State of the Game

Just wanted to post an update about the current state of the game and when Early Access will be available.

The last few weeks and months I have been play testing and polishing the game.

Somethings I am happy with, others not so much. My goal the entire time has been to create a fun game the player can escape a few hours with.

In that regard, the game is mostly successful. You begin the game with a few quests, recruit your heroes, send them out to explore, fight battles and complete quests.

For successful quests, you get rewarded and can expand.

If you're unable to complete quests then you won't get rewarded and eventually run out of gold to recruit new heroes.

This does not necessarily mean you lose. Your heroes will slowly regain health and can still be sent on quests. You can also trade to boost your income. But there is a chance that you run out of heroes / gold and have to face the music.

So there is a bit of risk in the game and you do have to think about which quests to accept / complete and who to send on them.

So far, so good.

But as with most games, this becomes repetitive and a bit tedious. There will be different chapters to complete which introduce new content but I'm trying to think of something bigger.

You have your private army of heroes and what else can you do with them?

I'm thinking that eventually you will have to side with one of the Factions (Human, Elven, Goblin or Undead) and wage war against the others for control of the world but this still needs to be fleshed out.

So I'm trying to keep the game engaging even in the later stages.

What's currently being worked on

- Parts of the UI seem a little dated and I want to improve / upgrade those
- Adding more Character Skills and Spells (especially for Archer / Mage / Cleric)
- Adding more Accessories to make character customization even more unique
- Bug fixing

Introducing deeper battles

As you've perhaps seen from the trailers and screenshots, the battles are fought on a square-like battle board.

This allows for some strategic variations such as structures, barriers, wave battles, etc. But it's also limited and the battles eventually become repetitive.

With this in mind, I want to expand the battles for certain locations. For example, if there is a unique location like a dungeon or tomb, this should be something bigger. There should be multiple rooms / areas that have to be explored with multiple enemies to be slayed along with an end boss.

So this is being currently worked on and will be introduced as soon as possible.

When will Early Access be available?

This is a little difficult to say at the moment. I don't want to commit myself to a date and then not be able to deliver or deliver a shoddy product. Anyone remember Sword of the Stars II?

I want to release a polished game with enough content. Let's say a rough estimate will be the next 6 - 12 months. In the meantime, I will keep posting updates and dev diaries about new features and content.

I'm currently not active on Discord and maybe I should be. But from what I've heard, Discord is a real time-sink and at the moment I'm not able to spend that much time on it.

As always, I'll keep posting new announcements on Steam and if you have questions or comments that's where I'm the most active.

And thanks for reading to the end ːsteamhappyː