Edge of War - isometric turn-based RPG inspired by Finnish folklore from Iron Danger devs - now on Early Access

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

For the whole "waiting for support to drop some items", we are getting there in our next update

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

That sounds like a great plan!

On the update estimate, we are now working on tweaking and testing changes for latest update and doing couple of things so I'd say it is couple of weeks away (depending on if we find out that we broke something miserably when testing it more indepth!). I think it has been sort of learning update for us in the sense that in future we do it bit differently This time we actually focused on content and as the time anyone can invest in given period is unpredictable, it means that update cycle easily gets too long. And even then, we did not get as much content there that we were initially hoping. But that is understandable since people were focusing on new jobs and doing freelance gigs and so on to pay their bills, so those of course have to come first.

So, we have been thinking that in future we likely try to keep updates with goal of maybe update per two months or so and the amount of content changes included will vary depending on the time. But at least that'll keep update cycle shorter even to get smaller updates in. Of course, in case there is need for quick patches for something that is broken, we will do those faster when needed.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Sooooo, some update here. We are getting closer to finalize our first content update. We have been working hard for last couple of weeks to get some unfinished things to be finalized for update and now we are in state that we are not adding any of the knew stuff that we know to be unfinished. That does not mean that we will not have any bugs or anything such. There are old bugs and very likely new ones as well (making bugs is easy for us!). So, currently we are playtesting the build ourselves and looking for any critical issues or major regression issues that we still should fix. When we have the main pass with that done, we will provide "experimental" build with update on special branch for community testing for those who are interested in being first ones to dive into the update and to help us testing it through and stabilizing it before we will push it fully public.

So getting closer!

Will share some of the changes here for all of you in days to come (some of those that are bit more visible and don't contain spoilers), just to keep you in a track with something that you can expect.

First one, we have included a small introduction text in start of new game (hopefully someday we will get this as nice video as well) to give some insight on starting point of the game, which was earlier hard to catch. Also, some additional NPC conversations early on will shed more light as well.

One thing we decided to update on UX plan (That has been in plans for a while) was to change dialogue UI to be more vertical to give better view on the world around you and the person you are talking with. In addition with some other adjustments on dialogue UI to make it more clear to read and better to separate "actions" from what is said.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/4194610392083265590

First content update moves to community testing
Hi all!

It's been a (way too) long since last update, but we are still here and we have not been idle meanwhile. We have been working hard to get our first content update done and available for all and we are getting close to that moment. Even so close that we can provide our community members a chance to try it out early on!

As we are working with game on our spare-time and the game is quite big and has procedural elements, it is pretty much impossible for us to catch all the issues out there by ourselves. Or even catch all the major issues that there might be. Therefore we try to take an approach that we invite interested members of our community to help to test the new version before we push the update available for all.

So, if you have the game in your library and want to join community testing to give us a hand (or just to be one of the first ones to get your hands to our upcoming content update), we are happy to welcome you to join this mighty quest with us!

You can learn more and find more detailed instructions about joining the community testing in our Discord-server.

 

[Fargus]

Really want to try this game but they are very slow with updates...

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Hi @everyone . Bunch of fixes have now been done based on both findings of community testing and our own, and we have new build available for community testing for those who want to give it a try (in preview-test beta branch, as before). Not all that has been found so far has been fixed and they will be fixed eventually in other upcoming builds, but we have tried to fix all that has seemed critical and most major things out there. In addition, we have fixed some amount smaller "cosmetic" bugs that have been quick to fix on the side.

In this build, our main focus is finding possible critical issues, which are only things we are planning to fix anymore to the final content update (if any such are found). Reporting smaller ones is still very welcome as we can then take those in account in future versions. And some case some smaller ones can be indication of something bigger as well.

So, for those who want to give it a go, it should be available for now. The version is 0.5.85 (which you can confirm in main menu).

And as always, please start a new game as old save games might be broken in mysterious ways.

