There may only be 4 skills, but from a recent Q&A, it is said that you are not locked to just one path. In fact, you can can basically mix any skill from any profession so you can create something in between or just get skills from random professions mixing warden skills, elementalist skills, cleric skills and so on
Isn't that similar to Nox? At least when you play as warrior.
From what I understand, this game combat is more skill-based aka an isometric soul-like than typical click-fest aka Diablo clones, so I'm not sure Nox is an apt comparison
Alaloth Brand UpdateAlaloth gets a new look
Following up on September’s Production Update that brought you the latest info about the development of
Alaloth - Champions of the Four Kingdoms,
we’d like to bring you some news about Alaloth as a brand. We’ve been working on a new logo for the game and have been excited to unveil the new look to you all. We couldn’t wait any longer to tell you all about it, so without further ado, we present to you the new logo for
Alaloth - Champions of The Four Kingdoms
!
We’ve come a long way since Gamera Interactive was founded in 2017 (it will be 5 years in February! Yay!) and a lot has changed within our company and around the game. We also feel grateful to be working on such a cool IP that has so much potential. Given all that, we felt that it was time to give the logo a new look.
Our company was founded around the idea of delivering our dream RPG, inspired by the old classics but with a modern twist, so when making the new Alaloth logo, we used references from the 80s and 90s. We pulled strongly on our nostalgia of the golden era of RPGs and we feel that the new logo reflects our fond memories of that time. We hope that you like it too.
Another reason that we wanted to give the Alaloth brand a fresh new look, with a logo that was more readable and modern is because of the other Alaloth goodies we’ve been working on. Under the umbrella of Alaloth there’s more than just a video game, there’s alsoAlaloth - The Tempest, a comic book that serves as a prequel to Alaloth - Champions of The Four Kingdoms as well as a novel in the works.
Alaloth - The Tempest is ready for print and will hit shelves in bookstores and comic shops by the end of the year (it will be available in major online stores too). We’re pretty excited as it’s not often that you get to physically see and touch the product of your work in the mostly digital world we operate in! We’ve also signed a deal for a novel, which will be a collection of stories (codename Alaloth - Legends) from our narrative team. That project is in progress but is almost ready for publication as well. Be sure to follow our channels to stay updated on these extra goodies from the realms of Alaloth. Even if we can’t say too much now, it is just the beginning talking about retail.
We appreciate your support and patience as we work on Alaloth -Champions of The Four Kingdoms and other Alaloth projects. Do you like the new logo? Let us know here on Steam or on our Discord.
Until next time!
Alive & kicking!
Hello Champions!
Not a massive update for you today but for sure the most important one since a long time: Gamera Interactive took back publishing rights for Alaloth – Champions of The Four Kingdoms, its own in-house developed IP. We can’t go into details about the process that led to this [don’t ask] but hey, that’s a big news, isn’t it? Hands shaking while posting this, we are over the moon now, after a very long silence since the latest Steam update back in November. We can’t wait to show you what we were working on and disavow all those who believed the worst about the future of Alaloth.
On one hand, we’ve suffered the pain of not being able to answer to everyone in real time, we offer our apologies for this. On the other hand, the huge support we’ve received, fueled us and gave us all the strength to move forward as a team, even in the darkest moments, facing the pandemic first and many other issues out of our control then. As any “respected studio” outside, we’ve got trolls jumping in here and in our social channels sharing “the truth” about the development: the upcoming cancellation of the project, the redesign of 99% of the game, the shady explanations of the problems we had and so on. Nothing true of course but legit, we can say, considering the above-mentioned silence that luckily ends today with this fresh restart. This time for real.
The development never stopped. Never. We now have the chance to think about next steps, pushing our vision in full, taking care of everything we consider pivotal in the long term: the community, the players. Participative design anyone?
