Noble Kings,
Once again, the royal court has been filled with your questions. We thank you for your curiosity, your passion, and even your unexpected requests! Today we bring you another round of answers straight from the throne. Let us begin, onward!!
Q: Any plans to add VO to the game?
A: We actually prototyped an announcer who would comment on waves and resource shortages. In practice, though, we felt it broke the flow and immersion of the game. For now, we don’t plan to add VO.
Q: Are there plans to add new councillors, maybe through a community challenge?
A: Yes! We already have about 20 more councillors in prototypes, and some of them will definitely make it into the game over time.
Q: Why can’t the Tavern consume wine to increase morale?
A: If you mean why wine is always consumed during battle: that’s a balancing decision. Wine provides a strong morale bonus, and we didn’t want to gate it behind a building. Because it’s always consumed, it’s relatively easier to stockpile compared to other high-level resources like meat.
Q: Will there be a barracks that only uses wine, like Viking warriors?
A: Maybe :)
Q: Could each King have their own independent advisor setup?
A: That’s a QoL feature we’d like to add, but it requires a big rework of how advisor choices are stored. So it’s on our list, but low priority.
Q: Why didn’t you tie Threat Level unlocks to specific Kings, so you’d have to replay from scratch with each one?
A: We discussed this a lot. Both systems have merits. We chose a more liberal system to give players freedom: you can replay each difficulty per King, or jump straight to higher Threat Levels with a newly unlocked King.
Achievements for reaching maximum Threat Level still encourage trying each King, though.
Q: Why can’t you get more than six spells?
A: This is a balancing choice to keep spell slots limited. You can increase the limit with a specific advisor, and you can also stack multiple copies of the same spell. This keeps the cap soft while pushing players to actually use the spells and not hoard them.
Q: Will Endless Mode be available in Threat Levels 2, 3, and 4?
A: We limited Endless Mode to specific Threat Levels so the leaderboards stay fair and easy to follow. That won’t change for now.
Q: Who is your favourite King to play as?
A: For our lead designer, it’s King Spellus. For our publishing producer, King Saladin. And we’ve all had fun with Baldwin’s grunt builds :)
Q: Can you remove the restriction of only being able to take each artifact once?
A: Hm, that’s actually an interesting idea for a councillor ability.
Q: Could you add a button to gather all units at once, like the deploy-all button?
A: This and also “presets” of units were requested a lot, but even if we add this functionality it’s a low priority improvement for us at the moment.
Q: Could you make the small gold and iron mines more distinct?
A: We’ll think about it, thanks! We know there’s a popular mod that does exactly this, so it’s worth exploring.
Q: Can you add the possibility to place orders at the trader for specific items?
A: Not at the moment, it would break the balance of the current system. But we do want to make builds more predictable in the future, so this might change as we refine things.
Q: Is it planned to add the possibility to play as a bad guy?
A: What makes you think you’re playing as a good guy now? ;) But we will add more ways to feel bad, but cool.
Q: What was your most useful marketing beat?
A: Steam Next Fest brought us the largest number of wishlists. But in the long run, pivoting the game more towards roguelike mechanics, and thus making it more marketable, was even more important.
Q: Is there an opportunity to join your team as a QA engineer?
A: There are two ways to contribute:
We recruit volunteer testers from time to time, so keep an eye on our Discord announcements.
We’re not hiring QA managers right now, but we are looking for another GameMaker developer to join the project. You can apply on tinyBuild's website.
That is all for today's royal friends. Your questions inspire us, your support strengthens us, and your love for the game keeps our kingdom growing. We will return soon with another scroll of answers. HUZZAH!
~The Hypnohead Devs