 

[Litmanen]

Sounds really interesting and I hope it will be born, sooner or later, as it was supposed to be.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Woa. I watched a lot of that hour gameplay demo. This looks pretty good. I will purchase in the hopes this comes to fruition.

 

[Konjad]

How complete is it at this point?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/4178850961424653570

Edge of War: A World Transformed
Welcome back to the Northlands, a brand new update is here
Get ready for a thrilling new update to Edge of War, packed with new adventures, tactical improvements, and a more immersive world! Check out these key highlights:

Adventure Awaits
Discover and explore all-new locations and complete 8 exciting quests!
Face a dangerous new enemy faction. Can you survive?
Interact with unique NPCs and engage in compelling dialogue.


Enhanced Gameplay
Revamped resource gathering! Mine ore with your pickaxe, fill bottles, and craft bandages.
Brew potent potions with the new alchemy system.
Unlock chests with keys for hidden treasures.
Dynamic faction powers that respond to your in-game actions.
Smoother trading, combat animations, and camera controls.


Quality of Life Updates
Customize your graphics with multi-stage VSYNC support.
Enjoy a deeper understanding of the world with an insightful introduction.
Optimized performance for smoother play.


This massive update is yours to explore now. Sharpen your blades and prepare for the challenges that lie ahead in Edge of War!

edit.
changelog:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1786070/discussions/3/4361247268672649443/

Change log for first content update (0.5.85)
Hi all!

Here is more complete change log for the content update that was released today.


New content and features:

• 8 completely new quests of varied sizes added.
  
  
• 7 new locations added to world map.
  
  
• Fort Turso Interior made accessible.
  
  
• Variations created for caves and locations.
  
  
• Small quests (errands) now appear in quest log.
  
  
• New enemy faction added.
  
  
• NPC dialogue added to Turso, towns and more.
  
  
• Multiple unique NPCs added with unique dialogue.
  
  
• Slight variation added to Turso for each playthrough.
  
  
• New animations added to weapon classes and several creatures.
  
  
• You can now fill bottles at water and oil barrels.
  
  
• You can wash dirty rags at water barrels to create bandages.
  
  
• Bandage item added.
  
  
• Chests can be opened with corresponding keys.
  
  
• Alehouse added.
  
  
• Tavern added.
  
  
• Alchemist can now brew potions through rudimentary system.
  
  
• Ore can only be mined when player has a pick axe.
  
  
• Added wider support for faction power. Faction powers now change due to actions and quests having effect in many things such as how likely it is to encounter specific factions and how powerful individuals of that faction you might face.
  
  
• Big amount of changes on the quest system, allowing special conditions to trigger quests based on world state and such. These are not directly visible through any individual action, but enables us to make better quests.
  
  
• Added multi-stage VSYNC support to give more control for limiting FPS, to stop your GPU screaming in pain. This can be configured in game options.
  
  
• Added support for using items to bypass some ability requirements. Such as providing support for keys to open locked chests.
  
  
• Can drop items from inventory by right clicking item and selecting “drop” from context menu.
  
  
• Added better support for unique encounters (which there are now some).
  
  
• Improved faction relationship mechanics to provide more means for quests to have an effect to the world.
  
  
• Added introduction text in start of the game, to give better insight on the starting setting of the game. Hopefully we can replace this with proper cinematics at some point of development, but at least now it should give you bit more insight to background.
  
  
• Added improved camera focus to target NPC when talking to them

Changes:

• Foxwood and Cliffshore locations re-touched.
  
  
• Dialogue re-worked in many areas.
  
  
• Texture and material optimization
  
  
• Jump animations improved to all characters
  
  
• World map icon scales improved
  
  
• Loot randomization reworked
  
  
• Item prices and rarities adjusted
  
  
• Item names and descriptions reworked
  
  
• Fixed some menu buttons that were using outdated visuals
  
  
• Feat UI in character sheet was showing icons, even though feat don’t have icons
  
  
• Major update on conversation UI visuals. It was changed to vertical and text formatting was improved for better readability.
  
