Well, I mean, Rome exists, and Roman legionaries got around, so I wouldn't find it TOO outlandish for there to be at least one Darkie in Scotland. Obviously, your character is simply the ancestor of the Demoman.
Act 2 — Player Choices & Consequences Update
Hey everyone,
To boost role-playing even more, we’re adding a lot of new player choices and story beats to the game based on your feedback and suggestions. A big thank you to all of the testers on Discord for helping us make these new additions as immersive, tense, and fun as possible!
NOTE: there will be spoilers ahead for Act 2 — proceed at your own risk!
TLDR:
- Yes, you can kill your opponents in both Act 2 duels
- Yes, you can avoid all injury in Act 2 (both the back-stabbing and the spear)
Here are the changes and additions in detail:
1. GLEN BATTLE
There are some changes even before the battle begins.
You can now stop Ygrain from leaving the safe spot before the battle.
NOTE: There is no penalty if you don't stop Ygrain. Overall, this update respects your progress, so you don’t have to replay Act 2 if you’re happy with your playthrough.
The ‘Rescue Brian’ scene is now a proper risk chain,
with smart choices making the rescue run a little bit easier.
You can avoid getting stabbed by Flavius.
Your allies, be it your feathered companion Talon, or a former rival like Morl can warn you and help you dodge the cowardly backstabbing. If it’s Talon who warns you, make sure to feed him afterward
You can kill the Roman commander Flavius.
The Romans get a more thorough implementation as a beast with many heads. There are multiple Roman commanders leading the punitive raid, some obsessive like Flavius, some more rational. Gaining insights about them is crucial when making choices that will impact who you’ll be facing in the final battle in Act 3.
2. REST SCENES
The male protagonist’s playthrough gets three romance beats in Act 2.
Clair’s is part of her expanded backstory, which is itself full of new choices that can dramatically alter her fate. Etain comes to repay the favor, if you took care of her while she was unconscious at the beginning of the game, and keep you company, while you recover after the safe spot battle. And Morrigan can reveal her softer side after the pivotal royal feud battle if you manage to save her son. She plays a more active role in the courtyard aftermath and saving her son can elevate your status even if your protagonist's heart is already taken.
The female protagonist’s playthrough
gets all the nuanced text variations contributed by the talented Jennie Kong, and a better Leif introduction in the ‘Ygrain questions the threat’ and ‘Crying girl’ scene in Act 1. Besides Leif, new romance beats are reserved for Act 3, due to the male characters being introduced a little later in the story.
3. HILLFORT BATTLE
You can avoid getting spear-stabbed by Kean's man.
Again, your companions and allies might help to make this easier, or you can just get lucky. Furthermore, you can dodge Wid slamming into you, keeping a zero pre-scripted damage path possible.
You can kill Kean - let’s be honest, he had it coming That being said, for certain end goals, there is value in letting him live after defeating him
. There are multiple instances when the protagonist can go for the kill; including a ‘trial by combat’ duel that can prevent the loss of life of your men. Morl can prove to be an extra obstacle if he got banished before.
On the flip side, once Kean is defeated, you can get the raiders to join your ranks.
Things go a lot easier if you understand who Clair is and help her in her dilemma. Morl can again prove to be a hindrance. Or, if you managed to turn him into an ally in Act 1, he can help.
This results in two new Act 2 endings
'STRONGER THAN EVER'
or
'A DECISIVE VICTORY'
. Losses are tracked across each major battle now, affecting subsequent battle risk chains.
NOTE: If you got ‘A HARD WON’ victory in the original Act 2 release version, there is no penalty and you don’t have to replay Act 2.
Also, based on community feedback, the queen and king dynamic leading up to the battle has now been better explained with the
refined motives and behavior of king Uther.
4. OTHER CHANGES
A no man’s land community backstory moment
was added to Chapter #1. When returning from the hunt the player can better understand their place in the community before they decide whether they want to warn the others or share their prey with them.
It also provides context on how the necessity to survive, and a common enemy, motivated the remnants of the Caledonian people originally inhabiting the no man’s land to look past their differences and accept slaves escaping the Roman empire, or warriors from subjugated provinces like Gaul, into the resistance.
Thank you for your support and patience while we work on Act 3. In the meanwhile, I hope these changes will make the available scenes even more immersive.
