Cultist Simulator: tiny update
I’ve added a very small update to the Cultist Simulator prototype:
I’ve changed a key quote, added a couple of rather significant ritual descriptions which had fallen off, and stamped a big KICKSTARTER link on the menu screen.
There will probably be one more content update before the KS. The image below probably won’t be actual art I’ll actually use.
3 comments on Cultist Simulator: tiny update
on Cultist Simulator: tiny update
Your alpha is delicious, and I’ll definitely jump on your KS. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth..
I’m digging the Crowleyian vibe of hesitant insanity, and like that this has its own feel and setting distinct from Fallen London. After playing a while, I can sense this could get a bit grindy and repetitive without some mechanism to make the content less predictable and inject some subtle differences in gameplay on repeated playthroughs. Will you be including some procedural generation of content (e.g. acquaintances, books, entities, rituals, events) to mix things up? Much of the content does benefit from your custom writing, so perhaps a mix of procedurally generated and premade content will be enough to keep things flavorful yet fresh.
Thank you!
It depends what you mean by ‘procedurally generated’. If you mean ‘randomly generated from name lists’, e.g., then the answer is probably not. Players increasingly tend to see the grammar behind those approaches, and ‘the Book of Foo Bar Boz’ doesn’t really show as a difference – a variant of what Kate Compton’s called ‘the oatmeal problem’. But I never say never.
You’re welcome! I was thinking more along the lines of what Bruno Dias has done with Voyageur (http://voyageur.space) and what Emily Short has done and written about here: https://emshort.blog/tag/procedural-generation/
These and other authors have had good success in creating simple scripts to recombine a variety thematic text fragments of their choice in interesting ways. (I’d say exploring the procedurally generated planet descriptions in Voyageur is actually a lot more interesting than No Man’s Sky..)
It could be feasible to use this approach to generate some novel yet flavorful/thematic text to help keep things fresh on repeat playthroughs. (As one example, some dream sequences could incorporate imagery generated from text chosen based on the player’s stats/qualities at the time). Food for thought..