  
• Changed trading values to make more sense, showing the prices better in UI
  
  
• Lots of smaller improvements on trading UI
  
  
• When skipping tutorial, party now gains some initial coins and xp to not start empty handed.
  
  
• Simplified stacking to have only few stacking changes. In addition many things were changed to not be stackable anymore.
  
  
• Changed the way the quests are randomly picked, better ensuring that there is steadier flow of missions from Turso and so on.
  
  
• Disabled some status effect functionality on world map, that could cause game breaking issues. These will be enabled in future updates, when status effect system is reworked to better support those scenarios as well.
  
  
• Changes for XP rewards from both combat and quests. Both balancing and bug fixes. Including capping maximum combat xp per enemy. So, no more lucky hits giving you multiple levels from same enemy.
  
  
• Change Peycko tribes to not be hostile by default, as lore-wise they are not supposed to be.
  
  
• Improved error handling in plenty of situations that could have earlier caused game to get to unstable state.
  
  
• Improved character ground placement, to reduce situations where characters would be placed inside ground.
  
  
• Lots of optimization that should lead to better framerate in many cases, mostly optimizing sizes and usage of different textures. This leads to improved VRAM usage as well as performance. (Performance was tested so that Steam Deck was able to run the game around 20-40fps on low quality settings. Steam Deck is not still officially supported though, and have some issues with some VFX not showing up and such)
  
  
• Changed notification text for spotting hidden enemies and props to better indicate what was spotted
  
  
• Planar reflections are now disabled by default as they have major bug that can cause screen to regularly have white full-screen flicker. The interval for this is very dependent on the device, so it might be tolerable for some. IF YOU HAD EARLIER VERSION OF THE GAME INSTALLED, the planar reflections might still be enabled for you due to earlier configuration. You can still enable and disable planar reflection in graphics menu.
  
  
• Disabled option to leave conversation by pressing esc. Earlier this caused some silly situations with conversations when stopping them in middle instead of going through selected flow.
  
  
• Some changes on interaction range handling to reduce amount of invalid “out of range” situations. There are still some cases where it does not work nicely, which is something we are going to improve in future updates.
  
  
• Changed many trader inventories and their initial wealth to improve balance in trading.
  
  
• Improved highlight outlines for some props that had massive highlights when you could have just smaller. (Such as some backpacks found in woods)
  
  
• Improved world map camera movement speeds, which were also FPS dependent.
  
  
• Added more gap between random encounters to not so easily end up in situation that you have constant random encounters
  
  
• Toned down some skill VFX that was very over the top compared to skill level
  
  
• Improved ability descriptions to better tell what points spent on them really give.
  
  
• Some amount of adjustments on different encounter and their difficulties.
  
  
• Lots of changes on loot drops.
  
  
• Disabled Depth of Field effect on normal quality level
  
  
• Added more places to be shown on overworld map also when they are still unexplored. This should ease finding quest locations.
  
  
• Allowed trading of quest items. We are still thinking the way we want this to be in the end.
  
  
• Changed character creation camera movement to be instant
  
  
• Improved inventory UI layout
  
  
• Improved character sheet layout
  
  
• Adjusted character turning animations to make it smoother
  
  
• Disabled diseases for now, as they did not work properly in many cases. Will be fixed and enabled with better version in future updates.
  
  
• Some AI updates to reduce situations where enemies would just skip their turn

Bug fixes:

• Lots of typos fixed in dialogues, descriptions and so on.
  
  
• Some keyu pods exploded immediately when placed in the game and never functioned as they were supposed.
  
  
• Some enemies (especially bigger ones in caves) started with some health missing.
  
  
• Tutorial UI elements were not always aligned correctly.
  
