As I write this five programmers are in a meeting trying to figure out how best to merge all the source code changes between the two branches. It’s a lot!
First, let’s talk about the different goals of the two builds: The Nextfest Demo and the upcoming Early Access Release.
THE NEXTFEST DEMO
The Demo’s PURPOSE
This game has been over 9 years in the making, and we wanted to show the world (or at least the subset of awesome gamers like you) what we have been working on all this time. It was important to show not what it is, but where it is going and what it could be. For this reason we left a lot of untested unbalance features turned on.
Like the Mage Tower.
We didn’t think it was good, but we wanted people to know/see that building a mage tower is a cool and integral feature of the game.
As I mentioned, many many features were untested and unbalanced. It wasn’t until it went live we learned how badly unbalanced and buggy some of it really was. Oops.
The Demo Quest
Like a good themepark ride, we wanted to reduce friction and get everyone through the entire experience.
To get players jumping into the various elements of the game right away, we created a very structured demo experience with a mandatory quest: the hunt for the Senindarin Artifact. We introduced some of the world and the ongoing competition between our three major factions: The Nobility, The Conclave of Mages, and the Free Mages (Renegades).
We made the demo easy: low hp enemies, low gold costs, small combat group sizes. We basically took a level 30 quest and made it achievable by level 1 mages.
We hoped to provide one hour of engagement, allowing people to explore a procedurally generated world.
Mission accomplished! Over 50% played for more than 3 hours.
THE EARLY ACCESS RELEASE BUILD
The Early Access Release’s PURPOSE
We’ve finally built something that we are proud to release to a wider audience. This is the real game experience, the foundation from which we will be building upon for the next year+ with you according to our Roadmap.
We hoped to add more features in time for Early Access, but instead focused on stability by fixing all the bugs. A stable release is better than a buggy one with new features you cannot really enjoy.
When I say “real game experience”, I mean in the demo you could easily one shot a skeleton. But skeletons are actually one of our mid tier enemies and new players should RUN like from a killer rabbit. This will be jarring for longtime players.
Temporarily Removed Features
Before we get into the new stuff coming in the Early Access Release build, let’s talk about the features we’re temporarily taking out, and why we are removing them (for now). These are features that we wanted players to try in the demo, but were half-baked, untested, or buggy.
Mage Tower
It needs a new UI and lots of attention to the costs. This is the primary feature of Update #2: The Mage Tower, so it will be making it’s return soon.
Demo Quest for the Senindarin Artifact
As mentioned above, this is supposed to be quest designed for higher level mages. This quest will come back as an optional quest you can pickup at a Conclave Chapterhouse.
Monster Race of Bandits
There are a minimum of 5 enemy types per race each of a different archetype: caster, ranged, brute, trash mob, etc. For bandits, we only managed to get one in and they were a dumb one and fundamentally broken: every time it was their turn they hid. This is more interesting when there are other creatures bashing you and this one leaps from the shadows.
The bandits will be returning as a monster race in Update #4: Crime & Punishment.
Enchanting
Mechanically it works, but within the broader context of the game it needs lots of balance and help. It will be returning Update #2: The Mage Tower.
Misc NPC Stuff
We left some things turned on which didn’t work well: letter writing, inn performances, jokes, followers. We’re turning it off until they come back in Update #1: Townsfolk.
Slavery is being turned off until Update #9: Rulers and Kingdoms where you can help pass Royal Edicts to ban it.
Casting Spells on Hexes in the World
We’ve just made massive changes to our combat and spell casting (which we’ll get back to in a minute) and need some time to get it working with the hex casting. So for now, you can’t rain fireballs on towns. This will return Update #2: Mage Tower.
As you can see, most of the removed features will return very shortly (within the first 2 updates) to give us some extra time to polish them up, so you won’t be without them for too long!
New Features
The whole team has been working hard to deliver a better, more polished experience. The primary differences in the Early Access Release build are:
1. Combat
I’ve been playtesting the demo for the last few weeks and the combat wasn’t achieving any of it’s goals. It was simplistic and boring.
Based on feedback from the demo, we’ve revised combat to be rarer, more strategic, and involved. 80% of our effort over the last month has gone into this combat update. So much so that a separate writeup of the specific changes is coming in a few days.
2. Save System
The game is permadeath… but also buggy. And while we’ve done a ton of work over the last few weeks to reduce as many bugs as we can, they can still happen and it’s no fun to lose a run due to a bug. So you can save your game at any time and load a game at any time (and quit without saving, a much requested feature). The new save system shows details of your save files so you can pick the right one.
As we get further into the development roadmap and things get even more polished, permadeath will become the defacto way to play the game, while the new save system we’ve introduced will become optional.
3. Updated Character Creation & Start
The beginning of the game plays out a bit more of life and schooling, leading to many different starting situations.
4. Starter Quests
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve taken out the demo quest to be added back in later as a higher level quest. That means we need a new way to start players on their adventuring journey, so we’ve put in eight new shorter starter quests, appropriate to the starting player. This is the beginning of a much broader work on our quest system. We will continue adding quests and improving the quest system over the coming weeks. This is just a starting point.
5. Exploration
It was hard to know which hexes had resources and which ones were already explored. We now desaturate an explored hex and automatically pop an icon if you found something there. This is just the first small step to Update #3: Exploration where this will be polished and expanded upon (among other features to be added).
The hex to the north east has been explored. It’s subtle and doesn’t make the map too noisy.
6. Economy RebalancING
Updated the costs of everything. Can’t claim it is perfectly balanced, but it is at least consistent. No more free rations!
Also updated the distribution of resources throughout the game world. And resources are available by season now, no more picking strawberries in the middle of winter! Due to a recent fix I made yesterday now there are too many resources. Oops!
7. Inn’s Now Offer More than Beef Jerky
As much as I’m sure all of you love the bountiful supply of beef jerky found in every inn in every town, we’ve now got a variety of food and beverages at various price points to restore hunger and wellbeing. You can roleplay a vegetarian, vegan, and teetotaler.
8. Rebalanced all Dynamic Quest Rewards
It was silly turning in 300g worth of stuff for a 75g quest reward.
9. Improved artwork when camping, sleeping, and sailing
We’ll let you experience these ones for yourself :)
10. More NPCs portraits!
We’ve doubled the number of heads and added more skin tones to the pool.
More Bug Fixes
Vendor stock now refreshes
Financial House now tells you when you are too poor for their services.
Inn gambling game now always shows your dice rolls because it is a dice game and makes no sense if you had dice rolling turned off.
Harvest button not enabling upon finding a resource
Better loot dungeon distribution
Better item descriptions - you’d think this was easy (I did!) but took many many hours.
Player log now saved in save file
Another 65 other bug fixes I won’t detail but ultimately makes the game run better.
That’s all for now, but we’d love to hear what you will miss the most, and/or what you are most excited for in this new build!
Drop us a comment below.