Devlog · Episode 13
The economy: coins, forge and bugs
How money moves, where you buy and sell and which mistakes showed up when I touched it.
Game economy is the scariest part. One small mistake and everybody gets rich, or nobody can buy anything. And players feel it right away, even if they can't explain it.
Where the money comes from and where it goes
My rule is simple: every coin that comes in needs a place to go out. If money only piles up, it loses value. If it vanishes too fast, the player gives up. The balance sits in the middle, and I adjust it little by little.
The game has more than one kind of coin, trade counters in the cities, bags and a forge where gear transforms. Every piece talks to the others. If I change a price here, the effect shows up further down the road.
Before, when selling, the amount was a guess. Now you choose how much you want to trade and the total appears on screen, with no surprise at the end.
The forge
What I care most about in the forge is clarity. Before you confirm, you know what you will spend and what you may gain. Nobody should lose a piece for not understanding the screen.
The forge is where gear stops being just a number. You bring the piece, choose the refinement and see the result. It is a coin sink that gives you a reason to save money and a reason to spend it.
The bugs that taught me
The bugs were instructive. A trade that happened without coins. A statement that showed the wrong thing. A price that changed at the moment of the click. Each was small, but money is trust: if the player doubts the number, they doubt the whole game.
The bag
The Bag changed too. It shows what you carry in a clean way, so you can decide fast what to sell, what to refine and what to keep.
I worked slowly, testing every step with care. Touching money takes patience, and I would rather make mistakes during testing than later.