  
• Some icons in item tooltips were missing and only white boxes where shown instead.
  
  
• Damages were not properly shown for skills in character creation or level-up.
  
  
• Fixed multiple tooltip scaling issues..
  
  
• Improved colliders for some dead enemies, so that they are easier now to target for looting.
  
  
• Burning (and some other) visuals were not always shown for characters and props.
  
  
• XP rewards were not always properly shown on quest log, but you could get for example xp rewards of 0 xp shown .
  
  
• Fixed some bugs on projectile trajectory visualization in movement speed and orientation.
  
  
• After adding attribute or ability point in character creation, empty tooltip was shown for a while.
  
  
• Unequipping item when inventory was full, could have caused item to be lost.
  
  
• Poison attacks of Konna were missing animation and effect broke on second shot.
  
  
• Roosterfishes stayed waiting for a while after their attack due to missing animation event.
  
  
• Level-up screen left some unnecessary resource hogs enabled, causing big drop of framerate after visiting it (until you left the location).
  
  
• Fixed bug in AI behavior that sometimes caused frightened characters to actually get closer to enemy instead of fleeing
  
  
• Peat’s Sake quest was always available in start of game, when it was supposed to act like others and be picked by random and conditions.
  
  
• Sometimes dialogue with NPCs started showing white box instead of their portrait.
  
  
• Witch skills and few others had misconfiguration in their targeting, selecting also friendly characters as their default target. This could cause easily to target party members instead of enemy.
  
  
• Mechanics was tied to agility even though it was supposed to be intelligence based ability.
  
  
• Some places were missing colliders, causing you to walk inside walls or props.
  
  
• Some indoor locations did not have audio enabled.
  
  
• Some quests were not properly cleaned up after completion.
  
  
• Overworld map had really low resolution on lower quality settings.
  
  
• + big pile of smaller minor fixes

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/4181104663294255604

Patch Update 0.5.88 out now to fix a critical bug with broken feats
Hi all!

We have released a small patch update to address reported critical patch of feats getting broken in game when visiting overworld map.

Contents of the update:

Bug fixes:
(CRITICAL) Feats got broken when visiting overworld map and did not function in that current save game anymore after that.
Attack of opportunities chance for enemies were sometimes shown wrongly. This could lead to seem like casting skills with battlecaster feat would still give attack of opportunities and other such situations.


Changes:
Frog movement animations updated back to use jumping instead of walking.
Added improvement error handling in some cases where there were reported errors that did not have enough detail to fix them

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/4177728231394847136

Next up: Combat and VFX improvements
Hi all,

Will try to start more regular habit of sharing here as small news on the plans we have and what is currently going on.

The first major content update is now done and dusted, and seems to be stable enough to not have need for bigger patch updates, so it is time to be working on something to add on the game. The big learning point with that content update was that making bigger updates can become extremely long process when working on the spare time, so better focus now on bit smaller increments. Therefore it is currently likely that we will be sharing smaller updates in about update per two months interval. Sometimes they might take less and sometimes more time.

So, what are we working on currently?

There are multiple things to polish and add, but two of the major ones we are currently working on are VFX and combat system improvements. VFX improvements are especially important for some enemy skills missing VFX totally, but also for things like adding VFX for aura effects. It is after all nice to know when you step into that Death Aura of Juurukko instead of just trying if you'd be lucky.

Some work for aura VFX has already been done and can be seen in attached image.

How about combat system?

