Dev Blog: Simultaneous Turns

Yo!

We've got a big one for you today.

While a lot of people enjoy the chill pace of Walk of Life as a cozy way to spend the afternoon, others have commented that the gameplay can feel glacial, especially when playing longer games with multiple people.

This is a valid criticism as some of the bigger games can take hours, which is not feasible for a large portion of our playerbase. We've mulled over how we could speed up the gameplay without ruining the the fun for people who like the boardgame-like gameplay and we've decided on rolling out a new game mode: Simultaneous Turns.

In this game mode, which is only available in online games, each round starts by going through the choice events and report cards on each player in order before the round starts. Then everybody acts at the same time! After a player finishes their round, they wait for the rest of the lobby to finish up their round before the next round can begin.

This leads to games that are quick and snappy - the development team has played 6-player 10 round game in under 20 minutes! There are some hectic side effects, such as players racing to the pawn store to buy a furniture stolen during a crime wave or running to the park to lock a building another player is heading towards.

To clarify, this is an optional game mode, and the original game mode isn't going anywhere.

We will be rolling Simultaneous Turns out in the next update in a somewhat experimental state to start testing the waters, but we hope the mode will be a gamechanger for those of you who like snappier games!

That's it. That's the blog. Please leave us a Steam review if you haven't already - it really helps us!

Laters!