We’re back for a fresh new year of magic, mayhem, and machinations in Archmage Rises. The team enjoyed the week break and we’re back at it to finish combat Jan 19.
NEW Combat coming Jan 19
WIP: The health bars are broken, but its starting to come together!
It really is all hands on deck this week to get combat out: James, Jessie, Josh, Jonathan, Michel, Mark, Nolan, Phil, Tyler, Zach, and myself.
Last year, we hit an internal milestone Dec 22 of All Features Working. This isn’t every spell or monster, but every type of spell and monster and required features working. We did this to set a good foundation for when we return in the new year to not have to worry about features but instead tuning and balance.
Combat includes a ton of new systems and spells. We are testing the entire game with a full battery of Test Cases NOW to see what broke in surgically removing one combat and putting in a new one. This is the earliest we’ve done this in a dev cycle. We’re trying to make quality a priority and do better this time. I’m expecting to find at least 99 broken things we need to fix.
Added in the wolf racial ability to “Howl” which brings in more wolves to the fight.
Spells for Arcane and Fire schools are being finalized with names, descriptions, and icons. We’ll share details on those schools soon.
That’s pretty much all there is to say: everyone working on combat.
A Little Slice of Time Off
So what does a game dev do during a holiday to unwind? Buy games on Steam and play em of course!
Sometimes fans recommend certain games as inspiration for Archmage. I was able to pick up a couple of these including Shadows of Doubt, Pentiment, and Outer Wilds.
I played some Shadows of Forbidden Gods to see how the political actions and city network work.
TW: WH2 is like a warm cozy blanket to chill with.
But then I found myself falling in love all over again with Total War: Warhammer II. I have loved TW games since I first played Shogun. I spent too much of my time off “just one more turn!” conquering Old World with the Dwarves!
(I have a secret life goal to complete a campaign with every race. Please don’t tell my wife!)