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What Consequences of Failure is

An open-world superhero game where the city keeps score. The short version, mostly in pictures.

the gamedesign

A caped hero in red and cobalt stands on a rooftop ledge above a blocky city grid while two jets and an attack helicopter fly past.
A real frame from the game.

Consequences of Failure is an open-world superhero game. You get a whole city, and it keeps score.

A city that is busy without you

Every city has its jobs, its police and an army down the road. Most people in it have no powers, and you don't need them to matter. In the game

A cloaked hero faces a two-legged walker mech with missile pods in a city street. A tank sits to the left and an attack helicopter hovers overhead.
A hero, a walker mech, a tank and a helicopter on one street. A real frame from the game.

Strength you can measure

Every powered person sits somewhere on one ladder, the Lefevre Threat Level Scale, from Civilian at 1 to Cosmic at 10. It decides what a full blast does to a house: a scratch at the bottom, nothing left standing at the top. How strong is strong? walks through all ten ranks. In the game

Hits leave marks

When you get shot, your armor should tell you how it is holding up without burying the screen in numbers. Here is the design we are building for that: one small gauge over each body, sparks for rounds the armor stopped, a hole for the round that got through. Coming

Design preview Coming, not in the game yet

Armor eating the damage

A man in a Kevlar vest is hit by five pistol rounds, then one rifle round The pistol rounds spark off the vest and leave dents. The gauge above his head fills mostly gray steel, with a running total of 9 of 35 through. Then one rifle round goes through, leaves a hole, the gauge is mostly bullet color, and a BREACH card shows 14. 9MM PISTOL 7.62 RIFLE 2 4 5 7 9 VEST 9 of 35 through VEST 14 of 16 through BREACH 14
  1. 1Steady fire. Five 9mm pistol rounds hit a Kevlar vest. Each one sparks and leaves a dent. The gauge fills mostly steel: the vest stopped three quarters. One running total, no number per shot.
  2. 2First breach. One rifle round goes through the same vest. It leaves a hole, the gauge is mostly color, and one number shows: 14.

Stopped by the armorGot through, in the bullet's color

Design preview, coming. The armor numbers are the game's own: this vest lets 1.75 of a 9mm round's 7 damage through, and 14.4 of a rifle round's 16. What is new, and not in the game yet, is the gauge and the sparks and dents that show what the vest stopped.

The numbers in it are already the game's: a soft Kevlar vest lets a quarter of a pistol round through and almost all of a rifle round. The gauge and the marks are new and not in the game yet.

Guns are one gun plus parts

A gun in the game is the bare gun plus the parts you snap on: a silencer, an auto switch, a grip you printed yourself. Each part changes real numbers, and none of them changes the bullet. Beta members can read the full breakdown. Beta members

What comes next

We will post here as things land: short clips, real frames, and plain notes on what is in the game and what is still coming. Anything marked Coming is a design, not a promise of a date.

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