Achievements. If you’re a regular gamer you’ve undoubtedly heard of them, and have probably already earned some. Sometimes they go under a different name, like trophies or badges or accomplishments; but whatever they’re called, they’re essentially the same thing. You complete some specified task in a particular game, and then you get bragging rights in the form of a shiny little graphic with a catchy title.
Well, now that Mayhem Intergalactic is coming to Steam, and since achievements are the Done Thing for Steam games, it’s expected that I add achievements to the game. So I have!
Those of you who didn’t buy the game via Steam will still get the achievements feature. You just won’t be able to show it off on a Steam profile page. But you can still invite your real-life friends over to your house to show them your achievements list and gloat.
Photographic evidence follows:
The title screen now has an Achievements button. Clicking it takes you to...
...the Achievements screen, which lists all of the available achievements and indicates whether you've completed them or not. (Work-in-progress screenshot.)
The Achievements screen as seen above is still a work in progress. I’ll need to hire an artist soon so that the achievements all have spiffy icons next to them instead of boring coloured squares, and – more importantly – I haven’t yet finalised the list of achievements.
This is where you come in!
I’d like your ideas and feedback on what achievements should be available in the next version of Mayhem Intergalactic.
Here are my current 15 ideas, as seen in the above screenshot:
- First Blood: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game.
- Natural Intelligence: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game with the AI difficulty set to Highest.
- Perfect!: Win a Quick Start singleplayer game with the AI difficulty set to Highest, and without losing any battles. [Editor's note: Yes, this is possible; I've done it. It merely requires patience and a little luck. Or patience plus abuse of the saved game feature.]
- Things Fall Apart: Destroy 1000 enemy ships in a single game.
- The Center Cannot Hold: Destroy 2500 enemy ships in a single game.
- The Blood-Dimmed Tide is Loosed: Destroy 5000 enemy ships in a single game.
- Maker of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win a multiplayer game.
- Master of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win 10 multiplayer games.
- Maestro of Multiplayer Mayhem: Win 25 multiplayer games.
- Vindictive: Destroy 500 native ships. Cumulative over multiple games.
- Bully: Destroy 1000 native ships. Cumulative over multiple games.
- Slaver: Destroy 2000 native ships. Cumulative over multiple games.
- Freebie: Conquer an undefended enemy planet. Then win the game.
- Mechanized Intelligence: Use rally points to connect all planets in a Quick Start game into a single network.
- Prime Directive: Win a game without conquering any native planets.
I’m not especially attached to keeping these the way they are, and some of them are admittedly a little bit boring. I’m sure that if we all put our heads together, we can come up with some much more interesting ones.
Feedback? Suggestions? Please feel free to leave a comment. I take all suggestions seriously, and if your idea is good then it has a better-than-even chance of making it into the game. There’s no limit on how many achievements there can be, so the more the merrier!
How about:
“Last ship flying” Win a planet by a margin of 1 ship(easy at the start of a round, nearly impossible at the end.)
“Bag of hurt” Lose a game after producing X(number) of ships [OR] Lose a game after holding the majority of planets(total on battlefield, not of player owned).
“I’ll Get You Even If It’s The Last Thing I Do!” After being pushed back into a single planet, come back with a victory.
“Last stand” Defend your last planet from an invader.
“No Place Like Home” Don’t lose your home world even once during a battle.
“Crushed” Lose without ever taking more than 3 planets at a time.
I rather like bad achievements. If nothing else then to punish people who love them so much they will go to great lengths to get every one.
Some really good suggestions there, thanks!
The main reservation I have is about the first one, since it’s basically just luck (whereas achievements are usually mostly about skill). And I’m in two minds about negative achievements, just on general principle… I’ll think about it.
“No Place Like Home” is probably my favourite idea of the ones you listed. Good name too. That one’s going in verbatim for sure.
Some ideas:
Conquer more then X planets in a single round.
Gather a fleet of X ships.
Control more then X planets.
This could be done in some kind of medal-style, for example:
title: the conquerer
bronze: conquer more then 3 planets in a single round.
silver: conquer more then 6 planets in a single round.
gold: conquer more then 9 planets in a single round.
It would save space for other achievements, because you only need
one field for the 3 steps.
“Untouchable” Lose not a single planet in a game. (maybe just in a multiplayer-game)
btw, great game concept =)
The medal idea is a really good one. Don’t think I’ll have time to implement it properly, unfortunately…
Glad you like it. =)
Maybe there could be:
“oppressive” – prevent 3 ai from conquering a single planet on medium difficulty (on second thought, that might be impossible)
“obsessive” – have the same number of ships simultaneously on 10 planets
“strategist” – conquer 10 planets simultaneously
“rapid expansion” – double empire size in one turn (probably require a minimal empire size e.g: 15 < planets – x2)
“marathon runner” – play several games lasting more then 200 turns (probably a bit easy to cheat at that)
Maybe you could make some really hard achievements and use them to unlock single player cheats
Amazingly addictive game! Responsible for a very under used TV and a extremely over used computer
Glad to hear it! TV rots the mind. Playing indie games is much better for one’s health.
Thanks for your ideas!
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