Before writing down this update we were so much excited we even thought about the option to fully reveal future plans and next steps but going all in is definitely not a thing in game dev. We carefully have to evaluate what’s the best path to follow to release the game at its best and truth is that we’ve a business running here, so we can’t just throw our cards on the table without weighting all the opps popping-up here and there. It could be a new partner jumping in, old friends rejoining or such. We are dealing with all of this now putting pieces together.
We’ll immediately work on getting the ball rolling again. A lot of people are testing the game right now, we are at work to get the spotlight in one of the key events happening in a while, a new gameplay trailer is ready [and we love it]. We decided to put consoles versions on hold, focusing on PC now: someone else will take care of this letting us being focused on PC build. This is a choice we made with the full picture in mind. And yes, we have an ideal release window too in mind and it is much closer than what you expect.
So, what’s next? There is a huge queue of unreleased contents we are going to share since now on, we just have to reorganize the flow a bit. There are so many things to say that we’re probably going on with a few “random drops” here. We’ll be showing in-game features, creatures, companions, tech stuff, lore related contents and so on. Following the inspiration let’s say, trying to pair the original plan we had in mind as soon as possible.
When we put online the last update about the development, we explained how we tried to stick with the original vision we had, despite the fact that the scope of the project changed with the day by day, transforming Alaloth into a bigger, ambitious product. It was September 2021 and today we can confirm everything we said about our vision at time, just adding that probably these months have been the most important so far. We added new features, iterated a lot, redesigned a few things not convincing us 100%, collected super amazing feeds from testers ranging from QA guys to dev superstars. We’ve been glad to see this people getting the essence of a game intended to be something new, in between old school classics and modern action games. We’ll be back on this in the next days, anyway.
Once again, thank you very much for the love and support: every single message has been red, and we are super excited to chat with you all and show progresses we’ve made. AMA on the way too, to ask all your questions about WIP [details to be posted by the end of the week hopefully!]
Stay tuned!
All the info you need in one place
Hello Champions!
As promised in the Spring 2022 Update, we are going to drop here a bunch of misc updates originally scheduled in a different moment of the last year. Before doing that, we thought that a bit of recap was necessary, considering the huge number of questions we’ve received in the last months. To avoid any possible confusion, we are going to summarize here all the info already shared, adding comments on what is changed and what’s happened in development lately. Almost 1 year ago we hosted an AMA session on our Discord channel and highlights were published in this topic. Looking back at it one year later, made us thinking about the huge work done since than but we are happy to have kept our vision alive, despite a few changes we did following feeds from QA and testers. This update should work as a sort of guide to understand in full what Alaloth is and what is not.
WHY YOU DIDN’T GIVE US NEWS FOR MONTHS? WHAT’S HAPPENED?
We are not going to comment this. We apologized for the lack of updates on our Steam page and always tried to do our best to inform the community of what was going on. The Spring 2022 Update contains all the info on what’s coming next. Past is behind, future ahead and we are doing 110% to recoup the time lost without interacting with people and players waiting for the game.
OK, GOT IT. SO, WHAT ABOUT THE GAME? AN ISOMETRIC SOULS-LIKE? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
The idea has always been trying to put a few cool 3D mechanics in a isometric game. We thought there is nothing like this on the market. Souls-like ref has always been about a combat sys that will be hard to master but very satisfying once you’re done with it.
SO WHAT? IT IS A SOULS-LIKE, IT IS DIABLO, IT IS A CRPG?
It is Alaloth, we are trying to stay in between old school classics and modern action RPG. When you see the game running, mind flies to good old times but there is no tactical pause so you have to be good with the pad to kill stuff. And staying in between past and present, is something we’ve tried to reflect in any aspect of the game. We have two kind of players we’re talking with here: the first one, is the one skipping every single line of text and caring about his build only, skills and fights. The second one is the one taking his time enjoying every single dialogue around, trying to pick up lore details to connect all dots. We are trying to make both of them happy, leaving the freedom to play the game both ways. Anyway, to take 100% from it, hardcore players should play a bit with quest and lore related stuff around and old school players will have to master combat anyway. We are just trying to “force” this in a funny way for both .
