Hello, Rulers!
As you probably know, we have released a demo for Lakeburg Legacies at the beginning of February, during the Steam Next Fest event. This demo has been played by thousands of you, and we’ve spent a lot of time reading your feedback about it (as well as handling some of the issues you reported). It is extremely motivating for the team to see you so passionate about the game, and to read your lovely messages: we can’t thank you all enough for your support! ❤️
These past few months, we’ve worked on some new systems and important reworks that we couldn’t showcase in the demo. We felt that the game needed more refinement and comprehensibility, among other things. Let’s have a look at what’s been cooking! Brace yourself, because we have a lot to show you! 👀
New Build Menu with choices!
One of the most important decisions we took was to give players a little more agency in deciding how to expand their village. Before, we could only add buildings in a set order. Now, it is possible to make a choice between three paths: primary resources and prestige, transformed resources, and buildings with various effects.
New buildings...? New buildings!
Among all the reworks, this system stands out because it is a brand new one. We’ve teased it a bit in the previous DevJournal: four new buildings have joined Lakeburg!
These new additions to the town will become the heart of the party: by throwing events such as banquets, balls or jousts, the nobility will bring the town 💎 Prestige – a very valuable resource that will determine how well you succeeded at the game. Other villagers can take part in the festivities to socialize and perhaps develop new relationships. 🎉
Ernesto the Merchant
If you had the opportunity to play the demo, you’ve probably been visited by Ernesto, a cheery merchant who travels the roads alongside his faithful llama Bianca 🦙 Before the construction of the Castle and Trading Post, trading him goods is one of the only ways to make Gold. 💰
We found his appearances were a bit too random, and players often suffered harshly from the lack of Gold at the beginning of their game. Thus, we decided to rework the trading system to give it its own permanent interface, rather than appearing as a random event. At first, players will have only one trade offer available at once, and two more will be unlocked after the Trading Post is built!
New Villagers Menu!
In just a few years, the population of Lakeburg can increase quite a lot, and we found it could be difficult to follow what was happening with everyone: who had been kicked out of their house and was now homeless, who was single and ready to mingle, who was jobless or in search of a mentor... It was also hard to track the members of the same family without going into their house. 👩👩👦👶
Thus, we decided to revamp our previous menu! The result, we hope, gives a better view of the families in town, as well as the different required actions.
Working Atmosphere
In a previous blogpost, we’ve talked about the variety of relationships between the Villagers. In addition to affecting various factors such as their affinity or morale, social connections now directly reflect on the production time!
Workers in the same building can have a production bonus or malus, depending on whether their relationship with their coworkers is good 🌻 or...explosive. 💣
Encounters
Lakeburg is bustling with life, and villagers will meet each other even without any action from the players! These random interactions were previously only displayed in the town’s Journal, which made it easy to miss them. Now, they will appear directly on the map, showing you which villagers were involved in the interaction, as well as its type. Did they gain an “Offended”, “Charmed” or “Embarrassed” trait after meeting each other? Did their relationship evolve from crush to passionate romance? 💕 Or from rival to sworn enemy? ⚔️ These notifications will make it much easier to keep track of everything that is happening in town!
UI rework of the Mentorship system
Life can be tough in Lakeburg, and it’s important that kids prepare themselves for their future jobs as soon as they can! That’s why adult workers can mentor up to three children at once, from the age of 6 until adulthood. However, we found that our mentorship system was often hard to get the hang of. And that was when players managed to find its location in buildings! Thanks to players' feedback, we realized that we needed to rework that part. After an interface rework, we hope it’s easier to understand!
Mentees slots can now be seen directly under the related worker slot, as well as information about their status (occupied, free, locked, or when the mentor is missing).
Furthermore, mentees slots now show more information about how well a child is performing at a given job, including whether they have an aspiration towards this kind of work.
Clarification of the Traits system
For a while, it was confusing to understand where traits came from and how they could be transmitted from one character to another. We already had that in mind when we reworked the character sheet a few months ago, but we found it wasn’t enough.
We’ve reworked the way identity traits are displayed so it is much clearer which are hereditary (transmittable to offspring), and which are personality traits (transmittable to children and mentees).
Animations!
We’ve started to bring more life into the game by animating parts of it. For example, cute little animals on the map...
... newcomers joining the town...
... and good ol’ Tindra doing her magic! 🔮
We hope all these changes are making you as excited as we are! The game is now much closer to what we had in mind, and it is very satisfying for the team to see that almost all systems have been implemented. We have a lot more balancing and polishing to do, but we feel like we’re getting there! ✨
The demo is still available, so don’t hesitate to give it a try and tell us what you think!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1584940/Lakeburg_Legacies/
Join us on Discord, Twitter & Instagram to discuss with the team and other players!