u/Paracordelia

Fair skies Dustlanders!

We return with a monthly update video today, talking with devs about what we've shown in the last month and answering a few questions too.

Howdy Dustlanders! 🏜

Dispatches from Afterworld Begins. First up, a warning from the water merchant, a man who's found his own kind of beautiful in the dust.

Dev diary written by Podcat.

Welcome back Dustlanders! Today we continue the adventures of the Bunker Cats. Last time they had gotten their first settlement running and food and water processing too.

Having progressed further in the quest chain for Shelterborn, our band also gains enough pride for another custom (we will go into bands in the next diary), where we conveniently have the choice of “Wolf Wardens”, because of our workers harvesting the paw-paw fruits. This adds both combat abilities and skills in cultivation to our band. We are now quite broadly skilled! At the time of upgrade we also had a choice of deepening our skills with machinery and craft, or doubling down for more survival.

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This is probably a good choice because we are all alone and aren’t quite sure what can lay in wait.

Scouting further it turns out that just one province further up the river is pretty good so we move our settlement upstream where the fertility is looking better.

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We'll set up there, build some basic farms and start growing grain. I have also set up an outpost here to expand our borders.

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Our new location seems worth sticking to so it is time to start researching Settlement Development in the Idea Tree to allow us to upgrade our main settlement.

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While this is researching our rangers have been exploring across the river to the south - and made an exciting discovery! The second shelter we lost contact with is located here!

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Not only that, they also discover some Factory Ruins. These can catapult us into midgame technology-wise if we settle there and repair them (as well as do the right research)!

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As we build an outpost to make use of the ruins, our rangers continue exploring and make our first contact with other humans. A bit of an unfortunate encounter, as they rob us :D

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We swear revenge on the Iowa 80s! As soon as we are armed and ready! But as we are not ready yet we continue exploring :D The second tribe (to the north) we find are much more friendly and welcome us warmly. Their use of slave labor does give us a bad feeling. Our neighbor situation seems quite sinister right now. More reason to arm!

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Our rangers finally reach the second shelter - but it looks like the inhabitants have already left. We get ready to prepare an expedition to explore and see if there are any clues…

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Expeditions are a mechanic in Afterworld where rangers go on special adventures often with skill checks and other requirements barring their way. It is a way for us to bring more classic post-apocalyptic stories into the game and to create cool narratives. Of course it's also a great source of powerful relics, information and various loot! We will talk more about how they are constructed and work in a future diary.

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With the people gone, we bet on activating the shelter's emergency beacon hoping they will notice this and contact us. This starts up a longer event chain…

While we wait to see if anyone picks up on the emergency beacon it is time to get ready to deal with our neighbors! To do that we construct the ability to start producing weapons, through an Improvised Warworks.

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Blades should be enough at this stage.

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While we doubt the friendliness of those slavers to the north, the more immediate threat is probably the people who robbed us to the south! Our rangers have already mapped out their home, so we are ready to strike!

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Our War Party rolls out.

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I would like to believe the Iowas are not beyond redemption (and I also worry about their connections to the Highway Brotherhood) so we absorb them as a new underclass for now. They will need to prove themselves in the future

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This means that we now have two bands - which means we can finally form a full tribe! We have also been unlocking some options for government forms during all this and make our first steps into a more formal society outside the shelter as an Administrative Fiat. We could have formed a more democratic society here putting the Iowas up in a ruling position, had our run-in been more fortunate.

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It's worth pointing out that through becoming more accustomed to the dustlands and building up their skills in farming, the Bunker Cats now have taken on more of a look of farmers and cast off their ill-suited shelter overalls (Justin is even sporting a proper tan)!

Forming a tribe is an important moment, so here you can decide your tribe's crest and name for the first time! For origins that start with multiple bands, this is part of the prologue.

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This is a perfect spot to stop our story for now. The bunker cats have formed a larger tribe by oppressing the Iowa 80s and have established themselves outside a larger city while waiting for the beacon. Our next step is probably to decide what to do about our Northern neighbors as well as pushing into the city proper…

So, what has been happening with the Turns Expedition, let’s see below in their next excerpt.

Next time you see us in a Dev Diary will be in two weeks time, where we will move to talk about specific mechanics, with Bands first out!

Turns Expedition - Interview Excerpt.

Subject: pop-cultist priest, Marina Bay Cinema Temple.

Subject is wearing dozens of religious icons hanging from a sash. They are plastic figurines, likely pre-Fall in origin, each representing a character of pre-Fall popular culture.

Each hero is a reminder. I wear Arnold, and remember that great strength requires great effort. I wear John McClane, and remember never to yield to wicked men. I wear Bugs, and remember that there is no design of man that chance and trickery cannot frustrate. I wear James Bond… you’d better ask your parents why I wear James Bond. Ha!

Clever folk say to me: “Don’t you know these heroes are only tales the Ancients told each other? You must be a fool, praying to old stories.” And they are very clever, so maybe I am a fool. But I see the power of the Ancients all around me. The wealth of their cities, the scars of their weapons. They knew these heroes were worthy of honor. They poured themselves into their tales, and live there still.

When you think you are alone on these lands, you are not alone. This world teems with the Ancient dead, watching what we do from beyond the silver screen. Here is my blessing, friend: may you live a life worth watching.

Greetings! Shake off the dust and join us at the fire for another development diary! Today you will hear the first tale of the Bunker Cats as I walk you through the beginning of the game and give you some design intent along the way.

