The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker News

Greetings medieval adventurers!



Thanks again for all the feedback from all of you who participated in the latest playtest, a good number of bugs were spotted and reported by all of you and the overall generic feedback about the game has also been very welcome. We closed this round of playtest sign ups by 21st November, so if you're looking to play now but missed this chance, we're afraid you'll have to wait for the next one.

Steam Next Fest and Early Access release plans:
Moving forward, we are set to appear with a demo in Steam Next Fest running next February between 6th - 13th. The demo will be a shorter showcase of the game, a lot restricted compared to the previous playtests. However, once we've gone over the feedback from Next Fest, we're aiming to release the game in Early Access as soon as possible afterwards in late February or early March. We'll announce the specific date probably around the time for Next Fest.



Why Early Access?

Cursebreaker is a large open world game that requires thorough testing, balancing and bugfixing.
As we're developing with a small indie team, early access allows us to better receive feedback on such issues from a variety of players with different perspectives. This will also help us in considering different playstyles as we balance the game, making necessary changes to turn the gaming experience as smooth as possible for the official release.

What we're aiming to offer players in the early access release is a full mainstory questline, the areas and character progression associated with it, with some additional sidequest stories.

Over the course of the Early Access we'll work to regularly update the game with new side content, fixing bugs and fleshing out features where need be, culminating in a final official release update, which will most likely be announced some time over the course of the next year.

We're obviously really excited to get our game out there, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us.
Huge thanks to all of you who've been sticking with us and following the game thus far! If you want to chat us up for any reason, feel free to do so on our discord server: link down below.

As usual, feel free to follow us on twitter, where we post progress updates and behind the scenes content regularly.

Stay tuned, happy gaming and happy new year!

Regards,
Pura

Greetings medieval adventurers and welcome to participate in our updated open playtest which is live now!

You can join in by clicking “Request Access” for the Cursebreaker playtest on our Steam Store page, you’ll be granted access automatically.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1189290/The_Black_Grimoire_Cursebreaker/

If you've tested our game before, the current playtest should feel very familiar. However, this version will include expanded story content and freedom to roam.

You can give us feedback both through the ingame menus and on our discord channel (link below), where we’re happy to answer your questions as soon as we’re able.

For now we're planning to keep the playtest open until Monday 21st November.

As usual, we recommend you follow us on twitter, where we post progress updates and behind the scenes content regularly.



Regards,
Pura

Greetings!

Starting next week we’re opening an updated playtest version, which includes a bit more freedom to roam and more of an emphasis on the questing experience / main quest pacing. We’re obviously excited to hear your thoughts on how we’re doing, but at the same time we’re happy to get to show you a (mostly) functioning part of our game, especially for those of you who didn’t get to play yet. The playtest will go live on Friday October 21st, we’ll announce it on steam as well as on our twitter (link) if you’re following us there.

In the meantime, we thought we'd show some of the explorable areas of the game and ramble a bit about their lore for immersion's sake.

The Aercrest Manor



As the player, you're placed in the shoes of Lord Rothar Aercrest - the feudal ruler to the remote woodlands of Imberthale. Your journey thus begins from the comfort of your family manor, where the Aercrests have ruled Imberthale for centuries.

Resting in northern Imberthale, the manor house overlooks the country's largest lake - Thalefresh - to one side, while being surrounded by Lordswood to the other. The area's aiming for a pleasant "noob aesthetic" with the intention of also accommodating a skippable tutorial further down development.

Haywind



In southern Imberthale, a grand city sprawls in the shelter of Mount Silderstone and the branches of River Aure. Haywind is a new city, having previously existed as small mining and farming communities, Imberthale's damp and cool environment only provided life with hardships. However, some decades back that all changed.

Fleeing the aftershock of a nasty war in distant lands, the Magi of Hydrobor resettled their academy west of Haywind. They brought with them the magical talents to manipulate the weather and soon Haywind's crops flourished. The land prospered and from amidst the farms, a city began to emerge.

But as Haywind’s fortunes have grown, it has attracted some unwanted attention. A seeming horde of marauding bandits have laid siege to its countryside, bent on extorting the city for all it's worth. Haywind struggles to defend itself - a problem further exasperated by the city mayor’s apparent incompetency.

Thornhill



While Haywind, despite its growth pains, is a city on the rise, Imberthale's oldest city - Thornhill - is in decline. It is poorly administered and its ruler, the Lord-Mayor Goldbridge, is only interested in lining his own pockets. Nepotism and corruption run rampant and taxation resembles more of a protection racket, where soldiers rough up whomever fail to make payments.

As if that alone wasn't enough, the city was recently beset upon by a deadly plague. As was befitting of his character, the Lord-Mayor locked himself in his keep while the people on the streets suffered. Some cry the plague must have been the result of witchcraft, of course.



