Epsilon: Mandatory All Bureau Communication No. 002
The next monthly update about Epsilon — a solo adventure game about exploring a dark and corrupting forest. Adding new plant features and encounters.
As the launch of Exclusion Zone Botanist: Epsilon approaches, I will be posting regular updates. It’s a chance for you to get a behind the scenes look at some of the design decisions and work going into the game.
Follow the Kickstarter pre-launch page to be notified when it goes live!
If you’d like to know what Epsilon is and when it will launch, see the October update.
100+ plant features
The original Exclusion Zone Botanist zine uses the TD-2039.2 Plant Discovery Guide when finding new plants. Beyond plant size, leaf shape, and leaf arrangement, it provides a number of “unusual features” that a plant might have. It forms the core of the game, changing it from just simple botany to unsettling horror.
The features were divided into three groups (Group A, B and C), each of which have six possible, unique features. Rolling two six-sided dice determines which group to use and then which feature to select from within that group. This allows for 18 total features.
While that works for a smaller game, my intent with Epsilon is to make the world much larger and with a reduced chance of repeated features. To do that, I set a goal of having “over 100 unique plant features” in the game.
I’m happy to report that over the last month, I was able to draft all of the unique features for Epsilon. The map will be divided into six rings (i.e. zones), each with its own list of 18 plant features — 108 total plant features.
Also, because features are tied to concentric rings on the map, they can progress from “basically normal” at Ring 1 to “very strange, slightly horrific, not dangerous” at Ring 2 all the way to “impossible, reality-breaking” at Ring 6.
Each plant feature still requires some work to expand and clean up the text, but it feels good to have them all written down in at least a basic form.
Encounters in the EZ
Next up is working on random events and encounters in the EZ.
While finding and documenting weird plants is still at the core of Epsilon, I want to make sure the game provides enough narrative depth to be a longer solo game. This means that when moving into a new hex, something needs to happen — even if that something is not finding a new plant.
This doesn’t mean that every hex needs to be a high-adventure monster encounter!
Instead, I want each move on the map to lead to something notable, even if it is simply a more detailed description of the forest. Ideally, many of these encounters will have mechanical impacts on the game state. This allows plant discoveries to remain intermittent and surprising, but not required for a turn to be fun.
I’ll talk more about exclusion zone encounters in the next monthly update!
— E.P. 💀
P.S. Epsilon updates are published on the third Friday of every month. Follow Exclusion Zone Botanist: Epsilon on Kickstarter to be notified when the project launches. Stay safe in the EZ.