As some of you may know, we're an Irish studio — and our biggest local game show is GamerFest!

We brought Causeway along this May to promote the game and let folks help test the alpha.

It's always fun to see reactions from people who recognise the genre, or are curious to learn more about the project.

A Busy Booth

This wasn't our first time demoing at GamerFest.

Last time, we learned it helps to tweak the build with more forgiving numbers: a shorter revive timer, more health regen, etc. We also limit the character select screen to avoid excess reading or people picking the less conventional characters.

That worked out well this time. I'm always amazed at how fast kids can pick up a game and enjoy it! It makes the effort to have 2 PCs for multiplayer worthwhile.

Overall we had a good event. It's great to meet with other local developers, and we look forward to being back again for May 2025.

Last time, we shared some thoughts about depth in Causeway, and how to design for it without adding needless complexity.

Today I'd like to share some thoughts around another important topic, which is accessibility.

What is accessibility?

Broadly speaking, we're exploring how players answer the question: "can I bring friends to this game?"

Everyone has some friends they can't bring to a lane-pushing game. Common complaints include:

• "I can't make the time investment"
• "The community is too toxic"
• "At this age, playing games is a waste of time"
• "The art or characters don't appeal to me"

There are also realities of the genre — it's real-time, there's a learning curve, and whatever camera angle you choose won't suit some folks.

We accept these constraints, and nonetheless aspire to make a lane-pushing game that people can bring friends to wherever we can.

Community

The biggest accessibility issue in modern lane-pushing games is toxic behaviour — which we define as harassment, exclusion, and unsportsmanlike conduct.

Nothing discourages players from participating more than the risk that a play session will leave them feeling worse than when they started.

The reason we're doing Causeway instead of some other lane-pushing game is that this is the most important, interesting, and unsolved problem in the genre. Causeway is extremely well-positioned to serve players who want to enjoy a lane-pushing game for an hour in the evening without toxicity.

That's a big accessibility win!

The Three C's

Game designers are often taught to get these 3 things right: Camera, Controls, Character!

In the lane-pushing genre, Camera and Controls need a lot of work — because what players want is customisation.

Many of our testers have spent 100's (or 1000's) of hours in one of the mainstream lane-pushing games. Any new game has to support the key options from most of the others, so players can enjoy their familiar setup.

In that sense, it's harder to make a game now than it was 10 years ago!

We learned if an option that a player expects isn't available, it creates huge friction and pretty soon they'll quit playing. Thanks to great feedback, we've got most of that ironed out.

We also chose to be early adopters of options that some players find really important:

• Scaling the size of text, cursors, and UI elements
• Colour-blind mode
• Cursor crosshairs
• Custom keybinds

That leaves Characters. We aim for variety in how demanding they are to play, so both beginners and experts can participate and contribute fully, even if certain skills aren't their forte.

Closing Thoughts

This is just some of what goes into making an accessible game — one that players feel very comfortable in bringing their friends to.

I'm sure we'll have more to share on this topic in future!

Hi folks,

We've been doing lots of concept iteration with the game this summer. Let's share one of the lessons from our process!

Complexity and Depth

For any new lane-pushing game to find success in the market, we believe it must satisfy three properties:

1. Be fresh — enough to attract new players
2. Be accessible — enough that they'll bring their friends
3. Be deep — enough that expert players stick around

This is the minimum requirement to "sit at the table" in our genre. There are many other ingredients to success — but today I want to touch on "depth".

In terms of philosophy, achieving depth in Causeway can be done most elegantly through well-crafted complexity. (For more on that topic, do check out my favourite article on the internet.)

We feel that on our imaginary ruler📏, Causeway's complexity (the number of mechanisms, and how tightly they interact) should rest a notch or two above that of Heroes of the Storm, and a few notches below Dota 2. This is intended to let us stay accessible, while also allowing for a rich level of mastery.

Tailoring for a 'Medium' Fit

Knowing where we want to arrive — I have leaned towards adding "medium complexity" mechanisms to the game, in anticipation that their combination would produce the right result.

