Century City Times No. 2

POSTED Fri, December 16, 2022

Hello Citizens!

Here’s our weekly devlog update for our community, where we talk about our daily and weekly development challenges! This update will be a really big one, so give bloo...water to the plant, disconnect the phone and sit comfortably on the sofa: there will be a lot to discover!

Hallways, wallpapers and... gifts!

Even in Century City, holidays are an important event: if you think about it, it's the perfect moment to gather resources, accumulate capital and to find monsters stealing stuff from the shops...

To celebrate this lovely traditions of our citizens, we decided to create an in-game event dedicated to the winter holidays: we're working on new furniture, devices and wallpapers, and even a new hallway and new enemies! Now let's take a closer look at all this new content!

Of course, the new hallway must be the obvious first point of our weekly devlog: in this event, Christmas decorations are scattered around the building, and Alfred is a little more... cheerful than usual. I mean, what better holiday to remind us of creatures that creep between the cracks of our homes, to give us unsolicited stuff? And by the way, you'll also find gifts all around the City: there are some presents that spawn randomly in the houses. When you open them, you’ll find random devices (you'll learn about them in the next paragraph): of course, we're doing that to make you happy, but we also hope that these gifts will make it easier for novices to get acquainted with the new items!

Devices

Speaking of devices: we have a LOT of new stuff coming your way, but at the moment we're trying to focus on a smaller bunch of them. Fra, Valerio, Giuseppe, Michele and Nicolò, the "devices guys", are confident that we'll be able to deliver some really cool new stuff. We had a blast going through the game and throwing grenades and molotov cocktails at each other, and we made some cool gifs for you! We wondered about what kind of meta you guys are going to create with that stuff: it’s going to be the “Glue meta”, or the “Claymore” one? Meanwhile, here's a little sneak peek at some of those devices:

Molotov (creates a large area of flames on impact; if a player is hit by the impact, or passes through the flames, they suffer from burn damage, comparable to bleeding);

Flash Bang (makes the players in the range deaf and blind for a limited time);

New furniture

We talked about the hallway and the building, but we know that holidays are all about our individual gain! That's why we've added some new furniture for your Hub: there are some cool clocks and lamps coming your way, as well as some new complete sets!

Here's the list (and some artworks!) of some of those amazing additions (great work, Valerio and Francesca!):

Factory;

Hitech;

Maison Monique;

Eclectic;

Chalet;

New enemies

A really big part of the update are the new enemies: Matteo has worked really hard on them, trying to create something that could help every single member of our hellish community to enjoy the game no matter the level they're at. And so we decided to create multiple versions of the Things we already have, to create more gameplay variety, give more loot and add some flexibility in the difficulty of a game according to the player level.

We tackled the problem creating 2 different enemy levels: the “Level 1” version of the Things are those already implemented in the game, with some balancing to their attributes (speed, health, damage, etc.) to make them just slightly easier and more approachable.

The “Level 2” enemies have mostly the same behavior as the easier ones, but have added mechanics that make them distinguishable and challenging (for example, the Level 2 sweeping thing does less damage when Hitting, but does inflict bleeding on the player). Level 2 enemies will have also their attributes balanced in a slightly different way, to make them more difficult. All level 2 enemies give more credit to the player when killed, and have a chance to drop more loot than level 1 Things. We'll explain their different abilities in-depth in the next few days!

In short, the Winter Carnevale brings with it many cruel gifts, and we can’t wait to see you explode with joy while trying them! Maybe on the citizens of the City, because in the end holidays are all about sharing with others!

Pocket

In the last devlog, we told you about the integration of a safe slot system that can ease the grinding process for players that want to have a more stealthy and sneaky play style. Now we have some more news to share with you: we're introducing the pocket, an additional inventory slot that the player has access to, and it is unlocked by default from the start of the game! We’re gonna dive into this system in the next few days, so stay tuned!

Durability

In the previous devlog we also talked to you about durability, and as for the pouch we have some more news for you: it is a mechanic that enables weapons to have a limited lifespan, that wears down on use and that, only when consumed, makes the weapon unable to be used again. Again, we’re gonna tell you about degradation, differences between weapons and the value of broken weapons in the next few days!

Referral system and community events

Talking about sharing: we decided to use this space to talk also about a new feature that is soon coming to Hell is Others, which will allow the best entrepeneurs to be even more successful. We're really excited to announce the introduction of a referral system, and we’ll give you more news as soon as possible!

Before saying goodbye, we want to thank you a lot for the answers you gave us in the form, since those are helping us a lot in improving the game and understanding its problems. Some of the more in-depth answers you’ve given us are only possible if you have a passion for Hell is Others, and that makes us both proud and motivated for the future!

As a first response to some of your hints, we decided to launch some Discord's community events. Later this week we’ll let you know more about rules and procedures, but at the moment we can already tell you that there’s going to be an art contest, based on the holiday theme: you’ll just need to share your creations and ideas with us, and after a rigorous and incorruptible process (we love pizza, by the way) we’ll decide who’s the best artist in our community!

Then, we thought we wanted to test your filmmaking skills, designing a contest with two final prizes: one dedicated to the scariest clip of all, and another one for the most exciting revenge video!

In the future we’re planning new types of events: for example, we’re thinking about one where we give a prize to the player that opens the most gift in the City, or one where we give a reward to all active players, but just if the community reaches a specific number of those poor Things killed!

You can find our Discord here.

Again, thank you very much for your love and participation!