Sovereign Syndicate - isometric narrative RPG set in steampunk fantasy London

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/sove...2023-were-headed-to-pax-east-rising-showcase/

SOVEREIGN SYNDICATE DEV UPDATE, MAR 2023: WE’RE HEADED TO PAX EAST RISING SHOWCASE!​

Hi Everyone,

We’ve been selected for the PAX East Rising Showcase and will be showing Sovereign Syndicate in Boston March 23rd – 26th 2023.

We’re running a special playtest for the PAX East version of the demo which also shows off some of the recent graphical fidelity, performance, and UI changes we’ve made.

If you’d like to help test the game head on over to the Steam page and request access. No password or approval required; if you participated in past playtests the build should automatically update.

Thanks for your help! If you’re going to be at PAX drop by our booth and say Hi!

 

[Infinitron]

New trailers:

 

[Jedi Exile]

Looks linteresting. And there is a demo available on Steam.

 

[Infinitron]

Nu-Banshee sent a guy to PAX East:



https://www.gamebanshee.com/news/127464-sovereign-syndicate-gamebanshee-pax-east-interview.html

Having attended this year's PAX East, our recently-expanded team had a chance to chat with Crimson Herring Studios' founder and producer Isaac Otway about his studio's upcoming narrative steampunk RPG Sovereign Syndicate.

​

To summarize the interview somewhat, it tells us why the developers decided to go with a trio of premade characters (a minotaur magician, a corsair courtesan, a dwarf and his automaton) and the unique perspectives they bring to the table. The dwarf in particular will be drawing certain parallels between the modern-day advent of AI and a Victorian take on it with sentient steam-powered robots.

We're also told that the game is structured in such a way that we'll be switching between our three characters at predefined points and then have to deal with the consequences of our earlier actions, and occasionally can even meet our previous avatars.

Then, we get a chance to learn more about Sovereign Syndicate's influences. With Crimson Herring Studios being a Canadian company, BioWare is of course a big inspiration for them. But games like Shadowrun, Disco Elysium and Arcanum also get mentioned.

Going a bit deeper, some of Sovereign Syndicate's aspects can be traced back to various Greek myths and practices. In particular, the game's setting prominently features minotaur and centaur characters as a twist on a more traditional fantasy world. The humoral theory is also a major influence on the game's systems.

And beyond even that, the game strives to feel and sound authentic, and as such, its texts are directly inspired by the works of Jules Verne and other similar writers, but also, going even deeper, assorted historical references and documents.

When it comes to systems, Sovereign Syndicate will use Tarot cards instead of dice for its assorted skill checks. Not only does this way of doing things synergizes with the game's setting, it also introduces some extra complexity by letting you count cards and decide when to tackle which checks and how to fudge things to have a better chance of getting a good result. And apparently, failing skill checks will also grant you experience as a play on learning from failure.

Expanding on its alternate history Victorian setting, Sovereign Syndicate will be using various regions of the brain as envisioned by phrenology for its skills, while the personality aspects distilled from the humoral theory will allow you to develop your characters over time by favoring certain kinds of decisions.

Finally, we're told a thing or two about the game's development and how it started as a passion project during the COVID lockdown, but ultimately evolved into a narrative behemoth totaling roughly 500,000 words of text. We're also told that right now, the game is roughly a year away from release.

And with how intriguing everything looks here, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on this project.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/sovereign-syndicate-dev-update-apr-2023-pax-recap/

SOVEREIGN SYNDICATE DEV UPDATE, APR 2023: PAX RECAP​

Hi Everyone, we’re all back and settled in now after a successful showing at PAX East! Thought I’d take some time and provide an update on where we’re at with Sovereign Syndicate.

I’m really glad we decided to show the game in person. We’d never had the opportunity before, starting the studio during COVID, and I was delighted and humbled by the positive reactions from so many people who enjoyed playing our game.

The prospect of showing the game in person like that also forced us to work on some additional polish and a re-release of the demo, as we wanted to make sure we were putting our best foot forward to any players, media, publishers, and other vendors. I’m really happy we put the time in and can show off a lot of the changes we’ve been working on since our initial demo release almost a year ago, and the feedback on the changes has been fantastic.

