Rite of Life Update – Dev Team Update, ROL Details & 2020 Release
Intro In this update we’re going to cover apologies for the lack of communication, an update on the development team's current situation, information on what stage Rite of Life is currently at, what still needs to be done, new information on Rite of Life itself (complete with scr
Intro
In this update we’re going to cover apologies for the lack of communication, an update on the development team's current situation, information on what stage Rite of Life is currently at, what still needs to be done, new information on Rite of Life itself (complete with screenshots) and our target release date. Without any further ado, let’s get started.
Apologies
Firstly, we would like to start by apologising for the lack of communication. We’ve noticed that we haven’t posted an update for over a year on Steam and that simply isn’t acceptable. Moving forward we plan on posting an update on how the development of Rite of Life is progressing on the 28th of every month until the game is released. ːsteamhappyː
Development Team Situation
Now we’re going to move onto the development situation that we have found ourselves in over the past 2+ years. When we started development of Rite of Life in early-2015, we were a team of eight developers working full-time using our own money/savings. Since the start of 2017, five of the full-time developers have left the project and since then the remaining three of us have been continuing to work on the project as best as we can. We will be transparent here and admit that even when there were eight full-time developers, we definitely underestimated the scope of the project. That issue has since been multiplied now that there is only three of us. What the three of us have had to do in order to continue the project (and keep a roof over our heads) is take on work-for-hire projects on the side to fund the remaining development. For example, the past year we’ve worked on Rite of Life for roughly 8 months full-time and the rest has been spent working on client projects that help us pay the bills and continue to invest in the project. We have also been in talks with publishers and other external funding opportunities (grants, etc) to help us finish Rite of Life without the need to jump into a side job along the way. We'll keep you updated on any of these developments if/when they occur.
Current State of Rite of Life
Rite of Life is currently playable start to finish (the game doesn’t really have a traditional ‘finish’, but you can get to the ‘end game’ part at least). The three environments that surround your home are implemented, we have all the monsters designed, balanced and that includes their exp, drops, hunting logs and everything else attached to them. We also have your home designed from the earliest stage all the way up to completion. This has all been balanced in relation to the experience that you get from the materials that you gather. We’ve also meticulously designed what additions you get with each level up of your home. These additions include characters, shops, buildings (which include interiors), environment assets, minigames, festivals, events, quests and many other things. If you played the demo that we released two years ago, your home is capable of being triple the size/level that you achieved in that, which reflects the additional environments that exist in the final game.
“What else still needs to be done and why haven’t you released the game in its current state?”
The biggest task that needs doing right now is animating all the characters. We have just started this process this month (we'll touch upon this in more detail below), but with the hand drawn art style that we've decided to do, this is definitely the biggest task we have left.
Also, despite all the things mentioned earlier that are in the game, we’re still busy padding the game with content as you progress through it. We’re also creating a lot of content for the ‘end game’ phase once your home has reached max level. Essentially, animations and padding the world with content is on the current agenda. We’ve also planned out a proper introduction to the game, but we’re yet to implement this. Another area that still needs a fair bit of work is the UI, we’ll show off some screenshots a little further down, but that’s an area we’ve been working a lot on and we’re still not happy with where it’s at.
Until we’ve ticked off all these areas mentioned, we won’t feel comfortable releasing the game.
Rite of Life Updates
Now let’s move onto the more interesting stuff. We have some screenshots to showcase some of the improvements we’ve made in certain areas. I will give a quick warning, there will be some spoilers involved in what’s coming up. We’re going to reveal the boss monster for the swamp and some additional monsters in the journal that you haven’t seen before. If you want to be surprised when you encounter these, I have to suggest not reading any further. Anyway, let’s dig in.
Character Redesigns
Due to the way we're animating the characters, our artist wanted to go over the designs one last time. We really want to have a diverse cast of characters that join your home as it grows. We'll do a deep dive on who these characters are in a future specialised update.
Character Creation
Originally we were going to just allow you to pick between two characters, but we felt in a game where there are social-sim RPG mechanics that allow you to develop your personality through dialogue choices it would be a shame if you couldn’t customise your character a little bit.
So, what we’re allowing you to do is choose between two base characters and then you can choose the hairstyle, hair colour and the colour of your character's eyes. We do want to develop the character creation further, but we’re using this as a base right now and if we have the time and resources later, we might add additional options for you to choose from.
Mountain Pass
Based on feedback that we received on previous mountain pass screenshots, we’ve decided to play around with the colour palette in the area. We felt it was too like the forest that you explore beforehand and one of our goals is to make each new environment feel like a fresh experience.
We’ve really explored how the time of day and weather impact the fantasy elements that are found in the area. The crystals, the water and the stone carvings that you’ll observe alter based on those variables. It’s not too dissimilar to how the weather impacts the forest, but it’s just more fantastical and I hope you look forward to exploring this area. It’s considerably larger and more challenging than the forest as well.
Here's a quick look at the battle backgrounds for the mountain pass. Much like the forest, the ground terrain changes based on where you encounter a monster.
