Hey everyone... I'm Back!
It's been a while since my last update, I'm sorry I haven't been updating you guys lately. Although I haven't been posting updates I want you guys to know that I've continued to work on this game full time and I finally have some great news to share with you guys!
UPDATES
The game is now in beta state! Every single aspect of the game has been improved in various ways. Unfortunately I wasn't able to keep a full list of changes since the last public update but here's a list of new additions and improvements since the last public version:
New Race: The Orcish Tribes has been added to the game along with two new Heroes. The new faction functions completely differently from the human faction, with unique resources, buildings and heroes.
New Hero: The Warchief is a brutish Orc war veteran armed with plate armor and a massive Pavise Shield. A fearsome commander with abilities to empower and command his troops and instill fear on his enemies.
New Hero: The Berserker is a lunatic tribal warrior that revels in battle and pain. A reckless fighter with dual axes that spins around the battle dishing out massive damage and applying bleeding effects to multiple targets.
New Campaign Story Mode: Levels 1 and 2 of the Story Mode have been added to the game! This is just a small demonstration of what the complete finished campaign will feel like. Hope you guys enjoy it!
Hero Leveling Progression and Talent Rework: Heroes now start off with only Left click and Right click abilities at level 1. Each level allows you to unlock an additional ability, up to level 5. Additionally, Talents are now unlocked with Crystals instead of hero levels. Most abilities and talents have been reworked and/or improved, and some heroes have gained new abilities.
Complete rework/improvement of the game's combat. Virtually every aspect of combat has been improved in one way or another. The changes are too many to list here but the major changes include: Reworked knockback system with less frequent stuns for the player. Major tuning to damage, cooldowns and costs of most abilities. Numerous improvements to AI behaviour and unit pathfinding. More responsive and fluent Hero controls. New enemies and abilities.
An overhaul of the game's UI, with brand new UI animations, menus, general descriptions, information and clarity.
A massive overhaul of the game's Sound, Music and FX with new and improvements for most effects in the game, better sound balance and a new ambient sound option slider, along with new particle effects, improved body ragdolls and soundtracks and brand new Main Theme.
Extensive improvements of the game's resource economy and unit production systems and game flow. Matches should feel a lot more balanced and challenging with less snowballing and a lot more skirmishes for objectives and map control. Boats from Ports have been sped up. Income from various sources has been tweaked to provide a better resource flow in the early game while reducing bloating in later stages.
Polish, polish and more polish, and an ungodly amount of bug fixes too large to list.
NAME RE-BRANDING
I've decided to rebrand the game for multiple reasons. As you might have noticed by the new discord icon and Steam page assets, I am re-branding the game's name to "RTS Hero"! I understand most of you that have followed me for a long time have known the game as "Shattered Lands".
Firstly, unfortunately a series of months ago, some Chinese developer released a random asset flip game under that same name on Steam.
Secondly, the game also shared the same name as the expansion for Dark Sun, "Dark Sun: Shattered Lands", and also "Dungelot: Shattered Lands".
Thirdly the name RTS Hero is a lot better at essentially describing the focus of my Game. It's an RTS where you play as a hero too! Rather than Shattered Lands which only vaguely alludes to the game's backstory.
This name change allows the game to be more easily marketable and prevents any confusion with other game titles out there.
KICKSTARTER ANNOUNCEMENT
I'm happy to announce that I'm finally launching a Kickstarter to support this game's further development! Those of you that have followed me from that start may have known this was my plan for a while now but I wanted to make sure the game was well polished and up to the quality that I wanted it to be for this launch, and I’m glad to say it's finally ready!
The Kickstarter will launch on December 2nd. If you'd like to see this project finished and even expanded on, please support me on Kickstarter! As much as I love this project, I am a real person and I have bills to pay and require food to survive. I've been working on this game for 5 years now and my only wish is to make it the best I can.
Along with the launch of the Kickstarter I will be launching a limited time demo during the Kickstarter campaign that includes most of the improvements and new features previously mentioned.
(Oh and If you're a long time follower of this project on Discord go ahead and DM me personally on discord and I'll give you full access to the internal development version! Thanks for sticking around ːsteamhappyː)