Welcome back to another dev diary from the Legend of Khiimori team!
We have a collection of different bits of good news for you all today. What this post lacks in a coherent theme, it makes up for in juicy details about various topics.
We’re Headed to Cologne!
We’re thrilled to announce our presence at Gamescom in Cologne this month! While individuals from the Aesir and Mindscape teams have been around the conference floor to discuss courier rider business, this year’s event marks the very first time that our game will be playable for the public!
Our booth design is still work-in-progress, but we’re incredibly excited about what we have planned. Let’s just say if you’re there, you should keep your eyes peeled for anything looking like it belongs into the middle of the steppe rather than a crowded show floor. 😇
Further highlights from our Gamescom plans include:
Play an exclusive ~15-minute demo of the game! Not only is the game playable for the public for the very first time, but the exclusive Gamescom version will feature some Archery gameplay that we haven’t shown anywhere yet as a special treat! We’ll have enough gaming stations set up for up to twelve people to play the game at a time.
We’ll have a special guest on site with Zolzaya Boldbaatar! He is part of the Bavarian-based traditional Mongolian band Khukh Mongol, plays the Morin Khuur (horsehead fiddle) among other things, and has contributed some wonderful work to our game’s soundtrack. We’re thrilled to have him at our booth on Wednesday and Thursday to play live to some of our gameplay sessions.
There’s going to be a photo wall, because we love giving attendees an opportunity to brag to their friends.
Thanks to a collaboration with Mifcom, we’ll be giving away one of two customized high end Khiimori gaming PCs at Gamescom. The second one will be raffled off online so our international fans can participate as well!
… and a lot more! We’re still getting everything set up, so who knows what we might add! Unfortunately we probably won’t be able to import an entire herd of Mongolian horses for marketing purposes. 😔
Our team on site will be meeting with press and content creators, so if you’re reporting on the event and want a personal tour of the Gamescom demo version, do get in touch with us!
Gameplay Trailer
Keen eyes will have already spotted it on our Store Page, but for anyone who hasn’t checked in for a bit: we recently released our very first gameplay trailer!
Get a glimpse at what route planning, item gathering, powder pouch throwing and general storm-weathering will look like in the game.
Stream Highlights
On July 28th, the Aesir team went live on Twitch and Youtube to show you the latest (stable) version of the game and answer a bunch of questions! You can find the complete stream recording right here, but let’s summarize some highlights and provide timestamps:
We’ve moved our Early Access release window from “Summer” to “Fall” of this year. This gives us a bit more time to include some of the new features and ideas from the Kickstarter as well as make sure that the start of the Early Access will be an enjoyable experience for our players. We’re also getting a lot of important feedback through our Alpha Playtest at the moment, which we want to address and fix before the initial release. Timestamp
Our Senior Artist Valentin explained a bit about how coat colors and genetics work in our horse breeding mechanics (timestamp). Later in the stream (timestamp), he showed some cool details about the horse’s visuals like our updated coat rendering, how white markings turn visible skin on muzzle and eyes pink, and how white markings near the mane now correctly impacts the color of mane hair.
We showed some of the injuries and illnesses our horses can get, and how such things can be treated. Around this timestamp, you see our QA Director Jackie demonstrate crafting treatments for her lame and injured horse.
We’ve also been asked whether horses in the game can die: the answer is no, we don’t feel like that fits our vision. Valentin and Rupert explained this choice in a bit more detail at this timestamp.
You’ll notice throughout the stream that our answers to many questions of “will the game feature XYZ” boils down to “maybe, depends on how the Early Access release goes”, outside of some definitely planned core features. This isn’t vague marketing speech from our end, but an attempt at transparency: the truth is that the success of our upcoming Early Access release – measured by both commercial and critical reception – will inform our strategy moving forward.
Many people on our team are incredibly passionate about this project, but passion in the end isn’t what pays people’s bills, so we’re dependent on our game’s reception in terms of reviews and sales in order to commit to improvements and further updates beyond what’s been planned and promised through out Kickstarter campaign. Your support – in telling people about the game, and in forgiving us for things that might not be perfect in the initial release yet – is invaluable for that, and we’re immensely grateful for it!
For more on what will/won’t be part of the Early Access release, make sure to check up on this dev diary from May and to keep an eye on our Trello Roadmap!
Thank you for reading, and let us know if we’ll get to meet you in Cologne!
Previous Developer Diaries can be found here:
#10 | Early Access Expectations
#11 | Thousands of Bugfixes and Other Improvements
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