Swamp of Wergaia
We’ve also spent a lot of time working on the swamp environment. One of the challenges has been to create the kind of atmosphere and mood for the player when they’re exploring it that we desired. A lot of our time has been spent getting the shading right and the lighting capturing the sort of mystical nature of this swamp.
We want it to feel as though it’s got a sort of wildness about it, almost like the environment itself is alive, but also capture the archaeological history that exists within it.
Swamp Boss
Each environment will have a boss that must be defeated to unlock the next section. In the demo you may have fought the Mightytaur which acts as the Forest boss, once defeated you will unlock access to the mountain pass. That’s the general structure of how to unlock further environments.
Monster Showcase
Oopsie Daisy
Magpie
Ampear
Combat Changes
After balancing the game up until you unlock everything, we decided to make some changes to the combat. This coincided with finishing the level up system, which we’ll share a couple of screenshots of a little later.
Due to dozens upon dozens of skills being obtainable through the Spectrum System(the level up system in ROL), we felt it best that in the interest of balancing and allowing the player to put together their own build, that we would have it so you can equip up to 6 skills.
There were a few reasons for this, firstly we got to the point where if you clicked ‘skills’ during combat you were scrolling through for a while and we felt it could become a bit tedious. The other reason is it allows us to build end game bosses and monsters that challenge the player tactically when it comes to the skills that they have equipped. You have to plan and think what skills you’re going to equip for the journey. We felt this was more in the spirit of what we wanted out of Rite of Life. We'll do a deep dive into the combat system in a future update.
Spectrum System Update
The Spectrum System has now been fully designed. It’s gargantuan in size, but we’ve been playtesting and we think it should work really well. Based on our playtests, we expect a player to be able to finish one specific route by the time they’ve beaten the Swamp boss. Which should give you a bit of an idea of how much more content there is to do after you’ve beaten that boss. Every large node in-between each of the smaller nodes is a new skill to be learned. The skill nodes will unique icons inside them to make it clearer, we just haven't gotten around to that yet.
Here is a look at the Spectrum System zoomed out to demonstrate the scope of it.
Journal Update
Something else that has had a massive overhaul is the journal. We received a lot of positive feedback about it. The structure of it has remained the same, but we wanted to improve upon the visual aesthetic of it, making it feel more like a scrap book that your character is keeping through their journey.
With this, we’re just going to drop a bunch of screenshots, but we'll leave out any lore/story/quest information to avoid spoilers. There is still a fair bit of work to be done on them, but hopefully you can see the artistic direction that we’re going for. We’ll include some comparison pics to demonstrate the improvements as well.
Old Character Page
New Character Page
Old Hunting Logs
New Hunting Logs
UI WIP Updates
We’ve also made some adjustments to the UI that shows the time of day, weather and season. We’re trying our best to design it in a way that you can infer all the information necessary without needing to hover your mouse over them for a tooltip. This is still a WIP, but we feel we’ve made good progress and it’s a step in the right direction.
Character Animations
We’ve recently started the big slog that is animating all the characters in the game. There are over 25 unique villagers that all needed to be animated in some way. Walking is the current focus which will take the longest time, but we also need various animations for the characters interacting with the world and them in their idle state.
For the sideways walking animations, we’ve been breaking up different parts of the character’s anatomy in order to animate them fluidly. We then create a wireframe using our selected animation software to make animating it easier.
Carnival Minigames
Once your home reaches a certain level, a carnival will roll into town and will provide you with access to a host of minigames. Playing these games wins you tickets which you can exchange for prizes at the prize booth. It's very similar to how the Gold Saucer works in Final Fantasy VII where you can exchange GP for rare items and equipment. All of the minigames are based on real life fun fair, carnival games that exist.
We’ve had the carnival games implemented from a design point of view for a while now, but we haven’t had the art assets created for them because other parts of the game have taken priority. We’ve just started work on those and we have the first carnival minigame to show you.
Here’s a look at our coconut shy-inspired minigame.
In this game your goal is to knock off as many of the 'coconuts' with the limited number of shots that you have. It may look easy, but the wind changes with every throw, so you have to look at the direction and strength of the wind and guesstimate where you need to aim in order to hit your target. The more you knock off, the more tickets you'll win which can be exchanged for at the prize booth.
One thing we’re doing with all these minigames is we’re using the Rite of Life lore and adding that unique splash of paint to it. So, there’s an enemy in the game that you can encounter called Egg & Soldiers which is inspired from a British dish called Egg with Soldiers. It’s basically a soft-boiled egg with toast where the toast has been cut into strips. Anyway… the coconuts in a traditional game of Coconut Shy are replaced with this monster’s body in this world. Honestly, typing this out actually makes it seem rather morbid… moving swiftly on! ːsteammockingː
Target Release Window
This is probably the thing that you care about most. We're targeting Q3/Q4 2020 for release. I know it has been a long time coming, but we're into the final stretch and we're very confident that we'll be releasing this game this year. We really appreciate all the posts and comments that have been made about the game, questions being asked and such like. It really means a lot to us. We're a small three-person team and we assure you we're working as hard as we can on this game to make it as good as possible. We hope you're still looking forward to it despite the long wait.
We'll be posting another update next month on the 28th. We'll cover what we've been working on and we look forward to seeing you then.
Rebourne Studios
