Version 2 and the road to V3

Version 2 is now out. Introduced in this version are a range of gameplay additions, including major game-option functionalities.

Gameplay-wise, a new way to interact with the world has been introduced. Characters are more complex, with traits, and a 'sanity' stat, which serves as HP for the mind. This can be attacked, to turn a character insane, in proper Lovecraftian fashion. Madness serves as a way to degrade nobles who you wish to remove, or to harm kingdoms you wish to see fall. 

The three current 'types' of evil have been upgraded to use them. The Deep Ones, in need a buff, were given a coastal attack, to disable nobles across the world. The Unholy Flesh also gains an AoE madness, and the enthralled noble gains the ability to cause nearby nobles to turn insane, or to specifically turn a particular noble insane by sharing to Terrible Truth of the world.

Possibly the core game improvement is on the user side (other than save/load functionality). The game now has a small option screen at the start, allowing you to choose world size and difficulty. Alongside this is the params.txt file, which allows a player to fully access almost all the numbers used by the game. Power costs, cooldowns, noble AI-parameters, world-gen properties. This ties into the game's open-design philosophy. Not only is the game open source, to those who wish to recompile it, but it is also accessible for alteration in a simpler and easier fashion, by simply changing the params.txt file. 

We intend to continue work on the game options, so that future features can be toggled on or off, to allow flexibility in terms of how complex the game is. The game is intended to be complicated, but not so much that it becomes unfun. The aim is to have a default state, which could be used if an advanced feature is disabled. For example, traits could be removed, making all characters identical, so the player no longer needs to spend a while on the first turn going through all nobles to learn who is who.

In terms of version 3, the aim is to make locations more complex. The game simulates heat on a per hex location, and this ties into habitability. This means that locations can be made more or less useful to the human civilizations, by altering the weather. Cities would grow and shrink based on available food, as well as possess traits of their own, making each place somewhat unique, and dynamic.

Ideally version 3 would also feature different forms of evil, allowing the player to select an evil god to play as. We would keep some 'custom' option which allows any mixture of powers, but would like there to be a set of different ways to play which are provided to the player.

Hope you enjoy this release