Development update #24

First of all, let me convey a great big thanks from the whole team to all of you amazing people who read this blog. When we announced that the game would be delayed until next year I was worried about the response. The wonderful reactions, comments, and positive vibes we got in return were just awesome. Having all of you along for the ride is something every development studio could only wish for. We hope that you’ll be pleasantly surprised when we finally ship the game and you can try it out for yourselves!

David has been working on the updated purchase menu. Players can now upgrade those lean mean troops. How convenient!

Lately, I have been focusing on the recruitment of more pixel artists. We are currently re-shaping our art production pipeline and one step is to shift more production to outside of the studio and to make sure we have a stronger art direction and leadership in house. There are a lot of reasons for this, but basically we need to be able to produce more assets faster. Since the pixel graphics market isn’t exactly booming locally in Gothenburg we need to look outside of our backyard to find good people. Fortunately, we have some very good pixel artists getting ready to sign up for the project.

The Oathbound swore to serve in life and death, if needed. Turns out it was needed.

Speaking of graphics, Anders has redesigned some of the Loth sprites and also fixed troop animations in-game. Troops have been a general focus for a large part of the team, across many disciplines. Marcus has been adding upgrades to units along with testing the system to make sure it works. Christian has worked on the troop drafting and upgrades, along with loading screens and path explorations.

Andi is trying out a new look and feel for our spell icons. Overall I think we are on the right path, would you agree?

Carl has written away on the campaigns, focusing most of his time on the Arleon campaign. He has also given some love to the event system, writing new random events and happenings for our skirmish mode. At the same time, Patrik has been fiddling around with the AI, trying to make it reasonably hard to play against. It certainly hasn’t become self-aware yet, but it is improving each week!

Christian likes to create smooth and clean Scandinavian styled UI’s, but with a hint of meaty fantasy smeared on top. I think he is truly on to something. This is a mockup of our online multiplayer loading screen.

The most exciting thing to happen in these last weeks is that we have started a very limited pre-Alpha testing phase. A few people are trying out the game to help us squish bugs, make sure the UI works as intended and that the game is… fun? So far, we have had very positive feedback from all testers. Niklas has been fixing stability bugs and sometimes clarifying what's happening in the background for the players of the pre-alpha. One example is that people (understandably) didn't understand that the game was quick battling in the background. Because we didn't give a single clue that it did - so it just seemed like the game froze for 1-5 seconds. To solve that Niklas added a large popup with the sign "Waiting for Battle...". That made it clearer!

We have also been investing in more development tools from the Unity Asset Store. Taking time to improve and find new tools can speed up development considerably. I wouldn’t really know, but so the developers tell me. I’m inclined to trust them on this matter.

Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.

About the release date

A little more than one year has passed since we announced the game at E3 2019. The response has been amazing and we couldn’t be happier with the reception of the game (despite not really showing much content yet!). We have had over 15 000 people sign up for the Alpha testing, there are over 8000 followers on Twitter, and more than 3000 people chatting with us on Discord. With such a following and expectations comes a huge responsibility. We are aiming to create a game that both pay homage to classic titles but also sets a new standard in what we call the adventure strategy genre. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that we’ll not be able to meet our own ambitious targets during 2020.

This means that Songs of Conquest will not be released in “late 2020” as previously announced, but sometime during 2021.

We know this is not what you would have wished for. It’s not what we had wished for. But it’s the reality of things. We simply cannot deliver the game we want you to experience before the end of this year.

With your continued support, I’m sure we can continue to take the game to new heights. All of your comments, ideas, fan art, and positive vibes are really cheering the team on. We have gotten some great input from fans and many of the things you have suggested to us have already gone directly into the game. Hopefully, you’ll still want to stay along for the ride, even if it turns out to be a longer haul than expected.

Some of you are also asking about when the Alpha will start. While I don’t have a definitive answer I will say that we will soon start a very small pre-alpha test to iron out most of the kinks. When that is over, we will start broadening the testing and eventually reach the alpha testing phase. We hope it is not far off, but we aren’t setting any dates for it just yet.

Sincerely and respectfully,

The Lavapotion team

Development update #23

The team is back in action! After the slow summer days and vacation it feels great to be working on the game once again. 

