Greetings fellow villeins!
We're now about a month out from the first time some of you got to experience Under The Yoke at Steam Next Fest (the demo is still available for those of you that missed it).
We received an awful lot of great feedback on the game so I wanted to share a little behind the scenes on what you can expect from Under The Yoke prior to a full launch in a few months time.
UX
A pretty common response from player's were issues with the UX, mainly with the Font. I can proudly announce that we will be moving away from our old timey font to something a lot more legible. This is actually a pretty major change as Under The Yoke features a vast number of menus that will need to be resized. For the 1 or 2 of you that like the old font, we will be keeping it for menu titles to keep the medieval theme but for the most part the new font will be deployed for any menus that require a lot of reading.
There will be some general work to improve the UI which should just give the game a cleaner and clearer feel.
Tutorial
A lot of feedback showed that the game lacked clarity on some mechanics. Truthfully there are so many mechanics in Under The Yoke that it's hard to explain the mechanics to players without overwhelming them. I think the existing tutorial can do with a little refresh though, and we will look to include images and even a video tutorial. If these changes don't help then it may be possible to create a tutorial that holds the player's hand a little more but I want to be respectful of people's time.
Bugs
Unsurprisingly with 1000 people launching into Under The Yoke they ran into bugs that my small group of play testers hadn't encountered. A lot of hard bugs and crashes were squashed during next fest and the game is in a much more stable space. Bug fixing will be an ongoing process so if you do encounter any new bugs along the way, reach out through the socials or [email protected] and I'll get on it.
Balance
The game received a lot of rebalancing during Steam Next Fest but there's still plenty to do. Expect the value of goods to change as well as the amount that you can/do produce in your home.
We will also be addressing Character Needs, particularly Faith and potentially experimenting with turning Cooking from a Weekly cost to a Monthly cost so player's don't need to constantly micromanage their inventory to make sure they have enough vegetables/beer or whatever other tertiary foodstuffs.
When?
Fortunately you won't need to wait until the full release of Under The Yoke to experience these game changes. A patch should be being pushed to the demo as this article gets published which features some bug fixes as well as other user requested changes, such as decreasing the speed at which time progresses.
Feedback is always welcome and helpful so jump into the forums with any of your thoughts.