Oddsparks: An Automation Post-Mortem - Making a Hardcore Genre Cosy for All

How do you make a game with a hardcore genre, like Automation, that targets both genre experts and complete newbies? How about giving it a cosy theme for the casual players and mixing in a new genre, like RTS, to give it a new twist for the experts?

Brenden Gibbons, Lead Game Designer, will talk about how he juggled game direction, design, and marketing considerations in this post-mortem of Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure. He’ll go over what went wrong and right with the cosy mix of Factorio and Pikmin during its year in Early Access. The lessons will not just be about mixing the Automation and RTS genres, but on how to make any hardcore genre more accessible and appealing to both potential groups of audiences instead of accidentally alienating them all.