Hi everyone!
Our apologies for the delay in updating the roadmap. We are just so stoked to be nearing completion of Rogue Legacy 2 that we lost track of time. With the Hallows’ Eve Event behind us, we will now be updating the roadmap to reflect our progress on wrapping up production, or as we call it, the Road to Release. This means our next major content patch will be version 1.0, and while we’re excited to be entering this stage of development, there’s still a lot of work ahead of us. Completing the ending sequence, adding the final touches to the story, bringing in new languages, and including more content are all on the horizon.
With a focus on finishing the game, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing to look forward to though! We have another interim event planned which we’ll have more info on in the coming weeks, but for now, here’s what we have been working on for 1.0.
ENDING SEQUENCE – If you’ve enjoyed our previous games, you know that we take last impressions seriously, so we’ve got a few surprises in store for players in Rogue Legacy 2. The ending is big and involved and will take a lot of elbow grease to complete, however it’s all been planned out and work is already underway.
FINAL BOSS – From initial design to concept art, to modelling, texturing, and rigging, to animations, to coding, and finally to balance and polish, the steps to creating a single boss in Rogue Legacy 2 can be exhausting. This is even more so with the last boss since we really want to make that final fight special. We’re about midway through the modelling, texturing, and rigging parts of development, which happen all at once.
STORY – The lore behind Rogue Legacy 2 is truly massive, being nearly three times larger than anything we’ve written before. Fans playing through Early Access have experienced most of the rich history behind the game, but there are a few storylines waiting to be resolved. Of course, the conclusion has yet to be revealed, but that part will be penned in conjunction with the ending sequence. We also have some Prime memories to write that fully explore the backstory of the Estuaries, the mystery behind J and Z, and the true purpose of your lineage.
LOCALIZATION BACKEND – Supporting new languages is a huge undertaking, requiring early planning and a lot of diligent work to make sure everything is in place when translations become available. Fortunately the work on this system has already been completed, but we’re sure we’ll encounter a few hiccups once we actually integrate new languages.
TRANSLATIONS – Because the backend for localization was only finished recently, we’ve just begun the next step, which is translating the game’s text. We also intend to localize the game into more languages than we have in the past. It’s a lot of work, but translations usually happen in parallel, so once we get past the paperwork of finding translators and setting up LQA, it will be full steam ahead.
ACHIEVEMENTS – With so many things to do in RL2, it was a real challenge for us to come up with unique and meaningful achievements rather than overwhelm players with as many as we could think of, so we spent a lot of time on the design. Fortunately work on the achievement system started early, and it is already nearly complete. A few more ideas may crop up in the future, so we haven’t closed the lid on it just yet.
ADDITIONAL CONTENT – There’s still a ton we’re looking to add to the world, including new Challenges, Classes, Burdens, Relics, Abilities, and more. We’re also finally finishing up the Skill Tree, and adding the remaining features we have planned. There are so many small things on our To-Do list for this part that it’s tough to give an accurate estimate of the progress, but we’re slowly chipping away at it.
OPTIMIZATION – We’ve done several rounds of optimizations throughout Early Access, however, as the game grew in size, so too did the resources needed to run it. Worry not though, as we have many plans for improvement and we are nowhere near satisfied with the state of things. Currently, optimization is taking a backseat to completing the ending sequence, but once that’s done we will look to address the major bottlenecks affecting performance.
BUG FIXES – At this point, fixing bugs is less a job and more a way of life with Rogue Legacy 2. The number of bugs we’ve tackled since the launch in Early Access is truly mind-boggling, but that has only strengthened our appreciation to a community that has helped us every step of the way. In truth, we already have another patch worth of bugs fixed, but most of them are chiefly cosmetic as v0.7.1 proved to be more stable than expected. So we’re holding off on releasing them until the next update. We’re incredibly happy with the state the game is already in, and with a couple of months more work, we are confident RL2 will be the most solid game we’ve ever released.
RELEASE WHEN? – Our lips have been intentionally tight regarding an official release date for Rogue Legacy 2. In the past we’ve made the mistake of making promises we couldn’t keep, or coming out when we weren’t ready (like RL2’s EA launch), and after it was all over we always asked ourselves the same question: Why did we do that? Why endure years of sweat and hard work only to spoil it at the end? After entering Early Access and giving Rogue Legacy 2 the time to grow, we’ve come to truly appreciate the ability to focus on passion and quality. As excited as we are to launch v1.0, we have no intentions of rushing to the finish line. We’re eyeballing a tentative release in Q2 2022, but only when the game gets our stamp of approval will we announce a firm launch date, along with the supported platforms.