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[Robsoie]

Not sure how i did this but i got horrible tension level.
But it seems luck was on my side as some guy visited and thanks to some meditation we got -192 tension !
Very likely saved my settlement considering high tension was attracting enemy troops by now.

[Majestic7]

Accepting help from nobles to reduce tension is not a good long-term plan as it costs you tension in the future - or actions - leading into further problems. What I meant was being able to spend excess of one type of resource to improve your situation in another resource.

Tension is often problematic, as Fey action can add +100 tension suddenly. Plus your allies can start attacking enemy territory around tension 50, further increasing it and snowballing things till you can do nothing but fight.

[Vaccean]

I went from an Outcast to purchasing a settlement, but I haven't gotten a single Merit.  When I purchased the settlement, I had -0.9 merits, and I funded my purchase from an Opportunist Aristocrat.  The Opportunist Aristocrat died.  Still no Merits coming my way.  Shouldn't they be going up as I am able to afford to exist, or have I forgotten something?

I should also point out that my game has the following Social Context:
-Discrimination Against Males: Males tend to lose Merits, their deeds are downplayed and their failures overemphasized (playing as a male)
-Radium Craze: Radioactivity is prevalent in society, your Weariness does not decrease unless you're an outcast
-Cult of Freedom: Colonists despise tyrants. Local Tension penalties for holding hostages or territories is doubled.

So, I suspect that the game is probably working as intended, yet I'm at a loss for how to gain merits.  Maybe I should try bribing a lobby with furniture for favor, and exchange that for merits.  Its the only option I can think of

Discrimination against either males or females basically negates the 0.1 merit gain from being not being in debt. So it seems to be working as intended, except perhaps in the lack of alternative ways to earn merits. As it stands right now I'd say your best options at this point are pretty much to keep exploring for events, interactions and rumours that might grant you merits or just outright focus on assembling the relic, which would allow you to get rid of that social context in the next cycle.

In general, I think the game suffers from sometimes being very difficult to climb up from a pit you've gotten into. Basically, if you get lots of Tension or negative Merit/Arkhe, it can be very hard to fix the situation even if you have plenty of other resources.

It's proving consistently tricky to have a randomized world that remains indifferent to the player character while also keeping things fair without too much hand-holding.

I might have to consider an option to exchange resources as you mentioned or perhaps set difficulty levels and handicaps, but I'd still rather try going for something more flavoury like quests for personal redemption, great treasures or the likes first.

[EuchreJack]

It's proving consistently tricky to have a randomized world that remains indifferent to the player character while also keeping things fair without too much hand-holding.

Documentation might be a bit of a help.  I'm playing as an Outcast, and it takes almost 100 weeks for the Opposing Aristocrat to wipe me out!
EDIT: My longest run was 200 weeks.  I think I managed a "draw" by having the colony disintegrate around me.  Then I tried another character.

Speaking of documentation, here is what I've gathered about "Winning Cycles"
1) It appears the only way to win a cycle is to gather all pieces of the artifact.  All other win conditions have been removed.
2) When society collapses, artifact pieces stop appearing.  Society is collapsed when population drops below 100 colonists.  However, it can be reversed: Society is no longer collapsed when the colony has more than 100 colonists.

I should also point out that if all the territories are destroyed, then the cycle is over with both sides losing the cycle.  If the player is captured by the enemy, the other side wins the cycle.  I haven't seen an option to capture the opposition (being both Renascents, death is inconvenient).

While this doesn't mean that the player has to chase down the artifact as their only goal, since the game never really ends, it does mean that the player should be trying to obtain the artifact most of the time.  The opposing side tends to get rather menacing if it gets artifact after artifact after artifact.

The player's Stats are determined by where they start out in the hierarchy, with Outcasts having the best stats and Governors having the worst.  This is interesting because Stats are what gets the player the artifact pieces.  An Outcast who obtains a base can potentially start getting their pieces with just their starting companion, whereas the Governor either needs to resign themselves to paying for the artifact pieces with merits or needs to hire 3-4 companions to do the dirty work for them.

