Preparing for Early Access
Good day Commanders, Ramiro here.
Before the release of the game in Early Access next week, Wednesday the 15th of January, we wanted to provide some information and set expectations, answer some questions, and give you mini-roadmap of things that are coming soonish.
How much of the game will be playable?
When the game releases on January 15th, Players will be able to play the prologue for free as in the demo that is available right now in the store with several updates and improvements, and the beginning of Act 1 out of 3 for our first Released Faction: Anchorage. Players will be able to recruit all 5 Champions from Anchorage, and proceed with the beginning of the story against their first enemy faction: Phobos.
This already provides a several hours of gameplay, fighting, exploring and unraveling the story of the Anchorage faction. There will be 6 recruitable champions, 4 from Anchorage (You start with the loyal Teles the Siren in your army already) and 2 Neutral ones as well as multiple main and side quests.
How often do you intend to update the game?
In the beginning, very often. We are a very small team and while we have been playtesting the game, we are absolutely certain that there will be a lot of problems that either we didn’t see, or we just didn’t have the time to address before the release. Our plan is to provide quick fixes to any major issues that pop up after release, while we work in the next major updates. In practice, this means that hotfixes may come even daily, while quality of life improvements and content additions less frequently.
Our plan is to release one major update every 2 months or so, but this will be heavily dependent on many variables. While that is our plan, we can’t promise that for certain, but we will definitely try.
When will the other factions arrive?
Phobos, the faction you fight against in the beginning of act 1 of Anchorage is almost done, so we would like to release it in a few months after the initial release. This will include roughly the same amount content you get for Anchorage, but for Phobos this time. Their own questlines, cards, Champions, town screen and so on.
For the other 2, Paradise and Forge, expect similar timings as well as a significant chunk of the Act I map becoming available whenever either of these 2 factions are added.
To emphasize again, this will be heavily dependent on a multitude of variables, so take these with a grain of salt, or two.
Is there any major feature missing from the game?
Sadly, yes. We are missing a progression system for both the Commanders and the Champions. We have already the skeleton for that system to exist, but we didn’t have the time yet to fully implement it. Both Commanders and Champions will be able to level up and become more powerful, but that will come in a future update.
Artifacts exist in the world and can be equipped already for some minor bonuses, and sometimes some game altering mechanics, but to be honest, they are not doing what we would like them to do. Sometime down the line we will be releasing an update that will be changing most artifacts with more game altering mechanics. We just simply didn’t have the time yet for the system to meet our desires.
Adventure Map exploration: While Players can explore, fight and gather resources, the Adventure Map exploration needs to have more weight into the Player experience and the way the Commanders and Champions develop. This is heavily tied to the progression system mentioned before, so when the progression system comes online, expect an overhaul of the exploration of the world map, with new buildings that support that system and that will help you sink those extra resources you have in improving your army.
Champion Upgrades: This is related to Champion Progression. We have designed Champion upgrades for all Champions, but due to time we couldn’t put them in yet. During a normal playthrough, Players will be able to upgrade their units visually and mechanically while completing their specific quests, changing the cards they have access to, as well as changing the stats. This will come later on when the progression is ready.
Voice Over: Due to lack of time, money, and the writing finishing later than we planned, we couldn’t schedule the actors for the full voice over yet. We have the casting done for most characters in the game and we will be bringing them in in a future content update.
AI: At the moment, our AI is functional. They move, they attack and some specific units can perform their special abilities. However, their targeting system is not fully developed yet and we need to add many more abilities (cards) for them to use. AI is something we will keep upgrading until the very last patch. This will result in higher challenge once they start performing more special abilities.
Because of these, it’s important to bring the following point.
Will my save game work with future updates?
In the long term? Probably not. While we are going to be careful not trying to break save games when we deploy patches, there will be moments where because of the addition of certain mechanics, or features, the save game will probably be affected, potentially rendering your save games obsolete.
However, the reason for it will be because we added significant changes to the game, so it’s an encouragement to play again with new content and features. Having said this, I will reiterate that our goal will be to try to make the savegames as backwards compatible as possible. But we want to be very clear about the expectations here already.
Will the game have multiplayer?
We have gotten that question a few times already so we want to be open and clear about it. The answer is no, but with a caveat. While it’s not planned to make the game work in multiplayer, we have thought of ways that maybe players could play battles against each other. This idea lives only in our minds for the moment but depending on how the game is received, we might consider it bringing it to life at some point after the 1.0 release. Our one and only focus right now is to provide a meaningful narrative and gameplay focused experience in singleplayer.
Does this game play similarly to Heroes of Might and Magic?
No.
While we are huge fans of the HoMM series and we even worked on the IP before, we didn’t want to make a copycat game, but just take the adventure-strategy or HoMM-like genre as inspiration. If we had to compare it to any game in how close it is to gameplay, it would be much closer to King’s Bounty and Disciples than it is to HoMM. However, we believe our game it’s its own thing and can exist together with all those classics, we simply want to elevate on what came before. Those games remain there are as the incredible jewels that they are and we just bring a twist to some of the ideas those games presented.
This covers all the points we could think about for the moment. There will be more information coming the day of release with more specifics and also some Known Issues.
We are looking forward to share the game we have been pouring our love and our hearts for the last few years with all of you and we hope you join us on January 15th when the game releases on Steam.
Have a nice day and see you in Eol!
Much love,
The Broken Alliance Team
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