Here's a quick rundown of what's going on in the heads of our lovely little Graboids!
As you know, Graboids have tremor sense - they feel vibrations through the ground. Any noise or movement can attract their attention! This is the fundamental element of our game design, and of their AI.
Every action in the game has a vibration power, a number representing its impact on the Graboids' senses. You can see a visual output of this system through the heatmap display in game (toggle in options).
The power of these vibrations decreases with time and distance, acting as a simple sort of decision tree to the Graboid actions - will they investigate the close but soft footfalls? Or the far away but loud distractions setup by the meeples?
Lower scores are more attractive. The market building here has a soda machine distraction active. Their second juiciest target is the loud truck, and then the meeple walking along.
Tweaking the balance on this was a key part of development - if they are too dumb, the game will be slow and quiet and boring. However if they are too smart, the game will become impossible and tedious as you always lose.
Distracting the Graboids is also a key theme of the film, so it was really important to us to get that incorporated on many levels - from the specific cards you play, to the actions and strategies you implement!
They had to be foolable but not foolish!
Each of the 4 Graboids (like the movie!) starts in its own quadrant of the grid. This allows the player a feeling of calm before the storm at the start of the game, to fit the pacing of the film. However once you start taking actions, the Graboids will immediately begin racing towards your position to investigate.
These Graboids are fast moving, and will travel very near to the vibration source before deploying their short range sensors - the tongue snakes!
The tongue snakes are able to investigate these sources by surfacing; if they find nothing, they'll communicate the false signal back to their Graboid. They're also smart enough to discard any vibrations which were a trail left behind this investigated position.
If they find a meeple, however... These slithery little creatures will be able to wrap around their legs, immobilising them! Once their prey is immobilised, the snake also send out a vibration signal through the ground to their Graboid parent, who'll quickly answer the breakfast bell
Thanks for reading!
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