Failed Negocations
Bringing a fresh new investigation loop with an interesting narrative and some never seen before types of puzzles.
This was a prototype for the first ever gameplay with a dynamic gravity system controlled by the player in Star Citizen.
In the Failed Negociations mission, the player must retrieve information off the captain of a Reclaimer ship. However, the ship has been hijacked and left in a bad state.
Unknown if any threats still lurks, the player finds a dead crew and the captain's corpse left inside a container hanging from the ceiling of the cargo hold. The player must find a way to reach the corpse to retrieve the objective.
During the investigation, the player will find clues about what happened, without never really knowing the truth. Their search will also lead them to multiple ways of completing the puzzle such as information about the gravity generator being faulty and accessible. The player can then disable the gravity to reach the captain or use other tools at their disposal that they might find along the way.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.17.2
Design:
-Pushing the limits of our tech and previous missions, but creating a dynamic gravity system ; something the players have never seen before.
-Multiple ways of getting to the objective, requiring the players to get creative.
-Multiple optional puzzles.
-A mysterious location with lots of environmental storytelling
-Players must investigate the location, find logs, etc. and draw their own conclusion
-The two other reclaimers we released as the same time had combat. To mix it up, there is none in this one. The three locations have an interesting rythm together.
Challenges :
-Prototyping something that had never been done before and that was deemed not doable.
-We had carte blanche-ish to come up with any puzzles/gameplay we wanted to and find the tools to do so
-We were required to use an existing ship and to build on top of it. We could not change it it any way, which meant dealing with a lot of the ship's issues.
-Though we did an art support pass over them, us designers did a lot of the level art ourselves
Star Citizen and everything here is under the ownership of Cloud Imperium Games. For more information, visit the 3.17.2 patch notes.