General Turmoil FAQ

[Gamious]

This thread will be dedicated to general Turmoil FAQ's. If an important Q comes up in the discussions, we will add it here as well. You can find Quick Game Tips pinned in the forums as well.

Why Early Access?
Gamious[www.gamious.com] is a small gamecompany that focuses on creating highly original and accessible games. Turmoil is our biggest production to date, but it's still made with a small core team of a game designer, programmer, artist, sound designer and musician.

The Turmoil game concept started out with an ugly sketch in Paint[www.gamious.com], and quickly evolved into a project with solid single level gameplay. While we were very happy with this, we also felt it had the potential of offering a more engaging player experience. So besides digging for oil, we started digging for more gameplay depth. This is how we came up with the (for our standards) huge metagame; that has a map, bidding on plots, AI opponents, bidding for Stock, a village and lots of upgrades.

We feel pretty good about what we've established so far, but we can't take the next step to a balanced and complete game without extensive player feedback. This is why Early Access is perfect for us. We're not quite sure if the game is too difficult, which elements are most fun and if it needs new features. We want to use feedback from Early Access to guide us in transforming the current state of Turmoil into a satisfying and well rounded game experience.

What state is the game in?
Right now...Alpha
What we have is a solid single player game type and a reasonably filled campaign. Playing a single game of Turmoil with all upgrades unlocked is fun and it works. And the same goes for the campaign, but it's not 'complete' yet.
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Jan 2016 Officialy the game is still in Alpha, because we are not feature complete yet. But we are nearing a state where most of the gameplay elements of the campaign are 'in' if not always polished yet.

What about Art and Sound?
For both art and sound we are very happy with the theme and style that we picked for Turmoil. But a lot of work still needs to be done. We just started testing with the first sound effects and the first couple of songs got their first recordings. This will all be slowly introduced and discussed with the Early Access players.
Same for Art. There is a solid art base for buildings, backgrounds, UI and characters, but much more will be needed. We want the game to come to life.
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Jan 2016 We have done a lot to improve upon what we had. Lots of new music, SFX and a complete overhaul of the UI. New buildings, characters etc. So we are quite happy. But we're not done yet.

What about Multiplayer?
Right now, we can't do multiplayer. It's too big a feature to just tack on. It would require a lot more time and resources than we have. With the 'share a seed' option, we do enable players to play the exact same level (same layout and price fluctuations). This way two (or more) players can play the same map and compare results. We're pretty sure we can add leaderboards to the game.

Other platforms and languages?
Yes, we will do other platforms like Mac and Linux. But we won't do those platforms right now. As we update the game every two weeks we are not able to produce, test and uphold 2 or 3 different builds. So it will bew Windows during the most part of Early Access.
The same goes for other languages. We WILL translate and localize the game in several languages. All the major ones at least and probably a bit more. But we won't start on this while the game is still in flux: text changes every week and there is more added with every update.

How will you communicate?
We plan to constantly involve the players in the development process by showing what we are doing and asking for input and feedback. We imagine that this will work on a 'per build' basis. We want to know how new elements are received, and what to focus on in new builds.

Besides this, we will monitor the game forum every day, and respond to user feedback and questions as soon as possible.

You can find us at:
Twitter
Facebook[www.facebook.com]
Steam Discussions

Can I continue save games after an update?
Probably, but not always! We will try to make save games transferable to the next update during Early Access, but some fixes, add-ons and changes will require you to start a new campaign unfortunately. We have added the option to start a new campaign in area 2, 3 or 4, so you can dive straight into the game in a later stage.

[Gamious]

Opened up the thread for questions. If there is something about Turmoil that you really need an answer to, just ask here and we will try to answer as best we can.

[Linktroll]

Could you please create a thread " Ideas" to avoid plenty of threads about that ?

[F+TM]

This game reminds me of Oiligarchy, a free flash game I really liked, mostly for its black-comedy endgame. No shade intended.

How do you aim to distinguish Turmoil from Oilgarchy? The setting and the town mechanic is definitely a right step in the direction.

[Gamious]

Originally posted by F+TM:

This game reminds me of Oiligarchy, a free flash game I really liked, mostly for its black-comedy endgame. No shade intended.

How do you aim to distinguish Turmoil from Oilgarchy? The setting and the town mechanic is definitely a right step in the direction.

Other than the theme and the fact that there is oil in the ground there are little similarities between the games. Gameplay mechanics are completely different, other than placing a Rig. In Turmoil you actually have to figure out a way to get the oil above ground quickly and sell it at the best times. Essentially time management. You upgrade your abilities and evolve your town over time.
So more than enough to distinguish Turmoil we'd say.

[Yolo from the Swagland]

A lot of people complain lack of content in this game, and that this game has low replay value. Im considering buying this game so id like to know first:

- Is there any roadmap ? Do You plan to add more content ? like lets say arctic oil drilling from sea of whatever new ?

Thanks in advance !!

