Hi folks,

Today I wanted to share about two of the playable characters in Causeway, because I think they're a neat example of what we explore in this game.

We call them Lute & Lyre. They are a character duo — they must be chosen together by two players.

How this came together

One of the most innovative lane-pushing characters of the past decade is surely Cho'gall, the loveable two-headed ogre from Heroes of the Storm. The game has fantastic designs, and this was one of the cleverest.

I knew we'd explore something similar in Causeway, with our own twist. But I wasn't sure what it would be.

Separately, I'd been musing on multi-unit characters like Meepo (Dota 2) and Gemini (HoN). These characters interest me most when they challenge and reward players for distributing attention across the map.

However, during team-fights, the player's cognitive load would often decrease as all their attention and units collapse on a key target. No doubt there is a lot of skill handling the hotkeys and multiple units to do that, but it is a different skill to "distributing attention".

I wondered — what happens if a player couldn't bring their units together? That thought planted a seed of inspiration...

Enter Lute. Enter Lyre.

They are two "identical" characters, in separate bodies controlled by one player each. And they take this Pledge:

Thinking of You

You can never, ever be close to your counterpart. If you are within 18 radius, you are both pushed apart evenly (unless one of you is near the edge of the map).

Whenever you receive a Shield or swap weapons, you are Cleansed.

This is a character duo which challenges you to attend to yourself and your counterpart, while rarely if ever being on the same screen.

I have heard them described as "the opposite of Cho'gall". I suppose that's true!

The dynamic is definitely a curveball, and players often have to stumble around for a while figuring out how to... heal at the fountain? Right, can't do that at the same time. And team-fights are always 4v5 unless... well, you get the picture.

In response, we've tried to keep the cognitive load of the kits themselves simple. For example:

Trading Tunes

Swap weapons with your counterpart.

• With the Spear, your attacks are melee.
• With the Daggers, your attacks are ranged.

That's the one difference between Lute and Lyre; at any time one is melee and the other is ranged. You can both initiate a swap, though it has a long cooldown.

Again, there's a long history of form-swapping characters to learn from, going right back to Troll Warlord (DotA). Finding the fun is about marrying the right ideas — we're still figuring out the right ones for Lute & Lyre.

I can share that Faris (Dawngate) inspired some nice unlockable upgrades, including:

• Your Melee attacks deal (+8% of target's missing life) damage
• Your Ranged attacks deal (+2% of target's current life) damage

Of course, you may want to coordinate choices with your counterpart!

Autumn Plans

We have some more play-tests planned before the end of the year.

While we really should advertise this better — the best way to get involved with us is through a community, as it makes coordinating games much easier. Reach out on discord if this sounds like you!

Stay tuned,
Softmints

Recently, we've been revisiting some of the macro concepts in Causeway.

As part of the process, it's healthy to learn from expert players and how they engage with different games.

One of the recent videos I enjoyed is a wave management guide, in which Coach Rogue gives a great breakdown:

The video shares many pushing optimisations, with one in particular about how to time pushes to a cannon troop (which appears every third wave).

For terminology, a "6-wave" has the usual 6 troops, and a "7-wave" has the additional cannon.

While this cannon troop adds depth — it's not something every player will know how to optimise around.

• It relies on watching a video (or deep introspection)
• It relies on watching the game clock (as cannons change timings later in a match)
• Readability is low, because the 6-wave and 7-wave look very similar.
• Readability is unreliable; some minions might be dead.

Tick, Tock...

Is there room to improve on this?

Looking back to the mods of Warcraft III, we found some inspiration. Two games spring to mind:

Advent of the Zenith is one of the most atmospheric lane-pushing games; and does a lot to elevate the sensation of two "armies" at war. As part of that, its troop waves spawn in a "tick, tock" pattern: alternating a 5-wave and a 7-wave.

This creates lanes which have a less linear pacing, and feel more dynamic — like a real battlefield.

Age of Myths is another game with a lot of style and flair. Among its flavourful touches — its three lanes use different models for troops. You know you're on bottom lane because it's orcs versus nagas, whereas top lane might be humans versus undead.

The troops have identical stat blocks, it really is just for flavour. (These days, that might be seen as more burdensome than tasteful by players... I guess that's the world we're living in!)

But Back to Pushing

Combining these ideas, here's what we're experimenting with in Causeway:

• The troop waves alternate between a 5-wave and a 3-wave.
• The 3-wave troops use different models, to maximise readability.
• The 3-wave troops use the same stat block, so player interactions with troops stay consistent.

Players seem to like the result so far. It's easier to understand when to push, retreat, or roam. And like Advent of the Zenith, the lanes have a more dynamic feel!

This is one of many small details we hope will contribute to a richer "game feel". As we often say: Causeway stands on shoulders of giants.

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

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

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. From past experience, we learned (as many developers do) that preparation pays off!

To prepare for this visit, we tweaked the build with more forgiving numbers: a shorter revive timer, more health regen, etc. We also limited the character select screen to avoid excess reading or people picking the less conventional characters.

That worked out well. 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 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

Here's how that looks in the client:

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.

We'll have more to share on this 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).

In this game, players can 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