Cheers, Andrej
Act 2 Finale Update & Winter Sale
A 3rd path through the 'Royal Feud' battle
Hey everyone,
As we continue working on Act 3, we'd like to share an important update adding a 3rd path to the previous heroic or cowardly play-through of the 'Royal Feud' battle.
You can also pick up Sacred Fire with a 25% discount during the Steam Winter Sale!
SPOILER WARNING: minor spoilers ahead — proceed at your own risk!
This new path is available both when you decide to stay behind in the main hall, or when you stay behind in front of the fort gates.
You can now fight to open the gate to bring reinforcements and directly save your brother's life.
Besides adding 3 new risk chains to the game, this also gives the player freedom to choose how challenging the playtrough will be.
This also presents the first time your people are left without any guidance whatsoever from Wid, and thus is a direct test of the leadership goodwill you accumulated with them.
We'd like to thank our community for helping us to deliver a great Act 2 this year. Thank you for your continuous support and patience, we can’t wait to bring the final Act 3 to you next year.
Happy holidays!
If you haven't already, you can join the community on Discord! It's the place for all things Sacred Fire.
Hello everyone,
it’s been a while. I’ll try to summarize the main Sacred Fire development events from last year we didn’t cover on our blog yet.
Act 2 Expansion
Since the initial Act 2 release last summer, we’ve implemented numerous updates to player choices and character reactions, based on our community feedback, almost doubling it’s initial size.
Among the most favorite scenes added was more screen time for a community favorite character, your eagle Talon. One of the latest additions was a complete new path through the Act 2 final battle.
Steam Page Localization
While we continue working on Act 3, we’ve also worked on updating the existing game and the Steam page text, which has also been localized into the 8 languages that will be supported in the full game. Feedback on the new text and the translations is welcome.
Czech & Slovak Games Week
Sacred Fire has been selected for the opening live stream for the Czech & Slovak Games Week, so I’ve recorded a video introducing the game to new players:
The annual Czech & Slovak Games Week is here to celebrate games made by passionate teams from two countries that share the history of a united struggle for independence and freedom.
A perceptive observe may spot a link why we’re not introducing the Caledonian resistance as one tribe, but as a community of different people, able to look past their differences, united in their suffering and struggle against a common oppressor.
Roadmap update
To make sure we can continue and finish up the story in the rich choice-making quality people love about the game, we’ve adjusted the Act 3 milestone to Q1 2023.
We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the community members who help make the game better in various ways, and also to all those who support us.
A thank you also to everyone who liked the game and left a recommendation for their friends on Steam – the game has collected over 300+ user reviews already with more than 95% of them being positive.
An last but not least, thank you for your patience, we can’t wait to hear what you think about the final Act 3
Kind regards,
Andrej
Act 3 Roadmap Update
Hello everyone,
In this short update, we’d like to let you know that while all is well with the team and the game, as we keep working on Act 3, we discover new things to resolve for a satisfying ending for the main story and the many character relationship states.
At the same time, the localization of the previous acts is in full swing and while we work with experienced translators, they do need our assistance with context here and there which results in hundreds of questions due to the sheer amount of text.
So we'd like to ask you for a little bit more patience while waiting for Act 3 - it’ll be ready by the end of Q2 2023.
I can't wait to see which routes, self-expression choices, and endings players will favor in their playthrough, and plan to collect your experiences with the complete story in a survey afterward.
The next sale for the game will be the Steam Spring Sale starting on March 16th.
If you haven't already, you can join the community on Discord, or leave feedback here on Steam forums and let me know what you think about the game.
You are actually right. It has been recorded that the emperor Septimius Severus met a black legionnaire in Britain and was horrified by his appearance (ironically enough there have been attempts at portraying Septimius Severus as black because he was born in Libya). For those interested, I will also note that the last pagan emperor of Rome, Julian the Apostate, said that innate differences among peoples prove that they are under the influence of different gods. Many quasi-historians like to say racial awareness didn't exist in ancient Rome, which is blatantly untrue.
Spring Update! Act 3 Progress
Hey everyone,
A lot has happened since our last announcement, so we’re pleased to share a summary update on development progress.
Sacred Fire participated in the Steam Tabletop Fest last month and we'd like to thank everyone for your feedback here on Steam forums and on Discord. This resulted in many small bug-fixes and tweaks in today’s update, as well as a small refinement to the female character's backstory description and starting effects.
