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ANNOUNCING TAINTED GRAIL: CONQUEST



Hey everyone! It’s Kamil again - game director/producer at Awaken Realms Digital. I have some really exciting things to show you today and we're SO DAMN HAPPY that we can finally talk about them out in the open! :D

Here’s... Tainted Grail: Conquest!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
TAINTED GRAIL: CONQUEST
Like I said in my last post, we are creating a whole additional mode for Tainted Grail and you'll be able to play it, well, endlessly. It’s an entirely new game experience which you’ll get in addition to the main game, not instead of it!

We’re kinda insane because making two games at the same time isn’t easy... But we’re extremely happy that we will be able to deliver this thing to you, folks!

[h3]The crucial point here is that Tainted Grail: Conquest will be the main focus of the period we’ll spend in Early Access! [/h3]
Why, though? Two main reasons

[h3]ONE: GAMEPLAY IS KING[/h3]


Awaken Realms, as many of you probably know, has A LOT of experience as a board game developer. This means that over the years we’ve learned that gameplay is king – and it’s really easy to forget about that when you’re making a video game (being constantly distracted by various systems and mechanics you’re adding to the experience while forgetting about the most important thing: FUN).

We’re confident that we’ll be able to deliver a proper RPG to you because RPGs stand on their storylines – and Tainted Grail is a really amazing, huge, and already developed world from which we're able to draw – but we are pretty sure that your journey through Avalon would feel lackluster if the gameplay wouldn’t be there. This is why we’ve been extremely focused on gameplay for the past months and we are really proud of the results we were able to achieve!

Actually, after a few tests and discussions, we realized that our combat system works really well on its own. After some further prototypes it turned out that this unique mix of an RPG and a roguelike is a really fun game out on its own. Full of neat combos, unexpected quests, and hard, satisfying exploration. This is how Conquest was born.

Sure, our new trailer shows a lot of shiny stuff, bits and pieces of combat, and some locations – it is much harder to see the actual gameplay and the flow of the game, though. We really put in the work so that the whole experience will feel really satisfying to you all – but there are still plenty of details to be taken care of and ironed out (hence - Early Access).

[h3]TWO: RPG experienced as a whole [/h3]


We believe that truly epic RPG adventure should be experienced as a whole, without any breaks or "episodes" and whatnot. This is why we feel like developing an RPG game in Early Access and giving out the storyline bit by bit misses the point. This is why in Early Access you will receive access to about 3-4 hours of the Campaign (just to give you a good intro and taste of things to come) and then you will get an update with the full campaign when it’s done! Meanwhile, you will be getting quite a lot of content for Conquest that will make getting the Early Access version worthwhile!

That’s why Conquest will be the main focus of our Early Access. If you want just the story campaign – we would recommend you to wait for the official release ;) (with one small caveat that the price might be a bit higher).

So, as you see, Tainted Grail: Conquest is our personal take on the roguelike genre – but holy damn, where do I even start telling you all about it?

There were a lot of things we wanted to do with the campaign but for various reasons we couldn’t. We had plenty of neat ideas that wouldn’t work in the context of a traditional RPG or there wasn’t any justification for actually making them happen. However, when we were thinking about Conquest, we realized that by working on two games at the same time we can make them both bigger and better.

What will be unique to Conquest?

[h2]MAP GENERATION[/h2]


We want the game to be playable “forever”. Every time you boot it up you’ll be presented with a different map layout but – at least at launch – with the same objective: kill the prince of the Fore-dwellers. Later on we’re planning to add ever-shifting, surprising objectives to every run.

However, all of the paths will contain interesting encounters, surprising locations, and various treasures – and we’re working HARD to make it really fun to explore this world.

At the same time we really do know that “procedural generation” tends to mean “boring shit” in the current video game dictionary. Because of that we’re trying to find ways of surprising you and making sure that even after hours and hours of playing you’re still going to find something new to experience.

(Something different then pure gameplay and various combinations of combat skills and encounters which in itself should make the game fun to play for gazillion hours – but if that was all we’d have to offer, then why bother with the map, right?).

We want you to be finding new stuff even after many hours of playing. There are various ways to achieve this but I’ll give you my personal favorite thing about Conquest (but I’m biased because I’ve been a quest designer for a few years).

What I personally always wanted to see in roguelikes is a storyline that… makes sense? It’s not easy to find one that has it – and for good reasons: why would you care when it’s all about quick arcade runs, right? However, in our case, since we already have the technology to handle a narrative-driven RPG campaign, it would be a shame not to use it. This means that we’re able to add plenty of interesting encounters, characters, and locations to the game, and make sure that once you interact with them, they can change, react, or surprise you over the course of your runs. Won’t spoil more – and I gotta tell you more about...

