there is no PC port. PC game was an original game... it was later ported and revoked but in a horrible way. if you liked your apple version then you probably love utterly disgusting PC revoked KoDP.
You say that just because of the the lack of the clan lands screen, or due to the changes the game suffered? It seems to me the changes were for the good (streamlining food, minimizing death spirals, more events, etc), no?
I don’t have to tell anyone that this has been a strange year. I don’t know if I can really blame 2020 on the lack of blog posts, however. Some of the progress is hard to show, and we want to have a few surprises when the next game comes out.
The COVID-19 pandemic did impact things. We’re pretty sure one team member caught it but had almost no symptoms (and at a time when there wasn’t any testing to confirm it). Otherwise there hasn’t been any direct impact, since the team is distributed and people work out of their homes. But that is still very different when other family members are now doing that too, or you can’t leave your home. So we’ve all been affected.
Despite that, work on the next game, “Lights Going Out,” has proceeded. Currently, 317 scenes have been written and coded. Two thirds of them have been exhaustively tested. (For comparison, “Ride Like the Wind” ended up with 364 scenes.) Most of the non-scene writing hasn’t started, though there are currently two rituals running. (One of those may need to be reworked.)
We have a lot of great art. I don’t know quite what our target is here (since a lot depends on the not-yet-written scenes). But more has been completed so far this year than in 2019.
Although most testing has focused on individual scenes (the “trees”) in isolation, we have done some QA based on just playing (the “forest”). I think you could play for 13 years before running out of yearly content. So while it’s not at all balanced yet, the basic game still works fine.
Although the basic game is the same, different things matter. The game takes place generations later, so factions other than the Seven Families are important. And you’ll possibly be interacting with the supernatural in different ways. Plus, the supernatural will impact you in different ways. I’m in the middle of tweaking the map for this.
And speaking about both games, you can indeed load a game you won and continue it. A number of factors are brought forward. At least one was something that we hadn’t originally planned for. (You can certainly play “Lights Going Out” without having won or even played “Ride Like the Wind,” though we hope it will be a richer experience if you have.)
As I mentioned in December, we’ve also been prototyping some ideas for a different game. As I write, its fate is unclear. For what it’s worth, as a separate project it hasn’t affected the “Lights Going Out” schedule.
Unfortunately, that schedule still isn’t solid. It’s taken longer to get here than I’d like, but I think we have made considerably progress during a challenging year.
Year In Review: 2020
TL;DR: We’re still making games.
COVID-19
The global pandemic hit all of us. Fortunately none of the team fell ill, though family members did, and there were several exposure or symptom scares. And while the team is distributed and work from home, that’s not the same thing in the middle of a pandemic, and when can’t really go anywhere else.
And of course we weren’t able to have occasional face-to-face meetings at conventions — or see fans.
Lights Going Out
Art by Ellen Barkin
We’ve been working on the next Six Ages game. “Lights Going Out” will let you continue the story of the clan you guided in “Ride Like the Wind” (though you can start a new one from scratch). Perhaps 3/4 of the events have been written and coded (with games like these, it’s hard to know exactly how many there will be, since we often add more towards the end, to fill in missing bits). And about half have been exhaustively tested. This is far enough that it’s now possible to play a significant chunk of the game without running into missing parts. Well, that’s what I tell myself, and then QA files bugs about missing parts.
Thumbnail by Jan Pospíšil
The exact art requirements are similarly hard to know in advance (since those new scenes may require new art). But I think well over half of the scene art is complete.
We just started thinking seriously about the endgame — what constitutes “victory” in a story game. Polishing and coding this is on the schedule for January.
There’s still too much uncertainty to talk about a release schedule, unfortunately. But it’s now far enough that we can start thinking about tuning, and testing the game as a whole instead of just in pieces.
Ride Like the Wind
Although most of the development effort has been on the new game, they share the same game system, and some “Lights Going Out” bugs are common. And we’ve been fixing bugs as players report them.
Luckily, there haven’t been too many of those, so I’ve held off on making a lot of updates. Plus, just making a release takes resources, and QA has been less available thanks to COVID-19. But I do expect a bug fix release next year.
Future
Last year, I mentioned prototyping a new game. A combination of events led to a digital prototype. There might well be a game there, but it’s still a side project to have in reserve.