A special thanks to our team that travelled to show in person, and the team at PAX for being so accommodating and generous with their time to make sure we had everything we needed to have a successful show.

We’ll have more on our development roadmap and release plans in the next update; but if you’re interested in learning more about what it’s like to show art an event like this, Isaac and Chris sat down and discussed it for one of our developer blog posts over on our YouTube channel.


As always, if you’d like to follow our development more closely you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our discord.

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Until next time, Take care!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/sovereign-syndicate-dev-update-may-2023-roadmap-to-release/

SOVEREIGN SYNDICATE DEV UPDATE, MAY 2023: ROADMAP TO RELEASE​

Let’s Talk Roadmap to Release!

Hi Everyone, as promised, I’m back to provide an update on the state of the game and our plans for release.

Lots of moving parts here of course, and I’d like to avoid making a release scope or date commitment that we’re not able to hit, so here’s what I’ve been thinking…

We know that with our current budget we’ll be able to make the game we wanted; but without publisher support or additional investment it’s likely that we can only deliver a PC English version at launch.

If we’re able to secure additional funding, then we’ll focus that funding on additional languages and console porting. This would mean release would take longer of course, to allow for additional translation and porting work to be completed; but we’d be able to provide the game to a larger audience.

If we’re not able to secure additional funding for porting and localization we’d still look to do these things post-release using revenue generated from game sales, it would just take longer than we’d like to reach the same audience.

We’re also looking at whether we can attend Gamescom or PAX West, and we’d likely run a Beta concurrently with those events so you can see everything we’ve been working on and provide that critical last-minute feedback so we can deliver the best possible version of the game.

I’ll provide you with updates as the situation develops, and update the Steam page accordingly when we firm up our plans for localization and release date; but if you’re interested in learning more about what’s going on with development right now, Isaac and Chris sat down and discussed it for one of our developer blog posts over on our YouTube Channel.


As always, if you’d like to follow our development more closely you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our discord.

Newsletter

Discord

Until next time, Take care!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/sove...2023-discussing-new-hope-and-despair-systems/

SOVEREIGN SYNDICATE DEV UPDATE, JUN 2023: DISCUSSING NEW HOPE AND DESPAIR SYSTEMS​

Hi Everyone, it’s been a while since our last update. Wanted to let you know what we’ve been working on.

Now that we’re further along in development we’re taking some time to re-assess whether some of the mechanics and systems we’ve developed are fit for purpose and reinforcing the core gameplay loop of exploration, storytelling, and meaningful dialogue choices. I’ll be going over some of the changes we’ve made in the next few updates.

Today I’ll be talking about our change to the vigour and nerve system which we’re now calling hope and despair.

The inspiration for this started with other two resource game systems like Diablo’s health and mana or Disco Elysium’s health and morale. A standard health / hit points and a second resource that together manage damage and healing and consumption of a secondary resource that was used for some other purpose.

Initially we were designing interactions around having a cost to vigour or nerve depending on the inner voice used for the action, and designing areas, interactions, and consumables to restore or damage these resources.

While this system was okay, we didn’t feel like it was doing a good enough job of reinforcing our core gameplay loop and feeding in to meaningful and variable dialogue choices. So, we’ve redesigned it to a single resource meter that measures your characters level of hope or despair.

This meter is divided into five levels, Hopeful, Optimistic, Content, Weary, and Desperate. Different interactions and consumables still effect this resource; but more importantly the level will affect the dialogue choices you have available. For example, a hopeful character may have different dialogue choices or actions they can take in a given situation than a desperate character would, and these choices are gated behind the hope and despair meter to provide for some choice and consequence.

So far, we’re really liking the change and look forward to leaning into this mechanic to provide some more interesting choices to the player.

That’s it for today, in future updates I’ll be discussing changes to the tarot card system, the new traits system, and the dialogue and UI panels so stay tuned for those!

As always, if you’d like to follow our development more closely you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our discord.

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Until next time, Take care!

 

[Leinhart]

Love this setting so much. Sadly we don´t get enough steampunk in RPGS. I know high fantasy and sci-fi are safer sales but I wish RPG devs would experiment a little more with other settings.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Discussing New Tarot Card and Traits Systems
Hi Everyone, as promised, I’m checking in with another update on the state of the game and some recent changes we’ve made.

