Ten Years Left - coming end of 2014

I've been working on this game for the past few months. It's been on hiatus with the birth of my son, but I'm starting to get back into it, and I figured what better way to build momentum than to show some screenshots of the latest design of the game (it's 7th).

The game is designed to have massive replay-ability with little to no repetition of outcome.

Each run through will take 5 minutes from start to finish.

 

Well, it's been a long while, but Ten Years Left is finally back in active development. I had hit a mental roadblock back in October, mapping out a large number of potential outcomes and different opportunities to mitigate them was difficult. At last count there were 980,179,200 different combinations.

The game is actually about 80% complete. I'm not ready to give out too many details yet, since I am a one man operation it takes awhile for me to accomplish anything, but it's going again. I'm hoping to boost the total different combinations to over 1 billion, which I should be able to do pretty easily.

Once I have those combinations nailed down, I have to work out how certain combinations can be mitigated depending on what the user does. Think of a giant choose your own adventure game where are presented with choices that will directly impact the path you are on. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad.

There is also a server side component that needs to be designed. This game will upload the combination that was generated, along with what options the player chose, to a giant infographic online.

I've been playing the alpha of the game, and I think it'll be pretty fun.

 

I managed to get it up to 1,069,286,400 different combinations!

 

thanks! but it get's even better. I added a 10th level of options, there are now 6,415,718,400 possible combinations.

Today I'm working on coming up with the % chance of each option occurring, and what their effect will be.

I'm doing this partly because I want to make the game as replayable as possible. It'll get boring awfully quick if people keep getting the same scenario every time. The other reason I am doing this is because I am afraid of the logic it will require in the back end

 

Ten Years Left is designed to be brutal, not in difficulty, but in their chance to survive. There is an end goal, but the odds of you actually making it there are around 50%.

To greatly over simply things, from start to finish there 9 different 'stages' you have to pass to be successful. Each stage has a number of different outcomes, many of which can be mitigated or outright bypassed based on your decisions earlier in the game. These stages are randomly generated at the start of every game, and you don't know what will happen when you are making your decisions (more on that later).

Like I said earlier, there are over 6 billion different combinations of these outcomes (including the epilogue options), but some of these outcomes are weighted to happen more often than others. The actual order of the stages can be switch as well, which increases the total number of combinations by some magnitude I can't comprehend . So, the odds of someone playing the exact same game twice is pretty small.

 

Thanks! As you know I've always loved your games

 

I did a bunch of work on the logic last week, still have a few major hurdles to cross however. There are three main sections of logic that happen when the game ends

1. selection and order of hazards
2. application of user choices to those hazards
3. display the outcome

Number 1 is just about done. I have a few bugs to work out but that should be done today.
Number 3 is almost done as well. It was actually finished a few months ago before I took a break, but since then I've added a few major new features which I need to address.

Number 2 is going to be the hard part. I have a massive visio diagram that maps out all the choices available, but this was before I doubled the number of options, so not only is it out of date, it's not even close to as complex as it should be. But it gives you some idea of the logic/choices behind the end game.

That's it for this update. I'll post again when something changes.

 

close enough, every red box is a catastrophic ending.

 

they are coming soon. I'm trying to workout the design of the actual gameplay screen, as well as the epilogue screen. I'm about 80% there.

Once I have the game feature complete I am going to put together a teaser video of how you play it.

 

Well I finally dove back into this project after an extended hiatus. I was dreading tackling the logic that makes the game so replayable, and I was right to be afraid. I've been working on this every night for a few hours, and I've gone in circle after circle . I finally made a breakthrough last night and was able to display a number that is generated through options pulled from 5 different databases. It doesn't seem like a lot, but you should see the connection string...

there is a light at the end of the tunnel!. It's just a pinprick right now, but it's there!

 

I will, hopefully soon. I'm waiting for the game to be 100% functional. It thankfully has not happened to me, but I know a few indie developers that posted a gameplay video of their game, only to have someone with more time bust out a clone before they could finish their original game. Since I'm a one man show over here, it can move slow at times when my life's other priorities come knocking

 

I hired a writer on upwork this week, i tried to do it myself, but I am not a writer . Once that's complete I need to rework some of that crazy logic above to make it a little simpler, and the game will be almost done!

so instead of the end of 2014, it's looking like the end of 2015 is might actually happen!

 

I can't believe I'm actually writing this post, but that massive pile of logic is finally done. I'm on the other side of the mountain.

The writing is done.
The artwork is done.
The logic is done.

I have a few kinks in the epilogue to work out as some button presses are registering multiple touches. I also have a few UI issues to sort out, but it's so close I can taste it!