We’re continuing to prepare localization, as the full launch will include support for a total of 8 languages. With almost 300,000 words in the game’s script, this is no small task!
Some of the languages were enabled by a grant from the Slovak Arts Council, which is of course wonderful but also required us to tweak our development timeline to fit certain requirements.
At least now we know we got it all working correctly. The translations of story texts are progressing at a good pace that should leave enough room for testing them with the community before we release them with the full release of the game.
Most importantly, writing on Act 3 continues. The many game states that have accumulated for Act 3 (characters being alive or not, characters being allied or not, reactions to achievements or betrayals of the player character, etc.) are raising the complexity of the scenes.
Thankfully, writing the two previous acts has prepared us for the challenge, and we’re making progress on the main conflict resolution scenes, as well on some more personal long awaited scenes, like the Raven rescue mission, and the Etain backstory revelation scenes.
We’ll keep you informed about our progress and the availability of a community testing build, leading up to a Q3 Act 3 release.
Thank you all for your words of encouragement, and for your continuous support and patience. If you haven't already, you can join the community on Discord[discord.com], or leave feedback here on Steam forums about the game.
Winter Update
Act 3 Writing done, Localization and Visuals in progress
Hello everyone,
With the new year in full swing, we're excited to bring you a brief update about the game's development progress.
All the writing is now finalized, and localization of Act 3 has commenced. In the end, Act 3 contains almost twice as much content as Act 2. Currently, I'm in the process of integrating visuals, stat changes, and dice rolls into all the lines.
Minor spoilers ahead.
In addition to the three main Act 3 events—the Raven rescue mission, the Roman camp infiltration, and the ultimate battle with several siege stages and iconic moments—we're pleased with how we've tied up all loose ends. We've brought all relationship arcs, mysteries, conflicts, and player agendas to a narratively satisfying conclusion.
Furthermore, Act 3 boasts over 10 pages worth of individualized epilogues detailing the fate of the kingdom and the characters based on your choices, including a variant where the fort is saved, but the protagonist dies.
To highlight a few additions based on community feedback, here are some elements that made it into Act 3 and the Sacred Fire story thanks to you:
- A way to enable Ygrain rise above her bitterness
- An opportunity to get even with Wid, if you get knocked out in Act 1, without overdoing it
- Morl's relationship can develop romantic undertones for female protagonist playthroughs. This decision was made simply because it made for a better story than the originally planned romance with a Roman captive.
Please note, Sacred Fire does not focus on romance, and not all romances are equally extensive; some pairs have more to overcome than others- Three distinct ways to upgrade the fort before the siege
- Successful endings for a coward and an opportunist playthrough, including a royal treasury heist
While many lines still need setting up, I'm eager to share Act 3 with you all. Thank you for your feedback, support, and patience!
If you haven't already, you can join the community on Discord! It's the place for all things Sacred Fire.
Spring Update
Hello everyone,
Welcome to the latest update from the trenches of solo development.
First things first - the testing of what’ll be available of Act 3 will start at the end of spring, meaning by the end of June. Those waiting for the full release, will then have to wait a little bit longer, as the feedback and amount of bugs in the testing build will determine the 1.0 release date.
While our last update was marked by the joy of writing out the story to its full potential, the increased scope meant spending more resources on localization and voice-over, putting increased pressure on the development. It’s thanks to my publishing partner’s flexibility and my determination that we tackled all the hurdles and can now bring you the good news of the game moving towards the finish line in an uncompromised state.
I understand the wait is long, both for players who’ve experienced the game recently, and for those who’ve been waiting for a conclusion to the story for a long time. That, however, is the road we went down ever since releasing the first public demo - of expanding the scenes with more player choice and NPC reactions based on your feedback. With Act 3, we wanted to avoid the common ailment of games in this genre - diminishing player choices, unanswered plot threads and patch-on endings.
Instead we tried to create many satisfying moments for many different playthroughs, addressing truly rare game states.
So, we want to thank you. Thank you for your feedback, your support, and your patience over the years! It's thanks to you that Sacred Fire could grow into what’ll hopefully end up being a satisfying choice-driven experience for all of you.
P.S.: Oh, and yes, for those kindhearted players out there, don’t worry, we’ve heard you : there will be an option for non-lethal attacks to stop the dogs in Act 1 as well.
Act 3 Testing Start and Roadmap Update
Hello everyone,
As part of the Steam Summer Sale festivities, we’ve prepared the long awaited Act 3 Testing build for you.
