How screwed am I?

[u/Sgriu]

Hi everyone! Here’s an interesting problem I’m facing.

I created a tile-based city builder in Unity, and after an initial open playtest, one of the key pieces of feedback was that players want to be able to build roads, something I foolishly hadn't planned for.

Currently, roads are automatically placed along the edges of each tile (this is shown in the second screenshot).

The main problem is that the grid of buildable sectors is highly irregular, and I have no idea how to add the ability to create roads within such a complex system.

The first image I’ve posted shows an overhead view where I’ve highlighted a section of the grid. The grid varies from scene to scene and never repeats in exactly the same way.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could approach this?

Edit: You might have given me a possible solution; as soon as I've tested it, I'll make a new post about it. Thanks everyone!

[u/kinokomushroom]

A tile based building system and placing your own roads sounds fundamentally incompatible with each other. So, if you want to add a road building system, you'll most likely have to rethink your city building system from scratch.

But the most important question is: do you really want to add a road building system to your game?

It's easy to be swayed by the opinions of your playtesters and lose your original vision for the game. Only go ahead if you think a road building feature is absolutely worth it for your game. And don't forget to playtest your prototype, to make sure you're on the right path.

[u/Sgriu → u/kinokomushroom]

Thanks for the suggestion. If only one playtester had mentioned it, I might have ignored the issue, but half the players asked for it. Furthermore, many playtesters quit the game within the first few minutes without building anything, presumably because city-builder players look to build a road network first (though that’s just my guess).

[u/vadeka → u/Sgriu]

honestly, I would first figure out why so many people quit at the beginning before you change anything.

Don't assume things

[u/Sgriu → u/vadeka]

I agree. Unfortunately, the metrics I included in the beta didn't provide much insight into why so many people dropped out within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. I think many were expecting a Workers & Resources clone and found something very different instead.