- Devlog 21: Emergence - 9 March 2026
Emergence New tools are finally speeding up development of Critias Empire after a long pause. Cinders After the last update, I spent a long time working on tools that would let me create and balance the in-game Decisions system more quickly. Unfortunately just making the tools themselves became a massive grind and I could feel myself getting burned out. That, along with a couple of other factors, led me to pause work on Critias Empire in the autumn of 2025. However, I somewhat unexpectedly got accepted for Turn Based Thursday Steam Festival earlier this year and that spurred me to get back into development with the game in the last couple of weeks. Bronze Seas Way back last year, there were two scenarios available in the demo. After making the Decision system and refactoring various other things, the Bronze Seas scenario no longer worked and needed updating. Revisiting it has been a use…
- Devlog 20: Fire - 4 September 2025
Fire I added a new disaster to the game: Fire. It took longer than I anticipated but I'm quite pleased with the results. Warning: Flashing lights. Gifs in this blog may not be suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy. Burn It Down When a fire type disaster occurs in Critias Empire, it will spread flames over a number of adjacent tiles based on the presence (or otherwise) of vegetation and how the land is being used (i.e. are there any buildings on the tile). This makes vegetation in the game, like forests and scrubland have a greater meaning than just giving slight bonuses or penalties to production and build costs. As well, fires create a subtle risk to concentrating buildings together, which is in tension with clustering buildings to get bonuses. Conversely, unlike other disasters, the player can see the relative risk of a fire when building their empire without having to get t…
- Devlog 19: Festivals - 11 August 2025
Celebrations Festivals allow players to make medium-term tradeoffs, spending resources to throw celebrations and festivities, but with ongoing costs to match. Meanwhile, the game itself has been in a number of digital festivals on Steam. Throwing a Party There are various pre-defined Festivals in Critias Empire can be instituted by the player. Each festival runs for a fixed length of time and cannot be cancelled. Most festivals involve paying some resource every turn for the whole time the festival is running, in exchange for bonuses or other types of resources. Players often end up with an excess of one resource that they can't easily or immediately do anything with. The idea behind festivals is to let players trade those resources in for something they want. But rather than a straight swap, the festival, and thus the costs and benefits, last for many years. In this time, the player's…
- Devlog 18: Mystics & Oracles - 30 May 2025
Predicting the Future The decision system is finally implemented in the demo, heralding a new way to interact with the Gods. Plus the predictions feature is back! In this devlog I'll give more details on both as well as future plans for the game. Decisions Decisions God anger and patience, which affect when and where disasters are spawned, are now largely driven by the "decision" system - The little story snippets and choices you make as a player around them mean your actions and the mechanics actually correlate to the story of the game. It's much easier now to know a) when the Gods are angry and b) why! It does though somewhat rely on my skill as a writer to weave this all together. I'm happy with the stories so far, though I'll be refining them over time to emphasise that Greek-myth feeling of big personalities and ironic twists. The writing time needed is why the Bronze Seas scenario…
- Devlog 17: Long Journey - 29 January 2025
Tempus Fugit It's been a long time since my last update, way back in August. The second half of 2024 really pulled me in too many different directions; I spent most of my time trying to balance working on 3 different game projects and in the end, none of them made anything like the progress I wanted. Shorter Focus Partly for financial reasons, and partly for my own sanity, I've started 2025 by focusing on smaller games. I've managed to finish Ambient Dark, which will come out until March. And I've a second small game that will be announced in the next few days, that similarly is close to completion and should release in the next couple of months. Both those games will be in Steam NextFest, alongside Critias Empire. My plan is to spend February before the festival on Critias Empire, finishing up as many features as I can before NextFest, with a view to release the full game a couple of m…
- Devlog 16: Fortune and Favour - 15 August 2024
Favours The decision system has been implemented and I'm now in the process of creating the content for it. In this update I'll preview that, and the changes I want to make to the tutorial afterwards. Think About I've talked previously about plans for the "Decisions" system in the game: Various player actions have a chance of spawning a story snippet, that asks the player to choose between a number of options, each with various possible outcomes. Which is a very dry way of saying that the Gods are now much more reactive to how you play, throwing you tricky conundrums which you need to respond to. I'm hoping this will make the game feel much more connected to the ancient Greek mythological theme and be a much more intuitive way of interacting with the Gods. I've finally implemented this! I'm pretty happy with how it works, but it does mean I need to now go and write a whole bunch of stor…
- Devlog 15: Tempest - 20 June 2024
Tempest The latest version of the demo is out now. It comes with a new scenario, and a new disaster! In this devlog I'll be detailing the changes to the game, plus the facepalm-inducing bugs that I fixed and lots of other small improvements. Sea Change As covered in the previous update, Critias Empire now has "scenarios". Each scenario has its own rules and balance, including different resources and buildings, all wrapped up in a bit of story. The maps are still procedurally (randomly) generated for now. I want to see how people find them before thinking about whether to support scenarios with pre-made maps. Originally I was thinking scenarios would be a relatively easy way to keep adding fresh content into the game, as well as compartmentalise new features or ideas around game balance. However, it's taken a lot more effort than I anticipated to create just the two scenarios in this upd…
