New player experience and accessibility

While we are confident with how the game plays once you understand the mechanics, we are aware the game isn’t necessarily easy to understand and it’s a big problem. Our first priority for next updates is to ensure new players aren’t lost and can enjoy the game with the least external help as possible. Many members of the community are willing to help and explain the game to newcomers, but we want clear in-game tutorials to ensure the former is not a necessity.
To smoothen the learning experience, we also want to introduce different session presets that are intended for different understanding of the game.

Given the social aspect of the game, communication is very important and can easily be a barrier in public lobbies, so we are adding tags to make finding a lobby easier : language, region and possibly more.

Another important point is accessibility. Our game design heavily relies on sounds and colors, which make the usual accessibility settings hard to introduce. We are working on solutions for a colorblind mode that blend smoothly into the game while being fair for everyone.
One very common suggestion we received is adding the nickname above the head. This sounds simple and effective, but in practice it causes serious balance issues to identify players because the size or shape of the text can affect the clarity of the information. This is also a good example of a problem that looks simple, but can take time to solve.

Character customisation

Immersion is something we want players to experience in LOCKDOWN Protocol and customizing your character to fit your personality is an important part of it !

The first version of the system will include choices between the already existing features, such as faces, skin colors and suits color. It’s hard to give an estimated date, but you might expect this to be released within the month.

The next step is to introduce more cosmetic options, but also more types such as shoulder patches, suit design, ghost skin and possibly more. While some of them will inevitably be paid content because we need to sustain the game, we want to provide a fair amount of free cosmetic options, earnable through challenges.

Regarding the Kickstarter exclusive cosmetics, they are coming as soon as we have the customisation system setup !

ACHIEVEMENTS

While the game is designed to play in short sessions like most party games, we want to introduce some longer term goals through a variety of achievements, coming with unique cosmetics as rewards.
Each achievement will award a badge you can display on your shoulder, as well as contributing to a general account level that unlock unique cosmetics such as suits, faces and more as you progress !

Achievements will range from simple things like traveling distance or winning games, to more complex stuff like killing multiple players in a same match with different weapons or throwing an item into a machine slot at a certain distance with multiple bounces.
While we want some of the achievements to be accessible to casual players, this doesn’t mean we will put aside experienced players seeking a challenge and you will need to be one of these to complete all of them !

Achievements will launch with a first small batch, but you can expect more to come, especially related to future content when it is released !

New tools and tasks

While we want the core gameplay to remain relatively simple to understand and follow for new players, we want a layer of complexity on top to ensure the game remains fun in the long term for experienced players !
If you played long enough, you probably noticed how experienced players approach a fight differently once they figure out all the mechanics and fully understand the stamina, difference between each tool/weapon and how to properly engage seemingly unfair fights to win them.

It’s perfectly possible to clutch a 1v6 situation with a screwdriver against guns if you engage with a clear plan and execute it properly.
This possibility to clutch at any point is something we want to keep the game fun and full of unexpected twists ! To further amplify this, we want to introduce a wide variety of complex and highly specified non-task related equipment to bring a lot of new possibilities and depth to how you can approach situations and solve problems, for both employees and dissidents !

The first step to this is the addition of syringes and grenades.
Syringes and grenades are new consumables, crafted from plant samples at specific stations. Each plant mix will correspond to a unique grenade/syringe with its own effect.
For example you could have a healing syringe, one that increases the stamina recharge, a stunning grenade, or one that marks players through walls for a short period.
These can be very strong but are situational, so crafting them is not always a wise way to spend your precious time !
We have a lot more planned for future updates, but we don’t want to spoil any of it yet. Some of them have been suggested so it can give a few hints, but I’m not saying more !

Regarding new tasks, we could introduce more, but we believe too many tasks can make the learning experience much harder for new players, so we want to introduce the complexity through additional items (as mentioned above) rather than additional tasks.
Despite this, we definitely want to introduce new unique activities, so you can expect these in future maps !

New maps and game modes

New maps is something that has been suggested a lot by the community and we definitely want to work on that as soon as we can. However, making a map is a lot of work and we don’t want months of work to simply result in the same experience in a slightly different environment.
Even if a well designed map can add a fun twist to the game, we believe it’s not enough and we want to make sure every new map is a refreshing experience that was worth the wait, which is why our current plan is to bring a new gamemode with every new map.

Some of you might be skeptical about such a drastic shift compared to the LOCKDOWN Protocol you played so far, but this is something that was planned from the beginning, and the entire gameplay has been designed with these in mind.
We unfortunately can’t share more at such an early stage, especially as we are focused on all of  the stuff previously mentioned for the couple next months, but we are super excited to share more of that as soon as we can !