Stars Reach Devs Detail Development Progress Relates to Procedural Worlds, Combat, and More

The Playable Worlds team shares info on their progress developing Stars Reach's procedural worlds as its Kickstarter campaign winds down.

The new devblog covers how they’ve been working on their creatures system to pave the way for the procedurally generated worlds that the team has been promising. Of progress made, there used to be fewer than 20 creature types in the game and now they have over 120 creatures and variations with a now-expanded variety of attacks and abilities.

They've also successfully added layers of difficulty to a number of aspects of the game. Where you once were able to solo almost everything, now, there are degrees of difficulties baked into their systems and some are not so soloable at all. When it comes to creatures,  they are color coded in a generally familiar system. White is something you can solo, yellow is a little trickier, and things go up from there. Orange, then red, purple, and bosses mean gather groups, make sure you have plenty of consumables and shields and strategic minds. On the purple and bosses, no compromises.

The team discusses other ways that you will want to get familiar with including shields, weapons, and of course learning how to keep out of the way. This means anything from a simple dodge to effective grappling and using a grav mesh. Make sure you craft consumables, pack the right weapons, and learn creature weaknesses to go ahead and get rewarded for your effort.

If you prefer a non-combat approach, Playable Worlds has you covered. You can crouch walk past a lot of the creatures you find, with additional stealth and concealment methods on the way. If you’re good for come coin, you can also hire other players with appropriate skills to help you get through a dangerous area or even to go acquire something you need from a danger zone. 

Makers, Servitor constructs that you might find on a planet, are also an important part of Stars Reach. These are what stimulate life to grow and spread in various ways and serve to protect them. You might find Makers, which currently are small or medium, with more to come, but doing so requires a lot of work to learn how to potentially spot them because they're invisible.  

There will be lots to learn and number of goals to set (or enlist others) to help things done in these procedurally-generated worlds.