[h2]BASE BUILDING[/h2]


One of the things we really wanted to have in the game’s main campaign was base building. We made some prototypes of this feature last year but it just didn’t make sense – it’s a problem from the design standpoint because of the inherent conflict of “having a base” and “going on a journey”. Having a base means returning back home and we didn’t want to force players to get back to Cuanacht for resources, to buy stuff, or whatever else.

However, in a roguelike, you constantly die and start over. And you have to start somewhere. That’s where a base comes in really handy – because the village, in our game, will be a way to carry over your passive progress.

During your runs you’ll find people and resources that will allow you to create new buildings - and these buildings will stay with you over the course of all of your runs. They'll function as vendors or rest sites. Some NCPs will allow you to craft various weapons or change your abilities. Some will offer things that you wouldn't be able to access in any different way - while some options will be hidden unless you complete a certain questline... There's going to be a lot of things to discover with this feature and we hope you're going to have a lot of fun with various ways of personalizing your hometown AND discovering how to actually unlock certain buildings!

General Additions

[h2]Combat Revamp![/h2]


I already said that in our previous post, but it’s worth repeating. Along with the visual overhaul of our combat, we kept the core, but changed a lot of things about the system. So far it’s looking really good and some of our Kickstarter backers are already having a lot of fun with it.

You see, in early 80s, Sid Meier, a genius designer, said that a game is a series of interesting choices, and that’s our core motto when it comes to designing our combat system. On the most basic level we’re operating on five factors: items, attacks, passives skills, runes, and rune upgrades, all of which influence each other, so that you get a real chance at customizing your playstyle – it’s all about giving options to players and letting them create their own killer combos out of various building blocks that we’re offering.

We’re not designing a “cRPG” where your passive skills are like “+5% to fire resistance”. We’re doing our best to include as many game-changing options as possible. Every turn in combat should present you with a meaningful choice – through encounters with tough enemies with crazy attack patterns or through sheer joy of optimizing your possibilities so that you’re a walking killing machine.

But, believe me, the game will be hard. We’re already working closely with our community and every time they tell us that they’ve won a bossfight on their first try is the moment when we make the game 20% harder :D

[h2]Fashion Grail![/h2]
One of the things we really wanted to add to the game – but couldn’t justify that – was character customization and more options for character development. Since you were playing as Beor or Ailei, we kinda had to stick with their board game archetypes.

Now, by working on Conquest, we decided to add a thing that plenty of players were asking us for in the pre-alpha surveys: say hi to Fashion Grail!



And that’s not all when it comes to improvements and additions… but we need to leave some stuff for later, right? ;)

Expect some gameplays and more information soon!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST


We’re pretty confident that we’ll be able to deliver a proper early access build by this date and – to reiterate – it will contain two games!
  • One game will be the beginning of a single-player campaign which some of you already played in December, but refined, polished, and expanded – offering around 3 hours of gameplay.
  • The second one will be the main focus of the time we want to spend in Early Access – that’s Tainted Grail: Conquest. It will be a combination of a hardcore RPG with a roguelike experience.


We will be running various tests for our Kickstarter backers soon – join us on Discord to check the game out!

A gigantic update about cool stuff!

Siema! I’m Kamil, game director/producer at Awaken Realms Digital, and I’m really happy that I’m finally able to share this update with y’all!

Mostly because over the past few months we made a huge leap forward in every aspect of the game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
As you may know, we’ve run a closed pre-alpha test of Tainted Grail for Kickstarter backers of the board game in December – we really wanted to see how players will react to a very rough version of the game in order to get as much feedback as possible. We asked them to complete a “short” survey after they were done with the demo and well… we got swamped with responses. We got a tremendous amount of answers and they still keep on coming.

We are amazed by this reception. So first of all: thank you! Engaging with our community is one of our core values at Awaken Realms and we always take your feedback seriously.

We went through all the answers, we’ve read all you had to say on our Discord (and spoiled some stuff over there already), we’ve read our Steam forums (and responded to everything we could), and we’ve been keeping close watch on everything that had been published about Tainted Grail on the web.

We were looking for things that keep coming back in your feedback. And so, taking everything you said into consideration (after running it through our internal filters), we’ve decided to change and improve some things in the game.

Here’s some of the stuff that’s been happening with Tainted Grail since December 2019!

