Hello, friends.
We’ve been very, very busy working on The Way. We know there hasn’t been any news about the game for quite a while, but we’re about to change that. You’ll hear from us a lot more from now on, both here on Steam and on our other social media channels. Additionally, you’ll soon be able to play a new demo. Your feedback will be invaluable in finalizing the game for release!
We didn’t forget about our promise though! We still want to go over the finalized results of the last demo and the changes we made accordingly. So, without further ado, let’s dive right into it.
Overall
Overall, we’re very happy with the feedback the demo got, especially considering the issues that were introduced in this demo. For starters, all new players were locked to story mode due to a bug. As this difficulty level was designed for people who are only interested in the story, it made the fights very easy and quick to complete. There was no real need for tactical gameplay, and a lot of people reported this issue in the feedback form. It should be fixed for the next demo!
Additionally, in an earlier demo of The Way, many felt we were too generous with the amount of gameplay it offered. Players could comfortably spend fourteen hours in the demo, which is a considerable portion of the game. We decided to shorten the demo based on this feedback, but missed the mark again. People reported they were speeding through the demo in a matter of hours, especially given the fact that the game was stuck in story mode for many. We made some more changes, so let us know whether or not this feels right with the upcoming new version.
Tutorial
As this game has quite a unique battle system, the tutorial is an important portion of the game to get right. We need to find a balance between explaining all the systems the player can interact with and the time it takes to get into the actual game. Some of the feedback indicated that the tutorial dragged on too much, so we decided to divide the tutorial into multiple stages. This will gradually introduce the player to new mechanics as they appear. The dialogue has also been shortened to get you into the fight quicker. We’re looking forward to seeing how all of you like the new tutorial!
Story
The story of The Way was generally received positively, but reception is noticeably weaker than the overall feedback. Players feel the story of The Way isn’t up to par with Redemption. This is something we understand, but we’d also like to reiterate that The Way is intended to be a very different experience than Redemption. While the story took center stage in the latter, The Way is a lot more focused on gameplay and features a simple story to carry the player forwards. However, thanks to your feedback, we considerably changed the story’s design: we added more dialogue and branching paths based on your interactions with the characters you’ll meet on your journey. This will make the game a lot less linear and more tailored to who you are or want to be as a person.
Currently, each tournament in the game has its own story and several endings depending on how well you perform on the battlefield. The Way features many different endings; it’s about five times bigger than Redemption. Now, you won’t get to experience all this in the upcoming demo. The Way is still a gameplay-focused experience, and most of the early dialogue will focus on explaining the rules and gameplay mechanics. We did move some dialogue and story you’d previously experience later on in the game forward to make the demo more interesting. This way you’ll get a taste of things to come, but you’ll only truly get to know the setting and its people later on in the story.
Dialogue
Regrettably, what we can do with the dialogue is limited by the simple yet inconvenient program we decided to use. This program was ideal for what we originally intended to do, but with the changes we made and the many branching paths we added, the limitations became very apparent. It’s simply not suited for the more complicated and extensive dialogue we’ve added since the last demo.
Nevertheless, we heard your feedback loud and clear and are committed to make the story the best it can be. You’ll have more meaningful and interesting interactions with the people you meet on your journey. Furthermore, there was a clear difference between how well the Russian and English dialogue was received. We are continuing our work to improve the English translation to get it up to par with the Russian version. Please, continue providing your feedback on this matter.
To conclude everything, we want to thank all of you for your feedback on our demos. It has truly been invaluable to us in the development of The Way. We would love to have you back for our next demo, so keep an eye out for our announcement on that soon! Look forward to a new main menu, story & dialogue improvements, (working) difficulty modes and more.
That’s all for now! Again, you’ll hear a lot more from us in the months to come. We’ll update you on when the new demo will be available to play.
In the meantime, drop by our Discord to discuss The Way and add the game to your wishlist! It really helps us out a ton.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/
Thank you for your feedback, we’ll talk to you soon!