Welcome to devlog #3! The game is steadily making progress, though certain things need a bit more time before we show them off. However, we're still hard at work on the game, and we'd like to show some of the upcoming features as we get closer to Arc 1!
Character Reveal: Kingsley Armstrong
Here comes a new fighter! Kingsley Armstrong is here to fight, improve, and then repeat!
Kingsley's a simple man with a simple life, being content in the everyday so long as he pursues his true passion—combat. To him, every fight is a story, with a lesson to be learned. He sees his place in the squad as an opportunity to battle new opponents and gradually better himself through his art. Between skirmishes, Kingsley is a friendly, approachable guy—not a drop of ill intent in his soul.
In combat, Kingsley excels in the front line, dealing high damage while being able to take a hit or two. The brawler gets some tools to build Aggro quicker than others, allowing him to take the pressure off of your squishier allies. One of his standout skills is the Seismic Force Passive. This makes Kingsley's attacks shove enemies back after combat, which can be used for offensive and defensive purposes. It also stacks with other knockback skills, including the universal Throw Command, turning minor displacements into massive journeys.
Professional Mercenary Reveal: Lance Viridis
We've got another Professional Mercenary heading your way—get ready for Lance Viridis!
Lance brings a lot to the team, even by just being present. Defense is his specialty, and being able to trigger Taunt allows him to take the pressure of of his allies.
Despite being a rookie, Lance is prepared to learn, and learn quickly. However, war does change a man over time—perhaps it'll change him as well.
Community Created Mercenary Results!
Thanks to everyone who participated in our Majority Duels event! It was really enjoyable to see the group come together to decide on a character, and we have our winner!
"The Plague" will be sure to make an appearance in Stratagem Lost's future builds! We can't say quite when it'll happen just yet, but we're going to make something truly unique based off this prompt!
Roster Menu Preview
Recently, a lot of work has gone into creating some of the game's progression systems and adding the appropriate graphics for them. We thought we'd give a preview of it, since players are going to be using these systems quite a bit in their playthroughs.
Here's your first look at the game's Roster Menu! You'll be using this for managing your squad, hiring mercenaries, getting new equipment, the list goes on! Pretty much all of your micro-managing and teambuilding are going to use this as a jumping off point!
The left tab is going to get a lot busier as more characters become available, as you might expect. Small detail—the background has a little bit of parallaxing that responds to your mouse movement!
A design ethos that has been present from the beginning has been giving the player a multitude of options, which extends to the game's equipment system. You can have Howden keep using his starting lance, or swap to a new one that prioritizes a different strategy like range, stat buffs, etc. There is no right or wrong answer, but there are a lot of choices. We'll be showing more of this in the future, as well as collecting information about backer created equipment—some of which we hope to include in Arc 1!
We had our Casting Call!
Since the last update, we've conducted our first public casting call for the characters in Stratagem Lost! We had over 4000+ total auditions!
We've already found an excellent list of voice actors for several characters that you'll see in Arc 1, as well as future characters! Look forward to seeing some incredible performances in the game!
What's Next?
Arc 1's alpha/beta testing is drawing closer! I'm happy to say that we're beginning to progress from isolated asset development to now connect the dots to form the full experience! We can't put an exact date on things yet, but we'll let you know! At some point, we're hoping to properly set expectations as far as what the alpha/beta builds will contain, and how backers will be able to access them.
Thanks for reading the devlog! Hope to see you again soon!
Thank you for your time,
-Smithy, Hybrid Fiction Games