Since we started working on HIJAC, we’ve been bombarded with requests for different type of cults to be included. From Cthulhu, satanic and militarist cults, to peace-loving, espresso machine worshipping ones… we’ve seen all sorts.
Allowing players this amount of freedom posed considerable design questions for us. We really do want to allow people to pursue as many strange goals and cult types as possible. This is where the cult themes system comes in.
Players are presented with randomised theme options that they can choose to pursue, these are called ‘Divine Inspirations’. These might require your leader to research certain theme technology in their Inner Sanctum, or your cultists to complete a theme related mission. Once completed, these will reward you with new rooms, object types and aesthetic options for your cult.
As you near the end of the game you’ll have to choose an end goal based on one of the themes you have been pursuing. For example, if you’ve been pursuing the Darkness theme, you might decide that your ultimate goal is to summon the Great Old One himself, or perhaps you’ll choose something more… apocalyptic. We don’t want to give too much away here.
On Early Access release the Darkness theme will be available with multiple endings. Further themes and endings will be released during Early Access. We’ve already got some great ideas for these other themes and the implementation of some has already started!
Honey, I Joined A Cult - Launching Into Early Access this Summer!
Hello faithful followers!
Wondering what's going on with Honey, I Joined A Cult?
Our charismatic leader has some information for you...
[previewyoutube="TfYGac6upRY;full"]
Honey, I Joined A Cult launches into Early Access right here on Steam this Summer!
Show your faith, add HIJAC to your Steam wishlist now and be ready to join our wonderful 'organisation'
When you start HIJAC, your cultists are going to be in for a rough time. They’ll be sleeping on dirty mattresses on the floor, with their personal effects stashed in cardboard boxes. They’ll shower under buckets of water and the toilets...won’t be nice.
Whilst some cultists won’t complain too much about this type of thing, there’s many who will want something more comfortable to get them by. To manage the essential in-game unlocks and upgrades that you’ll need to progress, we have been implementing our in-game universal tech tree.
This contains a range of different things:
Object unlocks that will take you from overspilling toilet bucket to solid gold throne.
New room unlocks to ensure the enduring appeal of your organisation.
Upgrades to your sermons, to make them especially productive or to provide buffs to your cultists.
Unlocks of unique abilities for your leader, such as their ability to provide buffing auras or to engage in theme related research (more below).
Efficiency upgrades to existing items to make them work faster/produce more.
Unlocking of certain mission types that can be performed on the world map.
Cult upgrades, such as follower and cultist cap increases.
(The above picture is obviously not the final form text and things like the tech icon still need to be put in for the popups!)
We love the look of the new tech tree and are very pleased with how this has come out. The overall content is pretty settled but it may change subject to further feedback.
Note that in addition to these universal unlocks the player will also be able to acquire a huge amount of other upgrades/unlocks/items that are related to any specific cult theme that they are pursuing. We’ll reveal more about how your cult pursues these different themes in another post!
Sound
We’ve also added in the first of our proper in-game sounds. We had previously been relying on place-holder audio but now have a full set of UI and in-game sound effects. This includes background ambience that changes throughout the day/night cycle. As the sun comes up there’s a dawn chorus, followed by the typical daytime sounds of birds singing and cars going by. As night approaches crickets begin to chirp and dogs bark in the distance.
In terms of sound effects, bells ring to signal the start of sermons and the various cult machines emit a vast array of strange and hypnotic sounds. As cultists go off to bed, snoring gently emanates from the bedrooms.
Until next time.
Simon & Ed
New Trailer & Official Discord
Allow our wise cult leader to bestow his wisdom upon you!
[previewyoutube="B9wiV_YjIQE;full"]
Honey, I Joined A Cult launches into Steam Early Access later this year!
Add it to your wishlist for spiritual enlightenment!