The combat is quite fun in many places already, but there is still things to improve. Some of the things in combat and character development that we would like to improve, include:

• Variety between weapons is very small. It does not matter that much if it is sword or axe of same size. We would like them to give some tactical difference.
• Variety between weapon sizes (including unarmed combat) is something we would also want to improve. Unarmed combat has been pretty useless so far and usually it has been most valuable to just invest the biggest weapons. However, we are looking at things like adding weapon speeds into the game that will affect AP costs of the weapon based skills and then planning possible some other adjustments as well to see that you can build for very different combat styles.
• Equipment progression is bit flat for our taste at the moment. For example, you will pretty quickly get quite high level mundane armor. We would like to increase the steps on that path, starting with lower level equipment and steadily moving to higher. This does not mean any level restrictions or such for equipment, but providing more variety and adjusting their availability.
• Make full-armored build be only one option. Currently the game plays in a way that best tactic is usually to pile up all of your characters with as much armor as possible. We have some plans on adjusting this so that unarmored or lightly armored builds would also have their advantages. We have some ideas how we could better utilize dodge as well as ability point bonuses in a way that would make it viable to have that fully armored tank, or lightly armored berserker.

In that sense, quite a lots of things we want to do. But in a way lots of those are balancing things with small additions and changes to combat logic, which already works nicely on its core.

Currently the work has already been started with implementing different weapon speeds and at that phase there will likely also be some work to do with damage ranges and such.


If you have any questions, thoughts you want to share or just want to have a chat, give us a word either here or in our Discord community.

 

[Sandsch]

Looks pretty interesting. Hope the devs stick to it.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Content Update 0.5.93 is now available for community testing

**Features:**
* Added attack speeds for weapons. Attack speed of equipped weapon has an effect for AP cost of the weapon based skills.
* Added VFX for Juurukko death aura

**Changes:**
* Improved VFX for poison spit.
* Improved some hit damage vfx placement that was earlier placed on feet of character instead of body.
* Weapon damage ranges changed to bring more variety between weapons and better support the new attack speed feature.
* Some updates to roosterfish setups with some skill changes and polish.
* Updated all enemies with natural weapons to take new attack speeds in account.
* Lots of improvements on different tooltips (skill, status, feat and item), providing additional detail to make it easier to understand what the real effect is. There is still work to do with these, but they are some amount better than before already.
* Disabled Vaeki Caller feats for now, as they were buggy and need rethinking in their functionality.
* Encumbered status effect now causes AP penalty instead of movement speed penalty
* Disabled fatigue from overworld travel. As resting is still missing lots of functionality, the forced rest through fatigue was mostly annoying. Fatigue system will be brought back in future when we have other supporting systems in place for it to make sense and contribute to fun.
* Disabled hit VFX for Trapper’s Shot skill. This is done temporarily to see if something with that VFX causes some crashes that have been reported to happen with Trapper’s Shot.

**Bugfixes:**
* Experienced Sneak Attacker feat provided only 0.5% damage boost when it was supposed to be 50%
* Big Game Hunter increased damage received from big or huge creatures, when it was supposed to increase damage dealt to them
* Some targeting data was corrupted whenever new game was started, which could lead into situations where targeting ranges were wrong for some skills. This could lead to situations where PCs or NPCs were able to attack from long distance with melee weapons.
* Attack of Opportunity threatening was not correctly updated when character was knocked back, causing attack of opportunities to occur when they were not supposed to.
* Night icon on overworld map was offset.
* Attack of Opportunity was always testing against being able to avoid AOOs when using range weapon, causing situations when combat archer could also remove AOOs when casting spells or such.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/4590944913264893555

Content Update 0.5.95
Content update 0.5.95 is now available for all!
New features:

• Added attack speeds for weapons. Attack speed of equipped weapon has an effect for AP cost of the weapon based skills.
• Added VFX for Juurukko death aura

Other changes:

• Improved VFX for poison spit.
• Improved some hit damage vfx placement that was earlier placed on feet of character instead of body.
• Weapon damage ranges changed to bring more variety between weapons and better support the new attack speed feature.
• Some updates to roosterfish setups with some skill changes and polish.
• Updated all enemies with natural weapons to take new attack speeds in account.
• Lots of improvements on different tooltips (skill, status, feat and item), providing additional detail to make it easier to understand what the real effect is. There is still work to do with these, but they are some amount better than before already.
• Disabled Vaeki Caller feats for now, as they were buggy and need rethinking in their functionality.
• Encumbered status effect now causes AP penalty instead of movement speed penalty
• Disabled fatigue from overworld travel. As resting is still missing lots of functionality, the forced rest through fatigue was mostly annoying. Fatigue system will be brought back in future when we have other supporting systems in place for it to make sense and contribute to fun.
• Disabled hit VFX for Trapper’s Shot skill. This is done temporarily to see if something with that VFX causes some crashes that have been reported to happen with Trapper’s Shot.