- Devlog 14: Distant Thunder - 14 May 2024
Distant Thunder Thank you once again for all the feedback on the demo. It's answered a lot of questions I had in my own head about what works and doesn't in the game. As well your feedback and bug reports have assisted in finding and crushing a host of bugs. Also in helping shaping my thinking about the direction of the game. In this update I'll be going into exactly what has been happening and the next steps on the Critias Empire road. Empty Handed I finally got around to improving the survey / exploration feature. Adding in search hints means no survey ever leaves you with nothing at all, which given the relatively high cost of surveying, is a good thing. Or at least the survey hints will tell you when there's nothing to be found, so you don't waste time and resources. Combined with the priorities filter, the hints also allow you to sniff down the resource you actually want, and over…
- Devlog 13: Set Sail - 3 April 2024
Set Sail The Critias Empire demo is out now! Go check it out (download link is on the Steam page). The demo launch coincides with TurnBasedThursday Festival on Steam. I've also set up a discord server where you can hang out and discuss the game. Plus in this update I'll guide you through the work done this month and future plans and roadmap for the game. Demonstrating The demo is a cut-down version of Critias Empire. There is only 1 wonder needed for victory, rather than the usual 3. As well, it is played on a small map with reduced number of products and land uses (buildings). And there are only 2 Gods and 2 disasters. I'm hoping this, along with all the future planned content teased in the New Game screen, will be enough to excite people for the final game. If you enjoyed the demo, click that wishlist button - it's free and will massively help support the game, especially when it come…
- Devlog 12: Trials - 6 March 2024
Trials Back at the start of February, I put out a call on a few discord servers where I regularly hang out for people to privately test the Critias Empire demo. I am eternally grateful to those who gave their time to play it and give feedback! You've massively helped both from a technical perspective, and also in terms of both inspiration, motivation and helping clarify the path forward for the game. Bugs Bugs Bugs - Part 2 Just about every player who tried the demo found some bugs. Some really obscure ones floated to the surface, which was great. Perhaps more usefully, a variety of people played the game in ways that are just completely different from how I approach it. This in turn gave me a huge list of small improvements to make to the game. Some things players just didn't understand, whilst other parts of the game that are awkward or fiddly to play, that I've got used to, were made…
- Devlog 11: The Return - 29 January 2024
The Return After spending the last 3 months of 2023 travelling South America, I am back to working on Critias Empire. A lot (lot lot!) of bugs have been fixed, the demo is ready and there's even a tutorial now! Bugs Bugs Bugs Way back in August, I took Critias Empire to devcom conference in Cologne, Germany. Mostly for pitching the game to publishers, but I also had a table at the show on which I had the game running. I got a huge amount of feedback from watching and talking to people who played the game. There were a lot of bugs, UX issues and things which as the developer, I could ignore or work around, but which tripped up new players completely unfamiliar with the game. Since returning from my travels at the start of this month, I've been hard at work fixing more small things than I could possibly list in this update. More heartening was seeing people understand the game and enjoy i…
- Devlog 10: Double Trouble - 18 August 2023
Double Trouble In preparation for the demo, the game has once again been re-balanced, this time focusing on the gods Poseidon and Hephaestus respectively. With this has come new God related features, plus a lot of bug fixing and user experience improvements. Gods Get Tough After meeting lots of publishers at Develop conference in Brighton in July, I realised, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they all want to get their hands on a demo of the game. So they can see if it's fun, or at the very lease see that it has the seeds for something great in it. To that end, I decided to rebalance the game yet again. This time however, the focus was on making a really great demo to convey the essence of the game to potential publishers. That meant making what was already in the game more coherent and less a bunch of parts that would "eventually come together". Then making that shine. In particular, the co…
- Devlog 9: Impressions - 5 July 2023
New Sights While there's not much visually to show off recent progress on Critias Empire, a lot has been happening in the background. As well as taking a much needed vacation (2 short ones in-fact!), I've been polishing the game for pitching to publishers and an eventual demo. Trailer Time Critias Empire has evolved over the past year and a half since the first trailer was released. It was high time a new trailer with updated graphics was made, and that's exactly what happened in June. For those of you who haven't checked out the Steam Store Page recently, you can also see new screenshots of the game, in addition to the new trailer. Pitch Perfect I'm currently looking for a publisher for Critias Empire, and I must admit I underestimated the amount of effort that goes into the process. Not only does the game need to look great (which benefits everyone), but putting together all the dispa…
- Devlog 8: Smoking Hot - 3 May 2023
