Why The Banished Vault is meant to be played with a manual
When was the last time you shipped a game with a must-read manual? If the answer is "I don't remember" or "never," then, like many developers, you live in a world where most information on how to play a game is delivered within the game.
But if you're a developer like Nic Tringali and the team at Lunar Division, a must-read manual might be a tool to bring a game like The Banished Vault to life.
The Banished Vault (published by Mike Bithell-led Bithell Games) is a sci-fi strategy game about future space cultists fleeing a growing horror in the stars. It's not dissimilar to games like FTL or Crying Suns, where players advance through different procedurally-generated solar systems in a limited amount of time.
But that's where the similarities end. The Banished Vault has little in the way of combat. It places a greater emphasis on resource management and borrows mechanics from the "worker placement" genre of board games.
Tringali told Game Developer they regularly turn to the world of tabletop games for inspiration as a game designer. As the game that would become The Banished Vault began to take shape in his mind, they began to dream of other ways to make the most of the medium—and it was here that the idea of shipping the game with a manual began to take shape.
When I first heard that Tringali planned to ship The Banished Vault with a manual, I assumed it was going to be a diegetic experience that felt like an object from the world of the game. With the weird gothic spaceships and spooky vibes, cracking open a forbidden tome that also had gameplay knowledge felt right.
When Bithell Games shipped over a copy of the manual (which is also accessible in-game, available for print-and-play, and purchasable if you want a nice printed
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