The biggest focus on the update this time will be the balance and reducing “flatness”.

So far it has been a lot of design work - what is the problem and what are my options to solve them?

The problem has been that the player becomes too rich. A very “flat” solution would be to increase cost, increase enemy hp, decrease the number of resource tiles. Instead, I’m focusing more on how to make more out of the systems in place.

I’ve added an axe, which works just like the pickaxe. When holding the axe, you gather double amount of wood from a tree. Instead of 5, you can get 10 in total.

A new set of tiles has been added - “small tree” and “small stone”. Small tiles give 3 (or 6 with the special tool) resources, and the big one still give a total of 5. This makes it easier to balance out the resources during the levels, while not removing tiles, making the resources more scarse.

I’m looking into moving the sword, the pickaxe, hammer and axe to a new building tile, keeping upgrade and repair in the smithy. The smithy won’t be as crowded, and it adds a small extra cost for the player by having to build both to get access to “all the things”.

The smithy might also get a “full upgrade”, which upgrades the item to maximum in one activation, instead of having to do it a couple of times. The cost for saving time will probably be 1 or 2 resources.

As suggested by DarkBloodbane, I’m considering adding a danger element to gathering resources. There might be a slight chance to spawn an enemy when gathering, to “protect the forest” that you are actually destroying to get your stuff.

DarkBloodbane also suggested having to repair a broken bridge. This is something I considered a long time ago and also tried out. What I don’t want, is the player to be stuck though. Consider you just used up all of your resources, and there’s nothing more to gather, so you move on. To a broken bridge. The player is now stuck and there’s nothing to do other than rage quit. With a good solution to this, it will most probably be added as well.

That’s it for this time =)

Much love,
J