Bugfixes:

• Experienced Sneak Attacker feat provided only 0.5% damage boost when it was supposed to be 50%
• Big Game Hunter increased damage received from big or huge creatures, when it was supposed to increase damage dealt to them
• Some targeting data was corrupted whenever new game was started, which could lead into situations where targeting ranges were wrong for some skills. This could lead to situations where PCs or NPCs were able to attack from long distance with melee weapons.
• Attack of Opportunity threatening was not correctly updated when character was knocked back, causing attack of opportunities to occur when they were not supposed to.
• Night icon on overworld map was offset.
• Attack of Opportunity was always testing against being able to avoid AOOs when using range weapon, causing situations when combat archer could also remove AOOs when casting spells or such.

 

[Konjad]

This or Call of Saregnar.

Which will take the lead in the "just one more year" run?

 

[Modron]

Call of Saregnar, Code of the Savage, Urban Strife, Kingdom of Night, not that it's been long in EA but can't wait for Achaelund, et cetera. There is a shit ton of stuff probably going to slip to 2025.

 

[Fargus]

Code of the Savage

Most interesting of the bunch. But feels like i've been waiting for this game forever.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Call of Saregnar, Code of the Savage, Urban Strife, Kingdom of Night, not that it's been long in EA but can't wait for Achaelund, et cetera. There is a shit ton of stuff probably going to slip to 2025.

Don't forget Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy! The demo was solid. The mechanics are good. TB and RTwP (player choice). It's going to be a Codex darling.

 

[Fargus]

Way of Wrath. Another cool looking game forever in development that i learned about from Codex.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/4665256842950052219

The Great Beard Update
In other words: Content Update 0.5.101
The war in the Northlands is a hairy business. And also beard-y. This update brings beards onto the warrior's faces.

New features:

• Facial hair is now available for human and peycko males.
• Facial hair can now be selected for characters in character creation.

Changes:

• Updated NPC and PC character appearances. Many now have facial hair, and there are also adjustments in character heights, skin color and such.
• Some tweaks on visual appear of both PC and NPC portraits.
• Disabled non-functional portrait selection arrows in character creation.
• Disabled hair color selection for Hirwio, as it had no effect for them.
• Some adjustments on inventory character lighting
• Big batch of inventory icons (especially for wearable equipment) was changed.
• Adjustments on some frog damages, which were bit over the top after previous damage changes.
• Improved portrait generation to have better camera distance for peycko and hirwio portraits.

Bugfixes:

• Opening inventory screen in world map caused PC portraits with wrong lighting
• Empower Vaeki - skill had some errors happening on background, which could lead to it not working properly in all cases.
• Set of smaller bug fixes in character creation to fix things like characters losing their hairs when switching race or gender.

 

[Nikanuur]

Looks pretty interesting. Hope the devs stick to it.

I must say, that I also like what I see.

Btw, it's been like a year or something since their previous publisher turned their back on them, leaving them on the brink of cancellation.
We saw several updates since then. It would've seemed they'd survived and continued in their endeavor.

 

[hepphep]

Looks pretty interesting. Hope the devs stick to it.

I must say, that I also like what I see.

Btw, it's been like a year or something since their previous publisher turned their back on them, leaving them on the brink of cancellation.
We saw several updates since then. It would've seemed they'd survived and continued in their endeavor.

