Warlander News

Greetings to all,

It’s time to dive into the most common areas of the game on your road of vengeance. Today we talk about the arenas of Warlander where Bruce will spill the blood of his enemies but might also have the opportunity to do different things that may help him bring down the Techno Order.

There are several different types of arenas, each representing different areas of the Warlander’s world. In each of them, a certain number of enemies will spawn and your mission is to kill them all. How are you going to do it? It’s completely up to you. The game offers you several ways to deal with the enemies. You have the “Old School Way” - where you take the battle to them and use your sword to cut through the waves of enemies. That way you utilize our unique take on the tactical combat - aiming and real-time mesh slicing - in order to kill enemies effectively. Also, you can take “the Forest way”, where you can use the druidic powers you unlocked and obtained through the run in order to kill your enemies in all kinds of special ways. Using powers like the Vine that can grapple opponents and throw them around, or the Stake that you can fire from a distance and kill an opponent or remove part of their armor is one of many possibilities. Or, you can try the “Timber falls” way, where you use the interactive parts of the environment in order to kill Techno forces. See those logs that are supported by that fragile-looking pillar? It would be a shame if you could throw your sword, cut it and make the logs fall on Techno heads… Or would it?



Of course, all those ways of killing enemies can be combined, so you can shoot the exploding barrels with the Stake and destroy several enemies at once. Or you can aim and throw your sword to decapitate an opponent and kill him instantly. This way, it’s up to you to test and try different strategies and explore different ways of fighting every opponent you meet. It also offers you the possibility to adapt and change your style of combat in order to kill some tough or rare opponents.

Some of the arenas will have a special encounter - a boss fight. These enemies are quite rare, and going against them is going to be quite challenging. Every boss is different, has different abilities and it’s up to the player to develop strategies in order to kill them. Of course, if you die, your journey begins again, and the path of vengeance is again upon you.

Clearing the arena means that you can continue your journey and progress to the next point on the map. After some combat encounters, players will be able to explore the arenas and find different lore notes. Each of these individual notes is actually a small part of a whole - we cannot reveal much more than that for now. Some areas will also have points of interest that will spark a dialogue between the protagonist and his sword (yes, the sword is alive, but that’s another story altogether).

As you can see, we managed to keep the main feature of the Warlander - tactical combat with real-time mesh slicing - and to fuse it with roguelike progression. We believe that this approach plays at the strengths of our unique take on tactical combat as each arena will provide you with different challenges always keeping your mind, reflexes and yes, your sword, sharp; while the roguelike progression offers the unpredictability and the sense of going into and against unknown dangers with each run.

That’s it for this blog post! You can continue the discussion in the comments below or on Discord or Facebook. Don’t forget to wishlist us on Steam and follow us on Twitter and Youtube!

Until next time,

CDG Team

Greetings to all!

After the important announcement last week (if you missed it, go here to read it first!) we wanted to honor our agreement with the community and inform you about the game’s development. We’ll take this opportunity to show you one of the aspects of the game being (re)made for the current version of Warlander. This time we’ll talk a little bit about the map which you use to traverse the game’s world. Keep in mind that all of this is still a work in progress, so your feedback is quite welcome!

When you start the game, you’ll see a procedurally generated map of the world with the interconnected arenas, each with different challenges. As you can see in the example given here, you may choose your path and encounters will vary. Also, because of the procedural generation, the map will be different for each run.

MAP - WORK IN PROGRESS

In most of the encounters, you’ll have the opportunity to show your swordsmanship skills and kill all the opponents. In some, various bosses await you and you must fight like there is no tomorrow. Other encounters are more rewarding and give you the possibility to heal yourself, obtain an upgrade from the great Devourer or get a random buff that will last until the end of the run. Or, you may risk it and enter an unknown node and face perils or blessing with equal chance.

Each time you reach an intersection, you are offered a choice and it’s up to you to decide where the path will take you. Do you take the road with fewer enemies but fewer possibilities to earn XP and body parts, thus devoiding yourself of upgrades? Or, do you go full rampage mode and look for as much combat as you can, to crush anyone who dares to challenge you? Each choice has its ups and downs, but in the end, it’s your choice that drives you on the path. And remember, vengeance cannot be sated - only tempered.

By offering the players a choice to forge their own path, and by changing it each time you start the game, we believe that the game feels new each time it’s started. Each run will feel different and offer a unique set of challenges and benefits. We’ll talk a little bit more about the arenas you’ll face in the weeks to come, and we hope this blog about the map and the way the game will work was interesting enough for you. As always, wishlist us on Steam, and also join us on Discord, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

Until next time,
CDG Team

Greetings all!

We talked a lot about Warlander in the past months and presented you with the most important aspect of the game - combat and its features. We also showed you the Shrine of Seers as one of the many environments of the game (you can check the other environments in the video here). Now, we need to talk about the future of Warlander - where it is now and where it will be in the months to come...

Warlander was initially conceived as an ambitious project. When the original concept was presented, the whole team was quite eager to jump into it and be a part of something as great as this game. However, the scope of the project turned a little too huge for an indie team, even one as highly motivated as ours is. We are sure that we created a unique take on stamina-based combat and an interesting setting that has all the hallmarks of a great IP. In order to avoid doing wrong by it, we decided to take a streamlined route to finish the game. To do that, Warlander is in the process of genre pivoting. While the main gameplay features - tactical combat, slicing, aiming - will stay the same, the form of the game is going to be changed. It will become a roguelike combat-focused action game set in a procedurally generated world. We believe that this shift represents a perfect match for what we want to make in terms of gameplay. Also, this is something that is both achievable and more importantly completely keeps the focus on the main feature of Warlander - combat.



