A lot happened over the last few months (even when not counting the whole pandemic business) so updates here were less frequent. Time to fix that ːarchduckː
Events, conventions, and more events
Almost all events moved into digital. We can now participate in a lot of cool events where we can show the game and where we couldn't afford to be otherwise. That's great because we are reaching new players and every event is an opportunity to test the pre-alpha build.
A week ago we were at Gamescom and Indie Arena Booth. Both events were great and Hellcard won the Devcom Indie Award! You can also see what our virtual booth looked like below:
Upcoming events
It looks like we will also be present on the Tokyo Game Show and Pax Online. We will try to stream the game daily so it will be a cool opportunity to join the stream and chat with us. Treat every stream as an AMA ːarchduckː
On timeline and schedule
As you probably know Hellcard is being independently from the pre-alpha prototype. As a result, the prototype serves as both testing grounds for stuff we want to add to the real game and a demo for new players.
This approach allows us to develop the real thing carefully and not to rush things. The downside is that the demo you keep seeing doesn't represent actual development. We will swap the pre-alpha build for the real thing as soon as we are ready but that's still some time away. The development is progressing a bit slower than we would like, mostly because the pandemic delayed our recruitment drive. We planned the production assuming new people would be joining our team around May but only now we were able to resume looking for them. A process we have started in January and had to freeze due to the pandemic.
That's why we have decided to move the launch date to mid-2021. That will allow us to continue working on the game at the best pace while growing the team. Which, in the end, will be the best for the quality of Hellcard and the following games in the series. After all, we are in for the long game (pun intended) and pandemic or no, we are making a whole series so we plan production with that in mind.
To sweeten that news I will add that we will run numerous closed and open alpha- and beta-tests along the way. Eventually, once the development build is ready, replace the current public demo based on pre-alpha with the actual build and continue testing new cards and balance with you.
Last but not least: what's new in development
We are currently working on the user interface side of things (which includes the flow of menus and windows). Some of you might have already seen the prototype main menu background for Hellcard:
As you can see the Town will be changing somewhat. The game will have a different flow of screens fitting new intro video and story, with the Cathedral and Town Center being the focal points.
By the way, you can grab that background for a wallpaper here.
Another thing we are focusing on right now is the event system. Right now the only thing you can do between battles is to pick one out of 3 cards or heal (ok, or rise health bar but that's it). As I often mentioned during streams this is only a placeholder. We are designing a system for encounters that would allow the player to react by picking one of the presented options. This is what we all know from roguelike deckbuilders already but we are, of course, doing it with a twist. We would like some of our encounters to be multiplayer, so the choices made by team members would affect the rest of the team. Shapes to be pretty cool but it's something you will have to judge once we test drive it in the prototype demo!
As always,
Stay safe in the paper dungeons ːarchduckː
Konstanty