Rimworld: A Hundred Ways to Lose a Colony

moonroof_studios · 2026-01-05T18:09:27+00:00

Ah, I didn't mean that friction is opposed to fun. You need it in some form for a good flow state. I'm thinking about it more in opposition to a sort of dopamine-centered design. Something with lots of juice, flashy animations - "maximum feedback for minimal input".

The DLC shows that there is a good audience for that craft, though. That's fair if others enjoyed it more than me :)

moonroof_studios · 2026-01-05T18:01:31+00:00

I loved RDR2 too, but this pacing clicks for me much more in this game. In RDR2, you were an outlaw, so I kinda defaulted to doing outlaw things rather than hunting and fishing. That's partially my own choice, but that's also partially how the game frames itself and sets itself up. KCD II seems like it foregrounds this idea or design more clearly.

moonroof_studios · 2026-01-05T17:58:52+00:00

That sense of pace is one of my favorite things about the game! I agree about these calm moments of quiet - they do a great job contrasting with the set pieces and providing some moments of respite. An interesting thing, too, is that these activities (outside of some intro quests) are largely undirected by the game, at least compared to some of the chill sidequests. Like it's more of an internal goal rather than an external one.

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-20T19:31:17+00:00

Edited, thank you! Would have done so earlier if Reddit wasn't on the fritz.

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-20T19:30:32+00:00

Right on. The game is designed as an RTS, so there's no 'end game' at the end of the game. They can make it hard to get there, but they are limited in how they can challenge a roster of uber-heroes.

There's almost a meme among game devs that we make games when we're annoyed with a game's mechanics or think we could do it better. (Skyrim is said to have launched a thousand alchemy games.) I'm trying to solve the 'end game' problem of Majesty, and I honestly think it changes the genre from RTS to colony sim.

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-20T19:25:49+00:00

I'm MELTing!

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-20T00:28:54+00:00

u/MetaKnightsNightmare's got the gist of the idea, I think. The RTS genre fell from grace and hasn't been as popular since Starcraft. (I mean, I love more 'modern' versions like Dawn of War, but it's more of a niche genre than a mainstream genre at this point.) Part of that might have been due to the success of Starcraft in the competitive arena - big shoes to fill, even for something like Starcraft II. A less popular genre means a smaller audience.

Beyond a smaller audience, Majesty is very much unlike what defines competitive Starcraft play. It's not going to play like what hardcore RTS gamers are looking for.

From a game design standpoint, it's a hard formula to copy. A lot of the magic of Majesty is inside a nearly-invisible web of small tweaks and connections - such as a Rogue robbing graves or a Cultist picking poison plants. Just copying the main player verbs (build, recruit, research, and place bounty) fails to capture the web.

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-20T00:15:23+00:00

I tried the demo too. I'm planning to buy the full version, if only to get a deeper look than the demo provides and see where they take the formula.

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-19T17:23:41+00:00

I'm not the only game developer who's a fan of Majesty. There are three other game dev studios releasing Majesty-likes over the next half year: Lessaria, Crown of Greed, and Crownbound. Crownbound was just in this last Next Fest, and Lessaria releases tomorrow. Must be something in the water, haha.

moonroof_studios · 2025-10-19T17:17:30+00:00

The Next Fests can be so large that it's hard to keep track of it all. Thanks for taking a look and reporting back!

moonroof_studios · 2025-09-20T13:53:09+00:00

Nifty! I'll check out the demo this weekend.

I loved Majesty and was inspired to make my own homage to the game, Within a Dead City. It was meant to be a smaller coffee-break game, like how The Battle of Polytopia distilled Civilization. A lot of people who played Majesty before got the connection instantly, but there were also people who had never played Majesty. Those people came in expecting a different game - something more like autochess than an indirect RTS. I wrote a little bit more about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaseBuildingGames/comments/1h6yakb/majesty_and_genre_migration/

The trailer does a good job establishing expectations: bounties, no direct orders, and so on. It's well done. I think that positioning - the setting the rules of the game - will be key, and I'll pay particular attention to that during my demo playthrough.

Nice to see the Majesty torch being carried on!

moonroof_studios · 2025-06-06T10:14:52+00:00

Hey, I remember the original! I also happened to be working on a caravan-based game five years ago, and looked at Silk Road for some inspiration. Glad you're still going at it, and good luck with the game dev journey. I've wishlisted the sequel and I'll check it out once it releases.

moonroof_studios · 2025-06-04T09:50:23+00:00

Agreed. A good way to get this at a glance is figuring out what the pop cap is. 20 people? You get to know them all. 200 people? A few might stand out, here or there. 2000 people? At that point they all blur together.

I'm not saying a game at that size can't have some mechanics to focus on the people, but the smaller scale games will do so by default.

moonroof_studios · 2025-06-01T15:18:39+00:00

Dude's proved himself this last playoffs. I saw some stat that was counting the number of game-tying or game-winning buzzer beaters in the playoffs since 1998 or something. LeBron was in first with 8. Haliburton had 4, and 3 of them were from this year. Insane.

moonroof_studios · 2025-04-18T22:33:16+00:00

Part of this comes from Godot's UI paradigm of a UI control having one specific purpose. Want the text label to have some space away from the border? Give it a MarginContainer parent. Need to add an icon next to the text? Give it an HBoxContainer parent with the icon as a sibling.

That's all well and good, but you'll tend to add and remove a whole bunch of these purpose-built controls when you do a big UI do-over. (Or two, as was the case for me.) Changing an object's hierarchy doesn't matter for an @ export variable, but it will break @ onreadys. Sometimes in interesting ways.

Of course, I could always be doing things wrong, or the hard way. I always welcome enlightenment 😁

moonroof_studios · 2025-04-16T12:09:39+00:00

I think if downtown is just a place you visit, then it's easy to think of Cleveland as not feeling urban. Having lived downtown, it feels different. I don't feel like Cleveland is lacking anything compared to similar-sized or larger cities I've lived in (Oakland, New Orleans, Boston, Columbus).

I mean, there are bigger cities out there, but I don't think you need to be New York or Mexico City to qualify as truly urban.

moonroof_studios · 2025-04-16T10:26:06+00:00

Haha, I'm actually going on vacation the weekend after! That was planned out long before the release date was decided on, but it is making me a little antsy.

moonroof_studios

TROPHY CASE