with my thoughts. Its far more important for me to take my time and release it when its ready than follow an deadline schedule, but I am darn excited. I've been working on OoC for nearly 5 years at this point--being this close has me wiggling in my chair quite bit.
Til next month!
-Marple
PS. There is a lot of space for different bandwidths here... 🤔