Hi!

We have survived as devs, but the company itself is still in hibernation, having no current employees. After losing publisher, we all had to look jobs elsewhere and most of us luckily found some in other game companies. Few of us decided still to keep on working on the game in our sparetime as a passion project and here we still are. Everyone of us works on pace that suits them and their life situation.

This of course makes development pace slower than working on things fulltime, but we are still here pushing the game forward update by update, with dream to someday be able to push out full release that we can be extremely proud of.

 

[cyborgboy95]

The big project status update:
It is now about a year and four months since Edge of War entered Early Access, and it is time for us to give a bigger update on how things have been going so far and what the future looks like.

This is quite a long post with many things, but at least it should be quite extensive as we really want to keep things transparent and our community informed.


The beginning of Early Access

As has been told before, going to Early Access was forced by external conditions. We had lost our publisher and were running out of money which meant that everyone in the team had to look for jobs elsewhere. As we did not want the game to be buried without anybody ever playing it, five of us decided to keep on continuing development in our spare time and to prepare for that we spent our last months working full-time in getting the game to Early Access condition. It was not in the level that we would have wanted to be when entering Early Access, but the situation was clear in the sense that if we really want to keep on developing the game, we need to build a community around it to support us and walk the path together with us.

Before the unfortunate situation, we had a team of around 15 persons working on the game full-time, so the amount of hours we could put into development dropped quite dramatically.


Time in Early Access so far

The time we have been developing the game in Early Access has been quite a learning path so far. It was extremely hard to evaluate how fast we can progress with things and how many hours we could put into the game. First half a year two us (me and our Lead Level Designer Antti) spend quite a lot time on pushing the game forward. The biggest priority was to push forward quest content that we were really lacking. Luckily Antti proved to be also extremely good in working on the narrative part of quest content and we managed to have quite a push there. Of course we were lacking lots of elements for quest development still, so we had to limit ourselves on working on the content that we really could already support. I was mostly working on coding and game design related things as well as trying to organize our work in the way that we can manage it better while working in our spare time. With that work, we managed to get an important update of getting some more story content in and improving the existing one, which really added a lot to the game (which before that was primarily just exploration and combat, which could be pretty fun, but a bit aimless).

After that period, Antti got occupied by happy things in his personal life and have not yet taken that much time in development since that.

After that, I mostly worked on the things myself. The initial update was quite a big one and having worked on bigger things it was extremely hard to adjust on scoping things to smaller updates and therefore shorter periods between updates. That is something we are still learning. To improve that, lots of time has also been spent on technical things to improve our own tooling for being more effective. Unfortunately that is something that is not immediately seen in updates themselves, but should help us when going forward. There was quite a bit of tweaking on game mechanics as well (and there is still some to do).

Also, there were other learnings as well. We had been (and still are) missing for example lots of VFX, which makes things sometimes really unpolished. So, I’ve been spending quite a bit of my time to also work on the VFX side of things. It’s fun stuff, but of course very time consuming still to get things “right”.

At the start of Early Access I spent lots of weekends and evenings developing the game, so in the summer I was quite tired with it, so we had a two month break. After that, I did get active again and we got a few updates in as well. Our Lead Artist Lyde also jumped in to finish some facial hair so that we finally got those in game. In addition our CEO Sami worked on a pile of animations for NPCs, so that we can get them out of just standing idle in the place. Unfortunately I have not yet had time to work on the tech side of getting those in use, so they are still waiting to be used.

Thinking of the progress so far and how far we have come now, I feel like things have been much slower than I was hoping for. Of course it is totally understandable, and something to take into account in future when planning on new features and what we should prioritize. We need to learn to be even smarter in picking our battles during development. Sometimes it feels sort of insane to work on developing a game of this size in our spare time, even though we got a good head start for it during the time we worked on it full-time. But being a bit insane can be advantageous in working in the gaming business in any case.

