Hey everyone! Today we don’t have an in-game update because things are a little slow on our end... for a really simple reason. We were really putting a lot of time and effort into our last patch, Seeds of Corruption, and now its time to finally get a little rest and plan things out properly – you know, gather feedback and regroup!
Don’t worry, though, we’re planning some epic things for y’all and you can read about some of them in the last week's update.
And one last piece of info before we get to today's update: we're going to be featured during the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest next week and you'll be able to get the game for a slightly reduced price AND also catch our CEO, Marcin, on a panel discussion in which you'll "find out about how many d20s you need when you port from physical to digital".
But this week we want to share some info about the campaign mode and our current plan of handling the "two games in one" thing in Tainted Grail. So this update will be all about the shift we’re planning!
As always, make sure to let us know what you think about it all!
Campaign and Conquest – two games instead of one
For those of you who are new here and don’t know about the game’s campaign mode (and couldn’t play it yet because it’s currently broken), allow us to explain a little bit.
We've planned for Tainted Grail to have two game modes – the roguelike Conquest (what you can play currently in Early Access) and a story campaign (The Fall of Avalon) which will be a proper RPG with branching storylines and so on. Both will use the same basic gameplay mechanics (cards, passives, runes, consumables etc.) – that is why, whatever progress we will make in that area (and we hope there is a good chunk of it already!) while working on Conquest, it will also benefit the campaign.
But the more we are working on these two “modes”, the more we realize that they’re actually more like two games, not modes. Two different beasts for two different groups of players.
Conquest is a demanding experience, where you have to min-max everything, especially at the higher levels of corruption – the vast majority of it is pure gameplay and the fun that comes from deckbuilding and optimizing. On the other hand, we want the campaign to be mostly story-driven, with deep choices that will affect the world around you.
Now when we think about it, we realize that we should separate these two games – for various reasons.
Starting from clarity (people seeing exactly what they are getting – currently, even though it’s said in the first line of the game’s description on Steam, some don’t understand that Conquest is not the game’s RPG campaign), through technical stuff (less data, easier patches – over the past few months we couldn’t change anything in the campaign because, for example, it would’ve deleted save games), up to the affordability (there might be some people who want only the campaign or only the roguelike).
This is why we are thinking about separating these two games – as two different products on Steam.
Now – just to be clear – we know we’ve promised everyone who decided to support us during Early Access full access to the campaign once it's done. This promise will be kept in 100%, just in a slightly different way – instead of having one game in your library, you'll just get an extra product.
We’ve been checking with Valve and we’ve been assured that it’s possible. This change would mean that the game you have right now will be the Early Access version of Conquest and the campaign mode will get a different Steam page – and we’ll be offering them as separate products with adjusted pricing. Conquest, as a standalone product, will have a reduced price, and Campaign will be priced accordingly with its final scope and so on.
We’ve thought about it a lot and it would make things way, way easier for us… But! Before we will do anything, we want to ask for your opinion.
Generally, we really believe in the strength of the community and always want to ask for your opinions and include them in the decision process. Let us know what you think!