Hey guys!

This past week, I’ve mostly been working on the daily structure of Mortis Invicta. More than anything, I want being stranded in the Warp to actually feel dangerous. Every new day should make things a little worse automatically.

When Greg wakes up:

• Retinue Mood goes down

• Corruption gets worse

• Water and Food supplies drop

• Daemon activity increases

So even if you do nothing, the ship is still slowly getting worse around you. I want the loop to feel more like a small survival-management apocalypse scenario—keeping the crew stable, managing supplies, controlling corruption, and surviving whatever the Warp throws at you. And yes, if Greg completely fails to keep things under control, there will eventually be a Game Over. I want you to FEEL the pressure.

You are stranded in the Warp. Surviving another day should feel like something you actually had to earn.

Retinue Manifest, Mood & Corruption

I decided to change the Retinue setup a bit from the original plan. I want each Retinue member to be good at different things—the Navigator is better with Technical Ability, the Psyker is stronger with Psychic Ability, and the Officer is better with Administrative Ability.

Those stats will matter during Crisis Management. Pick the right person for the job, and their chance of success goes up. Because of that, I also changed what I want to show on the Retinue screens. The main Manifest now focuses more on the practical side—what each person is good at and who might be useful for a job.

Then the Personnel File is more personal: Mood, Relationship, Obedience, observations, Corruption, and how they are doing overall.

I think this split feels cleaner, and it also gives me more room to expand the system later.

Right now, Mood matters most in Crisis Management. It can affect how someone responds to an assignment, or whether they refuse it entirely.

Corruption is tracked separately. A character can seem completely fine while their Corruption Level keeps getting worse, and if Warp Contamination gets too high, they can eventually become Imprisoned in the Lower Brig Cell.

Later on, I want Mood to affect a lot more—dialogue, normal interactions, romance, story behaviour, and other parts of the game too.

The Daily Loop

The basic structure now is 3 Action Points during the day and 2 Action Points at night. The idea is to keep adding more things you could do, so eventually you really have to think about your priorities instead of doing everything in one day.

For the last week, I mainly worked on:

• Crisis Management — problems can happen around the ship, and Greg has to decide who should handle them. Different characters have different skills, but skill is not the only thing that matters. Are they in a good enough Mood? The system can already generate problems, handle assignments, and resolve them
  
  
  
  The basic flow is working, but I’m still reviewing the Crisis events, balancing costs and consequences, and testing how everything behaves with different Retinue states.

• Water & Power Supply — these are now part of the ship’s survival state. Servitors in the Engine Room keep the systems running and pray to the Machine Spirit while Water and Power slowly build up in the background. Greg can track both supplies, and later I want him to be able to help the Servitors for a little extra Water or Power.
  

Nighttime: “Becoming that kind of Inquisitor”

Daytime is mostly about managing the ship. Nighttime is more focused on the Retinue.

You get 2 Night Action Points, and this is where Greg has to choose between spending time with someone, progressing a romance, or dealing with a Retinue member whose corruption has become too serious to ignore.

If someone becomes too corrupted, they can end up Imprisoned in the Lower Brig Cell, where Greg can help purify them. And because Greg is a psyker who is, let’s say, pretty easy to get worked up, his body can produce a rather unusual amount of psychically charged liquid... and, somehow, swallowing it can help lower your Corruption Level.

Pretty gross? Or pretty arousing?

If you want to know exactly what I mean by that, check the separate post. I already made the animation for the purification scene.

So the nighttime choice is basically:

Do I spend tonight teasing or romancing someone?

Or do I go downstairs and help restore a corrupted Retinue member?

Artwork This Month

Artwork-wise, this month is going to be pretty light because most of my time is going into making the game loop work first.

This update will probably feel more text-heavy and system-heavy than some previous ones. For now, the main new lewd animation is Greg healing or purifying a corrupted Retinue member in the Lower Cell, plus new ship artwork showing the Mortis Invicta gradually becoming more damaged.

I want the systems working properly first, then I can keep expanding the artwork and animation later.

What I’m Excited to Work On Next Week

There are three things I’m especially excited to work on next week.

Cooking System
A simple system for making potions and consumables that can help improve Retinue Mood.

Salvage Run
The idea is simple: tap, tap, tap, gather supplies, then use them to repair and support different parts of the ship. It is still being built, so for now I just want to make the interaction feel good and addictive.

Daemon Hunting
I do not want complicated RPG combat.I would rather make Daemon encounters something closer to whack-a-daemon: small Daemons appear around the screen and you tap as many as possible before the timer runs out.
Quick, chaotic, simple.

And hopefully... no bugs.

I’ve already been praying to the Machine Spirit every day. If I run into something I genuinely cannot fix, I’ll probably cut the buggy part and still push the build out. So far, thankfully, that has not happened yet.

Please help me pray!

A Completely Unrelated Personal Tangent

I’ve been working more than 12 hours a day lately and barely moving my ass from the chair. I think I’m starting to get some back pain, haha.

I’m taking half a day off tomorrow and trying to get around 12 hours of sleep. Also, completely unrelated to Mortis Invicta... I’ve become kind of obsessed with NeeDoh lately.

People in America are lucky because they can buy them at normal prices. Where I live, imported and reseller prices can become ridiculous. Some models can reach around $100 depending on the seller.

Despite that, I’ve been using one a lot while developing. It actually helps me stay calm and focused, so I keep it close during long work sessions. And honestly, I kind of need that with this update because I’m pretty nervous about it. This time I’m trying to make the Retinue, corruption, assignments, Crises, resource management, and the whole daily loop work together.

I really hope it feels fun once you guys get to play it.

Cheers,

Celeng