So I think we’ve hammered down on a couple key themes for the Multicellular Stage. We want three key trends to be present here:
- Cell Specialization - We want players to create more specialized cells in their colony as opposed to generalists.
- Tissue Formation - We want to incentivize these specialized cells to form layers within the organism.
- Body-Plan Strategy - We want players to intentionally think about body structure as a whole as opposed to individual cells.
Cell Specialization
- Size-Related Costs - After a certain size, non-linear costs begin to apply. This pushes players away from hoarding too many functions.
- Adjacency Bonuses Scaling Up With Proportion of Parts in Cell - Adjacency bonuses get stronger the more of a specific part is in your organism, pulling players towards engaging with specialization.
Tissue Formation
- Adjacency Bonuses - Cells of the same type interact with each other, boosting the strength of processes depending on your composition and proportion of organelles.
Body-Plan Strategy
- Body Plan SA:V Ratio - Your microbes won’t have individual SA:V, but your body plan will. This will make the player be more intentional about creating more bulky or more slender organisms.
- Rigidity Slider - A less rigid membrane increases strength of adjacency bonuses. A more rigid membrane provides greater resistance. This incentivizes the development of the more tough “skin” and the more chemistry-conducive “goop”. Other rigidity effects, like health and mobility, compound here as well.
There is another conversation to be had about abilities, which represents new models and functions we would add to the Multicellular Stage. But when it comes to the core of the Multicellular Stage Editor, I think the above represents a good plan of attack for differentiating the the stage.
I think each of these three major design elements are worthy of their own threads.
Push v. Pull Mechanics
One thing I wanted to discuss looking at this list. In game design, we have the idea of a push or a pull mechanic…
- Push - The player is penalized for not engaging with a mechanic. Engagement is based more on avoiding penalties, often with a cost. Examples include hunger in Minecraft, any sort of mechanic where the player has a limited time of holding breath underwater, resource inputs, etc.
- Pull - The player is rewarded for engaging with a mechanic. Engagement is based more on taking advantages of gains, often with a bonus. Examples include providing XP for certain behaviors, redstone in Minecraft, bonuses loot for going ina certain area, etc.
You can think of a push mechanic as a “baseline” of what the game expects you to do at a minimum, and a pull mechanic as an area to master, optimize, or willingly engage in. Both are very important to have and intentionally balance: too many pulls and not enough pushes means players really don’t have an immediate concern to deal with and can just do whatever they wish. Too many pushes and not enough pulls means players are constantly being forced to do something or manage a system without enough room to experiment.
Looking at the above list, we have only one push mechanic - size-related costs - discussed. I’m not of the opinion currently that we need another new push mechanic for the Multicellular Stage: instead of an entirely new mechanic, we can implement new parts or something that cost a lot of ATP.
But I think we do need to make sure that players have some sort of a reason to engage in these pull mechanics. Since a lot of these are pull mechanics, they would naturally be expressed as bonuses to energy production and metabolisms. As such, we should make sure we have something pushing the player towards working with our pulls. Otherwise, players will just go “eh I know these mechanics exist but I’m just going to do the same thing I’ve been doing in the Microbe Stage”.