The Three Design Pillars of Hades' Star

Last year, while pondering what I personally saw as the promise of Master of Orion, I identified three key elements of that promise:

Exploration and Progression: Exploring and expanding into interesting parts of space, growing your empire from nothing to a formidable force in the universe

Diplomacy: Interacting with other players in a highly political environment that involves friendships, rivalries, unholy alliances, betrayals

Strategy: Making meaningful strategic decisions, using (sometimes incomplete and hazy) information that the game provides

These three elements have become design pillars for Hades' Star. Every idea for a feature that could go into the game is evaluated by asking "How does this advance one or more of the pillars?". Ideas that don't cleanly relate to at least one pillar (or worse, contradict one of them) are quickly discarded. This allows us to maintain focus.

The three pillars are central to the game we're trying to make, and I'll be analyzing how each one is affecting development in upcoming posts.