But since the plague began to loosen its grip on the city, the majority has started looking on their "protector" the Lord-Mayor with increasing disgruntlement. Unfortunately their mood is also making the city's soldiers behave even more heavy-handed than usual.

Silvermirror Fen



A swamp with a tainted reputation lies east of Thornhill. Providing cover from the eyes of the civilization and being hard to casually traverse, it has always been attractive to members of the criminal underworld, but also to those wishing to practice dark magics. As far as people can remember, the swamp has always been home to the dreaded 'Witch of the Swamp', or the 'Silvermirror Witch'.

Perhaps in reality there have been many witches throughout the ages, at times even a coven. But where reality and peasants' imaginations meet is that the swamp is indeed a dangerous place. Over time its witches have often abducted unsuspecting travelers and through gruesome experiments, turned them into various monsters that now prowl the swamp.

Mistywood



These old woods are sacred to the druids of Imberthale, some of whom reside here. They look with disdain upon the emerging civilization in Haywind towards the west and especially the Magi of Hydrobor - their tampering with the weather risks defiling nature's sacred order. In their ignorance they may be inviting nature to one day lash back.



Mistywood also provides home to many different beasts, such as bears, snakes and spiders. But considered worst of all by the peasantry are the goblins, who have set up many small encampments throughout the forest. Logging efforts have without fault become ambushed by the little creatures and bounties on goblin heads are commonplace. The druids, however, appreciate the goblins as nature's way of protecting itself from the greed of humans.




If you got this far, thanks for reading! As usual, we recommend you follow us on twitter, where we post progress updates and behind the scenes content regularly. Also feel free to engage in conversation with us on our discord server at any time, don't be shy to ask us questions and maybe let us know which games you've been enjoying.

Regards,
Pura

Greetings all and welcome to a Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker devblog post about… houses! We’re implementing player housing into the game and wanted to share a bit about how they function.



You’ll be able to unlock several houses of varying types and sizes throughout your adventures in the game - some through questing - but for the most part you’re needed to pay hefty sums of gold. Early on during the main quest you may unlock your first player house simply by getting through the early quests. It might not look like much, but hey – it’s a free shelter!



There’s no limit to how many houses you can own – if it’s for sale, you can buy it. But you should be prepared to sink lots of the gold you hoarded from your adventures into the more luxurious estates. For now, interacting with the “for sale” sign in front of a house presents the option to purchase it.



After unlocking a new house, you obviously need to make it look and feel like your own. Furnishings can potentially be bought from merchants, or gained as quest rewards. Once acquired, you’ll be able to freely place them within any of your newly acquired homes.

Most furniture is cosmetic, however, some of it can be quite useful too. These can range from extra storage chests, to crafting workbenches, to altars that grant temporary buffs.



With some restrictions, you can also drop items on your house floors without fear that they'll eventually disappear, as they do elsewhere in the world. Player housing basically acts as your regional base(s), where you're able to return to from anywhere out in the world, (at any time, provided you have a return spell or house teleport scroll available), and resupply and recover from battles.

If you haven’t already, you may like to follow us on twitter, where we post progress updates and behind the scenes content regularly. Also feel free to engage in conversation with us on our discord server at any time don't be shy to ask us questions and maybe let us know which games you've been enjoying.

We'll bring you more updates of our development in the future, have a great week everyone!

Regards,
Pura

Greetings adventurers, champions and heroes, wizards, dungeon dwelling neckbeards and the like! I hope summer is going well for you. Thanks to all of you who participated in our recent playtest, we were happy to hear all your feedback and the bug reports were very helpful. If you didn’t yet get a chance to play and would still like to, give us a shout on discord and we’ll help you out.

However, we’re also planning on probably having one more fully open playtest event with improvements on gold/xp/stats balance and somewhat more questing content, as well as some tester QoL improvements (such as fast-forwarding cinematics). We’ll write more news on that at a later point.

We’re currently busy fleshing out the questing experience, adding depth to the skills and traits systems and balancing the sense of progression in every aspect, so our tiny dedicated team has its hands full. In addition we've updated our trailer showing some new environments, bosses etc. We're also aiming to include in-house music in the game as much as possible, you're able to hear a sample of that in the trailer as well. Check it out!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In upcoming dev posts we plan on covering some of our vision for how the skills and traits systems drive character progression in Cursebreaker, as well as about the lore and locations you’ll be able to explore in the game.



We're also looking to showcase our player housing system - after all, a weary traveler needs somewhere to rest their bones and store their loot - so stay tuned!



If you haven’t already, you may also like to follow us on twitter (link: https://twitter.com/OlipaGames), where we post progress updates and behind the scenes content regularly. Also feel free to engage in conversation with us on our discord channel at any time (link: https://discord.com/invite/gsBnQAbJ6t); you can let us know what games you enjoy playing and what you like about them, for example.

Regards,
Pura