Back from the Christmas break feeling refreshed, and with a new perspective on some old challenges. I’m really excited with how Star Dynasties will progress (and launch!) this year.

I’ve been silent on the game for the last couple of months because I’ve been struggling with designing and implementing a model for Social Status. As I said in a previous post, I think it’s important to capture this part of human social behaviour. The game needs some way to reward characters (and the player) for performing deeds that are neither good nor bad (which would use the morality system), but still earn respect or ridicule (such as surviving a dangerous expedition, losing a favourable skirmish, negotiating a truce between two feuding rulers, getting snubbed by another leader, etc.). I went down the rabbit hole trying to get a particular design to work, and ultimately came up empty-handed. Unfortunately that’s just the nature of trying to implement new features sometimes. I’ve since figured out a design that works, and am in the process of finishing its implementation.

Following that, I will be working on adding a set of narrative events to the game, to continue bringing the world and your character’s story to life, and am aiming to release a new build to the alpha group by the end of January. At that point I will decide when to start an Early Access on itch.io.

In other news, I’ll be joining Space Game Junkie's podcast later today at 5PM PST / 1AM GMT to talk about the game (Discord/ Youtube/ Twitch). In preparation, Space Game Junkie also posted a preview of the current alpha build. Check it out!