Celestial Empire
HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!
At the beginning of this Lunar New Year, we wish you all the fortune and luck. May this New Year bring many opportunities your way, so you can grow and prosper in the upcoming year and beyond.
While we can’t give you a more traditional red packet, we hope that the upcoming free and time-limited demo will be enough of a gift this season.
May the tiger bring you good luck and fortune.
Happy New Lunar Year!
The Devs
Devblog #7 - The UI Development
Usually, the complexity of a strategy game has to be expressed through a multitude of icons and windows. This can create chaos on the screen and scare players away. Because of this, for the last month or two, we have been focusing on the player experience and how to bring out the most exciting aspects of the game without making it overwhelming. All stats and buffs affecting your city have to be clearly stated in the UI. We looked into many different designs and solutions, searching for the most suitable ones.
The main menu:
Before you can do anything in the game, you will be greeted by the main menu. The intimate sight of your gubernatorial office should get you in the right mood and have you reflect on the upcoming decisions you will have to make.
The menus have been designed with functionality in mind. We want all windows to be clear and intuitive, so you, as a player, know exactly where to look for specific settings and features.
The Clock:
Different mechanics are shown through changes in the UI. The most important one would be the time system. The clock will show you changing seasons. Each season will have its own quirks, summer will bring bountiful harvests, while winter will stall your production. A crucial aspect shown in this part of the UI is the twelve animal patrons and the way some of them will affect your city. While all these aspects are still in early development, we already prepared space especially for them.
Iterations:
All elements have gone through a countless number of styles. Some of them are shown below:
The entire team was deeply engaged in choosing the most suitable colors, themes and decorations for the UI. In the end, the decision to make the panels red and gold came from the cultural and historical importance of these colors. They will remind you of the Emperor who is taking patronage of your gubernatorial rule. His presence is supposed to be seeping from many elements of the game, as it is your honor and duty to be the extension of his power.
The decorative elements of the UI brought a lot of discussion to the team. Our graphic designer prepared a multitude of choices and, for the longest time, we could not decide on only one:
In the end, we managed to settle on this design:
Tell us what you think about the UI! We can’t wait to share some BIG news soon and feedback on everything we’ve been doing so far would be vastly appreciated. You can send us messages on social media, Steam and Discord.
See you next time!
The Devs
Devblog #6 - Work, Work and Playtests
The work on our game continues. The devs are making bigger and smaller adjustments to the game. We’re preparing it for the upcoming playtests and even more exciting things next year.
All the elements mentioned in previous devblogs are becoming more advanced and new things are coming along nicely. We can’t wait to show them off.
Speaking of showing off. If you have been following our Steam Page, you may have noticed the new button available to you:
This means that the playtest registration is now open! We invite you to request access and join our playtesters group!
Unfortunately, there are at least a couple of things to know before requesting access:
The date of the playtests is still in the air and we are not sure how long from now they are. We want to avoid disappointing you all, so we will wait as long as needed.
We will not let everyone in at once. The playtesters will be let in waves to make sure we have fresh minds looking for imperfections in our game.
The order of playtesters who are let in is RANDOMISED by Steam. As developers, we have no possibility of sending the playtests to specific players. We can only tell Steam how many we need at a time.
The game WILL BE BUGGY. We can’t eliminate all bugs. We are already sorry for that, but that’s what the playtests are for. They will help us eliminate as many bugs as possible.
We will definitely mention all this again when the playtests open.
That’s all for this month. There isn’t too much to update you about, the devs are working but the changes are not spectacular enough to share yet. We will see you with more exciting information about the game and its development in January. If you want to ask us about anything, join our Discord and follow us on social media!
See you next year (hehe)
KarKarola
P.S.
We couldn't help ourselves. Here's a tiny sneak peek of what we're up to.