The Procedurally generated map is divided into three thematic tiers, each with its own perils and mysteries. Arenas will be quite different - in most of them, Bruce is attacked by the members of the Techno Order and must kill all the enemies by using combat and environment. In others, Bruce will have the opportunity to approach the Devouring Tree (aka the Tree from the Trailer) and offer pieces of enemies to it to obtain access to new combat powers. And of course, you will also have the opportunity to fight with different bosses. If Bruce fails and is killed at any point during the run, the Forest resurrects him, but at the cost of the player needs to start the new run.

As you can see, this structure offers a unique experience for each playthrough, since no two runs are alike and thus every player is granted with a special - personal, so to speak - adventure each time a game begins. Arenas with combat will have randomly generated enemies so the players may try different strategies and the battles are never the same. Random setup of the environment which players can use to kill enemies makes every arena feel different and memorable - “Do you remember that time when I squashed Technos under a ton of rocks?!” All this is in line with our (and we believe yours, too) idea to make Warlander a unique and challenging game, where players will have the opportunity to test their swordsmanship.



Second, our goal is to make a game that will test your skills. Making a challenging and engaging game is never an easy task. Numerous rounds of testing are needed in order to balance it properly, especially a roguelike type of game. That's why we decided to pursue the Early Access way. Our initial timeline remains the same, with small adaptation - the release of EA version in early 2020, and full release later that year. That’s why we kindly ask you to support us in EA and give us the much-appreciated feedback that we plan to use in order to make Warlander an engaging experience. Now, we know that a lot of people don’t like the EA or had a bad experience with it (or great, and thus have quite high expectations of games in EA). Still, we love Warlander and we decided to do all that it takes to deliver it to our community. That’s why we’ll keep you informed and updated about the progress regularly, so you can see our commitment for yourself. By being part of the EA community, you will be giving us invaluable feedback and influence the development of the game in the right direction.

That’s all for this week... And that was a lot. We’ll keep you updated on the progress of the game in the days and weeks to come. Remember to add us to your wishlist on Steam and also to follow us on Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and join the Discord as well!

Greetings to all!
July has seen a number of videos and streams covering Warlander's Pre-Alpha Demo. We've covered the influencers in the previous blog post - you can find it here:


While the influencers did an excellent job covering the Demo, we wanted to provide you with a video that explains Warlander's mechanics and abilities in greater detail.

So, without further ado - enjoy the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L7x0FfRC6o

Oh and - don't forget to wishlist us on Steam, follow us on Facebook and Twitter and talk to us on Discord!

This blog post reveals some lore behind the Pre-Alpha Demo’s location - the Shrine of Seers…

In July, we have released Warlander’s Pre-Alpha Demo to influencers. The primary point of the Demo was to test the public opinion on new changes to Warlander’s combat. But, we decided to add just a sprinkle of narrative to the Demo, mostly to add some context to Bruce’s exploration of the level and not to make it into a pointless arena-to-arena slog.

To our surprise and satisfaction, even that sprinkle of dialogues and cutscenes provoked great interest in the influencers and the audience - they wanted to learn more about Bruce, his sentient sword Ferguson and the particular place where their quest took them to. While we cannot reveal much without wandering straight into spoiler territory we will provide some information about the Shrine of Seers to our readers.



The Shrine was built in ancient times as a dwelling for a mysterious creature known to the Druids as the Many-Eyed. It soon became a gathering place to those of the Cult who were blessed with a gift of second sight by the Old God. Those Druids, who will become known as Seers, channeled the visions of the past, present and the future through Many-Eyed and partook of the knowledge of the Forest. The Shrine became a home for the Seers as well as their final resting place. It is said in the Cult that those buried there become one with the Shrine, the Many-Eyed and the rest of the dead Seers...



After the fall of the Cult to the onslaught of the Techno Order, the Shrine of Seers became one of the rare safe havens for the Druids. But, the Druid numbers were severely reduced by the short and bloody conflict against the Technos and the Clans under their command. Seers of the Cult were also affected and the Shrine slowly but surely fell into decrepitude, looking more like a gathering of recluses than a thriving community of augury and learning that it was before the war.



Yet, the fall of the Cult did not stop the Technos from pursuing the remnants of the Druids. Relentlessly they worked on weakening the Forest, destroying huge tracts of trees and purging out any Druid hideouts. The Druids, and the Forest, resisted when and where they could and managed to prevent the Technos from penetrating into the inner recesses of the Forest, where the holiest - and most important sites of the Cult are - including the Shrine of the Seers.
Then, something unthinkable happened. Somehow, the Technos were able to bypass the protections of the Forest, to reach and conquer the now almost defenceless Shrine. From then on, they worked on reshaping the Shrine to suit their needs… Whatever they may be. The results of the Technos’ efforts you have seen for yourself...



And, that brings us to the end of the info we can share with you while avoiding spoilers. But, you might wonder… Why would Bruce and Ferguson wander into a Shrine overrun by Techno forces? Not without a good reason, we can assure you!

We are currently hard at work implementing the changes based on the information we’ve gathered from the Pre-Alpha Demo. Stay tuned - we will be releasing new information on this! Until then, wishlist us on Steam, and take the conversation to Discord, Facebook and Twitter.

Yours,

CDG team!