Scam Artist just reached 3000 wishlists and I'm super thankful about it!
In this post I'd like to talk a little about what is planned for the full-release version and give you a better idea of what you can expect.
Please keep in mind that the things shown are still work-in-progress and subject to change.
When we developed Gamblers Table, we weren't quite sure what the gameplay length should be. One wanted a really long game and the other a short experience. And we met somewhere in the middle.
I still think that is one of the single biggest things I'd like change in retrospect, as we had a lot of mixed reviews that either found the game too short or too long.
With Scam Artist, I am specifically aiming for a true, long-term idle game.
For anyone thinking "Another idle game in this time?": While I see and understand that Steam is currently being flooded with a lot of idle games (indieforgames.com), most of them being AI generated menu games, I personally believe that Scam Artist, while it shares the idle tag, has nothing else in common. Scam Artist is being built with a lot of care, handmade assets, polish and eye for details, which I'd like to showcase in the upcoming paragraphs.
Since the demo so far was "only" a rather short view into the core gameplay loop of placing things and generating money, the full game has much more things to do that complement this core loop. If you wanted a short burst incremental game experience, then maybe Scam Artist is not the game for you - it's planned as a long-term gameplay experience.
As I stated previously, Scam Artist will be a long-running idle game with daily content. There will be more emphasis on the management part of things, interacting with various characters and turning into a more powerful criminal along the way.
This is a mockup of the equipment system in Scam Artist. You will be able to get items fit for a real criminal that change and benefit your gameplay in the long run.
Each item has a grade and a set amount of random modifiers it can have. You will be able to combine, upgrade and modify this equipment to better suit your gameplay style.
Anyone that visits my steam profile should see that I'm a sucker for Path of Exile and I'll use any opportunity in the world to cram their itemization system into my games that I can, though the concept is very WIP at the moment.
Its very typical in idle games to check in every now and then - just to see how much money you made. It's player behavior that forms very naturally over time - I do it myself in the ones that I play. Because of that, I'd like to have a system that rewards you for checking in by giving you a random event every day that you can activate. These events give you dialogs or mini games that (depending on your choices) give you various rewards like items, permanent bonuses or other cool goodies.
Something that has been requested a lot even in the demo was being able to add layers to your rooms. While there are no specific plans yet for adding attics, I can at least tell you that you will be able to add basements that have their own functions and purpose.
I'm very active in various idle and incremental forums and read my fair share of posts there - and a trend I see rising up is that people are getting tired of node based skill trees. "If I see a node based skill tree I'm clicking away" is a sentiment shared by many at the moment.
And I get that. When I recently started playing a new idle game some days ago and reached that exact kind of skill tree, I couldn't help but feel a little ... worn out? Nothing the game did wrong, just a system I've seen so often by now that it feels very samey.
For that reason I'm currently thinking of meta progression system that are not the typical skill tree system and are more in-line with the theme and world of Scam Artist.
No matter how, the meta progression system will be tied to the "Scam Society" - a cast of various personalities that teach you their ways of scamming others. Be it money laundering, call scams or rug pulling your own meme coin.
While at it, I also am not a huge fan of prestige systems in most games. I understand its an easy way to horizontally scale up the gameplay for us developers by resetting your progress, but I'm just not a huge fan. I can not yet answer whether Scam Artist will ultimately have a "prestige reset", but I'd like to avoid it long as I can.
I would love to know your thought on these things. Does this reflect your opinion as well? Or are you still a fan of skill trees and prestiges?
I'm hoping to have some of these system ready by NextFest and just maybe I can work some of them into the demo aswell.
This is all from me now - thanks for reading and until next time!
- Sven (greenpixels)