Tag Archives: social media

Public Exposure

Links to this site began hitting social media yesterday, and since then there’s been largely positive responses.  It has also been very interesting to see comments on sites like Reddit.  I expect to be directly responding to a number of concerns raised on those sites in the near future, since I suspect that comments there reflect a general sense of what our target audience is thinking as more information becomes available.

Right now the top comment on this thread is a concern as old as this game concept is: When the build time is so short as compared to movement time, won’t the game just become a frustration of doing a huge amount of local activity and waiting for a ship to cross the immense void to arrive at a distant star?

There is some truth there; the in-system game will proceed considerably faster than the out-system game.  The basic (although not atomic) element of game time is the day, and almost every star system will be less than a light-day across.  As a result, in-system play won’t be greatly affected by the signal-delay mechanics.  Most of the early game (at least when starting from a single Homeworld) will be in-system play as the player builds toward their first interstellar colony ship.

Eventually, though, the in-system game is going to get less interesting as the player’s home system becomes adequately developed to meet and exceed all of its productive requirements, and the challenges at home will take a back seat to the challenges in the stars.  At that point, the home system will more or less run itself — only construction of interstellar ships or mega-engineering projects will engage the player at home.  Reacting to events in the colonies will be the major gameplay of the later game, because some interstellar challenges only the Homeworld will have the resources to cope with.

Considerable thought has been put into not only how to overcome the technical and mathematical challenges of Slower Than Light, but also the game design challenges.  I am confident that the game upon release will keep the player engaged for the duration of their play experience.

To continue engaging, please like our Facebook page, follow our Twitter account, or add our Google+ page to your circles.