I’ve recently focused a lot on various administrative tasks (you know, the stuff that nobody wants to do but really needs to be done every now and then). But I’ve also planned our coming graphics production pipeline along with Anders. He is now currently hard at work finalizing the full troop lineup for Barony of Loth. And oh, in case you missed it: We are looking for a senior environment pixel artist who can join us full time and help us flesh out the world even more. Please send us an email or shoot us a DM on Twitter if you want to apply!

The militia are the most common of Arleon unit types. Simple farmers armed with crossbows. Only effective in large numbers, so bring a lot of them to the battlefield.

Our freelance artists have been producing heaps of material during the summer. We now have the majority of all faction buildings ready for implementation. Concept art wise we are also in a good spot, where almost all of the pickups and buildings have been visualized. The sound design is also coming along nicely and our audio artist (and I use the word “artist” in it’s true sense!) is grinding, creaking and ka-powing his way forward. Just take a look at the video below :)

Konstantin, our sound artist is currently searching for the sound of the essence. May the force be with him! (Mind the volume!)

Patrik is making the AI more capable of building interesting and useful towns and settlements. Troop recruitment is another area he’s been looking at for the AI, in order to ensure that the AI understands the essence system and how to build a capable army. Being able to fight against the AI is a huge leap forward in terms of playability.

Niklas has gotten all the battle spells to work as they should. We now have 35 spells in total - and lately Niklas has been working on spells that summon objects (barriers, poison clouds, mines). He is currently revising the development plan for the coming months. Something he does every now and then so we can make sure we are progressing and prioritizing as intended.

Felix is continuing to explore and visualize the world of Songs of Conquest. Pictured above you’ll see a variety of new buildings.

David's focus has mostly revolved around tooltips for the Adventure HUD and also completing the research features. The spellbook has received a handy quickbar which is shown as an overlay in battle. Speaking of battle, Carl has designed more battle maps to create more variety and surprise our players a bit. He has also written more copy for the campaigns along with our excellent freelance writer Kim.

David is making sure that research not only works, but also that the user can see that it works. Makes total sense to me.

Finally, we will now try to get back on the one blogpost per two week schedule again. If you want to read about something specific in the future, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Stay safe!

Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.

Short story - Rise of Cheekham

“Move! Move!” Cheekham called to his year-mates ahead of him and leapt once more. His strong legs clenched and he sprang again, and again while the crack of musket fire flared through the dense swamp. 

Beside him, Bulbitte tumbled, his webbed foot snagged on a fallen branch, while Terc leapt clear of both the branch and her comrade.

Hoarm cried out, a spray of red foam trailing as her crumpled body dropped and twitched. 

There was no stopping to help. Cheekham knew their orders, keep going, they must raise the alarm. Life came from the Marsh and life returned to the Marsh. That was the way of things.

“Raiders! Raiders!”  he cried. 

He hoped the north guard sentries heard him. He hoped he’d sounded the warning in time. Humans had invaded the Marsh and none of the Folk were safe.

The trees thinned suddenly, and a muddy stream was before them. He didn’t hesitate but dove in and dove deep. He felt the others hit the water behind him. How many? He didn’t stop to count but powered his legs propelling through the murky depths just like he’d practiced. The humans couldn’t follow them here. 

But there were other dangers in the water. On the land. In the sky. The Marsh had always been an unforgiving home.

He tried not to think about it. He tried to remember why he’d volunteered as a scout for Rasc’s Forces of Rana with a dozen of his year-mates. If he made it out of this alive, he would go back to his quiet corner of the marsh. He was no soldier. It was foolish to think they could stand up to the humans.

“Life came from the Marsh and life returned to the Marsh. That was the way of things.”

Many hours later, shaken and exhausted Cheekham returned to his hut and breathed the sigh of safety. The peace of the Marsh eased the fear from his lungs. He removed the leather chest plate and tossed it in the corner. A chest plate hadn’t saved Hoarm’s life. 

Outside, he let his feet sink into the cool mud on the bank of the stream, grateful once more that he could enjoy this simple pleasure.  He tended his lilies, harvested the fly ponds and settled to mending his fishnets, letting these simple tasks shed the anger from his body. He tried not to think of his fallen comrade, his year-mate, Hoarm and hoped that Bulbitte and Terc made it home alive. 

