In this update5
Full notes
Full Over the Alps update
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What changed
- Balance
- Gameplay
- Security
Over the Alps changes
We at Stave Studios are pleased to announce that our next major update to Over the Alps, titled A TEST OF CHARACTER, will be a total overhaul of the existing “police pursuit” mechanic. As with our last major update, King of the Mountain, this patch will be totally free for everyone who owns the game.
We’ll go through our in-depth reasoning for making these changes at the end of this update, but first of all, here’s a quick preview of what you can expect!
OVERCOME UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES THAT TEST YOUR CHARACTER
As you travel the Routes in Over the Alps, you now have the chance to encounter COMPLICATIONS which impede your progress!
These obstacles must be overcome using one of the character traits that you’ve been building up over the course of the game. It’s time to start paying attention to your Stamps!
The higher the Risk Level of your chosen Route, the more likely you are to find yourself in a spot of bother.
Failure in the Complication means leaving a Footprint. The Police will start closing in!
KEEP TRACK OF THE CLUES YOU LEAVE BEHIND
The Footprints in Over the Alps are an abstraction of the clues you’re leaving, which the police can use to track you down.
In A TEST OF CHARACTER, each of the Footprints is now tracked individually, so you always know exactly how you messed up. Oops.
PEEK AT THE NOTES OF THE POLICEMAN ON YOUR TAIL
You can now take a peek at the Police Notes to see exactly how close they are to catching you, and what they think of this English spy who’s been causing havoc in the peaceful Swiss countryside.
Why are we making these changes?
(Obligatory note of caution: Everything here is subject to change! We’re still in the process of implementing the new system, and there is extensive playtesting ahead of us. Take the following with a hefty grain of salt.)
After receiving feedback from our players on Steam and Apple Arcade, we felt that the previous implementation of the police pursuit had room for improvement.
Here’s a screenshot of the older system in action:
We found that players struggled to follow what was happening here. The Field Report pops up on screen and vanishes much too quickly, often resulting in a player not having time to process it.
Even seasoned players still had trouble parsing the relationship between the Route Risk Level, the Footprints, and the police’s position on the tracker.
Our solution is to introduce clarity by expanding on each of these elements, giving the player more information and (importantly) more time to process what was happening!
Tracking the Footprints individually makes it super-clear what clues you left for the Police, and showing the Police Notes makes it obvious how close they are to catching you. The latter also provides an interesting third-person perspective on the player’s in-game decisions.
By far the greatest gameplay change is the addition of the Complications to Routes. We chose to add these for several reasons:
Most importantly, it’s just fun! It adds a nice element of role-playing - your Spy may be better-equipped to deal with some Complications than others, depending on your choices and playstyle. You’ll always know beforehand which Routes test which characteristics, so choosing your Routes now requires some tactical thinking.
It makes the Risk Level more relevant to gameplay. Only riskier Routes threaten to block your progress with a Complication.
It increases the game’s replayability and adds something even for seasoned players to discover. Now there is even more optional content hidden behind many of the different Routes in the game.
Here’s a fancy flowchart of what the Spy’s journey down a particularly dangerous Route might look like after the Test of Character update:
Good luck, agents! It looks like your job just got a little more… complicated.
Roadmap
The Test of Character update is just one step in our dastardly long-term plan to provide you with more of the game you’ve already bought. Here’s a roadmap showing our planned upcoming content, and remember, all of this is free:
What’s behind those intriguing redactions, you ask? Well, that’s a top-secret matter of national security, and a topic for another post. But I can assure you, the gears are turning. Ink is being spilled.
Over the Alps is not over yet.
PS: Over the Alps is in the Steam summer sale! You can grab yourself a copy now for 20% off.
Source
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