The sales of the game have been pretty low. That is somewhat expected for an Early Access title. That is something I’m quite okay with though, it has been just enough for us to be able to pay costs of some of the tooling like version control and so on, so that we don’t need to put our own money into those monthly as we have managed to minimize such costs. That is important, of course and lets hope we can keep even that small regular income coming. We have not been pushing marketing for the game much either. It's mostly me telling us to still keep it on hold before spending our time on it as I feel that the game is not yet in the shape that I’d want it to be to really show how good it can be.

What I’ve been really happy about is that even though the game is still long way to being nearly as good as I’d want it to be in Early Access, it has been quite well received. Currently the game stands in 81% positive ratings, which is nice in this phase. It makes me believe that when we get the polish of the current content to the desired level, we can start aiming for much higher numbers still. It is a great indication of the potential. Also, we have had some really positive interaction with our community. All of that is extremely important in keeping the fire of passion burning. When you are in a situation where there is a mountain of work to be done in your spare time and you really cannot expect any compensation for it (at least in near future, and maybe never), all of those positive words and encouragement are extremely valuable. I really want to thank all of you who have given it. If you would not have done that, it is very possible that we would not be here still developing the game.


What does the future look like?

As mentioned before, it is quite a long path ahead. There is tons of work before the game is finished, so it is important to focus on nearby goals. The development pace will likely not improve much of what it has been (unless we can find some treasure goblin to loot and be able to hire some of us full-time again). We are still working on the game, update by update. Time will tell when we are ready (if ever). Maybe it's two years, maybe ten, maybe we will get it released from retirement home. There is still a chance that at some point we notice that the passion has burned out and we will finish the things properly to that point. In any case, we will keep you all updated and there will be no sudden disappearance or anything such.

Instead of focusing on the final release somewhere in the distant future, it is important to focus on something more tangible.

The next important goal for the game is to get it to the level where we would have wanted it to be when initially entering Early Access.
Some of the major things that we will be focusing for that are:

• Some improvements on game mechanics for ability usage and combat. For example shields should become more useful and we want more variety on how combat feels, for which we have quite good ideas on how to get that done.
• All the enemy encounters should be revisited after mechanics changes. There is lots of polish required for most of the enemies. There are some enemy skills missing animation, vfx and such.
• Character skills and skill progress should be revisited. Some of the skills and skill trees really don’t work as nicely as wanted at the moment, so there is room for overhaul there.
• We would need a pile of usability improvements. Some things with highlight indicators cluttering the screen at some points, better showing interactables and so on.
• Party management also needs a major update. It has been lacking quite a bit and will need some love.
• Revisiting for some of the dialogue is needed as well as some additional quest content. We have some additional mechanics to tell the story coming to help us with that.
• Some UI usability improvements would still be in need. We should be able to better teach some of the game mechanics, have some place to find all the hotkeys and such. Life of quality things. And of course some location map, even on a simple level, to make it easier to find your way inside locations.
• And of course a pile of bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements (would be really nice to get those NPC animations into use and so on).

This all will of course come in a series of small updates, so we will not lock ourselves in our wizard’s tower and appear in a year or so and just toss all at once.

So, that is the next big goal ahead.

That should take us to the place where we can tell that even though we still are missing some major systems and lots of content, you can happily jump into the game and get a good impression of what you will be getting. And that would be a good place for us to start putting some extra effort in marketing the game for a wider audience as well. And that does not mean that we are not happy to get all the visibility before that as well as all new players are more than welcome already.

I think that would be sort of the next big check point on where we will be heading with the game in the future.

Of course there are likely some smaller content additions and polish outside the main goal as well, but those are nice bonus to appear every now and then.

The goal is there, the pace will reveal itself while we see how the path opens in front of us.


Thanks to all of you who have been walking this path together with us so far, and all of those who will join us in future. You all make the path much more fun to walk.

Cheers,
HP - Lead Developer