The sun drifted down lighting the floating white seed heads that escaped from the reeds. A sleepy breeze stirred the tall grasses, whispering comfort, while the stream lapped against the shore, easy as a heartbeat. He was never more grateful to be home. 

Soon, the small creatures started their chirps, buzzing and chitters as a prelude to the Marsh beginning her night time song.  

Cheekham put away his nets and lit the swamp glow lamp by his door. He heard the sweet chirps of the Folk downstream at Black Gum Flats, the deep drawl out of Red Willow Grove and waited for the double-croak of his folk, the Great Leap of Sweet Grass Flats. 

“Reep! Reep!” he called but there was no answering call. 

“Reep! Reep!” he called again. 

Nothing. 

Cheekham shivered. Where had everyone gone? 

He left his hut intending to look for his friends, his year-mates, but then he heard the Marsh Thrush trill. It was the rallying signal for Rasc’s followers to gather. “Running after Rasc will get me killed,” he said to the lilies. 

But maybe he would find his folk, the Great Leap, at the rally? Maybe his year-mates would be there?

Cheekham poled his small raft along twisting waterways, deeper into the Marsh, lit by the swamp glow lamp, hanging from a mast at the centre of his raft. Soon he saw other rafts going in the same direction as him. The weaving courses straightened and passed between two moss-covered stone structures, relics of the past, Rana past, or so it was whispered among the folk. Cheekham could not believe his ancestors had crafted such monuments. Now folk lived in reed huts. More likely it was a story told to bolster Rana courage and do what Rasc wanted them to do. Cheekham was careful to keep his own counsel on such thoughts. 

More of the relics appeared around him and the streams glowed, lit by the tiny phosphorescent creatures that lived in these waters. He remembered eating one as a dare when he was little more than a tadpole. It tasted terrible, and he’d been sick all the next day. 

He tied off his raft with a dozen others and joined the convergence, giving a tentative, “Reep. Reep” and hoping to hear an answer from one of his own. There was nothing. 

He climbed the worn stone steps that lead to the top of the ancient amphitheatre where they usually met to listen to Rasc rouse the folk to put off their oppressor and claim back the marsh from the humans. Today was different. A crew of massive toads, Rasc’s Storm Guard, decked in scaled chest plates and carrying long tridents were ushering the folk through the amphitheatre to the hatching ponds beyond. 

He could hear the rising hum of conversation and exclamation. This didn’t sound like the usual response to Rasc’s speeches. It was deeper, slower, a collective moan. 

Cheekham pushed past the Rana who’d stopped on the path until he could see what had made them halt. Rasc towered above the ponds a stony expression on his face. Around the pond were the bloody remains of a score of warriors, a ravager and two shamans. 

What was worse, was inside the ponds. A bubbling red liquid covered the water and had destroyed every egg. 

Every egg. 

Every. 

Egg.

His body trembled. There was a strange sensation inside him; every bone and muscle vibrated as if he were coming apart. The horror of what he saw in front of him spilled out in what started as his voice but became something else. Not a cry, not a scream, but a great roar of rage. Pain filled him, as he absorbed fire from those around him. He threw his head back, raised his arms to the sky and a great blast of lightning flew from his webbed hands. 

Cheekham, collapsed on the stones by the pond, his heart pounding, chest heaving. He tried to push himself up and saw the change in his skin. Gone was the glossy smooth green that blended into the marsh lushness, a natural camouflage, now replaced by a hard scaly charcoal. 

Others backed away from him murmuring their distress. What had happened to him?

A hand fell on his shoulder. Cheekham looked up at Rasc and knew that his life was changed. 

“You see what the humans will do, brother, if left unchecked. This year will have no year-mates. There is a gap in our people like the gap in our hearts.”

Whatever doubts, Cheekham harboured for the cause and his part in it evaporated at that moment. There were some actions that could not be ignored. This time, the humans had gone too far. 

Cheekham felt Rasc’s grip and rose, standing taller than the others around him. 

“The marsh has chosen you, Cheekham Lightning-Bringer, to defend her.” 

This story was written by our writer Kim Tough. Let us know if you like and leave a comment below!

