SSH #30 — Let Me Paint You A Picture

Hwæt! Saturday comes, and with it, the good news of MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80!

It's time for Saturday @ Second Half #30! THIRTY! THE BIG THREE-ZERO! What a milestone.

All the best things start happening at 30.

That reminds me that I need to book a doctor's appointment. While I'm doing that, you keep yourself busy with this newsletter. Okay? Okay.

Last week we trapped ourselves (and you!) in a world of junk.

We're still in the world of junk, but it's a little nicer now — even if it is darker and scarier too.

Also, Lucien is on the warpath.

A New Painting!— Laura

Laura's been busy! We've got a brilliant new illustration from her.

My favourite thing is the enemy robot in the bottom right. Lucien and I didn't even notice it at first.

The End of Attrition— Lucien

Something that keeps coming up in our playtests is attritional gameplay. This is partly a result of overly eager combat encounter design ('yeah you know what, I WILL put seven enemy robots in this room') but also more broadly connected to our gameplay loop.

A big part of that comes down to how we handle persistence — particularly the decisions we make about enemies, loot and the player all respawning. We've always feared a 'Minecraft death run' feeling of having the player die and lose all their items unless they can return to their corpse in time to pick it all back up again.

There are other problems too. MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80 is a game with a lot of moving parts, including a complex electrical simulation system that powers all of the player's (and enemies') weapons. Loot and progression currently revolve around getting bigger and better batteries and capacitors.

But all those parts you loot and equip can also be broken by enemy gunfire, forcing you to keep maintaining your gear as you go through a level.

Right now, when the player dies, they respawn at the start of the level with all their gear back at full health. All the enemies respawn too. So, when you go into a level and one of your weapons gets shot off 10 minutes into a 20 minute level...you might really be best off just respawning and starting again.

This can all get rather tiring.

BUT WORRY NO MORE, CITIZEN!

Lucien's got the solution for us. He's stopped yelling about Rocket League every time we go past him in the office, but it's been replaced with something perhaps even more dangerous. After a cacophony of hammering and drilling sounds, he emerged from his office, covered in sawdust, to announce the beginning of the 'anti-attrition campaign'.

This means that within a week, we will have an overhauled power economy, new ways of dealing with damaged/broken parts and a new kind of player shielding. We're all very excited.

I'm going to have to repair a bloody big hole in my office wall now though.

Friday Wrap-up— Harry

Hello, soot-stained orphans of the Second Half Games Newsletter!

Happy Friday! I've been away in London all week (hence the soot, and the orphans). This has bankrupted me, though I did get to see the original patent of the rotisserie chicken oven invented by a Belgian man called 'Merlin' in 1773. He also invented the roller-skate. Everybody say 'thank you Merlin'.

While I've been gone, everyone else has been ploughing away at furthering the development of MEANWHILE IN SECTOR 80. We've got a lot of nice new things coming up, but they aren't quite baked yet - but you'll see them next week or the week after!

We played Mars First Logistics again tonight! The rest of the team had already played it in October last year, but I've never had the chance to give it a go. I would not make a very good engineer. Good thing I'm just a writer.

Did you know there are horns in that game that play different notes depending on what colour they are? Lucien made a piano. Laura played 'Happy Birthday' among other things. A good time was had by everyone involved.

It's playtesting again next week, and Lucien's got a lot of gameplay tweaks and some partly reimagined mechanics to show us. I'll be on levels again - I can't hide from them forever.

Thai red curry for dinner.

Be good!

Looking Ahead

Next week is another playtest week! My plan is to crack on with the floating platform level, hopefully taking inspiration from all my favourite warehouse shooting levels. There may or may not be a puzzle involving a crane.

Lucien's still working on implementing his anti-attrition campaign, but we're all very excited to see how that will improve our gameplay.