YOUR MAIN GOAL IN ALALOTH?
In Alaloth, you embody a champion who is willing to set free the continent of Plamen by the evil and overwhelming presence of Alaloth himself, a mighty demigod trapped in a limbo and willing to come back to the mortal realms to rule them all. To do so, you will be required to recover four light shards that open the gates of The Fifth Kingdom, his domain. These shards pop in a random way each run and can be found in many locations spread around the world [Fighting Areas].
CAN YOU FREE ROAM IN THE GAME WORLD AND DECIDE TO WHAT TO DO AND WHEN?
Yes, you are completely free to do whatever you want since the very beginning. The Main Quest is just Alaloth-related. You need to kill him to complete the game. Anyway, there is nothing set for you to do so. You can just decide to explore Plamen, do your stuff, meet NPC, do other quests or starts claiming Fighting Areas looking for shards to access the endgame. The player is free to navigate and explore Plamen the way he likes most since the start of the journey, choosing to prioritize the main quest, secondary ones or to just see what’s next. At the beginning of the development, Alaloth was supposed to be played one way only, facing 3 other champions coming from the kingdoms the player didn’t choose running after shards as you, fighting you. We have 40 different champions representing each house and clan in the game, rolled every time a new session starts. Everyone with unique skills, drops and behavior. Anyway, while testing the game and collecting feeds, we decided to work on a brand new mode introducing a full single player campaign to be enjoyed the classic way. We are talking about two different ways to play. In both cases the more the time pass the more Alaloth’s rage and power increases. Spawns became way more dangerous with each of this phases.
DIFFERENT DIFFICULTY LEVEL THAN?
There is no difficulty level even though playing in the competitive mode will result in a more challenging experience, with the addition of the 3 enemy champions hunting for shards and/or the player. Enemy champions will have their own behavior that can be aggressive, balanced or defensive, they will claim dungeons as you do and might even fail. Single player mode is advised for those players who don’t want to have a timer on their heads and for those completionists who want to be sure to be able to complete every quest available on their playthrough. The game is designed to be played in competitive mode at least once for every race. As already said, you are basically free to move wherever you want since the very beginning so it's really about how good you are with the pad. Some areas are more dangerous than other but will be completely accessible since the very first moment.
THE WORLD IS HUGE. HOW IT IS REACTING TO YOUR ACTIONS?
Yes it is. Each kingdom has its own capital city, a major one, five minors. We have hundreds of interactable chars to talk with and to get quests or find precious clues to survive Plamen and its dangers. One of the key element of the game is the calendar. According with it, the world is going to change with NPC popping-up time by time, events happening all around the world, timed quests, new mobs , new challenges. And if you hear a wolf howling, well, it’s just the full moon [and it is very important…]
WHAT CHANGES BETWEEN ONE PLAYTHROUGH AND ANOTHER?
Playing a different mode, race or alignment will result in a different experience, with new paths and rewards. That’s why it is required to play multiple runs to achieve and experience all the game content, not to mention enemy champions in competitive mode will be randomized every new game, with the ones you won’t match as enemies placed around the world and able to give you precious info about their lore and how to face them and many other dangers. Make sure to talk to every single one to unlock all their codex entries and know even more about the most known characters of Plamen. Same stuff could be experienced with a difference approach from different races…
WHAT’S THE IMPORTANCE OF MY ALIGNMENT AND HOW DOES IT AFFECT MY PLAYTHROUGH?
Alignment is indeed a very important choice you will make when creating your champion: it will determine whether your champion will be able to be joined by certain companions or not and will unlock you certain missions or outcomes instead of others.
WHAT ABOUT COMPANIONS? HOW DO I HIRE THEM AND WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS?
