Difference between the Demo and Release?

[Old Man Bryan]

I've only put a few hours into the demo so far but it seems quite extensive already (initial impressions)

How much more different will the release game be?

[Mintdragon]

The demo is the tutorial. The release game will have chapters 3, 4, and the end of time. Chis can tell you more, I'm not sure how much is still under NDA

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

The Tutorial / Demo

Basically, the demo is identical to the full game, in terms of being the first 4-8 hours (depending on your speed and amount of exploration), all of which is the tutorial.

Basically, it leads you through a bunch of tactical situations, and gets you comfortable with your "starting kit," and it's also the backstory to how you got your starting kit.

Chapter 2

Starting with chapter two, the game is no longer teaching you in that same way, and now you're the one driving the strategic choices. In the demo, you can look at the Victory Paths tab when you get to the end of the demo, and you can see some info about the 12 main goals that are available on launch at day one. There are also two side goals.

Victory Paths

A number of those 12 goals have multiple paths to them, some of which are diametric opposites ("Is It Justice?" is the main example of that). Starting in chapter two, there is time pressure, which does not exist in the tutorial part of the game -- the default is 1000 turns for a timeline (starting from when you reach chapter 2, not just 1000 turns total), which is a very long time indeed.

Difficulty Levels

If you want to crank up the difficulty, you can sabotage the spaceport computers within the first 50 turns, and choose either Hard or Extreme mode. Those give you either 500 or 300 turns, respectively, and make enemies dramatically harder.

The game is not super challenging in terms of tactical skill on the baseline difficulty, and if you do all the side Exploration Sites in particular, you will be way over-kitted for the experience you'll have if you've played strategy or tactics games in the fast. That said, it hooks you and pulls you along regardless, and the emphasis is on your choices more than your skill at executing them.

Early Advice

It's recommended that you play through chapter two on normal difficulty, and just explore what seems interesting. At the end of that chapter, you become essentially a time-lord, and can have multiple timelines. This is not a roguelike -- you don't lose prior timelines. You can move back and forth between timelines, and they can interact if they are in proximity, etc. It is a time loop like GroundHog Day, but probably the longest one in any medium. I've seen playtesters range from 3-10 hours in a single timeline, not counting time bouncing out to other timelines, and not counting the tutorial parts.

Once you're to chapter 3, it's really not about the chapters anymore. Those are no longer about unlocking content or features, but instead about marking your progress in the metagame. Some of the goals are strategic mazes that require the cooperation of two or more other timelines in support of the one in which you're trying to accomplish something. Figuring that stuff out is a certain kind of mental stimulation aside from tactical difficulty, and a lot of people will be happy just sticking to normal difficulty to explore and figure all that out.

Volume Of Content In Hours

If you're an achievement hunter, or in general want to achieve all of the goals on Extreme difficulty, I expect there's about 50 hours of content on initial launch for you to just see everything once, and reach each goal in the standard manner. That will vary by player, and I'm estimating low to avoid overstating things.

But it's a big game, and there's a lot to do. Whether you're more engaged with the decision-making level of things, or if you also want a moderate tactical challenge, or a grueling test of tactics and strategy together, that's up to you. If you pretty much just play on normal mode and don't use a guide, and don't go for all the achievements or side content or higher difficulties, then it's 20-something hours on launch, again being conservative. If you use a guide and know absolutely exactly what you are doing, and rush the entire time, trying to speedrun for some reason, it might be like 16 hours; I also don't know anyone other than a tester who would play like that!

Main Gameplay Flow

Once you're into chapter 2, the flow of the game is really different from before, but also... in other ways the same?

First of all, I should note that you're not The Chosen One, you're not on a quest, there's nobody telling you what to do. The goal states are internally-motivated from your character. You're there to either try to make the world a bit better or worse, or to decide what sort of person you want to be and take that place in the world, or some mix of both.

Chapter one is very inward-focused, and is based in many ways around the idea of Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs. By the time you reach chapter two, you are an adult, in some manners of speaking, but a young adult. You're still new to being a person, but you're relatively secure in your basic needs. Now it's time to try for Self Actualization, and to change the world around you.

The way you do this is by taking a look at the goals available to you, or even just taking a look at the list of Contemplations available (and by extension what goals they either directly lead to, or indirectly contribute to, which is labeled), and then pick something that seems interesting and in-line with how you're playing this timeline. Many people roleplay a certain way, but you don't have to. Many other people are in the mindset of "that sounds crazy, wonder if I can pull that off," and that's equally valid.

Anyway, as in chapter one, you'll see projects result from those contemplations, and start various things in motion, which change the world around you, and your capabilities.

There are stopping-points frequently, where to continue that chain of projects, you have to do another contemplation. This is very important, because it allows you to mix-and-match project chains, especially once you're playing on harder difficulties. Can you spare 30 turns and go down the first few projects of some route, grab a technology that you now know is waiting there, and then use that against some other project chain that is too hard without it? Etc.

On normal difficulty, to my surprise, a lot of the playtesters just started every contemplation that they saw, and so were running a ton of things in parallel. This can work on normal difficulty, but is not recommended on Hard or Extreme. Personally this is not how I imagined people playing the game, but it works fine and doesn't hurt anything, so do what you feel like.

Anyway, in your very first timeline (chapter two), you cannot even attempt all of the goals, because you are not a time lord yet. Once you have the ability to manipulate time, a lot of new things become possible. As you dive into a new timeline, you'll want to consider what your goals are for that one, what difficulty you want to be in, and what your path is to achieving those goals. The more you know from the past, the better, on higher difficulties.

Final Bit About Goal Paths

Different goal paths play really differently, sometimes based on your choices, and sometimes based on the nature of the goal path itself. There are several that are all-out war, temporarily or permanently for a timeline. There is one that is much more focused on territory control than usual.

Pretty much all of them open up new mechanics, and often buildings, and occasionally units, that you won't have seen in the demo or in other goal paths. But by playing through the tutorial, you have the baseline of knowledge that allows you to figure out anything that this throws at you.

Future Content

The content that is here is really solid. There will I'm sure be some bugfixes and balance tweaks and so on. But, the focus isn't going to be on refining what is already here in terms of the core content -- that's already done. The main work of the next year is going to be on adding more and more goal paths, including "tier 2" goal paths which require you to complete some tier 1 goal(s) first in the same timeline. Tier 3 will also be a thing, later. Very challenging on any difficulty.

Your older timelines will remain valid for those, so as you play, if you feel like you're done with that timeline for now, then switch to a new one, and you may find yourself revisiting it in some months. It's up to you, there's not one prescribed way to play. But I'm also trying to make it easy for you to find new content, versus doing the same thing repeatedly. Of course, some things you'll just be unable to resist, and you'll want to grab them and weaponize them against other goals, and that's fine also. Maybe you have a thing for liquid metal units, or really like throwing people in the torment nexus, or really like having a cult around to do a few basic things for you. All valid choices to make.

The reason I bring up future content in response to your question is because, naturally, it's something to wonder about how that fits into the gameplay loop. The answer is that it's pretty seamless, and because of your ability to go back and forth between timelines, you'll have entry points all over the place. This is, for example, how the playtesters experienced the development of the first 12 main goals.

Hope that helps!

[MeGa]

Is demo still available?

[Arlen Tektolnes]

Originally posted by MeGa:

Is demo still available?

There's a button to download it on the storepage, so I'd assume so.