Expansion Pack Contents

A month or so ago I shifted my development focus to expansion packs for Close Encounters. In some earlier posts I mentioned my thinking about them at the time, and then later on that I had more to think about in that respect. As I mentioned then, one issue is that there’s a great deal of content which could be added to expansion packs. How to package it, and what to include in each package, is a topic I’m constantly chewing over in the back of my mind. I think I’ll probably end up making some changes to the structures I’ve talked about already, although I’m not sure yet what they’ll be.

In the meantime, however, I’m trying to be systematic about how I develop all this stuff. I’ve broken down all the potential expansion content into eight different areas:

• map tiles
• story missions
• squad leaders and squad types/abilities
• specialists with individual abilities
• equipment
• tactics
• a “leveling up” system for campaign play
• heavy weapons

These are all things which tend to benefit the troopers. In actual fact, there are more content topics I’m working on as well, which tend to benefit the bugs:

• map tiles
• mutations
• events
• different types of bugs

You’ll note that map tiles appear in both lists. That’s because a big part of the game is exploring and revealing map tiles. I want that to be something that has both risks and rewards – the troopers might discover something which helps them, but there’s also the possibility of things which make their lives harder too (apart from the increased number of tiles to explore).

Separating the topics out like this allows them to be developed and tested independently of each other. I now have draft content for almost all of these topics, and have begun playtesting them. One drawback of this separation, though, is that it gets harder to balance things. I haven’t been working on these topics in complete isolation from each other, but they’re also not directly linked, so it’s hard to match and judge the advantages or disadvantages for each side.

The cure for that, of course, is more play testing! Which is fine, because I like the game, and I like trying different things in it. The more independent variables, though, the more play tests are required… so now we’re back to the idea of how to combine topics and what to combine together, with the objectives of a) having everything work no matter how few components one is using and b) having everything work well when it all gets jammed together.

Oh well, I’ll figure it out. If there’s something you’re particularly interested in or excited about being able to use in an expansion, let me know! Either in the comments or by email is fine.