Greetings, Survivors!
We hope everyone is having a great start to their 2023. We wanted to make sure to hop on and give everyone an update on how the development process of Silentium has been going.
First things first, we have officially entered internal alpha. What that means at Eldersin is we have started to give the game to individuals that we can get hyper-focused feedback from. As we continue development up to release, we will open the development process to give keys to more players -- we thank you for your patience. When we do open up our testing phases, it will be focused on certain features of the game. Example: At Pax West we tested our turned based combat system and our dungeon layout. We received critical feedback and are actively working to fine tune our numbers and shrink the size of our rooms.
Secondly, our theory for the dungeon layout before was, leave wide open room space for exploration. The feedback we received again and again, was "the rooms are too big and feel like nothing is in them." Our current solution is adding what we call, "chunks". This allows us to create more of a flow to the dungeons, and reduce how much time is needed to run through dead-zones.
Before:
After:
This new level-design theory also allows us to get creative from the developer side. It allows us to put things like harvestables, chests, objectives, and lore easter eggs into corridors.
Thirdly, another issue we addressed at Pax West was our HUD display for health bars. As well, as glowing boxes underneath characters/enemies -- for information or for those who are visually impaired. Currently, the UI in-game is good, but we plan to make it better. We will be looking for any suggestions/feedback that you, the community, has to make the game better -- especially with UI.
On the topic of UI, we also wanted to address the elephant in the room: Codex, our dungeon building mechanic. Currently, we are still integrating all assets, and props into the game, so Codex will still be awhile ways out for testing. We are hopeful by the end of Closed Alpha, Codex will be available for testing. The current development plan is to integrate Codex slow, and provide chunks of the labyrinth to allow the testers to play around and see how the UI/in-game map maker works. Again, this is tentative and we will keep you all posted on the progress.
Lastly, we integrated harvestable items this month. We plan on adding an in-depth crafting system, for items such as potions and elixirs. So far during our testing, it's added a fun addition to combat and tactical gameplay. While it will also reward those who are brave enough to check every corner of the rooms and corridors.
Thank you all so much for your continued support and feedback! As we grow our team, we will hopefully be able to give more frequent updates.
Feel free to tweet at us, at our twitter handle @EldersinStudios.