One of the common issues voiced by players game is that you reach a point where it's just too easy. Once you get a hang of wrangling building combos, there's not much more challenge there. (There's always the challenge of trying to break a billion, but not everyone out there is a score-chaser. I respect that.) In order to help with this, I took some inspiration from Hades and added "Black ICE" to the game. These are optional difficulty modifiers that you can select at the start of a game.
Currently, there are four Black ICE options available:
1) Captain - once you play a building, it's removed from the draw deck.
2) No Perks - what it says on the tin
3) Ugly Shanties - All shanties give -1 income to all neighboring buildings
4) Roof Ban - All uncovered or partially-covered buildings get -1 income.
I particularly like the Captain ICE. It doesn't necessarily make the game more difficulty per se, but it does change how you play the game. Some buildings become worthless (like the Gruel Plant, which needs two neighboring Toxic Waste Dumps in order to trigger its bonus) and some become more valuable. (With 75 buildings in the game and 64 days to pick 'em, you are extremely likely to get that rare building. You can plan around this.) Also, there's some fun Hack strategies you can use to double up on the "unique" building guarantee. True hacker fashion. I'll be looking for more ideas like Captain in the future.
Other changes:
- Fixed some issues with the UI losing focus when you double tap the build button on a controller
- Fixed a bug where shanty apartments would rarely get placed in the same position when the map is full, causing weirdness with saved games and saved cities
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you traveled too far away in photo mode with a city containing many lit buildings
- Fixed a bug where controller navigation of the perk bar was incorrect.
There are four more Black ICE modifiers currently in development, but I wanted to get this first batch out before the #TurnBasedThursdayFest starts on June 2nd. Enjoy!