On the way to Act One!
As you may already know, we spent the whole of January working on the new concept of the game (what we call “Spire of Sorcery 2.0”).
We’re happy to report that this work is now done, and the new concept is finished!
We never had so many meetings – and such long meetings – as during the month of January. From mornings to evenings, you would find us locked in our studio’s largest meeting room. From time to time we ordered pizzas (to save more time for discussions), and once every few days we printed new versions of the game’s board prototype to put it to test.
Sometimes the meetings were peaceful. This is what people generally enjoy the most in games industry: solving a design problem, in a team, where we all agree on the result.
Sometimes the meetings were closer to shouting matches. This is what we call “going through a bit of pain now to avoid putting our players through a lot of pain in the future”: we spotted bad design decisions early on, relying on the player feedback that we received during the Limited Early Access period, and then escalated them until we could no longer ignore them.
Several times some of our team members offered to quit. Several times some of our team members offered others to quit. But in the end, none of us did quit, because we are all strong enough to sacrifice our personal opinions for the common goal of designing a better game (though occasionally, we needed a reminder of this).
The main principles that we followed were these:
1. Simple is better than complicated
2. If you cannot display the mechanic in user interface, forget about it
3. If you cannot prove the mechanic in board prototype, forget about it
4. If you found a boring moment in the game, immediately remove it
5. Keep staging psychological experiments (“what if the Spire no longer exists?”)
6. Simple is always, always, always better than complicated
Now, starting from the last week, we are on the path to shipping what we call “Act One” of Spire of Sorcery. The development team is again split into several working groups that solve specific issues, and our focus is on shipping the update for our players as soon as we can.
What changed in Spire of Sorcery?
The world map is now hex-based
Many, many times during the January tests we proved that this is a significant improvement. By default, the hex grid is not shown on the map.
The game is now turn-based
It’s strange to think that we spent two years developing a different model. Once we made the game turn-based, it felt like finding a long-lost friend!
The game offers 100% direct control
Whether it’s about running away from a surge of Chaos or about attacking a camp of bandits, all decisions now lie with the player. We thought it could be overwhelming. In fact, it is much easier to understand than what we had in 2019.
The world map is now 2.5D
We used to have a 2D map (2D). With the transition to hexes, after several community suggestions, we tried 2.5D and we loved it! Objects on the map now have volume and change scale as you scroll the map.
All events are now shown on the map
We used to have some of the events happen through a dice roll. Now we show them on the map as “special events”: you don’t know what this is until you approach it, but you do know where it is, and it’s your choice to approach it or avoid it.
Tactics now plays a major role in the game
Each party has its own visibility range and its own number of move points to spend per turn. You discover the world by scouting the map.
The Inquisition is back, in force
The direct conflict with the Inquisition is a part of Act One. The Inquisition is now an immediate and direct threat.
The skills of Alchemy, Artificing and Healing are now gone
Disciple characters no longer have these skills. Concoction, crafting and healing is performed at the Spire and happens immediately. However, Battle Magic is now split into Protective Magic and Destructive Magic, so overall disciple characters now have 9 skills.
Character stats are gone, character mood is gone
The stats were complicating the game. They are now gone. The values that they defined, remain (learning efficiency, health points). Character mood was a micro-mechanic in a game measured by months of game time. It is now gone.
Skill checks and battles are how you win, or lose, the game
We settled on the total of 21 skill checks. There is no longer a “Win/Lose” outcome for skill checks: you can “win” with more or less risk. For example, you can mine emeralds with full success (a lot of gems collected, no negative consequences) or barely making it (one gem collected, the character is hurt in the process, her equipment is damaged), with a number of outcomes in-between. This removes the “black & white” nature of events.
Roadmap to Act One
As always, we continue the weekly dev streams every Wednesday. In February, the focus of dev streams shifts from “talking about concept” back to “showing the current build”: we are back to assembling a new version of the game every week.
In a few weeks, owners of Spire of Sorcery (Limited Early Access) will be able to test the version of the new 2.5D map on the [BETA] branch of the game in Steam.
And once the early version of Act One is ready, we will release it on the default branch of Steam for those of you who participate in the Limited Early Access program. This would be our most important test, and we look forward to your feedback once it’s released!
_________