Greetings, adventurers!
This is Oliver Joyce from the Lair of the Leviathan team. Since our last update, David from Nostalgic Realms has been working hard on the game's location art. From dank, oppressive swamp towns to cozy taverns with crackling fireplaces, David is putting together a ton of art for the game, one pixel at a time.
Meanwhile, I've been working on the game engine itself. I have created a pretty powerful in-game editor, where I can do everything from add lights, points of interest and set the weather for the realm, I can also create encounters, conversations, link locations and more. I've also got the character creator fully built too. Next up for me is most likely the 'skills creator' so I can prepare for building combat in the game.
I've got party chatter conversations going in the game too. Although you custom create your own hero ( and you'll have to create up to 4 other custom heroes to join you), there will be the option to have pre-made heroes join the group too. These heroes will have their own personalities and comment on things they see and experience through the game.
Right now the in-game editor is just for David and I to use, but at some point if the game does well, I'd love to open it up to the public to allow people to make their own modded adventures for the game itself.
Last week I started linking encounters created in the Editor with the actual game itself. I've just uploaded a video which shows this off, check it out.
What you see above is the five heroes ( all just using a 'dwarf' figurine right now but they will all have unique and animated figurines to move) walking around the first town in the game, Stoneward. The heroes have full pathfinding, so they can navigate their way around buildings, go behind trees and find the most optimal path to where they are going. Both mouse and keyboard will be supported ( and gamepads too) as we are planning on hopefully porting the game to Switch and PS5 at some point.
Also in this video, two characters having a quick conversation. One of them rudely remarks the town stinks, and the other tells him he'll feel right at home. This kind of little banter will appear all through the game but won't interrupt game flow ( and I may even have an option to turn it off for players who want totally silent party members )
However, with all this built, we now turn our attention to the town itself! Notice how the town is using a "Top Down" view, same as the overworld view. This works for exteriors, but we've been experimenting wtih a potential 'side view' ( antfarm, dollhouse etc) for building interiors.
This is the TOP DOWN view of an interior:
This is the SIDE VIEW of the same interior:
There are some practical reasons for switching to a side view for interiors.
- It's faster to create art on the side view perspective
- We don't have to worry about Y Sorting everything in crowded buildings ( where players can walk behind tables etc, this kind of pathfinding issue can be challenging to solve in interiors
- It cuts down on the constant 'walking' in the game - less dead time. Meaning, on the side view, you'll just see icons above the blacksmith for 'Repair", or above the tavern patrons for "Rumours" and so on.
Exteriors, overworld, dungeons and combat will of course remain top down view.
What do you think of the proposed side view for interiors? Also, we'd love your feedback on how the game is coming along so far. We're realistically 9 months away from a decent playable demo, but we're hoping to have one out sometime in 2025. It takes a long time to put together a decent game engine and toolset , but once we have it all working robustly, the game's content itself should come along quite rapidly.
Cheers!
Oliver and David
Whiskeybarrel Studios / Nostalgic Realms