Companions are the base for an AI or multiplayer local coop and can be found all around the game world. Every one of them has his lore and his goal in life: if yours is very different from theirs, they will not join your party anyway. Once you hire a companion, this will follow you until the end, giving you military help in the dungeons and the chance to accept their special quests, which will strengthen the bond between you. Remember you won’t be able to bring more than 2 companions in the battle with you, so each time choose wisely the combination of them that’s more useful for the specific dungeon.
HOW DOES MULTIPLAYER WORK?
Alaloth supports local coop up to 2 additional players that can join the game while taking control of your companions (if unlocked). Remote Play is supported and works even if your friends don’t own the game. Couch coop anyone? The only thing you need to do is inviting a friend as you open the game or send them the link to join you.
COMBAT SYSTEM?
Alaloth’s combat system is real-time action based, you can have an edge by fighting exploiting enemies’ weaknesses while still remaining always fair. The system is structured to allow the player to avoid every single incoming attack with a perfect execution. There will often be ways to use game knowledge and make smart plays that will put you in a favorable spot more than any reflex.
WHAT’S THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LORE IN ALALOTH?
Alaloth wants to be a really immersive experience at 360° degrees, where the setting and the lore are key factors to feel part of a unique place, designed to stimulate the player to explore and understand from the most ancestral stories to the more recent secrets and palace intrigues. The game is part of a cross-media collection of works, including novels and comics to come, and playing the game you will have an exclusive view of this coherent vibrant world, characterized by a gritty atmosphere and a complex balance between kingdoms and houses. Tons of cool little details hidden in single dialogues or places are waiting to be spotted
HOW DOES THE PROGRESSION WORK IN THE GAME?
Your champion is going to improve his capabilities by learning up skills upon completing Fighting Areas. Not only that: you will be able to choose which stats you want to increase and build your champion your way. There are also traits points you can spend to acquire special abilities like more proficient trading, cool down reduction on certain skills or better riding skills. Remember that knowledge is power: you can gain additional stat points by reading until the end the Hero Books, which tell the stories of the most iconic people ever lived. Find them all to become relentless.
WILL I HAVE THE CHANCE TO RESPEC MY SKILL POINTS?
During your journey in Alaloth you have a chance to pick up a special item: The Orb of Chaos. Use it to any altar in a sanctuary to pray to the gods to change your destiny, giving you new talents and forgetting your old ones. That will allow you to respec any skill point, but also stat points and traits. However, you will find other ways to respect you char on the way.
WHAT ABOUT REP SYSTEM, CRAFTING, ENCHANTING, MOUNTS OR TECH STUFF LIKE SAVES OR SUCH?
Following this new update, we are going to dig into any single game feature as already announced in the Spring 2022 Update. Moreover, key outlets all around the world are playing the game right now so many of these features will be explained in extensive features popping-up in a few time. All the things listed here are in and there is much more to say about the game.
DAMN, SO MUCH STUFF! TRIPLE A VIBES
Nope. And this is important to remember. We have always been humbled to the compared to big guns by press and players but Gamera Interactive is not Obsidian nor Larian or such. These studios are for sure our main inspiration and we can say we have some good friends around in the RPG scene but Alaloth is first of all a self-funded craft of love made by a team of 18 [at its peak], that gone through the storm in the last 2 years and survived a pandemic and many many other issues that probably would had killed 95% of the indie studios around. For sure, we will have a never seen before Post Mortem listing all these events! We can easily say that the whole team gave a Triple A effort and have a Triple A passion but games are made with money and budget and we are still talking about an indie product that represents the first step in a massive world we are going to expand in the future.
RELEASE DATE?
We have a release window in mind and we are putting all the pieces together right now, following feeds and being finally able to schedule things on our own. We are actually evaluating any possible scenario, considering new partners jumping in, console versions for the future and an internal roadmap we want be sure to follow, considering future updates of the game, DLC and such. Even the price point is still under discussion as well as Limited Edition, retail, loc and so on. Anyway, we would say that summer is on the way, lot of major PR events are happening. And this is when announcement take place usually. Again, just let us understand which is the best options for the final sprint, considering that we need to get traction back after a very long silence.