As I discussed in the last update, now that we’re further along in development we’re taking some time to re-assess whether the mechanics and systems we’ve developed are fit for purpose and reinforcing the core gameplay loop of exploration, storytelling, and meaningful dialogue choices.

Today I’ll be talking about our changes to the tarot card and trait systems.

Initially we were treating major tarot cards more as an augment to the card draw mechanic, changing how the minor arcana (used in place of dice) were drawn based on which major tarot cards the player unlocked and equipped to their decks. This was an interesting approach; but ultimately it was never as fun as we wanted, and a lot of players were confused by how this system interacted with the chance of success for a given draw.

Going back to our core gameplay loop, we asked ourselves how we could better design this system to provide more meaningful character customization and dialogue choices. As a result, we’ve simplified the card draw system. We’ve retained the minor arcana decks and associating them with the players attributes; but instead of having major tarot influence the card game, major tarot are now used to give your character traits.

This simplifies the card draw quite a bit, drawing one card at a time per attribute and minor arcana deck. The result is an easier to understand mechanic that feels more fair to the player and that allows them to focus more on core gameplay rather micro managing their major tarot equips.

For traits, we’d always been inspired by etiquettes in Shadowrun, specializations that players could select during character creation or earn during gameplay that would unlock special dialogue options and paths through the game. We’d iterated on this quite a bit earlier in development, but it never quite felt right.

Now that we’re using the major arcana cards to unlock traits, we’re able to make character creation and dialogue choices more meaningful and reactive to the player’s choices. With certain dialogue choices gated behind certain traits we’re able to offer more interesting choices in gameplay and provide more replay value as well. I’m really excited about how this change has made the game better and easier to understand.

That’s it for today, in future updates I’ll be discussing changes to the dialogue and UI panels and in-game options, so stay tuned for those!

As always, if you’d like to follow our development more closely you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our discord.

 

[Infinitron]

The latest gameplay trailer for Sovereign Syndicate, a Victorian Steampunk RPG with tarot cards instead of dice. Debuting at Gamescom 2023.

 

[grimace]

Looks linteresting. And there is a demo available on Steam.

Demon available since March 18, 2023? Who will play the demo and report back here?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1674920/Sovereign_Syndicate/

 

[cyborgboy95]

Game Update: Controller Support and other Quality of Life Features
Hi Everyone! Exciting times over here, checking in with another game update.

You may have noticed we pushed an update to the demo recently. We’re preparing for the upcoming Steam Next Fest October 9-16th and we’re making sure everyone gets to see the latest and greatest.

We’ve also been working to improve our UI and tutorials and add some quality-of-life features. This includes the controller support, font scaling, and UI improvements you can see in the latest demo. We’re also adding some additional features at a later date, including Twitch integration, Steam achievements, and a frame rate limiter.

As we mentioned in a previous update, we weren’t certain what we would be able to deliver for localization and platforms at launch until recently. Now that we’re further along and have more clarity on our budget, we can commit to an English PC launch. We’re hoping to follow that up with additional languages and platforms depending on the game’s sales. We’ve made the related updates to the Steam product page so users will know if the game isn’t in their preferred language.

We’ve been working hard in QA finishing up the game as of late. We’re now content complete and into the bug fixing and polish stage. We’ll have an announcement with a release date very soon, so stay tuned for that!

As always, if you’d like to follow our development more closely you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our discord.

Newsletter: https://www.crimsonherring.com/newsletter-signup/

Discord: https://discord.gg/vrVrE3vBSx

Until next time, Take care!

 

[Infinitron]

Huh:

Sovereign Syndicate launches on PC, January 15 2024.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I probably gonna try the updated demo, because if it's anything like last year's demo it's gonna be a wreck

 

[HoboForEternity]

well i played it, the demo is mostly the same, but plays and run much smoother. tweaked UI too which is better than the previous one. this game live and die by the writing and i feel just lukewarm towards it so far, but it is enough to get me curious

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.crimsonherring.com/post-next-fest-update/

POST-NEXT FEST UPDATE!​

Hi Everyone!

