I’ve just been reading about the new expansion for Caves of Qud: Diaspora, and I don’t mind admitting, between the two of us, that I’m quite excited about it.
Now, I wouldn’t have thought too much about the next part if I hadn’t seen some discourse online this evening, but Caves of Qud: Diaspora is actually the first piece of post-launch DLC that is launching into Early Access on Steam.
Given the fact that the base game was one of the prime examples of EA done right, it absolutely makes sense for the developer to do this. It’s also interesting to me that nobody has done DLC this way before.
Based on the scale of the expansion, it sounds like Freehold Games, with able support from Kitfox Games, has been hard at work on what sounds like an incredibly complex expansion that’s going to throw a proverbial cat amongst the proc-gen pigeons of Qud.
“Caves of Qud is an extremely complicated game with many interlocking systems & features and lots of unpredictable, emergent gameplay,” the devs explained in a Q&A. “Diaspora will add a whole new layer to that. Just like with the base game, our approach to building something this complex is to have the community stress test it the whole way.”
The name, Diaspora, is most fitting. This expansion is all about migration and population displacement, forced upon communities by war and climate change. Once again, the developer-writers of Qud are able to say so much about our world, but through the lens of their fantastical roguelike.
On top of existing starting builds, Diaspora will include options for you to choose to be either a mutated animal or a plant. We’re given a few examples, including dogs, cats, frogs, and chameleons. In terms of plants, you can even be a vine or a tree.
Beyond that, there are more anthropomorphic factions on the way, including Foxen and Snailfolk, although not everything will be in place at launch, and we can expect a regular cadence of content updates as the expansion continues to grow over time.
There are more details on all the new factions and species coming to the game, but you can read about them for yourself when you head over to Steam to wishlist the expansion.
There’s a lot to unpack in there, including some tidbits about the new campaign that’ll be included when Caves of Qud: Diaspora hits Early Access on PC (Lin, Mac, Win) on December 9, when it’ll cost $14.99 or thereabouts!