Developer spotlight - David Hamilton

It’s time for our second part in the developer spotlight interviews. This time around we talk to David Hamilton.His title on the contract says programmer, but since we’re a small studio you get to work with many different disciplines. David works a lot with UI and UX as well. He also reminds everyone at the office about new craft beer releases at the swedish alcohol monopoly Systembolaget, at least I think that’s part of his job (he takes beer very seriously!).

Tell us a little bit about you. How come you work with games?
Gamer since forever. My father was very interested in computers so we always were up to date with current hardware in the late 80s and early 90s so I played a lot of PC and we had an Amiga as well. I have never owned a Nintendo console though.

At the time when I started my studies at the university there were not many game studios here in Gothenburg so ended up studying software engineering followed by working with IT in some form at large companies but I always kept the idea of working in the gaming industry. I started learning Flash on my spare time and eventually moved to Unity and built some small game prototypes. Eventually more and more studios popped up in Gothenburg, I applied, got a job and haven’t looked back since.

Dragging and dropping spells into the allmighty Quickbar™, the handy combat companion of every successful Wielder. David obsesses about stuff like this and that is why we love having him on the team!

Tell us about a day of work at Lavapotion
I usually walk to the office. Read up on slack messages. Get coffee. Join the daily pow wow with the coders. Often my days are split up between programming and discussing UI solutions and assets with our UI designer Christian. During lunch some of us usually go to the gym across the street.

Splitting troop stacks wisely is important if you want to optimize the amount of essence you bring into battle. David is making sure that stuff like this works as smoothly as possible.

Do you have any favorite parts of the game that you are particularly proud of?
Effects and UX are key areas I find very interesting and at the development stage we are in right now there is not a lot of that. But I think me and Patrik did an awesome job on the Breath of the Phoenix spell effect. (Magnus note: This spell is a part of the game that hasn’t been shown publicly yet, unfortunately, but I promise we will show it sooner or later!)

What games are you inspired by when working on SoC?
There are many titles that inspire me in different ways. Ori and the will of the wisps and Red Dead Redemption 2 are two recent games that really inspired me by their atmosphere. For technology and effects I really like games such as Dead Cells, Diablo and Doom. Then there are also a lot of games that inspire the UX in SoC such as Total War, Warcraft, Frostpunk, Dota2 and many more.

Part of Davids UX work is to make sure we can tell a compelling story. Here’s an example of how we can stop the gameplay to show story highlights, like certain objects and text.

We get a lot of feedback from fans across Twitter, Discord and this Blog, has the comments and suggestions affected your work in any way?
Yes! There are many good suggestions coming in. The last one I can remember was about hotkeys for transferring troops. Also there are a lot of kind words coming in which is really inspiring.

Thank you David for taking the time :)

Developer spotlight - Christian Knutsson

Christian 2.png

Hello and welcome to our series of developer interviews. First of all goes Christian, who works as a freelancer with our UX and UI.

Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you end up working with games?
Games have always been an important part of my life and I have always loved to create things. But somehow I didn’t see games as a career and ended up working in advertising and graphic design – keeping game making as an inspiring hobby. Fast forward 16 years. I spent a lot of time making things for companies that will fit their brand and create the right kind of experience for their customers. Meanwhile, nights and weekends were spent making video games, flash games, apps, tabletop roleplaying games and board games. In 2019 I decided I wanted to work full time with games – as a specialist for others as well as developing my own. 

Can you tell us about some of the earlier games you have worked on?
I would say that one of my favorite game projects going back is a tabletop roleplaying game that I co-created, art directed and published. The game is called Operation: Fallen Reich and is a game about occult mysteries set in the shadows of World War II – basically X-files with Wooster and Jeeves (www.fallen.se). But when I’m not helping out on Songs of Conquest I am also working on my own video game called CULT Patrol -- check that out here:  www.cultpatrol.com

Cursors. Sometime clean and simple, sometimes textured and chunky. It varies depending on what part of the game you are looking at.

What’s a typical day of work at Lavapotion like?
I spend all my days in Photoshop and Slack. Talk with David about UX and UI stuff. Share some progress with the team. Get feedback. Listen. Polish. Export. Evaluate in game. Update. Drink coffee and water and usually take a short run over lunch. 

