Flavorful Ale to everyone!
A few updates.
During the past festival, over 50,000 people played our demo. Thank you to everyone who gave us a chance, and thanks to the 600+ individuals who provided feedback through the in-game form. We have analyzed everything and drawn conclusions.
We were hesitant about participating in the festival, knowing that the game is still raw, much work remains unfinished, there are bugs, and the interfaces lack sufficient information and require reworking. Nevertheless, we wanted to showcase the basic gameplay to ensure that the game generates interest. Regarding the number of errors, it looks worse than it actually is, and we intend to address them all within the next week. You can assess the dynamics of this process in the current demo patch. And thank you to everyone who sends us bug reports!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1857090/view/3648527372267838356
Now, let's talk about our plans.
The next stage is the Early Access release. Here's what we want to accomplish for Early Access, taking into account our own vision and your feedback:
- All the languages stated on the game's page will be added, including Chinese.
- Optimization will be conducted.
City:
- Buildings will rotate (currently only residential ones).
- We will add houses for noble families (a very frequent request, a bit unexpected, but no problem, we'll make it happen).
- We will create an overview economic interface as well as a statistics interface.
- A relaxed gameplay mode for builder players.
War:
- Bows and crossbows will be added to introduce tactics.
- Backstabbing will pierce armor and occur out of turn. This way, you will have the opportunity to create another squad, risking a second lord but gaining a tactical advantage.
- Options for squads to "Escape," "Surrender," and "Keep the lord behind the squad" (with morale penalties).
Global Map:
- New diplomatic quests and options
- Interface for viewing relationships between other cities.
- Enhancements for the unholy horde in the late game (to be honest, we didn't expect you to reach it!).
- Choice of starting map at the beginning of the game.
Characters:
- Reworking the family creation interface at the start. You will be able to customize all the characteristics of your characters.
- The older the lord, the more skills they will have.
- New traits and inheritance system.
- Improvements for children (yes, we know they currently look like miniature adults - we just haven't had time to change it).
Social Factions:
- The most significant addition that will significantly change the game.
- Each pawn, whether a peasant or your lords, will have beliefs: heretics, philosophers, hedonists, fanatics, pagans, pragmatists, etc.
- We will discuss this feature in more detail in a separate article.
Now, let's talk about timing.
We will genuinely try to accomplish all of this by the end of summer, but if we don't manage, we will postpone it by approximately one month. We were advised against releasing the game in September, alongside Starfield and numerous other major releases - it would be suicidal. Understand us correctly, the release is a crucial moment, and failure here could greatly undermine our ability to develop the game as much as we all would like. Gamedev moment. Nonetheless, we will try to come up with something.
Thank you once again,
Sincerely yours,
Long Jaunt