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Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon News

Announcing closed Alpha tests for Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon



Hello adventurers,

We have exciting news for you today. We decided to run an exclusive early access test and you may be one of the players who get the opportunity to check the game out before everyone else!

As Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon nears its early access launch, we’d love to show some of the players what the game offers. This is not only a chance for you to be the first to set foot on the island of Avalon, but also a prime chance for us to gather valuable feedback.
We would be really extremely grateful for your help!

Please note that this version, while offering a significant amount of content, will be far from its final polish. For example:

  • The voice-over will not be present for the majority of NPCs.
  • The balance will be inconsistent.
  • The visuals will lack some polish.
  • There will be bugs, some possibly game breaking, scattered throughout the game.
  • Some quests may be broken or missing.
  • Some systems may not function correctly, such as crafting.

Okay, now that all the negatives are out of the way, check out some of the exciting things we are preparing! Take a look at the world of Avalon!





100 players will be selected based on a simple survey (link provided below) and will be given access to the game. After experiencing Fall of Avalon, we will then ask you to fill out another survey to gather information on your enjoyment and technical aspects of the game. Using this feedback, we will strive to improve the game even further before its early access launch.

To apply for participation in the testing, please complete the questionnaire linked below. As this is an exclusive opportunity for pre-launch access, you must also agree to withhold any information about the game by signing a simple non-disclosure agreement. This is crucial to us, as we do not want any information about the game to be leaked prior to its launch. We want everyone to have an enjoyable journey without being spoiled beforehand.

[h3]Survery link: https://forms.gle/RLCgmBBaRPcmJyfF7[/h3]

Those of you who get selected will be contacted by email, so be sure to leave your actual address in the form (no other emails will be sent, marketing or otherwise).

Not to leave you empty-handed at the end, here’s a look at some of the views straight from the game:



















We CANNOT wait to invite you to discover the entirety of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon and hear your feedback!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1466060/Tainted_Grail_The_Fall_of_Avalon/

EA launch date change – March 2023!



Hello everyone!

Today we have some “bitter-sweet” news for you. On the one hand, we have decided to delay the launch of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon in Early Access. BUT! This means that our team will have much more time to put a lot of extra work into the game and it should result in a much better experience in almost every aspect.

So, the most important piece of news: Early Access will be published in March of 2023.

But today we will also talk about:
  • General vision for Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
  • What to expect from Early Access
  • Some very-Work-in-progress things ;)

But, before we will go into those points, we have a small trailer (cut from some pre-alpha gameplay footage) for you!

And even BEFORE THAT I have to say that I was just notified by a member of the development team that I will be in deep trouble if I don’t tell you that this footage is “old, already outdated, and the game is in much better state than it was when this footage was recorded”, so, yeah – that was the disclaimer.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
You can also watch said pre-alpha gameplay here (please note it is still very much work in progress)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]General vision for Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon[/h2]

First, let's talk a bit about what kind of game we want to create. For us, a great PRG is first and foremost about Adventure. The adventure we aim to create will rely heavily on discovering a grim world filled with fallen Arthurian legends, following on big secrets of this world and learning more about the Age of Conquest and untold tales of Arthur himself.

This means, we want to put emphasis on the following aspects of the game:
  • A compelling, complex, morally grey storyline with tough choices that will have consequences – from small personal effects, up to big changes for whole zones of the game.
  • NPCs full of life, stories, and character.
  • Huge sense of discovery in the open world
  • Rewarding progression system
  • Fluid combat / magic systems
  • Non-cliche quests

These are our focus points and while we are super proud of what our team has accomplished - remember, we’re NOT a huge studio and we don’t have AAA ambitions. We’re not competing with games that have daily marketing spend bigger than our entire development budget.

However, we want to create a game that will take you to a heart of re-imagined Avalon and offer you a journey full of memorable stories, adventures, and discoveries.

[h2]What to expect from Early Access [/h2]

Now that we got this out of the way – why, exactly, do we want to launch in Early Access and how will it look like (more or less)?

The reason is pretty simple – even though we are “pretty big” as a Board Game publisher, we are very, very much “Indie” when it comes to video games. Early Access is a great way to share our work faster with the community, gather some extra funds for development, but – most importantly – create this ambitious game together with you.

Working hand in hand with the community is at the heart of Awaken Realms, it’s one of the most important values we cherish as a company. We are doing it every time with our board games, but also followed this – for example – with our over 1 year long Early Access of Tainted Grail: Conquest.

We deeply believe that creating great board games requires input from gamers and we always treat their feedback very seriously.

[h3]What benefits can people taking part in Early Access expect?[/h3]
  • Much better price compared to full release
  • Well… Early Access to the game :D
  • Taking active part in the process of shaping up the game. It can be quite a fun journey!

[h3]For Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon’s Early Access we are aiming to create a following experience:[/h3]
  • Deliver the first full game zone, called The Horns of South
  • Around 15-20 hours of story-related content (split between the “main” storyline and sidequests but please remember that this is just a blind estimate for now, it’s absolutely impossible to count hours of gameplay in an open world RPG and we’ll be able to give better estimates early next year)
  • Full voice over (English only)
  • Most of major gameplay systems (there will be some we’d like to add later and some we’d like to work on together with you)
  • Good optimization
  • No serious bugs

…but here are other aspects of EA:

  • You can expect issues with your save games, mostly because of compatibility issues with story-related progression between various patches. We’ll do what we can to avoid forcing you to delete saves but we just can’t promise it will never happen (or we’ll heavily encourage you to start over once more content is added to the game)
  • There will be general lack of polish here and there
  • Balance might be off
  • (A lot of) small bugs (and probably some major, too)
  • Obviously: it’s nto a full game so your adventure will not be complete

[h2]Some very-Work-in-progress things ;) [/h2]

Now, with all that out of the way, let us share with you some things our team is working on right now!

