March Progress Update
Progress continues across the board with UX, L2 level pipeline, new game options coming online and more
Sometimes it feels like these late winter months go too fast. How is March over already!? It has been a very productive month with every team member hard at work on adding new features, creating exciting content, and polishing the game in preparation for the Alpha v2 return.
The biggest two internal projects - the UX implementation and L2 pipeline are chugging along. We're definitely in the grind now, which is a heads-down "crunch" to the end but without the crazy overtime or deadline induced stress.
Another big month and a lot of progress - let's check out some highlights!
New Game: Picking your Backstory, Origin Story and Team
This month we've made big strides improving the new game setup for the Cyber Knight's alpha. Where previously there were few options and every game started the same, we've now introduced three sets of choices which combine to create very different starting points for each game.
The first is your Backstory, which tells the story of your life before you reached this point. Were you raised on the unforgiving streets of the Wards under a radioactive sky, were you brought up in the plush luxury of a corporate tower preparing for your aptitude tests or trained up as a milsec contractor?
Your Backstory will define some of your initial Contacts when the game starts, your starting Attribute package and many of your character's metadata tags describing their faction, connections, skills and more. There will be numerous backstory options.
The second choice is your Origin Story which answers the question of how you came to have a Cyber Knight's quantum rider surgically and irrevocably spliced into your spine. The first Origin Story in the game will be Syndicate Debts, in which you and your friends have pulled together everything you had and taken a massive loan from a Syndicate financier to afford the installation of a Cyber Knight's computer. The stretch goal "Valkyrie Zero" and the Kickstarter add-on "Horizon Cypher" are both Origin Stories. There will only be a handful of origin story options.
As well as explaining your new cybernetic, your Origin Story sets up one of the big story arcs for the first act of the game and this story will include a set of Contacts -- be they friends or enemies.
The final set of choices will be to pick your team from a list of available character templates. You'll be filling up the slots for your team from a few locked slots -- your team needs a Face, a Vanguard and a Hacker -- as well as a few free slots -- your pick of Soldiers, Snipers, Cyberswords, another Vanguard, etc. There will be numerous character template options.
Each templated character you pick will have a starting name, character visual (both of which can be changed), their own Backstory, special starting equipment, optional cybernetics and at least one Contact that they know.
As a sum total -- your Backstory, Origin Story and team picks will give you a strong starting foundation for your covert merc team and aims to deliver on classic tabletop RPG feels -- you'll have friends and enemies, faction connections, a variety of skills and abilities and trouble already knocking at your door.
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