#destination ares

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Destination Ares Sales Pricing Structure – Pat Scott – Medium

This is a cross-post of my announcement on Steam, which can be found here.

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A Deep Dive

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>> Destination Ares has a release date (and it’s soon)!!

!!!! So excited

(also very scared)

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Destination Ares has been in Early Access for 7 months, after an initial closed development period of 27 months.

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Teaching Too Much, From a New Angle

Destination Ares is an obtuse game. I’ve constantly battled how to teach players to play and how to give information about its hidden depths without overwhelming them. As is, it has too much exposition and too many mechanics in too small a frame.

I can't waste time adding even more text before players get to do anything.

So it's time to get creative.

As with roguelikes and other games with permadeath, Destination Ares is fundamentally about empirical experimentation. Try something new, fuck up, learn, repeat. The trick, of course, is getting players to A) initially parse what they're seeing and B) keep exploring and looping.

Enter the metagame

When they loop, we can tell more information. Teach when they lose. Make it clear why and how and where they messed up. Occasionally soften with humor. To this end, more than half of DA's initial achievements are actually "failure" achievements. Here are a few examples:

I've made these secret achievements; you'll see them only if they become relevant (and ohhh hoho they'll definitely be relevant).

You know what's nice about this method? They don't take time away from play. These are a way of side-loading learning; they'll pop up and reinforce what's already happening in the game. Furthermore, players can go back and see what "lessons" and "hints" they've unlocked.

This game is about exploring and playing your way, not being railroaded into meta-goals I've established. So, along with failure achievements, most of DA's other achievements are also going to be secret.

Down the line, I hope to expand on this ethos of teaching through the metagame. As much as is possible with a mechanically front-loaded game design, I want to introduce new concepts over play loops. Complicate efforts, show ways to influence key variables, and, most importantly, allow organic self-teaching.

Thanks for reading. Hit that follow button if you haven't already.

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Destination Ares is now on Steam Early Access!

The store page is here, and you can find the presskit here. Kim is selling the soundtrack over on cdbaby here.

It's been a long time coming, and this ride certainly isn't over. If you've been watching these past two years, you've seen this game go from a spark of an idea into something real and playable. I expect I'll still be blabbing about Destination Ares for another year or so, as I iterate through Early Access and make my way to full release. There's still a lot to come.

A note: you can (and should!) monetize streams, videos, and other such broadcasts of Destination Ares. The music is also licensed for that use for you, so let it play if you want!

Thanks for being here.

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The Click and the Gamble

It's weird how you can work on a game for over two years, see the potential for it to be fun (and even occasionally have bursts of said fun), but not have it quite working the whole time. It's not as if early prototypes lacked the necessary engagement; it just hadn't found its magic.

A couple of days ago, Destination Ares finally clicked. After years of work and vision, it's now something I enjoy playing with. It's not done, of course. Still, I finally feel a little bit of pride in it.

Part of me is disappointed that it took so long to get to that point, that it was almost a gamble the whole time. The other part of me nods sagely, thinking, "Of course it took so long. It's an ambitious project. It's focused on a novel style of slow strategy, not arcade action or easy-to-duplicate genres and tropes (which can be made more quickly with the many available guides and jump-start assets)." And yet, it has certainly been all of those truths at once: ambitious, slow and strategic, a gamble. The two parts of me do not say contradictory things.

And here we are; something clicked. It feels real.

So, I'm beginning work on Steam integration soon. w/ Early Access ASAP. At some point I'll have to take down that terribly outdated demo on itch.io, perhaps to be replaced with the full/ EA version. I suppose branching out to other distro platforms will be inevitable, too.

Having gotten to this point doesn't mean the inherent gamble is done yet, either. Clearly, gambling with years of my life has not been merely to make something I find enjoyable (though that's certainly an important milestone). How will it be received? How will I feel about it once it's in public hands? Will it make enough money to justify the expense and energy it took?

This gamble is far from over, as a game dev, or creative of any kind, in these shoes could tell you.

Thanks for taking this ride with me, readers. I'll be back in another two weeks talking about who-knows-what, as usual.

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Musings on Forced Personalization

I've been working on allowing players to build their own ships for a few months now. To me, personalization and experimentation are important parts of the game. Of course, I don't want to make ship-building the only way to play, so I intend for it to be optional.

However, my original thinking was that players who do opt for ship-building should be encouraged to personalize it as much as possible.

To this end, I implemented a forced naming system for the crew. It popped up on each new character, and intentionally got in the way until they named the crew. If they never did, all crew defaulted to "Nameless Crew". My reasoning was: players will be more invested in crews they have personally named and designed, so it should be a core part of the process. Avoiding that process was penalized with a callous, generic descriptor.

Well, I took that to a local showcase event. Players despised forced naming almost universally. They especially hated the intrusive UI.

I've since scrapped that pop up. And, I've added short lists of names from sci-fi inspirations of mine. Now, all new characters are given a fresh name.

I love the idea of all these sci-fi/ sci-fantasy references. I'm also pleased that the extra UI isn't needed. But I do think I was onto something with forced personalization.

Without it, I fear players will be more blasé about their crew in the actual game. It may have been the lynchpin to the game's intended (if subtle) emotional impact. I hope not.

Oh well, now I get to watch people play the guessing game: "Is ____ a reference to _____?!"

Mayyyybe.