Do you have any favourite designs that you are particularly proud of?
Stone and typography. I love stone textures in games and it has been hard working on the stone textures of the UI in this game since we have such an expressive and beautiful pixel art style in the game. So I’m not saying that it makes me proud, but it makes me happy. The other thing is typography, I’m a systemic visual designer at heart and a big part of my preferred tool set is typography. I’m proud of our ambition when it comes to typography in this game but there’s more work to be done.  

Oh, that lovely stone work. So many iterations, so many discussions. So much stone. Also, did I accidentally show a tiny part of the battle view? Why, yes I did.

What is your current focus right now?
The thing that keeps me busy right now is how we best can get the feel for each faction in the UI and still have a common UI for the game. If you are playing a Rana Wielder I want the UI to help you feel in command of that specific faction and culture. 

Are there any other games out there that you are inspired by when working on SoC?
I love fantasy as a genre. But I’m also a minimalist graphic designer. These things do not always go together. When working on Songs of Conquest I really wanted to create a modern game, a modern fantasy game. I have looked at many games as a reference for this project but Diablo 3, Age of Wonder 3, Armello and Divinity Original Sin 2 are some of the most visited games. 

The banners of our faction represent an area where the UI work almost turns into pure 2D illustration.

A lot of people read our blogposts, comment on Twitter and discuss the game on Discord. Has our communications with the fanbase affected your work in any way?
Through my experience working with branding and visual design I’m very used to working in a collaborative process. Be that with my colleagues or with a client. I usually have a clear vision very early on of where I want to go. But I also know that everything can be better and I don’t have all the answers myself. I like to listen to everyone, it gives me cognitive fuel. 

Finally, is there something you’d like to add?
The most important thing in life is to be kind and generous. Take care.

Development update #22

Another two weeks have passed and I’m happy to be back with another development report for your perusal. The big feature freeze is coming up quite soon, though we have had to push it just a bit forward. In games development, things always tend to be slightly more complicated than you anticipate. However, I’m really looking forward to start focusing on playtesting, tweaking features, and enhancing the visual experience.

While not the strongest of warriors, her songs can inspire your troops to mighty deeds. The minstrel can play an important in your army composition, the choice is yours.

Another pretty big thing that has happened is that we are changing the Doneria faction name to Barya. A lot of people were reading the name as something related to Döner kebab. We didn’t want to risk people losing their in-game immersion due to fast food connotations. So, with the game still in development, we felt it was easier to change the name sooner rather than later. Over the coming weeks, we will update to the new name on all public places (mostly Discord I guess) but also within the game. It's actually not just only the name that has gotten a facelift, we're reworking the whole faction quite a bit. They were originally created way back when we had a completely different magic and spells system. A lot of their lore and troops were centered around making that system work. But as we've evolved the game we need to update the faction formerly known as Doneria to fit better. Renaming the faction is the first step. As we continue work on Barya we'll keep you guys updated with details.

David just can’t stay from the UI and User experience (and I’m truly happy about that!). Lately, he’s been fiddling around with the spellbook and our favorite spell feature, the oh so handy quick bar.

Carl has worked on units and buildings balance as well as maps for skirmish and campaign play. He has also created additional battle maps both for normal play and some that will be suitable for battles in and around settlements and towns.

Almost every programmer on the team has been hammering away at the AI. Patrik has more specifically targeted the strategic part of the adventure AI. Niklas has added a system to calculate influence maps for AI wielders. The influence maps will be a subsystem of our larger AI and help influence the decisions of where the wielders should be heading. He also tells me that he recently added over 56 new placeholder map objects to the game. It’s basically template buildings for the adventure map that Anders can replace as he finishes up graphic assets for the buildings. We currently have plans for over 80 neutral map buildings and points of interest, and we are slowly but steady producing them with help from our pixel freelancer Joe.

What is an influence map really? I asked Niklas and he sent me this picture along with a simple note: The red means "stay away!" and the blue means "come here!". I, for one, feel enlightened!

Anders is finalizing the look of every troop from all four factions (including… Barya!) along with faction buildings. He is spending a lot of time talking to freelancers, mostly about how we specifically render things in our game and also the general look and feel design direction.

Kordian is helping Anders out with new troop designs. We will share some new troops fairly soon, I promise. Loths (see what I did there?) great new characters coming along. Andi is continuing his focus on portraits, both for buildings and Wielders. Felix is impressing us all with a continued stream of interesting and visually coherent faction buildings. He will soon wrap up that work and shift focus to all of those 80 adventure map buildings I mentioned earlier.