We had a great Steam Next Fest in October, thousands of people tried the demo and added us to their wishlist, and we got some great feedback too! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and let us know your thoughts.

We did have one technical issue with the game that was causing an error with dialogue being generated in the sewers for some users, that’s been fixed now, and we’ve pushed an update to the demo.

We also took the time to integrate some more quality of life features in response to player feedback.

• Frame Rate Limitation, some users commented that their GPU’s were being utilized more than they would like, leading to temperature issues. We’ve setup frame rate settings to allow you to force the game to perform to specific frame rates. We’ve also done some additional asset optimization to make the game more performant.
• Always Run, some users asked for the option to have the player character always run, rather than having to double click to run. We’ve added this feature in the Gameplay Options menu.
• Disable Glossary Entries, some users asked for the ability to turn the highlightable glossary terms system on and off. We’ve added this feature in the Gameplay Options menu.
• Hardware Cursor, when using mouse and keyboard to control the game is using a software cursor. Some users noticed that when their frame rate is slower so is the responsiveness of the cursor. We’ve added an option to override this and use the hardware cursor.

In case you missed the last update we also added a dialogue font scaling option so you can increase or decrease the size of the dialogue font if it’s more comfortable for you.

As always, if you’d like to follow our development more closely you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our discord.

Newsletter
Discord

Until next time, Take care!

 

[Infinitron]

Get a look at what it's like to play as Clara in Sovereign Syndicate, a steampunk cRPG set in the Victorian era. Sovereign Syndicate offers three playable characters and uses tarot cards instead of dice to propel its gameplay forward, fueled by your narrative choices. It will be released for PC on January 15, 2024.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I wanted to try this but kingsvein release the next day. Sorry.

 

[Terenty]

The demo played like a cheap DE knock off with worse art and worse writing. Doubt it will be better in the full game

 

[processdaemon]

I'm playing the demo now and am confused about how the writers decided on what words and phrases should have tooltip explanations. Usually that sort of thing is for lore dumps and it feels a bit patronising that the game thinks people need explanations for the words 'proffered' and 'finery'.

 

[Isaac (Crimson Herring)]

I'm playing the demo now and am confused about how the writers decided on what words and phrases should have tooltip explanations. Usually that sort of thing is for lore dumps and it feels a bit patronising that the game thinks people need explanations for the words 'proffered' and 'finery'.

Thanks for playing! We tried to stick to lore dump words or Victorian English words. We're only releasing in English right now and it's been helpful to folks who aren't native English speakers. There's also an option to turn it off in gameplay settings if it's annoying you.

 

[Isaac (Crimson Herring)]

The demo played like a cheap DE knock off with worse art and worse writing. Doubt it will be better in the full game

We think the demo is a good representation of the quality and experience of the final game, whether you like it or not is a matter of taste.

 

[processdaemon]

Finished the demo now. I didn't find the MC in it particularly compelling, which is a bit of a problem for a DElike since the main characters' personalities are going to be a big part of whether the game lands or not, but I appreciate that it may just take a bit more time than you get in a demo to warm up to him.

On the positive side I liked what I saw of the setting's lore and think the world has a lot of potential, and I thought the models and environments were very nice, especially for the first game from an indie studio. I'm not 100% convinced but it made a positive enough impression that I'll probably give it a shot when the full thing comes out.

 

[Isaac (Crimson Herring)]

Finished the demo now. I didn't find the MC in it particularly compelling, which is a bit of a problem for a DElike since the main characters' personalities are going to be a big part of whether the game lands or not, but I appreciate that it may just take a bit more time than you get in a demo to warm up to him.

On the positive side I liked what I saw of the setting's lore and think the world has a lot of potential, and I thought the models and environments were very nice, especially for the first game from an indie studio. I'm not 100% convinced but it made a positive enough impression that I'll probably give it a shot when the full thing comes out.

Thanks, you do get to play as a few different protagonists throughout the campaign. One of the things we tried to do was show how the different characters have different personalities, perspectives, relationships, and motivations. The NPC's react differently to them based on who they are, share different information, that sort of thing. Also really like how interacting with the same item in the world across the three characters gives different perspectives on it.

If you're not a big fan of Atticus maybe one of the other characters will resonate.

 

[cyborgboy95]

First Review is out