Afterworld starts off with the player picking an Origin, starting area (depending on origin), and establishing the beginning of your story through prologue choices. You can click the images below to enlarge them.

In this game we are playing a band called Bunker Cats coming from a shelter that has been failing despite our band’s skill at repairing old technology. Armed with some extra guns, they are ready to finally crack open the shelter doors and discover the world above.

I have always enjoyed games that did these little prologue choices and it was one of the things I decided early on that I wanted. I think it works quite well in getting you immersed quickly and making the story your own from the get-go. I would actually say that Afterworld is a game where I want to both be able to have procedural stories, but also assist and immerse you with crafted ones.

So speaking of stories to assist you, the first thing that happens here is that our Rangers have been given a quest to locate safe lands and a longer task to find the location of a second shelter we know is nearby.

Rangers are your explorers and problem solvers. The dustiest of your tribe, and Mark, their leader, has particularly high cunning. We’ll see if that comes in handy later.

At this point in the game we have only our ranger and the quest log. This is part of our approach to making this game easier to get into than some GSGs. Your band has just emerged into a world they know nothing about, and have not even begun to consider diplomacy with others, or supply chains, or their legal system, so you, the player, do not have access to these options yet either. The idea is to slowly unlock things and avoid drowning you in too many new things at once.

The first job of the Rangers will be to scout out the local area so we can relocate somewhere before the shelter’s reactor goes critical.

We have some hint markers on the map to the north where the Rangers believe water and food are likely. They’re also close to a city as you can see tall buildings sticking up in the fog of war. Cities often have valuable things to scavenge but can be more dangerous.

Looks like we found some pawpaws (it’s a real thing look it up) and some harvestable wood.

While we explore, the shelter reactor finally goes critical and the rest of our band packs up and escapes. The explosion also contaminates the area with radiation and deforms the terrain so it's definitely time to leave.

We have food and water in the explored area, but our people are really not in a very good situation otherwise. The land has both radiation and quite low fertility, so I guess farming is off the table for now. But right now we do not have too many options - we need that food and water after losing the shelter so we set course towards the north.

Because our first spot is not very good, we choose to keep the new settlement light and mobile rather than commit to this place. We need to find somewhere better (Afterworld encourages you to move often, very different from our other games!).

Having settled and caught our breath we unlock a new mechanic: the Idea Tree. The Idea Tree is a bit like classic tech trees with inspirations from HOI4’s focus trees, but built dynamically based on your experiences. It's really exciting and cool, but I will dig into them more in the future! Here you can see that we have a custom one based on our Origin where we can start.

Because I need resources, I am going for Outposts as soon as I can to start expanding my borders on the map and get access to more areas. Meanwhile we have started taking water from the nearby river and harvesting the paw-paw fruits for food to replenish our stores.

Stores are filling up, but we will go deeper into economy in future diaries!

With the shelter established and our people getting to work, we complete the starting quest, giving the Bunker Cats a new memory and pride in survival. In fact it is enough for them to start developing new customs. I will go into how that works more in a future dev diary, but the end result was that they became more self reliant.
These are values that will help us develop in good directions, lower mortality and give us very nice output bonuses to hunting type workways.

While all this was going on, our Rangers have not sat idle and have been pushing further north. On the outskirts of town they found something troubling and strange. Mark luckily understands something of these nanite-related phenomena and knows ways to approach it and gain insights into the dustlands.

Past the haint, the squad also discovered some old car wrecks that could be salvaged - and finally something worth reporting home about! A green healthy forest just north of the city that looks like a great permanent home perhaps?

Next dev diary we will continue the story and we will see the Bunker Cats form a tribe, discover the location of other shelter… and have tea with a suspiciously friendly band of slavers?!?

And so, we return to the Turns Expedition who continue their journey below. Next time you see us in a Dev Diary will be in two weeks time, on September 30th, with the continuing tale of the Bunker Cats. May your journey be a safe one.

Turns Expedition - Interview Excerpt.

Subject: water-merchant, Central California dustlands.

Subject operates a barter-well near the edge of a large stretch of dustland. He has a commercial incentive to exaggerate, perhaps, but his description accords with my experiences.

I see the dustlands when I close my eyes. Walk there long enough and you’ll see it too. Dry earth, red sky. Can’t see the horizon behind the dust clouds. You walk all day and it’s like you’re standing still. Folk fall asleep on their feet walking there. It’s true, it’s true.

There’s no roots, so the land goes where it likes. Set dustbreaks around your camp or you’ll wake up buried. Don’t breathe the dust. Keep it off your skin. You can’t outrun sky-sickness [Radiation poisoning] forever, but you can keep ahead of it a while.

Folk say the dustlands are death. I say that’s wrong. Death rots, rot grows. The dustlands are emptiness. But there’s potential in emptiness too. The world’s still young, and there’s things out in the dusts well worth seeing. Flocks of feral drones in flight. Ruined towers so high you can’t see the top. Sungazer monks staring into the sky, burning out their own sight. Gulleys where the flash floods rush through, and crawling things making damp life under the gulleys.

Folk say this land was beautiful before the Fall. I say it’s beautiful right now. Someday folk will be back to scribble on all that dust, fill it with farms and cities and war machines. Maybe I’ll live long enough to miss the dustlands.

I don’t talk people out of going through the dusts. Used to try. Never convinced a single soul. If your destiny lies out that way then you know it, and I’m not the one to tell you any different.

[In this case “the dustlands” indicates an area of extreme soil degradation. Note that “The Dustlands” is also commonly used to indicate “the world,” and “dustlanders” its inhabitants.]