So it’s been a long while since I or anyone else has approached the concept of organelle unlocks. With the recent discussion of upgrades in mind, I have decided to go ahead and reapproach this feature in hopes of finalizing it’s concept. We’ve had gacha mechanics, “tech trees”, endosymbiosis, and more proposed in the past; But I feel that unlocks should be a relatively simple and dependable affair, promising a sense of discovery while always remaining predictable and dependable.
After some thinking, I have come up with three primary unlocking conditions:
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Situational: Part or upgrade is unlocked based on the player’s current location. (EX: Unlocking thylakoids in patches with light.)
This condition would be tied to parts that wouldn’t really have any use at all to the player until they meet the situational requirements. -
Relative: Part or upgrade is unlocked by placing/evolving an associated prerequisite part. (Ex: The nucleus unlocking membrane-organelles.)
This condition would typically be used for more complex parts presumably derived from previous ones. -
Earned: Part or upgrade is earned by the player by performing a goal or spending an upfront MP cost. (EX: Player engulfs a photosynthesizing bacteria, unlocking chloroplasts. OR spends 80 MP to unlock chloroplasts).
Many parts and upgrades will require atleast one of these conditions to be fullfilled to be revealed. Some however, may require multiple steps to be unlocked (Such as membrane organelles requiring both a nucleus and engulfing an associated prey species.).
Before a part or upgrade is unlocked, the icon will be entirely hidden from the part list in order to prevent confusion or overwhelming new players with an expansive list of parts.
Only by fulfilling the conditions listed above will new parts be revealed to the players, hopefully providing them with a sense of discovery and progress as they play the game and evolve their organism.
While locked parts will be hidden in the editor, the Thrivepedia will always contain information on all parts, as well as contain information on how to unlock them.
Some parts, like membrane-bound organelles relying on specific species archetypes to be available to the player may include conditions that depend more on chance. In order to ensure that the player will always have the option to unlock them, players should be presented with the option to buy access to the parts, skipping any additional requirements.
This should help prevent any potential frustration that could be felt by failing to locate the unlocking requirements normally.
HHyyrylainen suggested in discord that there could be an option to enable or disable “New player mode” which would reveal all parts and their unlocking conditions from the start, making for a more suitable experience for veteran players.
I would like to hear what everyone thinks of this concept!
If everything proves to be satisfactory and in order, we shall proceed to discussing which parts need to be locked, as well as how they shall be unlocked.
Edit: After some discussion in the developer chatroom, we have determined that it may be better to provide players with a strong hint that there are currently undiscovered/locked parts. As put by Untrusted, we need a “carrot on a stick” to keep players hooked on unlocking parts. Without that bait, players may not realize that there are unlockables at all and become discouraged.
We spent some time debating how exactly to pull this off, but finally came to the common ground of creating a promising “Undiscovered” icon within the parts list.
This icon will exist within each category as long as undiscovered parts remain, and will display a tooltip informing the player of such when hovered over. No matter how many things the player unlocks this icon will remain until there are no longer anything left for the player to discover.