Hi guys,

Yesterday I talked about a new concept for POPGOES Evergreen which involved Tokens, a currency that you unlock by completing one-time challenges in every major level of the game, and the Token Tree, which replaces the original plan for the Phone Shop.

In yesterday's post, I said two things which confused some people:

"Tokens are non-renewable rewards that you get for basically checking off challenges during the game. Completing Night 1 could give you one token, which you would not be able to redeem again. Night 1 could also have a token available for not letting your PANIC get too high. Again, these are non-renewable (meaning you can't farm them over and over again)."

and

"Originally, phones were just going to be available in a shop. Normal, fairly boring phone recolours would cost only a few Popcoins. And the cool, total reskins would cost a lot. This isn't an inherently broken concept, but it meant that players would likely scout out their favourite phone, and save up all of their currency until they had enough to buy it, and then... that's it. Unless you're a completionist, you'd be encouraged to just save up and get the phone you want. Which is... a little boring?

My solution to this was to adopt a skill-tree-esque layout for the phones, which requires the player to actually purchase some low-level items before they access the awesome endgame stuff. If you want the HandUnit phone, you'll need to buy like ten things beforehand. And the idea with this is that not only would this make buying phones more interesting, but it should hopefully encourage players to actually equip new phones as they play the game. Which should make discussion around the unlocks a bit more interesting, and just keep the game feeling a bit fresh and more customised."

I want to first clarify how Tokens would be collected by the player, because some people are concerned that the current system would require replaying the entire game, or each night, many times.

Firstly, I would not say that the average experience for a player would include collecting every possible token. It's not like you can equip more than one phone at once. Casual players can treat the Token Tree more as a "customisability" feature rather than something you aim to completely fill out. That's not to say you can't or shouldn't fill it out - you totally can if you want. But it will take longer obviously.

Okay so, each night, and "post-night", has a checklist. A list of objectives. An example for Night 3 could be:

• Survive the night [3 tokens]

• (Optional) and don't let Popgoes print any parts [1 token]

• (Optional) and don't let Perma-Panic rise above 25% [1 token]

• (Optional) and don't fail any Blake inputs [1 token]

• (Optional) and don't let Sara move at all [1 token]

As you can see, these aren't super specific challenges that require the player to "go out of their way" to do. They are bonuses associated with the core game mechanics. Meaning, if you are very good at the base gameplay, you could get ALL of these Tokens first try.

If you only check off three of the tasks on your first try, then you can replay the night and focus purely on the other two. Like I said in the original post, you can only get the tokens once. So you can spend some time prioritising the unredeemed tokens. And when you've completed all tasks for one night, you can completely forget about it forever. You've "100%ed" that night and there's no point in replaying it again.

The nights in Evergreen are planned to only be 8 minutes (compared to POPGOES 2016's 10 minutes). It ain't that bad. You will get plenty of Tokens by just playing the game, and you can get even more by being a god gamer.

The second thing that I wanted to talk about was the Token Tree, its general concept, and why it's something that I am considering.

"A skill-tree-esque layout for the phones, which requires the player to actually purchase some low-level items before they access the awesome endgame stuff. If you want the HandUnit phone, you'll need to buy like ten things beforehand."

Let me explain that this new system does not make anything more expensive, or slower, than the previous system. It is the opposite.

In the original system of simply having a shop of Phones with varying prices, you would see something like this:

---

You have: 3 tokens

Yellow Phone: 1 token

Cool Colour Phone: 2 tokens

Epic Phone: 3 tokens

More Epic Phone: 4 tokens

Super Epic Phone: 5 tokens

---

In that old concept, You would be able to buy the Epic phone with your current amount of Tokens, but a lot of players WOULDN'T because they would prefer to save up to get the Super Epic Phone. And when they finally do buy that phone, it's possible that they won't want to buy (or equip) anything else. Possibly ever. Which is FAIR but it's just not very interesting.

In the new concept, it works like this:

---

You have: 3 tokens

Yellow Phone: 1 token

Cool Colour Phone: 1 token (requires Yellow Phone)

Epic Phone: 1 token (requires Cool Colour Phone)

More Epic Phone: 1 token (requires Epic Phone)

Super Epic Phone 1 token (requires More Epic Phone)

---

In this concept, if you want to buy the Super Epic Phone, there's no point in saving up your tokens until you have 5. You can, and should, buy the Yellow Phone, Cool Colour Phone, and Epic Phone. Because those literally LEAD YOU to the Super Epic Phone. Does that make sense?

I think some people thought that some nodes on the Token Tree would be more expensive than others. That's not true. Every single node is the same price - ONE TOKEN.

Some examples...

As a reminder, phones are white squares. Stickers are black diamonds. Ticket rolls are small circles.

You could get a low level phone (just a recolour) for only 3 tokens:

And look, you also got a sticker, and a ticket roll!

Maybe a much nicer colour scheme for your phone could cost about 7 tokens, which could look something like this:

And while you were buying this phone, you also got a sticker, a ticket roll, a phone, another phone, another sticker, and another ticket roll. Holy shit! In the original system, you'd only get that 7-token phone.

If you were to beeline straight to the super expensive, right-most phones in the tree, you'd need to spend about 18 tokens, which could go like this:

But, oh my goodness, you also collected a sticker, a ticket roll, a phone, a phone, a sticker, a ticket roll, a phone, a sticker, a ticket roll, a phone, a phone, a sticker, a phone, a phone, a sticker, a phone, and another phone. WOW! You could equip ANY of those extra phones (some of which are super high tier) whenever you want. And you could spend those tickets on some awesome trading card packs straight away. And your sticker collection is now 1/6th complete!

What do you think of this? Every node costs 1 token. The tenet here isn't that you "need to spend your tokens on cheaper things to get the expensive thing". It's "you get bonus cheaper things FOR BUYING the expensive thing".

It's good. Trust me.

Some people found the UI for the tree a little confusing, so if you want an example of how the tree might look as you're filling multiple branches, then I guess it might look something like this:

Obviously the actual UI would include images of what you're collecting, and it would be interactive (changing when you hover/click things). But, in this example, the green nodes are already collected. The glowing nodes are items that you CAN collect (because you own their previous node). It's simple. You'll love it.

I hope this clears things up, but I'm still here answering questions, and if you have any (including anything you're wondering about Tickets), send that shit over and I'll do what I can to explain. Things will obviously be clearer in the actual game, when we're 100% settled on the names of things, and the UI/presentation can do most of the work. But I want to make sure you guys know what's planned!

- Kane