Outcast Mode

In the next version, losing at the Shelter/Refuge won't take you to the game over screen, you'll instead be kicked into outcast mode. Additionally, you'll also be able to chose to start as an outcast with absolutely no Arkhe or Merits to make the game even harder if you wish.

Outcast mode will be a more traditional approach to text adventures in that you'll be presented with events and choices based on your stats and a set of randomized variables to keep things fresh and replayable.


When you are an outcast, the game and its world will go on, but you won't have a base of your own. You'll end up drifting into any of the available territories, where you should try to keep a low profile, make a living and procure yourself a new centre of operations. Lobbies and units will continue to do their stuff, but you won't be able to interact with them directly.

Whenever you don't have a base, the population bar will switch to one showing you willpower or mental resistance, I haven't chosen a formal name for it yet. This will equal to your Terror value and will be replenished or spent depending on your actions. If it reaches 0, your character's will to continue will be lost, he or she won't care about anything anymore, and you'll lose the game. Additionally, some of your actions will still increase the local tension value and enemies might still come looking for you if it is too high. Losing once again when you are an outcast will result in capture and the usual game over.

Each turn, instead of getting the usual list of actions (correspondence, territories, etc.), you'll be presented with a random event and given a series of options. If you are an outcast in Alchrousse's Estate, for example, you'll be conscripted into the militia. You'll then be given tasks such as field work, bullying nearby smallholders and such.

The events have several visible and invisible environmental variables that will change the outcome of most decisions. Some of them will be randomized, while the player will be able to change others with his or her own actions. That means, among other things, that some times some of the individuals will like you more or less, and sometimes certain escape routes won't be available.

Some of the situations  in which you might find yourself will be quite benign. You might end up working as an assistant in a workshop or something like that where your risks are nearly zero. But in other cases you might not be able to get out of the place at all, specially if you are a soft-bellied governor. If you start as an outcast, however, your starting stats will be even higher than those of an adventurer, so you'll have a fair chance to get a place somewhere and make it to the regular game mode.

The outcast mode must remain, after all, a punishment for losing your base, so you can't expect it to be completely fair.

There will occasionally be, however, strategic reasons to become an outcast. Your Merits and Arkhe will be reset to 0, which will suck if you are waist-deep in cash and well respected. If on the other hand you are in debt, your debts will also be cancelled, so you might want to consider allowing some enemies to take over your shelter and your debts if you find yourself in an extreme situation.


Now, writing the outcast events for each of the territories will take a while, but I think the effort will be worth it. Be forewarned that even if I manage to write the events for each territory in one or two days each, this will be a months-long endeavour, and of course I can't realistically expect to have available free time every day for months in a row. I also want to avoid pushing myself too hard so that I can take enough time to make every territory interesting to play as an outcast.

In any event, other features will slip in from time to time, politics for example will be definitively expanded in one way or another. I'll also start going over the history of each city and protectorate in lore posts during those periods in which I have no new development to report as well.

I remained so relatively secretive about the outcast mode, labelling it simply as "Something listed in the Development Goals" for almost a week because I had the feeling I was biting more than I could chew this time. I was considering for a time to just drop it and start something else instead. I'm basically making a small semi-procedural cyoa story for each of the fifty-odd territories after all, but I do believe I can pull it off with a little patience.


Still, if the whole thing takes too long, I'll look for a way to release early testing versions, even if they temporarily limit the number of available terrains.
 

Anamnesis 130513 Released

Previous savegames are compatible.

As per usual, here is a tiny stabilising release to address the bugs that emerged during the last few days, with some token content thrown in for the sake of it. There were relatively few bug reports this time around, so I guess that's something to celebrate.

It can't really be called a new feature, but furniture now has an actual use too. Whereas getting a fountain or a library formerly simply wasted your hard earned money, now they will gradually reduce weariness from your units and your base each week.

Unless something else is terribly broken, I'll start working on new features tomorrow.

Enjoy.

Bugfix 1 Released: Fixed a display problem for weekly weariness reduction under the forces menu. This was a display bug that had no effect on the course of the game, so if you downloaded the previous version and can't be bothered to download it again, it should still be fine.

Change Log:

• Furniture can now decrease the weariness of units on stand-by and the weariness of your base itself.
• 1 new relic.
• The Birdwatcher's Association actually works now.
• Fixed some influenced immigration issues.
• Other minor tweaks and fixes. 

  

Anamnesis 130507 Released

Previous savegames are not compatible.

You can get it at your right under Downloads.

Now this is a release I like. There is still room for improvement but overall I'm satisfied with the new features.

The main focus this time was in justifying the neglected "Correspondence" menu option and introducing a solid ground for the political aspect of the game. You will now be able to shape the colony in more ways through politics and voting and, with patience, even to win the game in a new way by proclaiming yourself emperor/empress.

Right now, this will be extremely hard to accomplish, but of course there are missing pieces in the political puzzle that will see the light in future releases. I mean, what are politics good for without being able to blackmail and assassinate problematic individuals?

As per usual, please let me know any bugs or typos you find inside the game.

I hope you enjoy the release.

Bugfix 1 Released: Cancelling when navigating through the Correspondence menu was causing weird behaviours. If you experienced this problem please re-download the game.

