Dispatches · Devlog
Devlog #1: The ship is the main character
Why we threw out the to-do list, made every breakdown hit the whole ship, and doubled the size of the liner.
MAKH Play Line · Radio dispatch
Our first prototype of Dear Millionaires was a list of chores. A millionaire wants tea, you bring tea, you get a tip. It worked, and it got boring in about four minutes. Fetch quests are linear. Everyone does their own thing and nobody talks.
So we flipped it. The ship is the main character, and it is always breaking.
Breakdowns over errands
Orders from millionaires are still there, but now they are the background and the money. The main event is the ship falling apart, and every breakdown follows the same five rules:
- Everyone feels it, wherever they are. The deck shakes, the lights die, soot creeps in, the band loses tempo.
- You fix it with your hands, on the spot. Coal, buckets, fuses, planks, a crowbar. Sometimes two people. Sometimes freezing water.
- It has a timer and it escalates. Ignore it and it gets worse.
- It pays whoever fixes it, and it hurts everyone if the ship takes damage.
- It opens the door to chaos. In a blackout nobody sees who is robbing the millionaire. In a fire everyone is busy, which is the perfect moment to put on someone else’s uniform.
Seven ways to ruin a voyage
A frozen propeller, running out of coal, fire, a leak, a blackout, a clogged funnel, and sirens that drag everyone on deck to one side before a wave hits. Plus a burst steam pipe that blocks the shortest corridor. The full list, with fixes, is on the game page.
The liner got twice as big
With seven breakdowns, four decks got crowded fast. The new liner is 124 m long, 22 m wide and has five decks, from the boat deck down to the boilers. One rule: every room has a job. No empty rows of cabins, no decorative halls. Each room is a breakdown, a station, passengers, loot or a route.
Something we cut
Storms used to rock the camera. Our first playtesters got seasick in about ninety seconds. The deck still moves and loose objects still slide, but the camera now stays level. Nobody asked for a motion-sickness simulator.
Next up: proximity voice chat. Without it, half the jokes in this game do not land.
— End of dispatch —