July 29th marked the sixth year of Stone Story RPG being in development! It really is incredible how far this game has come, from its beginnings as the brainchild of standardcombo to an award-winning game in its first year of Early Access.
Looking Back
As a small team working on a passion project in our (limited) spare time, our goal has been to stay true to a specific vision. That often meant delaying features, spending more time on others, and figuring out how to navigate the quagmire that is indie development and self-publishing.
Despite it all, we’ve never conceded on what we believe Stone Story is and should be. An auto-RPG built on idle mechanics with an ASCII artstyle is something that we recognize is incredibly niche.
However! Our amazing players have proven to us that people want that niche to be filled. Early Access has gone on longer than we anticipated, but the support of our players since we launched into EA nearly a year ago has helped us refine Stone Story in extremely valuable ways.
With our community’s help, we’ve expanded Stonescript, designed and implemented Lost Items (which got its name from our players!), fleshed out new mechanics, and polished game balance to ensure that Stone Story RPG is the best it can be.
One such requested feature from our Discord community was Offline Farming, which we’ve now launched onto the live branch with today’s update.
Offline Farming
Key to incremental/idle design is the ability to stockpile resources. Up until now, players have had to leave the game running in the background in order to farm. No longer! Offline farming allows you to loop through locations and farm loot even while the game is closed.
This addition should help both new players and veterans alike, whether you’re trying to overcome a difficult location or finding the best way to optimize your runs.
Plans moving forward
So where is Stone Story’s development at right now?
We’ve decided to take a small break from events. Events were a nice way to test out various mechanics, but now we want to focus primarily on getting the Quest System up and running as soon as possible. They will most certainly make a return, however! The systems they helped establish are now simply part of the game, meaning we can approach further design options with them in mind.
The upside of being in Early Access is that we have the freedom to pivot development should priorities change (which they have!). We took stock of where the game was at and determined a number of essential tasks, such as bug squashing and quality-of-life improvements.
With those out of the way, our full attention is now on expanding story-based content for Stone Story RPG.
A Look at the Quest System
Much of our time lately has been spent on further developing the Quest System. The work thus far has been to establish the framework, as the Quest System was built entirely within Stonescript.
Designing around Stone Story RPG’s in-game scripting language ensures a high degree of modularity, which will be incredibly important for when we eventually work in user-generated content (UGC).
Players will have access to three quests at any given time, which can be broken down into two categories: Basic and Epic. Basic quests typically involve some kind of tracked task, like “Kill X Fire Foes” or “Craft X Basic Swords”. After a quest is completed, a timer kicks in that will tick down until the next quest takes its place.
However, once in a while you may have an Epic Quest pop in! Epic Quests are vignettes that take you on standalone adventures where you’ll meet new characters and uncover new mysteries in the Dark World. This is where the modular design philosophy really shines.
For example, in one of the Epic Quests, “Ascension”, players will cross paths with an escaped Pusher trying to make their way up to Acropolis. Several modular systems were developed using Stonescript, including dialogue boxes, animation and location layouts, event triggers, and quest rewards to name a few.
The modularity means that once UGC is live, players will be able to create custom quests with an easy-to-use established framework. Everything you’ll see in Epic Quests you’ll be able to create yourselves!
We can’t thank you guys enough for supporting us. We’re extremely lucky to have dedicated players who have been and continue to be there with us every step of the way!
As always, we welcome anyone and everyone to stop by the Discord server and be part of the active effort to help the game's development-- discord.gg/StoneStoryRPG
For the the full release notes on the current patch (v2.18.3), please visit: https://stonestoryrpg.com/releasenotes/
-SSRPG Team