Have a great week-end!
Learn more about the events shaping the game world
Hello Champions!
Following what we said with the Spring 2022 Update and the latest post with a big summary of all the info available so far for Alaloth, we are here today to talk a bit about how the map and the calendar work in our game.
We are going to give you a taste of Plamen’s topography along a bit of gameplay-related info! As you know, there are four huge areas in Plamen [the kingdoms] with the end-game area in the middle [The Fifth Kingdom, the area where Alaloth is trapped, by lore].
It is really important to keep in mind that you can move wherever you want since the very beginning and different terrains mean different travel speed: don’t expect to cross a dwarven mountain chain as swiftly as you would with a small elven forest, and the more you get away from roads, the more trouble you shall find on your way.
Monsters, wandering merchants, wandering units from other clans and houses and other champions are constantly moving on the map, so always plan your route to your destination to prevent dangerous encounters. Defeating brigands is surely a way to get some loot and some juicy bounty, yes, but without resting in some bed your wounds won’t certainly recover. You have the chance to set your camp on the way. You are constantly being notified by events happening anyway and you can access a log tracking all the key moments you should be aware of. You'll be able to use mounts and mounts will be crucial in many different ways: you can increase the size of your inventory and of course take advantages of riding many different beasts! We'll have horses of course but each race will have its own racial mount to use and specials will be unlocked with reputations and quests. Bears, wolves, battle goats but even a griffin could be an option for the best warriors! We'll go in details very soon wheh talking about vendors in one of the next updates!
The passing of time and the calendar are key elements of the gameplay too. We've built the world of Plamen with the idea of creating an ever-changing world and basically we've created different phases that are going to change things during the playthrough in many different ways.
Alaloth becames stronger and stronger in each phase, mobs spawning on the map will be way more deadly and new dangers will pop-up from The Fifth Kingdom, making things very difficult.
Night and day cycle is a thing: we'll have different spawns on map but even different layouts for each place you are going to visit. If you enter a city during the day, you'll have access to shops, you can enter the royal palace or meet NPC that are going to be somewhere else by night. Shops will be closed, few locations not accessible and so on. Even quests avaialble will be different of course.
So don’t forget to visit cities and points of interest in different moments as there are many things happening only when the sun rises-up or goes down: you can find exotic merchants coming from other kingdoms sellinq unique items or weapons and remember that rogues and thieves feel better doing their stuff covered by the darkness...
Entering Westwall during the day...
...and by night
We have 10 months, 30 days each and while you can imagine every race has its own holidays and festivities [which will bring unique NPC appearing as the aboive mentioned merchants for example], crossing the sky is one thing that everyone shares.
Moon phases are indeed important and someone says that the biggest secrets will be unveiled only at full moon[Moonstone anyone?]. A few recently asked if the time passing should have an impact on the quality of runs, because thought about being forced of playing with a timer on top of his head, withouth a way to go at his pace and enyoy so let's clarify this one more time: the phases of the world are strictly connected to Alaloth and nothing more.
So, simply, the world became more dangerous in each phase. There is a difference between the single player campaign and the competitive one but it's not related to these phases but to the presence of other champions competing for the same objectives. This makes each run unique, because when you play competitive, the other champions are randomically rolled at the beginning, they are 40 and they have different behaviors. So, someone could be more aggressive, some other could be more passive and this is the way the player will be affected in terms of gameplay. To enter the end-game artifacts have to be collected. If another champion has one of the artifact, at some point you'll have to hunt him/her in order to complete the game. If you have artifacts, any of them can decide to hunt you for the same reason.
The world will go on on its own in the back so it's really about the strategy adopted, the other champions and the combination of both things while playing. But again: this is only when competitive mode is selected. Even these aspects will be detailed with the next updates!