Disaster Optics Throughout the game's life, the disasters in Critias Empire have been limited to earthquakes and the terrain shifting they induced. As cool as they are, it's time to add in more different disaster types, which is the focus of this update. Eerie Silence It's important that the player knows when a disaster is imminent. Not only so they can prepare, but just as importantly, to give them a sense of tension and anticipation. Already in the turn before a disaster, the music changes from baroque/romantic classical music to an eerie ambient background track. But that can be easy to miss if music volume is turned down, as can other signals such as the disaster countdown turning red. To fix this and add extra immersion, the map now gains a grey pall, the seas turn a stormy grey and the clouds that fringe the game map turn to brooding thunderclouds. All in the turn before disaster…
- Devlog 7: Waves of Change - 6 April 2023
Looking Better Improving the user experience and look of the game with both big and subtle changes has been the focus of recent work on Critias Empire, the details of which are covered in this update. Water World The water graphics in Critias Empire were created many many years ago, to the point that some people were commenting that the game has a retro feel. Whilst the game was never going to compete with the latest AAA graphics, the visuals of the game were not supposed to look that old! Rather than reinvent the wheel, I decided any one of the many water graphics packs that are available off-the-shelf would be a significant improvement on what was being used before. After some experimenting, I eventually found one such water plugin that I liked (and works with the technical limitations of the game). Are You Experienced? The UI is finally starting to improve in line with the plans I've…
- Devlog 6: Exploration - 20 February 2023
What Lies There With the global bonus system implemented, focus has shifted to balancing other parts of the game, and the implementation of a long-planned feature - exploration! But how does exploration work in a game with no units and the map already revealed? All will be... revealed... Hidden Riches Like many resource management games, Critias Empire has advanced resource types that can only be made by combining or changing more basic resources. For example, to make bronze, copper and tin must be combined in a Forge type building. Some of these basic resources have infinite supply. A mine will never run out of stone and a farm will always produce food. But copper and tin only occur in certain places on the map and in limited quantities. However it would suck for the player if they were trying to build the Colossus, only to find out there wasn't quite enough copper and tin on the map.…
- Devlog 5: Enter the Gods - 1 January 2023
Global Good As the end of the year rolls in, development of Critias Empire continues to progress apace. The global bonus system foundations have been implemented, along with about half the planned bonus types. While I didn't (yet) start on to the UI improvements mentioned last blog, the game did receive some new art, which I'm very excited about. Wondrous The global bonus system gives the player bonuses (or penalties) right across their empire, rather than being limited to specific land uses (buildings). Amazingly, I've worked on the game for years without ever actually needing such a system, at least until now. However, it's now key to make wonders... well, wondrous! To give you a flavour of what this means by way of example, the Temple of Artemis wonder provides a bonus to certain special resources: All "Fish" now get an extra 15 food added to their reserves, meaning they last longer…
- Devlog 3: New Worlds - 27 October 2022
Land Ho! A number of people have mentioned disappointment when looking at the Critias Empire store page that the game only seems to have island type maps. Well be disappointed no more! The game now supports multiple map types. So far I have re-implemented the "Islands" map type, and also added a "Coast" map type. New Range For both the new map types, I took a different approach to topology, with the map gen algorithm creating either areas of uplift or long chains of mountains. These are then surrounded by foothills that gently slope down to plains below. This gives the terrain a much more natural feel than the somewhat random distribution used before. A Wide World I also implemented configurable map size, but in the end, I concluded that a much bigger map gave the feel I was looking for: Something on a grander scale than a city builder, but not the globe spanning scale of games like Civ…
- Devlog 2: Sands of Time - 28 August 2022
Time Marches It's August! In fact, nearly the end of August, and this month, my provisional penciled-in date for when the game would be released has been and gone. While disappointing for all, it's not a bad thing in the long term. In this update, I'll explain why, and how development and the road to release has changed. First off, what has been done on the game since the last update in June? Balancing data spreadsheets have been massively improved. Buildings (Land Uses) have a whole suite of new variables that affect them. The city / population growth algorithm has been changed UIs have been tweaked and improved. Lost in the Details Most of the code changes to the game of late have been about giving myself as many possible tools and techniques to balance the game. For example, I added construction timers to buildings. I added restrictions to where buildings can be placed. I added build…
- Devlog 1: Shifting Grounds - 2 June 2022
Rebalance, Replay Back in April, Critias Empire was looking in pretty good shape. It felt polished and robust. I knew the game needed rebalancing, but I also had a nagging feeling this meant more than just adjusting the numbers. A round of intensive internal testing confirmed a number of my suspicions: Disasters were a bit too random / arbitrary Spamming quarries/pastures made the game too easy The shrines next to wonders winning strategy removed the late-game challenge of keeping wonders alive Population growth/decline was unintuitive and opaque Wonders were not very wonderous. They didn't do anything Moreover, these things contributed to the game being overall less replayable than I had hoped. To tackle this, I decided to take each problem on one at a time. The biggest was the disaster randomness and that's the subject for today's update. As you may have guessed by the title and the f…
