"It's important to take care of your Peeps!"
We’re going on Strike!
Just kidding! It’s actually the Peeps going on strike! Let’s take a look, shall we?
When a high enough percentage of your Peeps are unhappy enough, they will start a strike. And just like in real life, some of your production lines will stop while the Peeps are striking.
But don’t worry - not ALL of your Peeps will strike at once, so not all of your production will stop. However, we do want to avoid strikes happening at all, and to do that, you’ll need to make sure that your Peeps are well cared for - this includes managing pollution, making sure no Peeps are homeless, and that there are enough resources, such as food, to go around!
At the beginning of a strike, you will receive a goal to do a task that relates to the root cause of the strike. This may include building more houses or cleaning up toxic areas. And if the goal is completed, the strike will end early!
Not only will Peeps waddle around holding signs, but they’ll also deliberately choose to park themselves in a spot that gets in the way of other Peeps who are still working, slowing them down!
Speaking of strikes ending early… when one begins, you’ll be given a duration of how long the strike will last. The first will be 3 shifts long, but depending on whether the previous strike's goals were met or not, the next one will be shorter or longer.
So make sure you’re meeting your Peeps demands!
We wanted to expand on the original happiness system in Before We Leave, in which unhappy Peeps would still work, but they would slow down significantly, which tended to cause further problems with happiness as production slowed and resources became scarce. Fixing it was possible, but it took ages because again, slow Peeps! So we created striking as a way to still maintain a direct response to Peep unhappiness that feels more "solvable".
We look forward to seeing how you handle Peep striking in the full release of Beyond These Stars!
If you want to keep up to date with these little Dev blogs and join the discussion, be sure to head over to our Community Discord! 🔗: https://discord.com/invite/balancingmonkeygames