We are going to speed-up things dropping some lore related content by Friday the latest, we still have to introcude the companions, the coop, items, crafting, enchanting, skills and other cool stuff!
If you have questions about the topic, post it in the comments!
Stay tuned!
Westwall for our #screenshotsaturday
We have a day/night cycle and you can find different layouts, NPC, quests and stuff entering a location [any] when the sun goes down or when it raises up!
Wishlist #alaloth now
https://t.co/xn2ACkbbZu
#rpg #fantasy #soon #steam https://t.co/rhdcJaraaP
A new trailer and much more on the way!
Hello Champions!
As you probably noticed, we just refreshed our Steam page a bit, uploading a bunch of new in-game shots from the latest build we delivered in the morning. Shots come along with a brand new key art, showing a new Alaloth too: he wears a mask now and it's way more lethal than before! We had a rework of the boss here time ago and we were planning to share this since a long time. This is just one of the many things we've iterated on the way, both tech & lore related. As we said recently, there is so much stuff to show after the long silence that we literally spent last weeks trying to figure out the best scenario to send out everything with a ratio, while dealing with all the biz-related stuff that is directly connected with the release of the game. Well, we can say that despite the fact that we had to squeeze in just a couple of weeks, work usually done in months, we have finally an idea of the next steps that we'll bring us to the day in which we are going to push the green button. The plan is not complete 100% but hey, the path is set and it's like fresh air for us.
Just a random shot of the overview map of Na'Nardur, the orcish capital
First of all, we've just done with the new trailer. Yes. It is a 2.30 clip full of love and stuff but the most important thing is that we are going to announce the release window with it. Details about the final release date will follow. May 30 is the day, trailer will be out by that date so...next Monday! Please don't ask about the final release date: we'll have an official one very very soon, a few cool things are in progress and the final decision needs further consideration on our side. We can't wait to say more and we encourage you all to join us on Discord[www.discord.gg] to get in touch directly. We are going to use it as main source for lore related stuff to share, because we realized it's pretty impossible to go on with Steam updates for each cool little thing we've created. This means we are going to go on with tons of updates here but they will be dedicated to major systems, major features and such. If you want to know more about the story of a very unique secondary char or clan or location [given that we are going to put as much as possible in terms of contents here], you'll find all this stuff on our channels. AMA on the way too and a full schedule of streaming sessions on Twitch as well. We've unofficially shown gameplay already, the idea is to go on with almost daily sessions while polishing stuff. All of this happening starting from the next month Follow us on Twitch too[www.twitchtv.com]. Pass by and say hello to Alberto screaming at the wiki while spotting the latest known bug of the game codex!
If you love RPG and you are from the '80s you know what this is
Last but not least: June will be interesting as well! Alaloth - The Tempest will be released in bookstores, comic shops and online digital outlets by our partner, Edizioni BD, which handles the international licensing too. This means that the comic will be available both in printed and digital versions across EU and US soon [from June 1 on]. The comic is a stand-alone adventure set in Plamen that introduces the world of Alaloth - Champions of The Four Kingdoms and it's our first licensing deal in place to push our universe on different media. The amazing cover is from the Eisner-nominee Simone Di Meo and Marvel artist Alessandro Cappuccio [Moon Knight, Fantastic Four] drawing the full volume [112 pages]. Moreover, the game has been selected for WN Conference Instanbul '22 and will be showcased during the show, competing for the best indie title awards. We didn't attend events since a very long time and we can't wait to be back in action.
Next steps: a massive artbook [250+ pages], novels [ready!], an amazing OST [3+ hours in-house made], and much more. We'll have time to talk about this and yes, we have plans for Limited Edition, retail and all the things that we had in mind at the very beginning of this journey. Talking with many cool people willing to jump in and help right now.
If you have questions about the topic, post it in the comments!
Stay tuned!
