SSH #32 — The Anti-Attrition Campaign

Happy Saturday!

If you're in the US or Canada, it's also Labor Day weekend! Everyone in the studio is off on Monday and I'm looking forward to the short week.

Last week, Harry shared pictures of his cat and talked about emails because we didn't have a whole lot to show.

This week, we've got a studio update and updates to the game's core loop!

Ending the War of Attrition— Lucien

A few weeks ago, we realized that we had a few big problems with the game's combat. It's something we've been experimenting with for awhile, but the core issues really crystallized recently:

1. Taking damage when there's no healing in the game feels bad and made us want to restart the level if we took too much damage.
2. We couldn't make enemies as deadly as we wanted without making combat frustrating
3. Players couldn't meaningfully improve their defensive capabilities via engineering

It hit us like a ton of bricks! We've been thinking about our combat through the lens of games like Dark Souls, where you're navigating a world that eats away at your resources, trying to make it to the end without running out. In those games, that includes your health bar, but also your flasks and sometimes weapon durability.

Dark Souls is a game that's largely about attrition, and we realized that our game isn't.

Epiphany in hand, I went into my cave for a day and came out with a proposal: The Anti-Attrition Campaign.

1. Cut the player's health pool down to almost nothing, but give them an overshield part (e.g. Borderlands or Halo)
2. Make part damage temporary and let them self-repair after a delay.
3. Rebalance the electricity economy to be based on a central part that generates electricity instead of just storing it.

Along the same lines, I built some new enemies and realized I could give them shields too!

We did our scheduled internal playtest on Friday with the changes and they feel great! I forgot to migrate some of our old parts to the new balancing scheme which messed up some of our progression and there were a few bugs though, so we'll be playing with it again next week.

The Floating Warehouse— Harry

Harry did some fantastic work experimenting with making a multi-level warehouse to serve as the first level for the player right out of the junkyard. I'm shocked at how he was able to use some of our kit pieces to put together a fun space.

The exterior of the level (pictured in previous SSH issues!) was a really fun test for our new volumetrics system. The interior of the level is reminding me of the need to start thinking about lighting. Soon!

One Thousand Applicants— Lucien, Laura

As you may know, we opened a new role last week for a 3D Environment Artist. Since then, we've had over 1,100 applicants! We're blown away at the interest in the role and we're only a bit swamped.

We'll be closing applications and starting interviews in a little over a week. We're very excited, but it's taken a lot of time to get everything prepped for interviews and eventual onboarding. If you haven't heard back from us, fear not — we're aiming to respond to every applicant this time around so we won't leave anyone hanging.

Before we know it, we'll also be looking to find a Sound Designer, a Composer, and a part time Marketer. I'm looking forward to talking with those candidates as well in the coming months. Stay tuned!

The Friday Wrap-up with Harry— Harry

Whereas last week we experienced endless Wednesdays, we're in a weird Friday-is-always-playtest-Friday loop now.

We were meant to have a playtest last week, which we pushed to today, and now we're planning for another playtest next week too! It's playtests all the weeks down.

Lucien is still tinkering with the electrical system. He told me this morning that he'd updated how the batteries worked, and that it was my job to go into our playtesting levels and replace all the loot with new batteries and capacitors. Turns out - he didn't actually change the electrical system at all! So I was replacing those batteries with themselves! He's going to have me counting gravel next week, just watch. I earn my pay.

A side effect of Lucien's extraordinary electrical error is that we got to enjoy unlimited power! This, combined with more generous enemy loot, meant we put together some pretty vicious builds.

Rasmus seemed to have the engineering philosophy of just stacking everything on top of himself and tripling up on the arcing 'glob launcher' weapons. I figured I'd go with a laser beam focused build, loading up as many lasers onto my front as I could.

Lucien observed that our builds look far more... animalistic than usual. Give us a week and we'll be the new Horizon game.

Beef panaeng curry for dinner tonight.

Be good!

Looking Ahead

It feels good to have something to show! I've been working on stuff that's very non-visual in the guts of the game and that can be disheartening. I think we're headed in a very good direction and I'm excited to iron out a bunch of bugs next week and feel that next Friday.

We have an in-person team meetup scheduled in around a month. Between that and the hiring, there's a lot of administrative work right now in the studio. I don't mind it since it comes with running a small team, but I really want to work on making weird robots instead.

See you all next week!