Mercyful Flames News

[h2]Hi there.[/h2]



I want to tell you one more interesting fact. We tried to make sure that the game did not have a voice-over, well, because, you know, costs. Our grumbling was simple: it needs to be recorded in English, it needs to be recorded in Polish, and it may need to be recorded in other languages... And if later we make some changes in the script, well, then we have another problem. Voice over is out.

Unfortunately. It didn't fall out. The more work we put into bringing the world to life, the more we added sounds, animations, and other nitpicks, and the more the feeling that the experience was incomplete nagged at us. Intuition told us that a narrator to guide the player through this dark and depressing world was the missing piece. Well, we trusted our intuition. We gave it a try, and what was heard, will not be heard again. In the Polish version, we made a voiceover with our efforts and the result allows us to smile with self-satisfaction. For the English version, we will look for a suitable person.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

What impact has the addition of a voiceover had on the work so far? Contrary to appearances, quite a lot. Well, the script of Mercyful Flames was written in the second person, a style known from paragraph games or RPG sessions. In the case of our game, we decided that a first-person narrative, which allows us to report on events in a somewhat storytelling style, would best suit the proposed dynamics. Besides, the inquisitor's story is very personal, and the presented course of events comes out most credibly when the author of the reflections is the main character.

Sooo... We have already added a voiceover to the first scenario and it works.

Hello, fanatics.

I would like to announce that we are working on a bridge between Priest Simulator and Booze Master. This means that as soon as we're done with the former and before the release of the latter, you're gonna experience a short winter adventure, meeting characters you already know. It's gonna be something like Heavy Duty, but more unique. You will be able to experience the adventure together with Quella, Jerry and Mortimer. We will officially announce the game when we have a Steam page prepared. Ahoy!

Remember the images from the last devlog? We showed previous iterations of the game. I wrote that the camera moves along a single curve at that time. However, we went one step further and stopped it. That is, not quite so much. It can't move, but it can rotate. It's a bit like sitting in a tank that has had its tracks punctured by someone. This type of camera is begging us for VR.

[h3]Anyway, see for yourself:[/h3]

We are now working on bringing the world to life. Since you won't be able to move freely around the area, we have to make an exceptional effort to make you buy our idea. You must believe that this is not a flat world that serves only as a backdrop for playing cards. This is a world where you can suffer and cry. We are adding animations, sounds, particles, and a whole lot of probiotics to stimulate your peristalsis of mechanics.

Coming soon.


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There is a Halloween event, so I allow myself to share information that is extremely unpleasant for me to disclose. Look, I know some of you are going to be pissed off, but we decided to make a big change to the game.



Simply put, the two previous iterations did not deliver the fun we set out to do. A third one had to be done. What we found attractive on paper turned out to be monotonous and chaotic in the digital edition.

What have we done? We changed our perspective once again. The goal is to get closer to the card prototype, and moving the camera along different axes was not good for the game. The current model will follow one curve. We try to get the right depth using, for example, predefined camera settings and frame composition. The trick is to keep the illusion of a living, three-dimensional world, without adding mechanics that make it difficult to get involved in the design we propose. The mechanics are relatively complex, we collect a lot of information and make hundreds of decisions based on numerous calculations. Full freedom in penetrating the world of Mercyful Flames knocked out of the game rhythm and unnecessarily prolonged the gameplay.

This change of work does not take much away effort from us, but we are making this game for you. Sorry it's taking so long, but we try as much as we can. Thanks for your patience.


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It must be confessed that although Mercyful's core looks trivial on paper, there is no tag in the Steam database that accurately expresses the essence of the gameplay... Then again, I can't seem to find one in my base either. The instruction manual is just a few pages that suggest the complexity of the game on the level of solitaire multiplied by "ludo". If I had to shrink the design down to just a few words, I would say that the goal of the game is to get a set of cards marked as evidence.

From a low-level perspective, Mercyful looks like a board game containing several stacks of cards. The player seeks to find evidence, while each interaction with a stack of cards requires sacrificing action points and/or increasing the level of plague.

Well, the idea is that we ransack lockers, snoop in the bushes, examine corpses, interrogate characters and look for clues that will lead us to more stacks of cards. The most intriguing element is by far the characters' interrogation, as they are the ones who usually directly lead us to the evidence. Characters can be interrogated in various ways, choosing from several interactions, and each of them is sensitive to a different type of interrogation. The reward for progress is to increase the probability of success when testing given interactions, ie. character development.

Now, let's imagine that each piece of evidence acts against the evil we seek to expose where each card that is not evidence contains a piece of one coherent story. Let's add panels with torture equipment to the mix. On top of that, we throw into the pot holy patrons, executioner's friend, inventory with items... Great Scott!

So what type of game is this? Who cares if I'll say it's a story-driven "Monopoly", it'll be called RPG anyway.

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