We’re going to talk about:
  • COMBAT
  • TURNS
  • THE MAP
  • WHEN IT WILL BE PLAYABLE
  • TRANSLATIONS




Oh, and one quick note before we get to the core: in our surveys we asked “what do you feel is the game’s most solid and enjoyable aspect?”, and we saw that most common answers – 75% – point to the following topics:
  • story (32%), lore (7%)
  • atmosphere (13%), visuals (11%)
  • combat (12%)


But, as you may know, we’re Polish, and so even though we could’ve said that it’s a job well done and call it a day, we – like our DNA dictates – decided to focus mostly on the negatives instead. That’s how we’ve been raised, that’s what our parents usually did! ;)

So. The interesting thing that came up when we asked “what one thing should be improved in the game” is that the most popular keyword was...

COMBAT
Here’s a funny thing. How is it possible that “combat” was both one of the best rated elements of the game and one that you felt should be improved the most?

I’d say that the answer seems pretty simple: our game was based on a very weird dissonance. It looked and played like an RPG while its combat felt like… well, another boring card game. We’ve seen this problem reflected in our surveys, on our Steam forums, and in plenty of other places.

There was an interesting paradox we faced, though. It seems that people are fed up with card-based games EVEN THOUGH when they did try out Tainted Grail they seemed to like the gameplay we’ve built around cards.

So, thanks to the amount of positive feedback we received and a lot of interest we’ve seen around the game we decided that we definitely need to find time and resources to do something about this.

Here’s one of the main things that we've been working on: we moved our combat to full 3D.

[h2]IT'S STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS![/h2]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
There's still a lot we have to polish in here and we're working on that - we could've waited to show you a better version... but we're so happy to be able to finally say that it WORKS that we just couldn't restist sharing even a work-in-progress video with you all!

Let us know what you think! For us - It already feels really good to play (that screenshake! :D). And we’re honestly not sure whether there’s another card-based game out there which does the same thing with combat visuals. We couldn’t find any.

Now we're finally sure that we are going to keep this feature and so we can finally share it with y'all - and we're really happy about that because going full 3D was the only logical step we could take if we wanted to keep the RPG feel in the game while also keeping the main building blocks of our combat’s systems intact.

So there are various reasons why we decided to do this – obviously, we wanted to make the experience more visually appealing and more immersive – but I won’t bullshit you with this kind of PR talk. One of the greatest things we achieved by going full 3D is that we can finally let you spend more time with your heroes and let you see them grow in power. We couldn’t do that with tiny low poly models moving around the game’s map that turned into static portraits on the combat screen. Now, when you build an awesome combo, you can actually witness and feel its real power! :D

“BUT… IS IT STILL A CARD GAME? :(“
Well. You see, the design problem we’re facing here is that unless they’re based on your physical dexterity (like Skyrim or The Witcher 3) most turn-based video games offer skills and abilities that deep down are just like cards – they only have different ways of visualizing them.

What we are looking for while designing Tainted Grail, and what’s best achieved in our case by cards and turn-based combat, is
  • letting players try out various playstyles,
  • giving them lots of interesting gameplay choices,
  • turning every combat encounter into an exciting puzzle to solve,
  • laying out a rich collection of systems that affect one another,
  • chosing new skills, managing them, and creating awesome combos.


Using turns and cards also allows us to have some fun with the game’s pacing: Tainted Grail currently feels like a fast-paced puzzle game (for “arcade” gamers like myself) WHILE also having plenty of opportunities for min-maxing and optimizing the game’s systems (for hardcore deck builders – like our designers).

But enough about that – it’s not the only change I have to tell you about!

TURNS
This will be quick. At some point in the game you were able to recruit a second character. When you did that, the game shifted to turn-based movement – and plenty of players hated that part because we didn’t implement it properly. It was confusing and tiresome to move characters separately (while we couldn’t just add a “party” because it would’ve been totally weird (as in “why is only one of my characters fighting or participating in that story encounter?” weird)) and/or game-breaking in certain points.

What we did is this: we got rid of turns as a limitation (“you can’t go there this turn, you need to wait until the next one”) and kept them only as a way to measure time. So now you can move freely on the map – it’s just that the time will pass and it will be measured in arbitrarily set turns. Why? One of the reasons is that some things in our storyline demand it! Also, there are some items and statuses that last for limited amount of time - and turns are pretty clean and easy when it comes to representing the flow time.

THE MAP
What players really loved about Tainted Grail’s demo was its atmosphere and visuals. Our artists did a great job at translating the world of the board game into its digital version in December BUT we knew we could do better.

Or rather they’ve known that they want to do better because… well, the only explanation I have is that they are insane. Like, seriously, I haven’t met a group of people who are that crazy about polishing every single thing (that nobody’s going to notice, like, ever). But, as always, they did an amazing job with the graphical overhaul of the entire game.

But first – let me explain why we felt that Tainted Grail needs a visual makeover.

