Hello! We are Karaclan, a small indie team of three artist brothers from Lithuania working on VED.
VED, a story-driven RPG featuring a unique turn-based combat system set in a vivid world full of magic. The award-winning title is our first game and will launch on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GoG in November 2024.
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It all started in January 2013. The idea was simple: to create a small project in 2-3 months. A platformer with beautiful graphics, slightly better than... Supercow, but in a dark fantasy style.
Since we're all artists, we nailed the graphics part. By June 2013, we already had our first assets for the platformer and the main character. Look, even the scarf is like Supercow’s cape!
By March 2014, we had a fully built level and a main menu.
But there was one problem... the engine... or rather, the choice of engine. Like many beginner developers, we chose the most "promising" engine available in 2013. Unity3D? Nope, that’s for 3D graphics... Game Maker? Cocos? Still no... Flash! And not just Flash, but its clone SWF Quicker. This engine wasn’t designed for large levels, but you could code with ActionScript 2 directly in the frames, while Flash had already moved to ActionScript 3. At the time, we thought this was a very convenient and simple way to program 😅
About a year later, as we were finishing the eighth and final level of the game, on March 10, 2015, Ori and the Blind Forest was released!
Just look at this masterpiece! Just look at this masterpiece! We realized that we were definitely no longer the most beautiful platformer, and on top of that, not the most optimized one either. The heavy foreground and background layers creating the parallax effect were too much for the engine, and at best, we were getting 15-20 fps.
By the summer of 2015, we understood that if we wanted to keep all the graphics we had created, we needed to switch engines. In August 2015, we moved to Unity.
Oh my God! We were amazed – an incredibly convenient editor with infinite possibilities! But there was one problem… a new programming language: C#.
We transferred levels from SWF Quicker by exporting sprites in Flash and then manually placing them into Unity using their coordinates. Without programming skills, we decided that a complex gameplay system could be replaced with a branching narrative. We wrote the first chapter of the story and made a text-based RPG using our assets. The main idea was this: the less effort required to visualize every plot twist, the more impactful player choices we could add to the game. Thus, from the foundation of a small platformer, the seeds of a complex branching story began to sprout.
Now the game looked like this: hand-drawn illustrations on paper in the human world and bright screens with camera movement in the magical world.
In July 2016, we made a small demo and sent it to Xbox ID. We were rejected, with the feedback that our game wasn’t suitable for Xbox One and could only be considered for Windows Store.
We realized something was wrong. We brought back the platforming levels and the playable hero, and with the help of the Platformer Pro plugin in Unity, we assembled a new demo combining the story and platformer elements. We sent it back to Xbox ID and received some great feedback: our game was approved for development on Xbox One.
In April 2017, we published our first trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7r3oavuKGI
We submitted the game to Steam Greenlight and within a week, we had enough votes. A beautiful GIF of the running hero did the trick.
We created a Twitter page:
https://x.com/KaraclanVed
We sent out our first emails to publishers and received our first rejections.
On May 23, 2017, we released a gameplay trailer. The main idea was to show more of the combat and the branching narrative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzmwLywB14
In July 2017, we were featured in Square Enix’s weekly roundup, which gave our project some visibility. It was strange and wonderful to see journalists writing about the game and getting our first feedback from potential players. People praised the atmosphere and the graphics.
We felt like we were on the right track. However, without any funding, our project was partially frozen. In October 2017, one of the founders found a job, and the other focused on freelancing. Only the writer tirelessly continued to work on new chapters of the story.
The script was written in regular Word files, with hyperlinks for each choice, leading the reader to new files with the consequences and continuation of the plot. There were even links to music files that helped set the tone for the events in the story.
In 2018, progress was slow. We learned new tools in Unity, mastered Spine 2D for animations, and finished 6 out of 9 branching chapters. We also drew the poster, which would later become the Main Art, and it remains largely unchanged in our marketing to this day.
One of the most important developments was that we dove deeper into the gaming industry. We learned more about publishers, conferences, and podcasts. Special thanks to Sergey Galyonkin and his SteamSpy service, as well as the How Games Are Made podcast with his co-host Michael Kuzmin.
In March 2019, after saving up some money, the whole team returned to the project. We were excited and added a fresh prologue to the game, creating a new demo using all our new skills. This demo not only showcased the platforming gameplay but also gave players an understanding of how the branching narrative worked. A small prologue with several different endings.
