00:00Rattlers are out in force today.
00:02Hello and welcome to This Dev Diary for Samson, a Tindleson story.
00:07Today we thought we'd take you through some of the mission types you can play in the game,
00:11a bit about the core loop.
00:13I'm Tommy Riedling, I'm one of the designers here at Liquid Swords.
00:17And I'm Donald Young, I'm a mission designer.
00:20So Tindleson is an old US city,
00:24and Tindleson is a city full of corruption and crime.
00:28It's like a city on the brink in a lot of ways.
00:31There's a new drug called White Whisper that's been sweeping through the city.
00:37You'll meet people who have been affected by it,
00:40you'll get into fights with dealers who are pushing it,
00:42and then that also ties into the main narrative.
00:48Tindleson can be a very harsh and unfair city,
00:51and this is where Samson lives and works as an enforcer in the Cobb Street gang.
00:58So the game takes place in South End,
01:01which is kind of the roughest part of the rough city of Tindleson.
01:05And South End is where Samson grew up,
01:08but he's been away for the past few years on the mainland,
01:12getting into trouble and accruing a huge amount of debt that he now has to repay.
01:21In Samson, there are basically three main modes of play.
01:25Missions, which are split up into narrative chapters and jobs,
01:30and then open exploration, whether that's searching for collectibles
01:35or trying to find optional story content.
01:39I'm really sorry to bother you, but could you spare a minute?
01:42Or just taking in the view.
01:46Yeah, the chapters tell a linear story.
01:49Shortly after Samson returns to Tindleson,
01:52we have kind of an inciting incident that kicks off the adventure.
01:56So the chapters are meant to pull the player kind of like narratively through
02:01while they're trying to deal with the debt cycle.
02:04So jobs are your primary way of making cash in the game.
02:08And back in the day, Samson used to do that for himself to earn money
02:12and also for the Cobb Street Gang.
02:14But nowadays that he's in debt to the wrong people,
02:17he kind of needs to do that every day to chip away at his debt
02:21and keep the wolves at bay.
02:22God damn, that feels good.
02:25There's a wide variety of jobs in Samson.
02:28It could be anything from picking up criminals at the scene of a crime,
02:31losing the heat and dropping them off at a safe location.
02:35Or maybe someone needs the help of procuring new items.
02:40Or it could be maybe a group of young wannabes
02:43are trying to start a gang in Southend without your say-so.
02:46Maybe you need to go there and tell them that's not a very wise idea.
02:51And a large amount of these jobs are repeatable.
02:55For example, every now and then in Southend,
02:59some freshly harvested organs need delivery to an underground clinic.
03:04And that can happen every now and then.
03:06Other jobs are more uniquely tailored and are more one-offs,
03:10such as maybe you're after a unique named individual
03:14and need to take them out.
03:17Jobs are your primary way for earning money in the game.
03:21And then the chapters are the story delivery method.
03:26Every day, the player can choose which one they want to do
03:29and mix and match to their choice
03:31or to whatever pressures are on them at the time.
03:34One is not more important than the other.
03:36We want the chapters and jobs.
03:38They run in parallel.
03:40And the player has to decide which is more important at any given time.
03:44I'll have this debt paid off soon, sis.
03:46I think it's interesting in the game with this push and pull between narrative chapters and jobs.
03:51Also the fact that you cannot do everything in a single day,
03:54even Samson has his limitations.
03:56On the one hand, I'm really eager to find out what happens after the last cliffhanger potentially in the narrative
04:02chapters.
04:03On the other hand, maybe my car is broken down.
04:06I was planning to try and win a street trial later to earn a bunch of cash.
04:11So I need to balance those things and then also see what does a good day look for me today.
04:20Once I described the game as a violent lesson in risk management,
04:24and I think that's pretty accurate.
04:26We don't want to be too punishing two players for failing a mission or a job here and there.
04:31But having said that, you wake up every day and you hopefully feel this healthy dose of stress
04:36of like, oh shit, I had to make a lot of cash today so I can chip away at this
04:41debt.
04:42And at the same time, the better you do at any given day, the more money you're walking around with
04:46like actual cash in Southend and that's dangerous.
04:51If you get randomly ambushed in an alley on your way home or whatever,
04:55the most probable thing that will happen if you get knocked out is that you lose that money.
05:00There's always like that feeling of, I'm having a pretty good day, is that good enough?
05:06Should I go home and bank that progress so they are actually safe?
05:10Yeah, do I want to like take the risk and try to go out and earn just like a little
05:14bit more money,
05:15chip off a little bit more of the debt?
05:17If you ignore your debt for too long, maybe you get a friendly visit from some debt collectors
05:23who are there to remind you that you should pay more attention to the debt.
05:30Thank you for joining us today to look at the content and gameplay loop of Sanson A Dental's Story.
05:36Feel free to join us on our Discord or follow us on social media and let us know what you
05:42want to hear more about next.
05:49We'll see you next time.
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