[Gamious]

Thanks for your interest in the game! Currently our main focus is on adding elements to the core gameplay. You can expect a write-up on the addition of the gas resource today or tomorrow. We expect this to make levels more dynamic, and fun (especially in the later months of the year). The update with the gas resource will hopefully be ready next week.

I don't see arctic oil drilling from sea happening very soon, but in the coming months we will add much more stuff on all levels (graphics, meta game, polish, balance, leaderboards, etc. etc.), we have a themed series of announcements we call 'In the Pipeline', in which we keep the Turmoil community up to date on what's on the agenda in the (near) future. You can find the last one here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/361280/announcements/detail/132078148613924433

Hope this answers your question. :-)

[Steve]

Will you ever expand the game past the 19th century? I think it'd be cool if you could make it go up to modern day and perhaps even the future, maybe these could be expansions/level packs of some sort.

I'd love to for instance have a Mars map where the resources you collect behave totally differently and you have many other things to account for.
Or perhaps like an asteroid field with some kind of mineral in it. A nice little detail would be if the same families from the 19th century still existed as huge industry names in the future, depending on their success.

I think stuff like that would give people the kind of replayability they're complaining it doesn't have(can't say I agree or disagree not got the game, probably purchase it in like 10 minutes though)

As it is and is planned to be it's a nice simple little game but I think there's a lot of potential for cool expansions on top of the base game.
Obviously a little early right now but if it kicks off I'm sure people would love it, people seem to like it on YouTube anyway. At least I'm getting it due to Draegast's videos anyway.

(and now I realize there's not a lot of questions here in an FAQ post...whoops)


Will there ever be events in the game that make life a bit more difficult for you? Like huge rocks you can't drill through, earthquakes that break pipes and/or shift oil or maybe sabotage from other competitors? That would be awesome, just to mix things up a bit.

[Gamious]

Thanks for all the questions! And good to know that you saw Draegasts video's. YT has a very positive effect!

We have had the same idea about moving forward through time and improving your tech and drilling in new, more sophisticated areas. Imagine all the possibilities!
But that was exactly the problem for us: all those possibilities. The game would expand in production size a fair amount (art, new mechanics, upgrades, balancing etc etc), and as a small studio it would become too big to finish properly.

So we decided that those things might be awesome for Turmoil 2 ;) But we need to make #1 first.

We have also thought about events that shake up the game. We will keep doing that, but want to make sure the base gameplay is great across all 4 areas first. Only then will we try out different ideas that are floating around.

[Ancient]

Will the came support Mac OS platform?

[Gamious]

@Updog, yes, but not very soon. Our development focus is right now on improving the game. This means lots of updates and because our time is limited, we'd rather not have to do testing on more than one development platform.

Once the game is (almost) out of Early Access, we'll make a version for Mac. Please stay tuned and thank you for your patience! :-)

[tophlikearock]

Originally posted by Gamious:

Thanks for all the questions! And good to know that you saw Draegasts video's. YT has a very positive effect!

We have had the same idea about moving forward through time and improving your tech and drilling in new, more sophisticated areas. Imagine all the possibilities!
But that was exactly the problem for us: all those possibilities. The game would expand in production size a fair amount (art, new mechanics, upgrades, balancing etc etc), and as a small studio it would become too big to finish properly.

So we decided that those things might be awesome for Turmoil 2 ;) But we need to make #1 first.

We have also thought about events that shake up the game. We will keep doing that, but want to make sure the base gameplay is great across all 4 areas first. Only then will we try out different ideas that are floating around.

My question doesn't really involve gameplay but more of a random curiosity. How is it good to know who's YT channel brought attention to Turmoil? Does it give marketing ideas? In my case, WeasleZone brought me to it.

[Gamious]

Originally posted by tophlikearock:

My question doesn't really involve gameplay but more of a random curiosity. How is it good to know who's YT channel brought attention to Turmoil? Does it give marketing ideas? In my case, WeasleZone brought me to it.

Yeah, it's good to know because we can work with that YouTuber more often, or give them some kind of thanks. Sometimes it's the smaller channels, sometimes the larger ones. That is also good to know. In short it helps with marketing and helps to see if we are doing it right.

[tophlikearock]

Gameplay question: Does it make a difference if you connect all gas nodes to Inc's at once or if you add them one at a time, immediately after the other?

[Gamious]

Originally posted by tophlikearock:

Gameplay question: Does it make a difference if you connect all gas nodes to Inc's at once or if you add them one at a time, immediately after the other?

Nope, the amount of Gas that gets pumped into the Inc's is maxed out. So, when the Rigs are properly closed, all the Gas will get put into pushing up the price, no matter when it's released.
On at a time has a risk in that IF you there is a gap in Gas resource the price will stagnate or drop. That's a waste.
Don't forget to connect Gas when the oil price is rising naturally. That will help push up the price even more because of the rising price in the 'normal' situation.

[Gamious]

We've updated the FAQ a bit. It had been a while.