Change Log:

• Implemented basic politics and votes, with interchangeable favours, randomly selected lobbies and takeovers.
• Allowed lobbies to pursue their goals through political and non-political ways.
• Allowed the player to learn new voting proposals when visiting territories.
• Added a new way to win the game by proclaiming yourself emperor/empress using political influence.  
• Implemented a basic system for economic investments through correspondence.
• Added values for overall economy, immigration and political tendencies inside the colony.
• Added 2 new information screens to keep track of them.
• Added the ability to extort tributes from enemies using envoys.
• Added decoys to expand the barriers' system (decoys are more effective against dumb units, barriers against weak ones).
• Renascents will now occasionally want to go out on dates with you if you are involved in a romantic relationship with them.
• Made anomalies less frequent and limited them to 1 at a time.
• Made subsidizing terrains more profitable.
• 18 new lobbies.
• 2 new relics.
• 2 new terrains.
• 4 new units.  
• Many misc minor fixes and tweaks.

  

Expanded Barrier System

I've made the barrier system a little more interesting to keep myself from chocking on all that proofreading.

Some time ago, Influenced Aristocrats had decoys instead of barriers, but that was just for flavour, both decoys and barriers worked the same depending on the size of the unit you were trying to deter. Since now you are attacked by a much more regular cast of enemies than before, it makes sense to be able to diversify and allow the player to choose what's more convenient to build.

Therefore, in the next version you'll be able to build both decoys and barriers independently of your allegiance. The difference between them is that barriers will have to be overcome through Resistance, while decoys will require Intelligence. In the same way, their creation will also require Resistance and Intelligence respectively.

It's fun for example to watch a huge, nasty, vicious Ogre Warband approaching your base, brandishing their 260 RS and 30 IN, just to end up harmlessly lured away by a bunch of decoys.


This won't delay the release in any event. It shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 days to be ready now.
  

Narcotics Regulation and Consumption in The Steppes

It's still a few days until the next release is ready, so we'll bridge that gap with a lore post.


While tobacco is simply unknown as a drug in the known world of the game, brewages and other drugs such as opiates are occasionally manufactured and consumed, specially by beastfolk.

Officially, with the exception of opiates in the form of painkillers, The Court of All Humans enforces through the whole of The Steppes a teetotalism with an strictness and enthusiasm that varies from one city to another.

This is most successful in Tershelle-Val and Stallia, cities that culturally consider all forms of intoxicants to be "beastfolk poisons". The official stance of The Court stems in fact from the days of The Old Court, located in Stallia, and is considered anachronistic by a large section of more cosmopolitan cities such as Nivhar and Ill-Vess.

There is then the approach of Arrakans which, as per usual, manages to irritate both sides at the same time. Most arrakensis citizens, as an old city itself, are also culturally disinclined towards drug consumption. But in their "live and let live" approach to issues, the authorities make nothing but token efforts to stop the smuggling of brewages and other drugs.

This is an important leak in the system, as Arrakans is not only a hub of maritime commerce connected with both Nivhar and Ill-Vess, but it provides a gateway for beastfolk smugglers through the Arrakans River, which reaches into the unknown depths of the protectorate of Malahs Kovoss.

The jungles of Malahs Kovoss, under the control of the warring beastfolk clans, is where most of the narcotics consumed on The Steppes are produced. This is so because it is actually cheaper to smuggle the different clans' wares than to produce them locally, specially under the secrecy required because of these laws.

Some clans have grown extremely powerful because of this smuggling. This fact, above morality or productivity issues, is the main argument of both detractors and defenders of the institutional teetotalism.

Detractors argue that by removing these laws and producing alcoholic drinks inside The Steppes, the stronger smuggling clans will lose power and eventually collapse into smaller, more malleable ones. Defenders, on the other hand, argue that those entrepreneurial clans are precisely the less aggressive. Because of their regular trade with The Steppes, they restrain themselves from attacking their clients, unlike the ruthless systematic plundering of those clans without any economic interest on The Steppes.

Cutting that trade short now, defenders argue, will potentially radicalize the stronger clans, encouraging them into using their substantial forces to plunder The Steppes for profit.

The whole thing is therefore a pretty sticky situation that goes beyond moralism and from which there is no short-term solution at sight.
 

On the Development Pace

I won't blame you if you believe development is too slow but, as with everything else in this world, there is a reason for it. I'll take some time to explain it now because, since I'm finished with the next release's features, I don't have any interesting game development to report.

As you know, Anamnesis is kind of an oddball compared with other games, so it's hard to compare its development with that of other games or even visual novels.

Coding new systems is the easy part, the technical part of the basic politics was done in less than 5 days. The hard part is writing the content. The new content written in the last 2 months accounts for about 130 pages in Open Office's standard page and font size. Yet still, it cannot be fairly compared with the writing of visual novels, for example, because of the modular nature of the text.

When you are writing a standard storyline, once you come up with the general immediate direction for the plot, you can get at least a couple pages out of it, what with the dialogues and all. In the case of Anamnesis however, each idea gets me a line. A lot of time is wasted with me staring at the screen trying to figure out how would a particular unit or organization think in a given situation and how they'll try to achieve their goals.

This is fun when you are in the mood for it, but it can get frustrating under certain circumstances, both external and internal ones.

And since we're talking about writing, I'd like to remind you that I'm very interested in hearing about any typos or even poor grammar you find inside the game. I'm not a native English speaker, and all my English is self-taught, so the chance remains that I got something wrong without even realizing it.