This week was a little on the dry side. Mostly spent my time noodling away building out maps for the forest campaign. They're coming along nice and have some lovely vibes. With these environment assets I've been trying to balance out the game design elements of providing cover, destructible terrain and open spaces with the aesthetics and story I'm trying to tell here.
In my mind the games that fuse their mechanics with their narrative, or even better tell their narrative via the mechanics and visuals are the best forms of video games. You can force a story down a players throat, give them fully cinematic voice acted cutscenes, but really that's just a slightly interactive movie. On the other end of that spectrum, you can give them the barebones of a story, put them into a place and time, give them some pointers and let them go. The story is theirs at that point, they can fill in the details as needs be.
PREPARE FOR A LORE DUMP
In my mind, Exoloper is an anticapital / anticolonial statement piece. You have this invading force, the Commonwealth, who rock up to your home system, kick your people out and mine the ever living heck out of it. In Interloper you reconquered the solar system, in Exoloper, you're taking back your home planet, and you do this sector by sector, campaign by campaign, slowly but surely one bit at a time. By tearing down every building, by ripping up their infrastructure, by cutting down their forces, by literally stepping on them.
But that doesn't have to be the story for the players of the game. I hint at it, I'll drop pointers to it throughout the game, but I won't explicitly tell them because of two reasons. 1) I'd like them to feel it and 2) The story is their responsibility, its theirs to tell, they are the players.
It's all a balancing act. Something I'm sure I won't get right this time around, but something I know I'm getting better at with each new game.
By the way, Its still amazing to me what some art can do to a greybox level.