When we started the project, it was based around certain assumptions – that the terrain will be of fixed size and height, and that the placement of locations should be more or less similar to the board game. This means that, for example, Grubwood – a haunted forest in which the Fore-dwellers were slain in huge numbers – would’ve had to be a location designed as a single “node” that could be placed on the map so that you could interact with it. Pretty much like a single card in the board game.

This meant that Grubwood would’ve had one entrance, and upon interacting with it you’d see a pop up with its storyline.

We didn’t want that to happen:



However, we didn’t have time to tackle this problem properly in December so our Grubwood looked like any other forest in the game:



We couldn’t do much about it back then. In order to fix that we’d have to start over – rebuild the entire map from scratch.

So what did we decide to do when we saw you all really excited about the game’s visuals after our pre-alpha demo? Well. Obviously we decided to start over and rebuild the entire map from scratch in order to make it even prettier! :D

But what does it mean for gameplay?

Skipping all technical stuff, it’s enough to say that now the map can be as big or as small as we want. And this, obviously, means that the game got… bigger. And more diverse in terms of landscapes you’ll be able to visit and experience.

This, in turn, means that we can add more quests, more events, more STUFF.

(And that I – being in charge of quest design, too – won’t sleep for a couple of months BUT OH WELL #INDIEGAMEDEV)



Second great thing we have now – various tools which help us out in differentiation of textures and vegetation in order to create plenty of different biomes. Cities should feel like cities and forests should feel like forests now. Do you remember the Witch’s cottage near Cuanacht?

In December:



Today:



Also, remember our old Grubwood – that blue forest? Here’s our new Grubwood:



Third thing: that damned scale.

I have nightmares about this topic, seriously. It kept coming back in our discussions for the past year or so, and we’ve been running in circles trying to fix this problem. It’s all because we just couldn’t stand this:



The fact that our heroes are the size of houses was a total immersion breaker for most of the people on the development team. Any solution would’ve required a redesign of the entire game map. Would’ve required a redo of plenty of our already existing models (like houses), plenty of entirely new ones, entirely new terrain. It would’ve required a lot of time and effort…

And, as you already know, that’s precisely what we did.

And it was soooo worth it.









Now let’s get to the best part.

WHEN CAN I PLAY THIS?

Soon™.

After some thoughts and consultations, we decided that we will launch this game in Early Access (this upgrade will come for free to all Kickstarter backers, your version of the game will just upgrade). You may think that story focused RPGs are not the best material for Early Access for various reasons and well… You are quite right.

BUT there are a lot of people who asked us whether it's possible to play the game somehow (THANK YOU, the fact that you wanted to play our pre-alpha feels so amazing!), even if it was just a tiny fragment of the full experience. So, even though we will have only 3-4 hours of main campaign's gameplay ready for our Early Access launch, we will make sure it will be an enhanced and improved version of what some of you have already seen. For example, we're going to implement/ehnance/fix:
  1. Better quests, more sidequests
  2. More choices and branching with more consequences
  3. More voiceovers!
  4. WAY better visuals (as you've seen in this update), sound, and overall UI improvements
  5. ...less bugs & better optimization

But, to be honest, we would feel bad if this was be the ONLY thing we would offer to all the people who will help us in creating Tainted Grail by participating in our Early Access.

This is why we are creating A WHOLE, ADDITIONAL MODE for the game.
And you'll be able to enjoy it... endlessly.

An entirely new game experience. For free.
In addition to the RPG, not instead.

It started as, well, just a crazy idea, but after a while... it turned out into something really amazing! I can’t tell you more right now and this update is REALLY LONG already… But stay tuned: we’re going to have more details soon and we are really excited to share it with you all!

Oh, I almost forgot. One last thing you’ve been asking about...

TRANSLATIONS

This will be quick. We spent a lot of time creating a backend and tools which will eventually allow us to translate the game to various languages but – to be completely honest – we won’t be able to support other languages than English for the Early Access launch. The game’s text and storyline is going to be changing during this phase and we just can’t afford to spend our resources on this particular feature because translations and voice acting… well, they are really expensive.

However – you can help us out.

Steam allows us to see precisely how many players downloaded or wishlisted the game in a certain region/country. This means that we can clearly see both the existing player base AND the possible demand – and right now all our player numbers come from the Kickstarter backers.

We will be looking at all those numbers closely (like “f5” every single minute closely) before, during, and after the Early Access launch – so we just want to ask you for a click. If you’re interested in the game’s translation to the language you speak or you know someone who will only play the game if it’s translated: tell them to let us know by adding Tainted Grail to their wishlist. We can’t (it’s physically impossible) count how many of you will ask us about this on Discord or email – we can see the numbers in our control panel, though.

So: make yourself visible by wishlisting and playing the game – this lets us know not only how many of you are there, but also WHERE you are!