Weekly Devlog – Codex (pt.1)

Overview

This week’s goal was to bring the codex system to life. It was implemented in a placeholder state previously, but now we have fleshed out the concept and the visual style.

Details

Codex is a system where all the unique creatures and resources are recorded by the player in the book for more detailed explanation and a nice visual representation.

Currently in the early access release we plan to include Flora, Creature and Mineral categories for the codex.

Mechanics

The original placeholder system intended to unlock a codex entry upon meeting a new entity (which could be entered in the codex) immediately, but the new system will require the player to harvest/defeat/mine/... that entity until a specific card drops. Once this happens, it can be used to unlock the codex entry.

We felt that this would allow us to give more value and more weight to the moment when the player finds a card that he was missing from the collection. Some cards will be rarer than others—like boss entries or uncommon resource types.

Visuals

For the visuals we made countless changes until finally landing on a nice piece of paper with notes and drawings on it. This felt the closest to what an actual doctor/scientist would produce while exploring the world.

This update brings the codex closer to the vision of a living research log within the world of Plague Alchemist.

Next Steps

Next week, we’ll be focusing on polishing the finalized codex visuals, mechanics and populating the cards so that they can be successfully found in-game.

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Thanks for following the development of Plague Alchemist! If you’d like to stay up to date, follow the page and check back every Thursday for the next devlog.