You can read about what Syphilisation is here and the manifesto for the game here.

Work Done

The first thing that I did was adding in natural preserves. These are supposed to function as a more environment-friendly alternative to camps. They are much less predictable than the camps in terms of what they give out and so you can’t really build a chain around it, but don’t pollute. I still don’t have either half of this pair done completely. I still need to play more with them to understand where they should go. I think that players are really going to like the feeling of decentralized cities that this brings.

The second thing has been a large stability pass. I fixed a bunch of small bugs, fleshed out a couple of missing params and playtested a lot. I still haven’t had a full playthrough and there are a few things that are still mock-ups. I do like where the new params are though. Right now, playtesting is still the big thing to do for the project. I still have a lot of small things to polish and a lot of things that I haven’t really gotten a handle on and this period of development is all about getting the game in order.

As I’ve written about before, I like to design in alternating expansion and contraction phases where you build out things for a while and then you streamline for a while, but right now I really want to get the game into Early Access, which is typically a contraction phase, but I also want to put in more post-colonial thought into the game, which is an expansion phase and it’s been tricky to balance the two. I should be able to get the anti-colonial work done next week though along with some playtesting and then the final week of the month can be a ruthless contraction.

Interesting Fact

One of the major sticking points over India getting independence during WW2 was the transfer of the Indian Armed Forces to Indians. Linlithgow’s opposition to the plan can be summed up with the following quote from him in 1942: “morale in sense of willingness to suffer for a national cause is a non-existent quality in India and could not be evoked by any political concessions. Among Indians and especially Hindus who preponderate in threatened areas the ruling instinct is self-preservation and the preservation of family and property.”