Dice Kingdom Log #5
X-POST from itch devlog
This weeks brings even more UI changes to the game. The goals of all these changes is to make the rules of the game clearer and make it easier to understand.
One of the key changes made was to the window that is provided when hovering over building’s construction.
Before the changes, you only get to see a wall of text. For some of the buildings, it can be easier to read but for others it is really unclear what the building does.
After the update, when hovering over the slot, the building will be displayed together with instructions on how the building works. The combination of the 2 will hopefully make it easier to understand. This change has also be added to Research.
Warning System #
In additional to changing the UI, a new warning system is also added. Currently this warning system will warn when there will be not enough food for all the villagers and when an event is expiring soon.
This helps to provide unintentional starving of the villagers and will hopefully make the experience better.
That concludes the changes for the week.
Some additional dev thoughts:
The warning system came around when I was doing a full run of the game. I tried surviving past the point that I wanted the game to end; i.e. turn 40. The idea is that around turn 30, the game will get increasing hard with the events and eventually (and hopefully) by turn 40, the player will be killed.
During the time around turn 35+, I realised that I need to do the same checks every turn. Step 1, check that I have enough food for this turn. Step 2, ensure that I clear all the death events
Because of this, I feel that having the game just telling me that I don’t have enough food might actually be better. This warning system can then be expanded in the future to other stuffs in the future, for now it will just serve Food and Expiring Events.
Another insight from the playthrough was how easy it is to survive to turn 40 with only a small preparation. I may have overestimate how fast the game will kill you. The game is really balanced around the game ending at turn 40, so I suspect I will have to increase the difficulty at the end.