We’ve been very busy since our last dev log and our main focus has been on overhauling our UI. Those of you that have played HIJAC (at expos etc) will know that our UI needed some work. Players would often be left confused by where things were, what things did, and when they did finally realise how to use the UI properly, it often required too long to figure out.
UI Design wasn’t the only problem – the look wasn’t of the standard that we wanted either. Therefore, many months ago we started to engage on a complete overhaul of the UI to solve these problems. It’s been a long time coming but the new UI is now being implemented and we can show you some screenshots:
We’ve replaced the monotone beige with a colour palette drawn from our key art. Interactive elements are now much clearer, the layout is more intuitive, and it looks much better (if we do say so ourselves).
This is an ongoing task that is not yet finished. We’ve been frontloading the more important UI elements (such as the build and various overview menus) to allow as much time as possible for getting feedback. So far the limited testing we have done has been very positive!
The UI will continue to be upgraded as we carry on with various other elements of the game.
Intro
Something else that needed addressing is that there was no real introduction to the game, other than being plonked in a sandbox with a tutorial to explain basic gameplay concepts.
To give players a better feel for the tone of the game, we’ve implemented a cut-scene introduction to your leader at his previous “venture”.
This gives the player a good idea of what to expect and is (hopefully) entertaining and funny too. We think it’s hilarious.
Misc
As always there’s lots of other work been going on, from usability testing, to design changes, to massacring an endless flow of bugs.
We also have a new (also hilarious) trailer which will be released very soon. Stay tuned!
Simon & Ed
Special Characters and a Helping Hand – HIJAC Devlog #7
As Christmas approaches, we have been focussing on the overall player experience, improving content rather than adding lots more.
Minimum Viable Cult
It became obvious to us that there was simply too much to do at the beginning to get your cult up and running. This in particular leads to a large amount of building at the very beginning of the game, just to stop your cult imploding within a very short time. Most of the building at the start related to satisfying your cultists’ basic needs (for example, bedrooms, bathrooms etc) as well as to start generating resources, so you don’t get stuck in a frustrating doom spiral.
It’s hard to cut out some of this building…it wouldn’t make sense if cultists just didn’t need a toilet at the beginning of the game! But we’ve now removed the Kitchen as a requirement and instead allowed the player to order takeaway food directly to the canteen to satisfy hunger. We also changed the recruitment office, so now very low grade people will wander in to the reception of their own volition, without having to be accosted on the street.
We’ve also made initial recruitment of followers and cultists easier, which means there is no need to immediately build rooms like the hypnochamber (previously this was almost essential to recruit a decent amount of cultists).
All of this means there’s less stress for the player whilst they’re finding their feet during the onboarding process.
Special Characters
There are now three special characters available in-game. These won’t be recruitable from the very start and some of them are dependent on the theme of the cult that you are pursuing. If you pursue the Dark Arts theme then you might find yourself with the ultimate satanic poster-boy:
Futurists, on the other hand, may find themselves with the deadly efficient T-999:
There’s also the chance to recruit a character called Bob Smooth, who doesn’t require any type of theme rating.
Each of these characters has high stat ratings that will really benefit your cult, but will be hard to recruit. You can recruit none or all of them (since you can pursue multiple themes at once). We are hoping to have a theme character for each new theme that we add.
Gameplay enhancements
We’ve made numerous changes to help the player get to grips with the game and be able to play in an easy and carefree way. A few examples of the changes made are:
Highlighting objects that are usable by cultists or followers when you have selected them. Players often forgot that cultists could be micromanaged on to items specifically, so now certain items are highlighted.
When moving room-specific objects, we’ve now made it clear which rooms you can and can’t place items in, by shading unavailable room spaces.
We’ve also very recently gone through a round of usability testing, that will no doubt shed further light on gameplay issues.
We hope that you all have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Rest assured, that 2021 will be the year that HIJAC is finally available on Steam!