It came as a surprise that this hasn't worked out so well!

For an example, one mechanism in Causeway's alpha is 🍟Chips. A Chip is a semi-permanent debuff. It stacks up to 3 times, increases damage taken by 5% per stack, and is only cleared when visiting your base. 

It's hard to apply them quickly, so they're part of a longer-term attrition game. Several Counsels (our twist on items) have bonus effects when the target has 3 Chips. One character has a permanent Chip on their shoulder (yes, it's a term we use playfully!)

However, Chips aren't quite a big enough part of gameplay that players wanted to allocate attention to them. Since the underlying idea is "a long-term debuff whose impact you can shape with your build", we didn't want to simply buff them into relevance.

Perhaps more importantly, they were tied in with another medium-complexity mechanism. We were giving players competing priorities before they might even begin to think about Chips. 

Personally I enjoy designing a medium-complexity armour system and shaping characters to fit it. But sometimes a 'neat idea' is really a solution looking for a problem! We are learning, slowly, that starting simple and building up seems to be the better approach.

As one of our community members reflected...

“The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.”
— Kevin Kelly

Stay tuned,
Softmints

Greetings all!

We've had Causeway in alpha testing for some time now. It really has been a blessing to gather so much feedback; our approaches and thinking sure get challenged a lot!

The game is so early in many ways. Still, we feel it's important to keep you in the loop about the kind of game this is shaping up to be, so today we'll share a feature about which we're particularly excited.

All Aboard!!

Many lane-pushing games give players a global mobility tool, such as the Teleport Scroll from DotA. This usually works by targeting a friendly building, and activates after a few seconds of channel time.

In Causeway, all player characters have the Teleport ability as baseline. We don't ask you to buy it or choose it among other options, it's just part of everyone's kit.

The interesting part is that our take on Teleport includes one extra rule: "you bring a friendly player along with you".

Teleport

Teleports you and 1 friendly player within 5 radius, to a friendly Monument after a 5 second channel time.

Maybe this does not seem the most glamorous or ground-breaking change! However, what's exciting for us is how our players respond.

Everyone starts each match with the same tools... yet players can accomplish so much more if they invite others to participate.

Picture this situation...

That's powerful. If one team starts coordinating their Teleports and the other does not... you can see the impact on each team's winning chances.

In our alpha tests, we devs don't have to tell new players about Teleport. Our testers explain how it works to each-other because they want the efficiency.

We feel this take on Teleport is great for the game because it's consentful and reciprocal and gets people involved and feeling like they're in a team. It represents a very "Causeway" way of doing things.

Respecting our Roots

The inspiration for this tweak is an old lane-pushing game called Tides of Blood (2003). It allowed players to buy a transport unit, hop inside it with teammates, and the transport itself had a Teleport ability.

This led to a lot of cooperative play as teams would delicately position their transport units out of harm's way, yet close enough to act as an escape vehicle, or to relocate the team across the map if necessary.

We didn't want to reintroduce extra units to control, but their spirit is hopefully alive and well.

Whispering of Advisors

Last time, we mentioned that the Advisor system (our twist on items) was in a tricky place. We're pleased to say that we've found some interesting directions to explore — and yes it did involve creating a new "equipment" — one I haven't seen in any previous lane-pushing game.

I'm happy with our new direction for this feature. More on that when it's ready :)

Until next time,
Softmints

Hi everyone,

We've had a busy summer working on the game, stabilising a few key features, and preparing to revisit some others.

We also spent time to develop some of our long term plans for the game and our studio. It is amazing what introspection and conversations with the right people can reveal! We're very excited about what's to come.

Forks in the Road

In the past, we've shared that Causeway's in-match progression is called the "Advisor" system. It's our twist on items. While we won't dive into much detail about it yet, we do have a lesson or two to share from development.