I can even theorize the following would tend to be true as to how each tier obtain artifact pieces:
Outcasts: Companion and player go it alone
Adventurer: Hire/rescue another Renascent, and the three of them go for the pieces
Merchant Venturer: Hire some Renascents and have them get the pieces
Governor: Trade in your merits for the pieces

As for exploring the territories themselves, the Outcast generally has half the territories identified prior to obtaining their base, whereas the Governor uses Reconnaissance-in-force.  The Adventurer dives in themselves and tries not to die too much, whereas the Merchant Venturer hires someone cheap to do the exploring.

[Vaccean]

I finished a new release a few days ago, so I guess I'll go though what seems to be the ritual of posting the link here once again and see what happens.

It's kind of a tiny release though, mostly adding Insights to address the concerns posted last time and playing around a bit with the idea.

Change Log:

* Insights: Accessible through the "Abilities" menu, Insights will allow players to instantly earn 7000 Arkhe, gain 7 Merits, or set the Local Tension or their Weariness to -700 as they choose. Insights can be earned spending 17000 Arkhe, 17 Merits, by successfully assembling the cycles' relic, or at the end of any lost cycle that lasted at least 107 weeks.
* Renascent Development: Players will now be able to use Insights to permanently increase some stats of renascents and sometimes make them acquire new attacks for the rest of the game, while enemy renascents will slowly gain these improvements after each cycle. Each renascent can get up to 3 unique developments, at which point any further development will simply give them Experience. Player characters can also gain Experience this way.
* Player's Past: The "Bio" screen will display the known information about the randomized past of the player character in that given game, along with which renascent the player needs to meet and befriend to learn more. Once befriended, the option to "Learn more about your past" will sometimes appear when staying home with that renascent. Learning all these secrets grants up to 4 Insights to the player.
* Added some new feyfolk content, mostly related to the new Insights.
* Added 2 new lobbies.
* Added 3 new social contexts.
* Some old bugs are out, some new bugs are in.

[Majestic7]

New bugs, yay! I'm going to name them Twinky, Dinky and Hinky, then train them to do tricks in the Crawling Labyrinth.

[Leatra]

In my game, nobody ever votes for anything. All proposals tie at 0 votes. Is this normal? I'm in the second cycle and I tried again by speedrunning to the third cycle, still no proposal passes through.

BTW, what's the point of overseas campaigns?

[Vaccean]

In my game, nobody ever votes for anything. All proposals tie at 0 votes. Is this normal? I'm in the second cycle and I tried again by speedrunning to the third cycle, still no proposal passes through.

Sounds certainly weird. I've been looking into it for a couple of hours but found no way to reproduce this behaviour. I placed a few safeguards to make sure votes were not getting multiplied by 0 in any way, but even if that was the case it wouldn't account for the problem persisting through cycles.

If you haven't' started a new game and still have the save folder at hand to send me over I might be able to dig further into it. Otherwise it would be helpful to know at least whether any lobby had 0 power, social contexts such as "Free Veto" or "Power Imbalance" were active or whether the proposals were displaying properly or instead failed to, for example, show what they would benefit and affect.

BTW, what's the point of overseas campaigns?

For now, they are mostly intended as long term investments, allowing players to have a more permanent impact overseas where changes can last longer than a cycle, potentially changing the likelihood and outcomes of wars and making trade and economic investments safer and more profitable. Still, it'd be nice to be able to do more with them in the future.

[EuchreJack]

Congrats on your 10 year anniversary!

You might see an uptick in activity, as most folks in the US will have some mandatory vacation time coming up.

As for popularity of the game, the mostly-text format tends to drawn the smallest crowd of gamers whom are nearly impossible to offend.

Ironically, if you tried to sell the game on Steam for $5, then you'd see a massive uptick in activity, even though the bulk of it would be "No graphics, not worth $5".

If it helps, I have seen a few games try some of the basic concepts of your game, although mostly in the vein playing characters descended from each other sequentially rather than the same character being reborn.  The setting is still significantly underrepresented.

Periods of dull employment can be great for spurring on creativity, so good luck with your new job!

[Vaccean]

Hey thanks for making my day!

You might see an uptick in activity, as most folks in the US will have some mandatory vacation time coming up.