ːsteamhappyː ːsteamhappyː ːsteamhappyː
This is a raid! Police, Government Agencies, and Protests – HIJAC Devlog #6
This month we have implemented several new in-game events. In particular we’ve added…
Heat Events
These occur when you’re carrying out lots of actions that increase your Heat rating. These include: carrying out particularly audacious missions (or catastrophically failing missions), cold calling a certain area of the City too much, and liquifying cultists. This could result in protests being held by angry members of the public, a raid by the police who will arrest certain members of your organisation and confiscate items, or even a raid by a government agency. These events are the consequence of not controlling your cult adequately. If ignored, it is easy for a cult to become unviable due to the constant interruptions of law enforcement, or because protestors are making it hard to recruit new followers.
Theme events
These are triggered at specific points when you are pursuing a theme. For example, stealing some of Farmer Joe’s high-tech machinery for your futurist cult might result in smelly retribution by him. Holding a lecture in the dark arts at the local university might also provoke protests from the students there. These events are to give a sense of progression within a theme and to provide different experiences for the different themes.
Random Events
These are predictably, random! Some of these can have significant effects, such as cultists having the sudden realisation that they want to join the circus and thus leaving your organisation. Others are less significant but more humorous, or provide certain aesthetic changes. The main point of this is to provide a certain amount of unpredictability in gameplay that the player must react to, as well as providing different experiences for players, even though they might pursue the same goals.
These events are in addition to the leader demands that were implemented last month, which means that there will be a significant amount of events to respond to as you progress through the game.
Misc.
Work has also started on sound-effects, and some of our redesigned UI is now being implemented, which should make the game significantly more intuitive to play. We also spent a large amount of time changing how Leader Demands work, which mean that the system that we implemented last month works significantly better in-game.
Let us know if you have any questions and don’t forget to add Honey, I Joined A Cult to your Steam wishlist!
Bow Down To Me, For I Am Your Leader – HIJAC Devlog #5
This month we’ve been focusing more on the leader and the difference they can make to your cult.
Leader Demands
We wanted players to be at the mercy of their cult leader and subject to whatever whim or fad they might have. Not only does this add a certain unpredictability to things, it’s also a great way of giving the leader some personality. We’ve therefore implemented a system whereby your leader goes through different phases and makes related demands of you.
They may decide that they’re an eco-warrior, and force you to plant endless trees and plants, as well as stealing farmer Joe’s wind turbine, all in a bid to save the planet.
Or maybe they’ve become paranoid and want you to dismiss some of your cultists for looking at them funny.
Or maybe they yearn to be a pirate…
There are also individual demands that are not part of an overall fad series.
Each demand has a time limit and failing these demands can make your leader very unhappy, whereas completion will give a mood boost. As a leader’s mood changes the effectiveness of their sermons (which produces resources), a leader’s demands can be a particularly important part of the gameplay.
We’ll be sharing some images of this real soon, so keep an eye on our social media for updates!
Leader Interactions
The leader is also now able to use their charismatic charm to influence cultists around them. So if you want to boost the mood of a cultist, the leader can use a new mood boost ability on them.
If you’ve let things go too far and cultists are already broken and wandering aimlessly, or perhaps about to soil themselves, your leader can cure their mood break before things get…messy.
Misc
As always, there’s been a huge amount of other things we’ve done this month, such as new items and missions (mostly related to the leader demands system), numerous bug fixes etc.
An erroneous figure in our hands animation also resulted in some interesting cultist windmills:
Until next time, Stay loyal.
Moon Landers, Shrunken Heads and Vials of Blood – HIJAC Devlog #4
Hello Followers,
Here’s the latest on what’s been happening at Cult headquarters…
In-Game Content
We’ve been adding a huge amount of in-game content to allow players to make their cults truly unique. Besides looking different these items also have their own prestige rating that increases the mood of the cultists in the relevant room. Items are grouped in to different categories:
Generic unlimited – these are the most basic items that are available from the start of the game and will allow budding Cult Leaders to get their organisations off the ground. You may purchase an unlimited amount of these but they won’t do much for morale, no matter how many you build.
