Spirit of the North 2 Development Update.
Hello folks,
Spirit of the North 2 is mere days away and we’re beyond excited for you to immerse yourselves in this atmospheric adventure about Fox and their Raven companion. As we near ever closer to SOTN2’s release we wanted to address the experiences many of you had with the demo that was released last year.
First off, we want to say a genuine and heartfelt thank you to everyone who shared their feedback and critiques. Not only was the feedback valid and invaluable, the sheer volume of separate Discussion threads and associated comments reiterated to us how much love you all have for our game and your anticipation for the next instalment.
While we didn’t respond to you all directly, the Infuse team did write about the SOTN 2’s demo, optimization, origins, impacts of using UE5 during its Beta phase while simultaneously developing a new game and the goals for SOTN 2 as a whole. All of which you can read here.
To continue with our goal of transparent communication we want to give you more information and context about what the team at Infuse have been working on since the SOTN 2 demo originally launched and how this work will prevent many of the challenges you experienced in the demo happening in the full game.
[h2]Optimization[/h2]
The last months of 2024 were spent solely on optimisation. Everything from weather, the in-game day/night cycle to UI and menu performance, has all been looked at to try and squeeze every last frame out of the game to make it as smooth an experience as possible.
[h2]Onboarding[/h2]
There have been changes to the opening portions of the game when it comes to player onboarding. As a semi open world game with vast areas to explore, it was important to find the right balance between not showing players a dotted path in front to follow whilst also not making them feel lost with no sense of direction.
With the help of things like Red Smoke trails guiding players to all major dungeon locations (a feature call-back to the original Spirit of the North), you are able to explore the beauty and wonder of the world until your hearts content knowing that all you need to do is look for these Red Smoke Trails to instantly get back on track. This, along with other tweaks in the opening level have been designed specifically to show mini examples of SOTN 2’s gameplay loop players will experience once they are let loose into the world.
[h2]Story and Cutscenes[/h2]
It's important to make players care about the journey they are undertaking and to care about the relationship between the fox and the raven as you help each other navigate a vast world. By far the most important way is to finalise and add in fully rendered in-engine cutscenes as well as beautifully hand drawn ones that appear during each Guardian encounter.
[h2]More Optimisation![/h2]
More recently we have done extensive compatibility testing to try and make sure we can recommend the minimum and also best suited specs for the game. As an Unreal Engine 5 title, it will need a powerful rig to see it in all its beauty but we've tried to make it as accessible as possible to players that don't have super up to date machines. There are extensive settings to tweak to your liking and even on low settings, still is a sight to behold.
We understand that everyone may not have access to the hardware required to run this game. The minimum and recommended specifications are listed on SOTN 2’s store page and we’ve also included them below. We want to ensure as much as possible that everyone can make as much of an informed decision as possible when it comes to purchasing our game.
[h2]Minimum:[/h2]
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: 64 bit Windows 10/11
- Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700K or equivalent
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 / Radeon RX 6800
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 25 GB available space
[h2]Recommended:[/h2]
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: 64 bit Windows 10/11
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / Intel Core i7-12700K or equivalent
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 / Radeon RX 7800 XT
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 25 GB available space
We hope this information and context gives you some assurance to the quality of the game we’re making. Thank you so much to our community, old and new, for the level of support you’ve shown the developers, Infuse Studio and Spirit of the North 1 & 2. We’re humbled by your support.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778840/Spirit_of_the_North_2/
See you in the wilderness!
Silver Lining Int and Infuse Studio