I've actually been on home confinement myself for a couple days already because of the virus thingy, I don't know about upticks in activity but I'm pretty happy to have some time off to put into the game for now.

As for popularity of the game, the mostly-text format tends to drawn the smallest crowd of gamers whom are nearly impossible to offend.

Ironically, if you tried to sell the game on Steam for $5, then you'd see a massive uptick in activity, even though the bulk of it would be "No graphics, not worth $5".

Honestly, it's weird and I've been struggling to understand it myself but I'm kind of torn on the idea of the game to becoming relatively popular one day. I'd much rather at any rate just have a small group of nice, agreeable people following the game than a big audience given the choice.

If it helps, I have seen a few games try some of the basic concepts of your game, although mostly in the vein playing characters descended from each other sequentially rather than the same character being reborn.  The setting is still significantly underrepresented.

A recently released game that resembled Anamnesis enough to get me excited lately has been World of Horror, although it does so in a completely different way at the same time. No rebirthing as far as I've seen for example.


And since I'm here, I guess I'll give anyone interested a heads up that the next release is still a long way from being ready. The big feature this time involves the beginning of behaviour-changing moods and phases for renascents. It's the kind of feature that requires a lot creative writing, so although I'm having a lot of fun getting it done it's hard to even estimate how long it'll take because rushing this kind of work does no good, it just results in me rewriting things over and over as I change my mind about them.

[Vaccean]

Remember this weird old game called Anamnesis? Turns out there is a new version for it now.

I'm not quite satisfied with this release because it doesn't fundamentally changes the game's experience, but following releases shouldn't take this long, external factors allowing.

Change Log:

* Foundational Renascent Moods and Phases: Each of the 28 renascents now has 5 unique moods with plenty of flavour text in them, ranging from upset stomachs and acquired hobbies to addictions and life crises. Most of these will come and go on their own as some sort of side-stories, modifying their passive events and which actions are available with them when staying at home, adding some new events as well. A few will modify their stats or require a choice on the player's part in the case of purely negative ones to avoid the risk of losing the affected renascent. This will all be further expanded in the future.
* Enemy Economy: Enemy lobbies will finance your opposition depending on how powerful they are, but attacking and moving units around costs the enemy money now, allowing among other things the pacification of the colony through attrition and political means.
* Automated Barriers and Ruses: Added 2 projects to fortify the perimeter of player settlements and seek official recognition for them by going to the "Projects" and "Settlement" menu. These are costly but automatically generate Barriers and Ruses over time.
* Players can now determine with 100% accuracy if an aristocrat is spying on them with enough investigating and stalking. After this, they can get rid of these spies at any given time feeding them misinformation to drastically lower Local Tension.
* Players can now conveniently give up on a given cycle to move on to the next from the "Abilities" menu.
* Combat is less frequent when Local Tension is 0 or less, hazards are slightly less punishing, and life is a little easier as a whole.
* Punishing enemy populations with any given unit will give you in advance an estimate the action's effect.
* Added new feyfolk content, some of it kind of sexy.
* Added 1 new territory.
* Added 4 new units.
* Added 4 new social contexts.
* Removed some old bugs to make room for new ones.

[EuchreJack]

Nice!

[Salmeuk]

Much love to you, Vaccean. This game always intrigues me and I appreciate the continued updates!

Were you inspired by any books or media when creating the atmosphere for the game? I am strongly reminded of Zalazny's Amber series when it comes to the politicking and the whole cycle-of-rebirth thing.

Honestly, the mechanics are still opaque to me, and that makes it very exciting (but also difficult) to play.

[E. Albright]

You're not the only one reminded of Amber - I think I may have said the same thing before. It didn't really register the first time I read the Amber cycle, but re-reading them last year those books are obtusely-yet-explicitly about intriguing between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts - as if Oberon should not have given it away. The not-quite-concrete and vaguely dreamlike tone also lines up well...

[Majestic7]

Yay, a new version!

You know, I have a dinky old laptop I take on trips and mainly use as a writing tool. Unlike my desktop, it can't really run games. Still, it has two games on it - Neoscavenger and Anamnesis. I've likely played Anamnesis lots and lots of hours in trains and hotel rooms on work trips to stave off boredom. So yeah, keep on trucking.