Hi everyone, I'm Daniel. I'm the Studio Lead here at Respite Games. Welcome to the first of our bi-weekly Dev Diaries!
Before we get started, I want to thank everyone who has played the demo so far. It's been an absolute joy seeing people really connect with both the gameplay and story. If you want to participate more in discussion around the game, we have a discord server. You'll find the link below.
Now let's talk about upgrades
Upgrades have gone through a lot of iterations since we started working on Station Command. Initially they were planned to be a more traditional talent tree system, but we quickly found that restricted what we could do with them. A talent tree felt artificial, overloaded the player with information right up front, and set expectations that we really didn't like. Instead, having each upgrade be something your crew or an ally is proposing felt extremely thematic. It also let us work in costs of time and money into them that felt right. Having to spend money to click a talent point that increases your fleet size feels wrong, but having to pay for the materials for the hangar repair makes a lot of sense.
Still, we feel we can do much more with them. At the core of our design for Station Command is to make sure you feel like your choices have impact. Repairing the hangar or rebuilding a ship has impact, but right now they feel more like checkboxes instead of any real choice. They also happen suddenly with (usually) no interaction with the character proposing them. So, let's change that:
Each upgrade will have a small scene with the proposing character explaining the upgrade a little more. Some of these will be only a line or two clarifying what's happening. Others will give you a chance to learn a little more about the character and build those critical relationships.
More importantly, each upgrade is now a set of choices. What type of fleet layout do you want? What sort of tactics should you learn? What ship do you want Niamh to rebuild? Which bribe gift from Weybourne would you like? Now, each upgrade will let you customize your story and strategy to whatever best fits you. Even more excitingly, this lets us build upgrade trees so choosing an aggressive fleet loadout will lead you down a very different path than picking something more defensive.
Speaking of customization, there's two buttons in the hangar that don't currently unlock in the demo. We should probably talk about those next time.
Don't forget to join our Discord!