We are going for lots of personality and visual character traits when it comes to Wielder portraits. These are the superheroes of our world, powerful magicians that quests and conquers so they need to look their part. Leave a comment and let us know if you think we are on the right path!

For final words, I’d just like to say thanks for your continued support. A lot of you are joining us at our Discord servers just to chat with us game devs, drop ideas, or just hang out. We really appreciate it :)

Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.

Development update #21

And once again we are back! (Even one day earlier than usual!) Working towards a feature freeze at the end of June is still kind off on schedule, even though we’ve hit some snags. The whole occupy and raze towns feature set took longer time than expected, due to a lot of unforeseen edge cases. Then again, this is typical for game development and nothing we can’t handle. We are still remaining agile and redefining our development scope and targets on a weekly basis. Well, Niklas is, I should say. We others stay informed and contribute, but trust him to make the final calls together with our publisher. All hail Niklas, our backlog overlord!

Look at that gallivanting minstrel. Is it safe to assume that she is singing a… song of conquest? I would like to think so.

Carl has worked on simplified versions of all factions. We need to get their basic mechanics into the game without doing months of code beforehand. We've worked a long time with only one playable faction in the game but now we're pushing them all in there. Some features will just be a bit simplified to start out with. Hopefully we'll find some better mechanics as a bonus!

Carl has also been expanding the lore and worked on the campaigns. There might be some short stories showing up for dev blog followers in the future. Right now he’s pondering what we can do with gear and artifacts, how to break the game ever so slightly with powerful artifacts.

Who’s that sitting on a giant throne? Why is someone digging around the base? Tell me in the comments and I’ll tell you if you are right! :)

David, along with Marcus, Patrik, Emil, and Niklas. Well, pretty much all of the developers have been working on storing wielders and troops in buildings. They’ve also developed the occupy and raze functionality. So you can now attack and defend towns. But we also have something called settlements, which are basically strategic expansion points on the adventure map, where you gain access to a bit more income but more importantly: additional building sites.

Anyhow, as mentioned above, the occupy and raze functionality had more edge cases than we anticipated, so it took a bit longer to implement. The coders are right now working on making those functionalities stable, along with more unit tests and testing the game in general

Temp art showing the UI off an occupied town. You can choose to either occupy a town and gain resources each turn or raze it and destroy one building per turn.

Patrik has been optimizing the startup and map loading, to ensure we don't spend tons of time on any one frame. Doing so can cause networking timeout issues which we obviously want to avoid. This is done by "spacing out" work over several frames as well as offloading parts of the work to worker threads. It also had the benefit of making our game run at around 200 fps in debug mode in the editor instead of our previous 60 fps.

Patrik loves to make pedagogical graphs and illustrations. So here you go: a humblebragging graph that clearly shows his mad optimization skillz!

Anders has been hard at work with buildings for Loth and handing out relevant feedback to our graphic freelancers. We’re working on all the Arleon animation sketches (with the new troop designs) as well as creating the final new troops for Loth and Doneria. Rana comes directly after that! We have a steady flow of adventure map buildings coming into the game prior to the feature freeze and the portrait work is progressing as well. Portrait art sounds kind of like a modest task, but keep in mind that we have around 10 buildings, 8 troops and at least 9 wielders per faction, times four factions + some extra portraits for neutral buildings - Which gives us about 120 portraits. Besides that, we actually have more portraits, for stuff we haven’t really revealed yet, so yeah. Lots of portraits.

Niklas isn’t only developer by day. By night he develops wildlife features for the game. Specifically he likes birds. So, here’s 4000 3D crows soaring through the sky, just for your viewing pleasures! (Will we ever have 4000 birds on screen in the game at the same time you ask? Well… ask Niklas is my reply!)

Oh, and by the way: If you (like me!) are a pixel art lover, then you should check out the beautiful game Huntdown. It was released just a few weeks ago. Developed by Easy Trigger Games and published by Coffee Stain (who is, incidentally, also our publisher!).

Stay safe!

Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.

