Developer Log #23 :: Moving Forward

Mercury Fallen was first released on Itch.IO on April 7, 2017 as a prototype demo. Shortly after that a full early access release hit Itch.IO and the response has been amazing. On October 16, 2017 Mercury Fallen will be available for purchase on Steam and I’m super excited to continue to develop the game and grow the community. The Steam release is only the beginning. There is a lot more to come for Mercury Fallen and I’m very grateful to those that have supported the project so far.

This week I’ve been fighting off a cold which has slowed progress on the next update, but I wanted to go over some of the things I’ve been working on.

 

Decor

The plan has always been for decorative objects have a larger impact on game play and with the new decor system that is finally starting to happen. Various structure objects in the game will provide positive or negative decor to the surrounding tiles. As colonists walk around the positive/negative decor value will have a direct effect on their stress level. The uglier the environment the more stress a colonist will receive. Positive decor items, such as decorations, will help to reduce stress.

The biggest challenge I found when trying to implement this system was how best to visualize the decor of the environment. The end result was to create a color overlay which shows positive decor areas in green and negative decor areas in red. Areas that are white have no impact. I’ve added some new buttons to the bottom button bar to toggle different display modes for power, water and decor views.

Colonists will stop working entirely if their stress level is completely maxed out, which means managing decor and stress becomes more critical. In addition to decor I plan to add additional interactive stress reducing objects.

New and better crops

In addition to the new decor system I’ve improved the look of hemp and have started work on additional crops. The new glow bulb crop is currently planned to be used as an ingredient for cloth as well as a new meal recipe.

 

Those are just some of the things being worked on for the next update. What are your thoughts on the new features?