The Necromancer's Tale News

We have added partial voice audio to the demo, covering the entire prologue and the early lines for the game's NPCs. The process of working with voice actors has been a lot of fun, and a lot of work too! We'd love to hear your thoughts on whether this is a good addition.

Other small changes include:

• footsteps audio
  
• functioning mirrors
  
• a "speed up" slider for combat
  
• a camera rotation speed option
  

As you might know, we ran a substantial testing campaign on our demo over the last several months. Nearly 1000 people have tried the demo now, and we have received a lot of really useful feedback. Not just bugs, but also strong evidence of what people like about the game and what they want to see more of.

One of the most requested features was wearable clothes - so, when you find a leather coat and wear it, it should appear on the in-game character. This makes sense as something players would want, when you consider that the depth of the game world is one of the main features they love. This is roleplaying, after all...

We have just updated the Demo to include a bunch of improvement on the main character art.
- Wearable clothes (with cloth physics)
- Improved animations, including procedural movement so everything feels more fluid
- Inverse kinematics on torches held in front of you.

Here's some quick footage showing this in-game. Naturally, there are wearable tricorn hats -- the 18th Century's most iconic fashion item. And yes, there is a royal ball in the game: it's at a major pivot point in the plot as the player's insanity is really starting to burn bright.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Analytics are something that's well worth putting the time into. We released a demo for The Necromancer's Tale a few weeks ago and here's a heatmap of around 500 play sessions. We can see where players went and where they spent most time. It turns out players went everywhere possible (and one place that should not have been possible!) and poked at everything.

We have also made quite a few bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements based on player feedback. So thank you all for that!

What I can't easily show as a visual, but which is probably more important than this location-based heatmap for game balancing, is a heatmap of the narrative/story data in the game. By recording the "critical path" through the story we can identify precisely where players tended to drop out.

A demo of The Necromancer's Tale is now available at last! This provides material from several places in the game:

• Chapter 1 (Prologue) - the interactive fiction that covers the period 1701-1733 including the player's early life; your choices here define your initial skills and career.
  
• Chapter 2 (Homecoming) - the start of the main game, where the player arrives home for their father's funeral and begins to meet old friends and explore the city of Marns.
  
• Chapter 6 (Dominion of Phobos) - the first half of chapter 6 sees the player confined to the city hospital, having fallen into a coma while attempting to re-animate a skeleton.
  
• Combat Demo - a demo of the turn-based combat system.
  

This is a demo so there may be bugs!
We value your opinions while improving and completing the game.

The demo has an inbuilt feedback form for small ideas and bug reports; it also links to a longer feedback form for gathering your opinions.

We will keep this Demo updated and available for an extended period while continuing to work on the game. Think of it like a free Early Access!

In The Necromancer’s Tale the player character has 9 skills, grouped into 3 groups: physical, mental, and social. This categorization is mirrored in other aspects of the game, including the career path of the player character.

Group 1: Physical Skills
The 3 physical skills are important in combat, as well as being used in skillchecks when attempting other physical tasks.

• Strength refers to physical power, and tasks such as arm wrestling or breaking things.
  
• Agility refers to speed, agility and dexterity, and affects how fast you move in combat as well as how well you can complete physically awkward tasks.
  
• Constitution refers to general health, stamina, and the ability to withstand poison or alcohol.
  

Group 2: Mental Skills
The 3 mental skills are used in skillchecks in order to provide clue-gathering or puzzle-solving options to the player.

• Acuity refers to logical thinking, and the ability to piece together clues to form a conclusion.
  
• Knowledge refers to knowing important information such as local history, military or medical facts.
  
• Investigate is the ability to notice important details or out-of-place elements.
  

Group 3: Social Skills
The 3 social skills are used in skillchecks related to understanding, convincing, coercing, blackmailing or seducing NPCs.

• Analyse is the ability to read other people's truthfulness and intentions.
  
• Impress refers to your charm: getting people to like and trust you.
  
• Convince is the ability to tell lies and talk people into doing your bidding.
  

Career Choice

The initial skills, portrait and backstory of the player character are defined through an interactive fiction which forms the game’s prologue. One of the key choices here is the PC’s career: Military, Academic, or Diplomat. As an 18th Century person of noble birth, the player is lucky enough to have these paths open to them.

Broadly speaking, the military career aligns with the physical skills; the academic career aligns with the mental skills; and the diplomat career aligns with the social skills.



Job Choice

The main game starts with the player arriving back to their home city and deciding that they need to stay for a while and take on a short-term job (their father having just died and left the family finances in turmoil). There are 3 jobs available:

• Dock-worker aligns broadly with the physical skills and will tend to give the player opportunities to mix with distasteful (but useful) people such as fences and smugglers.
  
• School teacher aligns broadly with the mental skills and gives the player access to a group of orphans who have their ear to the ground and are more than capable of spying or thieving on the player’s behalf.
  
• Tavernier aligns broadly with the social skills and gives opportunities to mix with and spy on a broad array of denizens who frequent the busiest tavern in the city.