Gods of Sand News

Greetings, gladiators!

By the end of September we arrived at the one year mark on the development of Gods of Sand, starting with a random concept art thrown into twitter and now working as a (almost) fully functional game!

This is the first concept art we had, destroyed by twitter's image compression algorithm:


Compared to where we are now:


Not that much of a difference, actually, as we were faithful to this concept from the beginning.

Now, about the state of development: In about two weeks we're starting intern testing to seek the perfect balance in the fighting (stats, skills) and also the game progression and "grinding", trying to make it hard enough to give the player a challenge, but fun enough to keep you playing.

If you've been keeping up with the our few updates, you know I'm terrible at predicting dates, so I'll just stop promising any release date: the early access will be released when our team feels that the game is fun, and that it has at least 2 to 4 hours of content so you have enough playing time to experience it properly.

Some of the things we've worked on, and are now already implemented are:
- Quests with meaningful dialogues and choices.
- Four bosses, each with unique abilities.
- Skills and usable items that change the way you fight.

Also, check out our steam page; we've uploaded a lot of new screenshots and gifs that show how our progress is goins, like these for example:



Since we're near to the release of the Alpha version, the next Devlog will probably be on it's annoucement, hopefully until the end of this year, but realistically on the beggining of the next.

Thank you for following us and wishlisting our game. We'll see you soon on the sands of the arena!

Greetings, gladiators!

It's been a while since our last diary entry, so today we bring you a lot of news. First of all, thank you for all the new wishlist additions we've been getting, you guys are awesome! This is helping the game to get even more visibility!

About a RELEASE DATE: We prefer not to set any expectations, as we learned that with our latest promises, although it will certainly be this year, maybe some months from now. After almost finishing the early access build, we felt the game was missing something, so we decided to put some work on more systems, like a skill tree and queslines. Also, a lot of the code is being refactored. We're aiming at a short (the early access will have about 4 hours of gameplay) but solid experience, making it easy for us to quickly build up new content over it.

The development keeps going on, but posting updates on twitter or even this page seems to communicate with only a really small part of the public. It feels really counterproductive, as we could be using this time to work even more on the game, so as you must have realised by now, we are not giving too much of an attention to the public relations. But be patient, soon you'll be able to get your hands in the game.

[h2]Here's what to expect for our first Early Access release:[/h2]

[h3]• 4 arenas with 4 bosses.[/h3]



The temple, the pits, the desert and the greek theater, each one with it's unique boss. The bosses are all ready to be implemented, but we'll leave them as a surprise for you.

[h3]• 5 tiers of armor[/h3]



All armor pieces are completely interchangeable, giving the characters this asymmetrical gladiatorial look.

[h3]• The market[/h3]



This is the place where you can buy/sell items and gladiators, or upgrade your ludus.

[h3]• Questlines[/h3]



Random events can appear to you at the beginning of each day. Depending on how you respond to these events, you can enter on long and rewarding questlines. Also, we hired a professional writer to create the quests, so expect captivating stories of all sorts.

[h3]• Skill System (still being implemented)[/h3]



This early version of the game has 16 skills which can be picked from a skill tree as your character win battles. The skill tree is not guided by skill lines, so you can "buy" skills from any line to any character.

About translations:

The early access will cover: English, Portuguese (our native language), Spanish and broken German. As soon as possible, we intend on fixing the German translation and adding Russian, French and Chinese (普通话). If you'd like to help us, and speak any language other than english and portuguese, we would be grateful if you could translate it to your language. We have an excel sheet with all the phrases in the game, and adding a language is just a matter of getting this sheet and adding the translation to the side of the english one. If you're interested, or has any doubts, you can contact us at: [email protected]

And that's it for this diary. So we'll see you guys in a few months when we launch the early access, then we'll really need your help on balancing the game. Thank you for everything until now!

Cheers!

Greetings gladiators!

This past couple weeks we've been finishing the whole management part of the game, testing new systems and concepts, and creating a playable experience for the soon-to-come "pre-alpha" build. One of the things we tackled was the world map. We're now implementing a system where you have to defeat an arena 2 times before you can face the boss. This will open the opportunity of grinding through a more fun method (by fighting), instead of just training in the ludus or sending your gladiators into quests.



We also added 2 new bosses to the game: An "odalisque" that wears a snake as a scarf, and a minotaur automaton/puppet which will fight you in a theater:



In the meanwhile our "art department" is working on new arenas. We expect releasing the game with 8 arenas, which the player will unlock as he/she progresses with the gladiators.



And that's it for this time. As soon as we release the pre-alpha version, we would be glad to hear your thoughts on the game, and how we can improve it. Stay tuned to our steam page for more news, and thank you guys for all the support! :)

Greetings, gladiators!

It's been a while since the last devlog. Since then we've been focused on getting the management part of the game working perfectly (all UI, menus, inventories, shops, etc...), so we're fixing bugs and making all systems interact between themselves.

A recently added feature is the gladiator market, where you can buy warriors for your ludus. Everyday the market will update with new gladiators, each with different levels of skills, items and different prices:



We also added the carpenter UI at the city, which will function as an upgrade system for the ludus. You can spend some coin to make your warriors train, heal or travel faster:



Back at the ludus, we've been working on a short tutorial (around 5 - 10 minutes), which will take the player through the basic functionalities of the game, like going to the city, buying gladiators, using the world map and fighting. Also, it will present a little bit of the world the game takes place at, and get you into the story, or the RPG parte of the game:



And that's it for this week (or month?). For the next update, we'll bring you some new arenas and bosses we've been working on.

Greetings, gladiators!

The last couple of weeks have been a little slow, but we have achieved some progress regarding the graphics and UI of the game. First, we now have icons for all weapons:



There are 7 weapon choices for each combat style (besides 1-handed and shield, which there are only 6). All these weapons have already been implemented in the game, having different stats, values and stories. If you have been following us on twitter (https://twitter.com/GodsSand) you've already seen this, but togheter with the weapon icons, we have some new armor icons:



To find balance in the game progression to this point, we are now creating 3 new armor sets, one based on antique chinese pieces, and the other two on roman/greek types of armor:



Regarding programming we've recently decided to get rid of our "skill creator", as it would make it too hard to implement more unique mechanics on each skill. We've been taking our time to figure out the best and cleanest way to make a system in which we can keep adding skills as we update the game.

And that's it for this week! Thank you for keeping up with us :)