One super important note here, though! Everything you see is heavily Work in Progress – so definitely don’t take it as a final quality, it's not even near!

Day and night cycle:

We will have quite a solid day and night cycle that will create a dark and gloomy atmosphere on Avalon, you can see our latest experiments below. Coming soon: weather. You can’t have dark fantasy without rain, right?



We have A LOT of work in front of us when it comes to our combat systems – but they’re getting better and better every single week.

One of the most important systems in the game is, obviously, combat and we will be putting A LOT of work into it, so that the general “feeling” of it will be great. We have a lot of extra things planned, such us:
  • Special perks and talent trees
  • Variety of weapons
  • More and better animations for the player (combos etc.) and enemies
  • Special effects on visual and audio side

Here are some general current tests, but again - you can expect much more!







[h2]First steps at UI and UX[/h2]

Managing your character will be crucial - we will have A LOT of different options when it comes to equipment, talents, skill combinations, and so on.

So, obviously, we need a great UI for all of that and we are making some first steps in that direction ;)



… and obviously we are creating TONS of assets that later will be fully featured inside the game. Here are just a few out of many, many examples!



















OK! This is it for today – we REALLY cannot wait to fully invite you to discover Tainted Grail and while it is a bit sad to move the Early Access premiere, we feel this is a very good decision that will result in a better game.

From now on, you can expect more frequent updates (about once a month) with deeper dives into different parts of the game.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1466060/Tainted_Grail_The_Fall_of_Avalon/

Cinematic trailer is up!

Hello everyone!

Just a super quick update for all of you who are following the game. For the past few months, we have been working super, super hard on The Fall of Avalon - so it is definitely NOT dead. If anything, it's just the opposite ;)

While we are not ready to show you more in-game footage yet (but this should happen soon-ish) - we premiered a short cinematic trailer with IGN today, just to get the setting in ;)

So, without further ado

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hope you will like it - if you do, please spread the word and share it with your friends! Cool things are coming ;)

Take care and hear you soon!

ANNOUNCING TAINTED GRAIL: THE FALL OF AVALON (AGAIN :D)

Hello everyone! You already know what's coming in today's update, right? ;)

Yes, we're finally ready to show you bits and pieces of what we've been working on since we've wrapped up most of the development related to Conquest!

But before we get to the main part of today's update, let us say this: thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your faith and support. It's absolutely mind-blowing that so many of you played and enjoyed Conquest! That our first game as a studio was able to grab your attention and that you've been so kind that we're staying between 90-92% positive reviews on Steam. And, let's be honest here, YOUR opinions are the only ones that matter.

That said, we're sorry to say that we won't be able to bring more content to Conquest this year — we're planning a patch for Q1 2022 (and at least one big surprise related to the game). Still, we hope that you'll understand why we couldn't work on more stuff related to Conquest when you check out the things we've prepared for you today...

And what we prepared is the very first look at Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.

Some of you were pretty impatient. Some even called it abandonware — but we'd like to tell you that... Well, certain things take time. If we were a "normal" game development studio, we wouldn't say a word about this game for at least another six months. We'd work on scheduling the announcement for some big event and whatnot.

But we just feel that we owe it to you, the players, to say what's happening — after all, it's your passion and support that makes it all possible. Here's our winter holiday gift for y'all :)

So, without further ado, we're really excited and terrified now... but here goes the teaser —

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So... Yes! Everything about the game's presentation has changed.

At the same time: no, we're not changing the game's core. Tainted Grail will be a dark fantasy epic full of meaningful choices. Only now we're able to make it even bigger and better than ever before.

Our goals for Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon were always pretty simple: we want to honor the choices of our players and give them as much freedom as we possibly can.



We want you to be able to customize your character, live with the consequences of your in-game choices, and let you play the game any way you want. We want this game to be a proper RPG — at least our first foray into this territory. We're pretty sure we're not going to succeed with everything we want to do! :D

This means that we're not following the storyline of the board game, and we're not making you play as characters from the board game. It's up to you who you want to be in the world of Tainted Grail and how you will decide to handle the problems you'll face.

And yes, what you see now is precisely the game we always dreamt about making but its scope… made us wonder whether we can make it.



But right now... we're really optimistic that we will. So what you see in this teaser — and we're going to show longer shots here and on our Discord — is just the start of our journey and we want to put so much more love into this game!

This means that we're currently in the really early stages of development: we have first versions of plenty of mechanics and systems, but not many of them "feel right" yet. That's going to take a while. But we just couldn't wait to show you bits and pieces of what we already have so that you know what's happening with the game!

And yes, even though the game's changed a lot and is a much bigger project than anybody anticipated, we're not changing the deal we've had with you. So all who bought Conquest before the cut-off date (27th of November 2020 on Steam and a bit later on GOG.com) are still getting The Fall of Avalon for free.



One last thing — every screenshot you see here was taken straight from the editor, we didn’t touch any single one with Photoshop. The only “lie” is that they were taken in 4K resolution (but if someone has a monstrous machine they’d be able to get this quality). Obviously, though, we’re still so early in development that things may change! We’re doing all we can in order not to downgrade the quality of the visuals :)

In the upcoming months, we will be talking more about the game, what will be unique about it, and we'll try to prepare you for (hopefully) an amazing, epic adventure in the dark world of Tainted Grail.

Our whole team is EXTREMELY hyped to create an unforgettable adventure and we hope you'd like to join us!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1466060/Tainted_Grail_The_Fall_of_Avalon