While the testing build contains only a handful of scenes for now -- like another set of rewards and dynamically generated dreams as you rest after the big Act 2 battle -- it contains also the long awaited resolution to your and Etain’s childhood friendship backstory for both male and female protagonists.
Like last time, the testing build will be expanded gradually with more scenes, advancing your Sacred Fire journey towards its grand finale. Please note that the testing build does not contain voice-over, as we need to fix all the bugs in Act 3 first before recording with the voice talent.
As mentioned before the decision to cut no corners when writing Act 3 increased its scope considerably. And while we think the experience, without all the different resolutions and endings, would be crippled, unfortunately the game won’t be ready for a full release this summer.
The increased scope and the consequent production hurdles ended up pushing the full release into the next year. We’ll be narrowing the release down as soon as the testing of Act 3 is over.
I wish things would be easier and I could deliver the game to you faster. Yet, we’re making progress and sticking to making sure experiencing Sacred Fire’s 1.0 breadth and depth will be an exceptional experience for both new and long-term fans.
In the meanwhile, thank you for your understanding, patience and support. If you aren't part of the public test yet, you can easily join now! Here's how:
- Join the community on Discord[discord.com]
- Head over to the #tester-role channel and claim the Act 3 Tester role
- Follow the instructions in the newly revealed #test-act-3 channel that will become accessible
Summer Update
Hello everyone,
With the summer in the rear-view mirror, here is a short update about the development progress of Sacred Fire!
While it’ll take a little bit longer before we’re ready to release a new testbuild with a fresh batch of scenes from Act 3, there have been a couple of pieces of community feedback we’ll be testing.
There will be a direct way to turn off tutorial pop-ups fairly early into the game. While these tutorials are useful to people new to the genre, they’ve been bugging more experienced RPG players or streamers enough to let us know about it.
Some players also asked for the ability to boost the NPC checks that appear at the bottom of the screen next to the Continue button.
Currently, the game already enables players to spend their motivation on keeping their fear and anger low, so as to not negatively affect NPCs. We realized that the 4 “presence” traits from the character creator could also be used to make a difference in these situations.
Take for example this dice roll: In this case, the game checks whether Morl will react in a hostile way. If the player character has the menacing presence trait, you will now be able to spend 1 motivation point to make sure this dice roll goes their way, progressing the story without Morl acting belligerently.
We see this as an improvement, because it adds another way for the player to gain control over how the story evolves, while also adding a little bit of extra depth to character creation.
We’ll be back with another update once a new Act 3 Testing Build is out. In the meanwhile, thank you for your support and patience, and feel free to join the testing via our Discord.
Only the player character can be black.
How the fuck does that work? Don't you have a brother in this game?
Fall Update
Hello everyone,
To celebrate Sacred Fire’s participation in the Czech and Slovak Games Week, we’ve prepared a historically low discount of 33% and another short development update.
While we continue to add more bits of Act 3, we’re also going to be testing quite a few new things in today’s update to the testing build:
Role-playing
The player character has always been able to use insights to spread rumors about characters and weaken their renown. To add another layer of consequence to your choices, if feeling angered or betrayed, characters from your community can now spread rumors about you to weaken the strength of your titles (epithets like ‘the Strong’, or ‘the Swift’).
On top of the above change, level-up costs for Titles and Ideas have been rebalanced to make the higher levels more valuable and reward the player for unlocking more of them.
End-of-line dice rolls can be boosted now to further increase the level of control players have over their stories, but also to rebalance what it means to have enough motivation points, as it increases the number of places they can prove useful.
As promised, non-lethal attacks that slow down the dogs chasing after the escaped slaves in Act 1 are part of the new build.
User Experience
The process of toggling the in-game tutorials at the start of the game has been refined.
Each of the many orchestral tracks is now alternated with 2 new tracks to increase the variability of the experience.
Rewind mode not only shows what choices the player made in the past steps but also remembers the probability of success of the selected choices, including which of them were boosted with motivation.
The UI bars at the bottom effects when reaching critical values have been refined.
The new build introduces various fixes, including a fix to a left-over tooltip bug and a bug that caused the game to misremember the last save slot.
Feedback welcome
Feel free to join the testing of this Act 3 build via our Discord and help us test and tweak these changes before we release them publicly. In the meantime, thank you for your support and patience.
[discord.com]
