Hello, Xenotherians!
We're delighted to announce that the first public demo of Xenotheria will be available during Steam Nextfest from June 19th - 26th, 2023! You'll get a brief snippet of our epic story, which takes place after a catastrophic planetary disaster, and you'll get to explore a small portion of our map and try several battle sequences as you explore.
We're eager to hear your feedback during this demo, as it will be an invaluable source of input as we continue to develop Xenotheria. We'll also be showcasing our latest trailer for the game and presenting our game to various outlets and content creators.
Overview:
- Game Updates
- Steam Demo Details
- Demo Feedback
Game Updates
If you participated in our prototype last year, you’ll be excited to know that we’ve implemented new features and content for the demo. Specifically, we focused on improving the UX/UI, environment art style, and music, which were the principal points of feedback from the last playtest.
A New Battle Grid:
As we discussed in our previous development update, we have made some exciting changes to the game's grid size. We have expanded the size to 4 x 3 on each side of the battlefield, which has opened up a whole new world of gameplay opportunities. This size increase has also given us the chance to introduce a brand new cover system to the game, which is sure to add an extra layer of strategy and excitement.
Improved Combat:
We have also made some significant adjustments to our combat system, including changes and adjustments to our cards, the ability to use cover, balancing, and player movement, just to name a few. We're confident that these changes will take the gameplay experience to the next level.
Dialog System:
One of the major improvements we’ve made since the beta is the addition of a dialogue system. We've recently implemented a brand new dialogue system that includes optional conversations, dialogue choices, and even sound effects to really bring the game to life. With these new features, players will have more control over the direction of the story and can immerse themselves in the game like never before.
Desert Environment:
In our last build, we focused on the shipyard of Moros. However, for our upcoming demo, we wanted to showcase a new environment that we've been working on called Wolf Hollow.
Wolf Hollow is a vast desert landscape that is teeming with life, both good and bad. It is home to some truly wild beasts and dangerous gangs, so you'll need to be on your guard at all times. You never know what kind of danger might be lurking around the next corner!
New Music:
We're excited to announce that we're taking the music in Xenotheria to the next level! Our talented composer Karim has been hard at work creating new tracks that perfectly complement our improved gameplay. Be sure to take a listen to some of these amazing tunes on our YouTube channel. And, of course, you'll get to experience them firsthand in the demo.
Improving Our UI Menus:
As mentioned in the last update, we're focusing on improving our UI. We've been hard at work improving our UI to make it even more user-friendly. Specifically, we've been looking at ways to simplify our Deck management menus. We had shared a preliminary sketch of these menus with you earlier, but I'm excited to let you know that we now have a fully functional version in-game!
Tutorials:
We've recently included some tutorials in our Xenotheria demo to assist our players in getting accustomed to the fundamental gameplay features of the game.
Enemy Art + Card Art:
We wanted to showcase the amazing work that our character artist, Chris, has done with our cards and enemies in preparation for the release of our upcoming demo. Some of these baddies may even look familiar to those who follow us on social media.
Steam Demo Details
- The demo is free to download, no purchase necessary.
- If you are interested in our demo, please wishlist on Steam to stay notified.
- The demo will remain up after Steam Nextfest.
- To download it, simply click “Download Demo” on our Steam page (will go live June 12)
- It will be available on PC platforms only
Demo Feedback:
Your feedback is important to us. We want to know what parts of Xenotheria worked for you and which elements did not. This feedback is vital to our development and helps us ensure that we back the best game we can.
Send us your feedback on the demo:
Join our discord and visit #bug-report-forum and #suggestion-forum. There you will be able to share the bugs you encountered or share your ideas, suggestions, and feedback for Xenotheria. Our developers will be looking through these forums during Nextfest to see what the community wants.
We're incredibly proud of this demo and our team for putting it together, and we can't wait for you to try it out. Be sure to mark your calendars and follow us on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok! You can also join our Discord community to get more involved.
See behind-the-scenes content early on social media
Wishlist Xenotheria on Steam today so you can be notified when the demo goes live and share our game with your friends. We can't wait for you to experience what we've been working on!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454960/Xenotheria/
That's all for today's update.
We look forward to playing Xenotheria with you in June.
-Anton, on behalf of Ganymede Games