We took VED to the DevGAMM conference in search of a publisher and with hopes of winning some awards. VED was nominated for Best Visual Art.
At the showcase, we tested the demo and, for the first time, interacted with players and publishers in person. In the end, we realized that our gameplay needed significant improvement. As one of the players said: I consider myself a hardcore gamer, I've beaten Dark Souls, but your platformer... it's just too unbeatable.
We fixed the demo and sent out our first batch of emails to publishers in August 2019.
The feedback was positive regarding the graphics, but the gameplay still raised concerns.
So we improved the demo once again. We ditched Platformer Pro and rewrote the character logic from scratch. We added more gameplay elements. Now, our hero could not only jump and fight but also create magical objects to overcome obstacles. (This mechanic was inspired by the amazing platformer Gris.)
In addition, we realized there was a major issue with the static frames in the narrative scenes. Looking at pictures and reading big blocks of text was pretty dull.
Inspired by Banner Saga and Pyre, we decided to raise the stakes: we added scene transitions and… made an innovative decision. Using Spine 2D and Unity, we added facial animations. Now our characters not only moved but also had lip-sync. With this technology, we could replace text with voice acting.
We created a new demo, which included improved gameplay, enhanced cutscenes, and even… fake voice acting. We cut out phrases from Skyrim that roughly fit the meaning and inserted them into the game to give publishers an idea of how the animations worked.
In January 2020, we finished writing the story, and by February, we had an awesome demo. We also had a clear understanding of what we wanted from publishers. We put together a new pitch!
Features:
- 10,000+ lines of dialogue in a branching story with dozens of endings.
- 1,000+ choices.
- 9 replayable chapters.
- 9+ game locations in a hand-drawn 2D platformer style.
- 20+ atmospheric symphonic soundtracks.
- Engine: Unity.
- Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC.
- Release: Q4 2020/Q1 2021.
We need:
- High-quality localization.
- Voice acting (current variant – test).
- Marketing.
- Help with porting to consoles.
- QA.
- Funding for the completion of development.
With the previous batches of emails, we sent the game to nearly 40 publishers.
We received more responses. Some said they’d be happy to hear from us with future projects. Others praised the art and story, but there was still feedback saying, "The gameplay seems questionable."
We received two offers from publishers, and finally, in April 2020, we signed with Fulqrum Publishing. They believed the game had the potential to be a hit, but agreed that the platforming gameplay definitely needed improvement.
We spent the next three months prototyping the gameplay, testing various ideas – even some that deviated significantly from a platformer.
It turned out that all the ideas related to turn-based battles or RPG elements worked much better for us than any other mechanics. Apparently, the fact that we grew up playing role-playing games like D&D and loved RPGs ourselves played an important role in shaping our skills.
By June 2020, we had found the best approach: a story-driven RPG with teleportation between flying islands, turn-based battles, and branching events. We used the magical world’s graphics from the platformer, but split it into floating islands and spaced them out in depth.
By August 2020, we had a new prototype. The concept was inspired by the battles from Disciples 2 and Darkest Dungeon, as well as the map and path choices from Slay the Spire.
Moreover, while developing the game for PC, we always had consoles in mind. Creating a convenient turn-based combat system for controllers added extra complexity. So, at the core of the mechanics was the choice between 4 positions and 4 abilities – perfectly suited for the main buttons on a controller.
For the next two months, we unified the entire game. Now, the deep narrative no longer clashed with the fast-paced platforming sections. Turn-based combat, base-building, and teleportation integrated much better with the story elements.
By November 2020, the game’s concept was finalized. We created a 23-month development plan with a tentative release date of September 2022 and secured funding for development.
In December 2020, we began working on the second milestone. For the first time in 8 years, we felt like we were following a clear plan, we understood what kind of game we were making, and we were even getting paid for it.
And it felt like this would last forever!🤩😅
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VED Developer Diary 2 – Coming soon…
Thank you to everyone who read this! Feel free to ask me anything! Share your own stories!
Wishlist VED ^_^ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1182420/VED/
Add the game to your wishlist so you don't miss the long-awaited release and get a chance to try the Free Demo. We’ll be waiting for you at Steam Next Fest on October 14th!