One of the goals of the Advisor system is to be a "minimum inventory, maximum diversity" system. This describes the tricky balance of having as little content as possible (less tooltips to read and internalise) while allowing a large number of (viable) possibilities and choices.

We have an implementation of this system, and we discovered that while had potential, it also came with a major shortcoming...

Players don't find it fun to calculate a large number of (viable) possibilities in the short timespan of a match.

Every time they opened the menu — there were too many options! There was also not a strong enough thread of progression through those options to narrow them down.

The system had so much freedom that players experienced choice paralysis. We saw people return to familiar options, rather than face the frustration of trying to optimise under time pressure.

That is a pretty big problem!

The Advisor system will need revisiting to address this issue. We plan to explore whether better UX can make a difference. Dawngate did a great job of concealing lots of choices in a cleverly designed menu.

Dividing progression into different equipments is usually a show of confidence from game designers, so that is another option we'll consider (though there are reasons we haven't pursued it yet).

Steps of the Giants

As some of you will remember, our game is named after the Giant's Causeway, which is a landmark in Northern Ireland. It also happens to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its stunning natural beauty.

During the summer, I had the opportunity to visit it for the first time. (Yes, we chose the name before visiting!)

Even though I'd seen plenty of photos online, I wasn't sure what to expect. Now I understand why I couldn't get a feel from just photos.

The area has a huge amount of variation in the size, shape, colour, erosion, and formation of the rocks. I don't think one picture or angle can really capture it. So here's a few samples I took...

When I mention that I work on a game called 'Causeway', people sometimes guess it might involve a hexagonal grid of some kind — a rigid structure often used in turn-based games.

I felt much more inspired by the natural variations that appear all around this landscape. I hope Causeway's gameplay can be known for giving players the same organic feeling!

Finally, we're very grateful for the time our testers have contributed to help improve the game this year.

Despite our website not having pretty artwork (or much detail generally) we've somehow managed to attract a consistently lovely group of people. Running games and tests has been made so easy because of the open and friendly attitudes that our testers bring with them every week.

We look forward to welcoming more of you on this journey before the end of the year :)

Thanks for reading,
Softmints

Hello all,

Since our previous update, most of our development work has targeted small, incremental improvements.

Some have made their way into the game: like better cursor targeting and tidying up the counsel "shop" interface (we mentioned this was a pain point for players last year).

Others, like being able to attack or cast while moving, are still being finalised. They'll be fun additions when they're ready!

Decorating the Lobby

In December, we added a small showcase of micro-modding to the game. This is our term for players being able to make small additions to the game which can significantly alter gameplay, usually done from the lobby settings.

This feature needs a lot of work, but initial reactions were promising. We definitely got some discussion going!

We value this addition because it helps our iteration process too. When we're examining a topic like "how does laning feel?", it's great to be able to explore variations without deploying a new patch.

Thinking Fundamentals

The rules of "Causeway" haven't changed much over the last year. Yes, we've added content and features — these were safe changes to a base game which was already working and fun.

This approach served us well. It allowed us to focus on fixing bugs and achieving stability, while also being comfortable to introduce people to the game at any time. We knew they'd arrive to a good build.

Also, we know that in the mountain range of fun, we are not already atop the highest peak. The new mechanics we've introduced could be interacting more, the systems made more elegant... and we do love emergent surprises.

We don't want to let cool opportunities escape the net!

Changing Seasons

Since we now have infrastructure for micro-modding and tweaking game modes, we can support rich alternative modes that co-exist with the base game.

Taking advantage of this, we're adding a new game mode to the alpha called 'Weekly'.

Our plan is to spend 12 weeks testing assumptions about the game — trying risky, even wacky changes that would have previously been destabilising. Our purpose is exploration; we expect most ideas won't be for keeps. That's okay, because we're comfortable failing forward!

As well as our own collection of ideas, we're inviting suggestions from our alpha testers. At the end of the 12 weeks, we've hopefully had some fun, created a few stories, and learned a thing or two more about the game.

Until next time,
Softmints