Weekly Dev Update: Mar 3, 2024

Rivals

Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• We’re trying to learn from our mistakes and give features time to “bake”. Rivals is ready for me to playtest, which I will do tomorrow. If everything is good, we’ll announce a launch date to Beta. If it needs more lovin’ in the oven, then we’ll do that.
  

Exploration

Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• This is one of those moments where I’m challenged by how much to share I share now because some some things aren’t 100% nailed down but swirling around…
  
• We’re going to make this update a big update. We will close the game loop(s) and make the game a game. Adding in player progression is important.
  
• We’re actively working on how we handle the player’s lifetime.
  
• We’re adding in a major world altering problem which significantly affects play and provides a win condition. We’re working through how we can add the first one, now. It’s going to be a dragon like Smaug, who shows up and pursues his own goals over time
  
• We’re looking into our map generation and how we can support “regions”, clusters of towns which all know each other and interact with each other
  
• We’ve started the programming work for our first dynamic quest in the game. Once we get it working we can build from there
  

Other News

I’m happy to report we are hiring an illustrator artist May 6! Lucas and I have been conversing since August of last year and finally we are able to pull the trigger. Above is his art test to sketch up some frost orc ideas. Lucas’ first task? Sketching dragons!