Generic limited – these items are available in limited supply as rewards from missions and have a higher prestige rating than the unlimited items. They have no specific theme requirements however and are therefore immediately available as a mission reward.
Theme items – these need to be unlocked through the relevant theme tree. Once unlocked, these items become available as mission rewards. The prestige rating for these items varies but they range from medium to high quality. This also allows a player to have their HQ slowly take on the aesthetic of any theme(s) they are pursuing with their cult.
Special Items – these are also theme linked but are unique items that provide a wide range of different bonuses to the player. They are awarded upon completing specific theme related missions.
In-game items from different themes can be mixed together depending on what missions/actions you take with your cult. Therefore if you particularly want the moonlander special item from the Futurist theme tree you can add this around the flaming torches you unlocked under the Darkness theme tree.
We’ve also added two new room types (1 for each of the starting themes). These are therapy rooms that can be used to make money out of your followers and also generate Influence.
Art update
We’ve also continued with our art update and added some small but very effective changes to the game. First we’ve implemented hand movement/head wobbling to characters as they move. This means they appear less floaty as they move around. Characters also now blink too, which makes them feel a bit more real.
We’ve also changed the look of the walls, doors and carpet in game to fit in with the new art style better. And last, but certainly not least, we’ve added new sprites for when cultists soil themselves – the last ones were just a bit too realistic and gross!
Overhaul of prestige calculation system
It took quite a while but we’ve totally changed how prestige for rooms works. The new way is much more efficient in terms of system resources and also takes in to account any wall decorations.
Misc.
As ever we’ve also fixed a mountain of bugs and continue to work closely with Team17 to bring you the best game possible!
Until next time, Stay loyal!
Satanist Militarist or Futurist Pacifist? HIJAC Dev Log #3
Hello Followers,
Want to know what’s been going on behind-the-scenes of development? Then please, read on…
Cult themes and narrative progression
To allow you to do whatever you want with your cult we’ve totally redesigned the theme/narrative system. Different cult themes can now be pursued based on what actions you take (from missions, event decisions etc). Each theme in turn has different endings that can be achieved.
For example, there is a dark/satanic theme which will allow you to pursue goals such as:
summoning a daemon,
destroying the city in hellfire, or
(a more mellow) religious recognition for the worshipping of Satan.
By increasing your theme rating you can also unlock specific theme technology. The themes are not mutually exclusive and some of the theme tree paths require ratings in another theme. For example, particularly aggressive paths in a theme might require you to have a requisite rating in the Militarist theme. In this way we are hoping to allow interesting combinations of themes - you might be Satanist/Militarist or Futurist/Pacifist, each with appropriate end goals.
As you progress along a certain theme tree you will unlock theme related technologies, objects, outfits and rooms, which will allow you to fully embrace that theme (if you want to).
At present although we have a good idea about the content of the theme trees and how it will be implemented, we can’t show anything off whilst our UI is still being overhauled (it would totally underwhelm you!)
We should also point out that on Early Access launch not all themes will be available and they will not be fully completable. That being said, there will still be a large amount of content for you to play around with and different ways to play the game.
Game art Update (continued)
We’ve continued to upgrade the art and this month have updated the walls and doors, grass, trees, rocks, outside pavement tiles, soil, the road and the style of the in-game speech and thought bubbles to be colour coded for easy identification of the different roles of people (cultist, follower, leader, unknown). There’s also a school bus whose relevance is yet to be determined.
Key art
By now you will have hopefully seen the new key art we have been working with Team17 on – we’re really pleased with it. We have also recently updated our Steam page with a new trailer and some updated screenshots, have a look at these if you haven’t had a chance yet.
Random
Just so you don’t think that’s all we’ve done last month, there’s a ton of other stuff including endless optimisation, bug fixes, design and other points (but these points aren’t that exciting!)
As always if you have any questions or comments then let us know.