New song released

Hi people! There will be no traditional devblog this week, as we are pretty hard at work with cramming features and content into the game. But we wanted to treat you to something special anyhow. So here is a new song from the soundtrack of the game, it’s called “Opening the crypt”. The video goes live at 14:00 (GMT+2) today. Enjoy and let us know what you think!

Regarding the development, there is much focus on placing Wielders and troops in buildings. Along with that comes the mechanics for defend/attack, occupy and raze. There is also a lot of new sounds showing up in the game from our new sound designer, as well as new building and troop portraits. We also have a lot of new adventure map buildings being created, along with faction related buildings. But, most content stay in a pretty rough state, so we can get it all into the game and then finalize as we see how it fits together.

Hopefully I can get some more material together and do another blogpost next week, so you won’t have to wait two more weeks for another update. But, it truly depends on how busy we are and if we have anything suitably interesting to show.

I had to share at least one new visual asset. Here is a work in progress portrait for the Tavern building, which apparently can be found in abundance across the cities of Arleon!

Until next time, take care!

Development update #20

Here we are! Two weeks since last time. Most of the feedback I got last week was supportive of moving to bi-weekly posts, so we are trying that format going forward. The development is thundering ahead and the new plan of action is, so far, working out great. That plan, more specifically, is to add all content and features in an “ok” shape to the game over the coming months. Meaning that we are going for quantity over quality for a while. We’ll then do a feature/content freeze and polish everything like crazy while we also test the game in a more cross-faction balancing way. What does that mean from an Alpha perspective? Well, we are slowly getting there, and as soon as we are ready we’ll let you know, for sure!

Here’s a first look at the Wielder sheet. As you might notice, the name and portrait doesn’t really match that well. But nevermind that you, this is work in progress screenshot, it is supposed to be littered with errors. Makes it more real if you ask me!

In the spirit of our new development focus Niklas has been working on adding content & buildings for all factions these last two weeks. As well as made sure that we can identify our placeholder art with text. The placeholder art, sometimes grey boxes, will now gradually be replaced with either pure concept art or basic pixel art.

Before we went into “add content like crazy” mode David was expanding the messaging system. We use it to create cutscenes and now we can also show hints and trigger sound effects. He also did some work with the wielder character sheet together with Christian. Primarily focusing on the Essence and skills section. But apart from that he has been setting up troops and buildings for several factions. The same goes for Marcus, who also spent some time optimizing troop stacks placement within the Wielder inventory.

This is the first time we share pixel art that shows what lies outside the island of Arleon. Kordian has been hard at work in doing this first draft of the Rana environment. Do you think we are on the right track?

Carl has been working on troop stats, abilities and how they become available through buildings. Basically he's trying to make sure that the game has many different builds for each faction. Right now he is making sure that each faction can go down three different paths of research, resulting in different play styles. And these paths will be based around what exotic resource you acquire at the start of the game, resulting in different armies and kingdom compositions from game to game. Or you can just use the marketplace and play whatever suits you better!

The essence spires grant magic powers to the Wielders that controls them. These sketches are just but a few of the concept variations Felix has created. So far I think we have an interesting and wide visual range, do you agree?

Anders has focused on giving loads of art feedback, mainly troop animations and new adventure map buildings. He has also performed sexy tasks such as setting up folder structures, aseprite files and spritesheets on Dropbox. Making sure that the programmers can add at least temp art for troops & buildings for the remaining factions (as well as adding any existing art that wasn’t already visible in the game). Meanwhile, Kordian has been doing first pass art for all three remaining biomes beside Arleon. Felix has focused on concept art for battle assets and now shifter over to doing faction buildings. Furthermore we have a new pixel artist called Joe, who is helping us with more adventure map buildings. As if that wasn’t enough we have a new portrait artist, Andi, who has redrawn all troop portraits and started working on building portraits.

Here is an example of the works from our new portrait artist. This is Cecilia Stoutheart, a Wielder that you’ll get closely acquainted with in the Arleon campaign.

Patrik has continued his ongoing adventures with building the perfect inventory system. He has also made sure that the faction you've selected to play with affects the tiles around your starting town. Meaning that if you chose Rana, your town will be surrounded by a swamp!

Finally, please let me know in the comments if you want to hear some more music soon. If so, what tunes do you want? Adventure music? Combat? Faction themes? Do tell!

Take care and stay safe!

Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.