In the last months, Archaelund has seen a lot of new content: from natural environments, to cities and dungeons full with adventure. From the beginning we faced the challenge of creating a world that was both new and ancient; the broken, overgrown ruins of a highly-magical empire lay next to the mundane (but thriving) villages and towns of the human Exiles, and the alien dwellings of the native Geldryn.
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The mechanics and options of the Combat Engine are mostly in place. Character 'Talents' may grant special combat actions or bonuses, which gives each of your party members unique advantages in battle. There are dozens of different Talents to learn, and while most are defined by your chosen Career there's some Open Talents that a character can learn independently. Our objective in combat is making it fast-paced and highly tactical, allowing the player to seek strategies and ability sinergies in the party. Expect different AIs with appropiate behaviors; archers wil fall behind warriors, and might focus on your party's weak spots...
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The Archaelund Character System is also seeing lots of progress. Character and party creation is already in place. It was very important to offer endless customization to make your adventuring party unique, yet intuitive and straightforward... you don't need to "study" to make your characters, because Careers work well "out-of-the-box". It is after the first levels when meaningful character development occurs, and by them you'll have learned what you need from the game itself.
I know what you're all thinking... "Neat things but, when does the game come out!?!?". To answer this let me give you the rundown on our "to-do" list.
The magic system is designed but not implemented, and the same can be said about several game elements like Traps and about half the Talents and Skills. Environments have advanced a lot, but we have about 70% of what we wanted for the first release. Many quests and dialogues are already written, but over half of them are just sketched. And then there's the polishing, the testing, the adjustments, which in a game like this may take a few months.
We could probably have rushed a release this Christmas but, as we've explained before, for us the priority is making the game as good as we can. We will extend the development into 2022, and make sure Archaelund Early Access is everything it should be.