Bladesong News

Welcome, swordsmith, to our new official Bladesong developer log The Cutting Edge! With this format, we will give you all the red-hot details of what we're forging in the SUN AND SERPENT headquarters. Let's take a look!


If you took part in the the first Bladesong playtest, you will remember the bland list that was our sword part library. Well, no more! We recently revamped it to show nice thumbnail images instead:



The recently added engravings are now displayed with thumbnail images as well. We also took some time to refactor the underlying architecture of how our engravings are set up in engine. Adding new engravings is now a much quicker process for us devs, so we can add entire alphabets like the Elder Futhark:



In addition, this brings us one step closer to a feature we would like to implement at some point: assignable engraving materials. Instead of an engraving being inherently gold-plated, you would place a vanilla engraving first, and then assign a material in a second step – gold-plated, blood-of-my-enemies crimson, blue glow of magick, you name it. To be implemented at some point in the future.





[h2]Artwork[/h2]
To tell the story of Eren Keep, we are working with a host of fantastic artists – we will introduce them to you when the time comes. For now, this means that we need to work out the details of relevant locations, bring them to life in our heads and put it all into words, sketches or whatever shape helps communicate the ideas to the artists working out the visuals. Watch this space for more sneak peeks at illustrations, concept art and the occasional WIP sketch.

[h2]Steam Page Updates[/h2]
Our Steam page still looked pretty empty. Considering that it’s the landing page and first source of information on Bladesong for many, it was time to give it some polish! Have a look and if you haven't wishlisted Bladesong yet, make sure you do to fuel the team's motivation!


That's it for today. Stay sharp!
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

The first Bladesong playtest is concluded. In one week of playtesting, we had around 3000 people playing the tech demo for a combined 4800 hours (that's 28.5 weeks), making an estimated 12000 swords and other creations.

Going through all the survey responses will take a bit of time, but for us developers, this playtest was already eye-opening in many ways. We have read along every Discord conversation and understood better what's important for a creative swordmaking game. We have learned which missing features are the most wanted. We have noticed patterns where mechanics are confusing or concepts are not yet explained well enough. And we have seen you have fun with Bladesong even in this early stage, have seen your passion and your fantastic creations. This is encouraging beyond words for the dev team, so thank you sincerely.

There is still a lot of work to be done before Bladesong can be released, and we won't venture a guess yet as to a possible date – for sure it's not gonna be in 2023. Extending our swordmaking tech to cover more of the cases you have brought up will be ongoing. More immediately, we will be focusing on the main gameplay, on progression, on the story and the characters that will give life to Eren Keep under the rule of the Masked King. We will reveal fragments of that as time passes. More playtests will follow. Join our Discord community to be among the first to learn about them.

⚔️ David and the Bladesong team

How do I playtest?
Join our Discord server. On June 29, we will be posting instructions on how to claim a key in the #announcements channel. Don't worry, there will be enough keys for everyone on Discord!

What is the Tech Demo?
The Tech Demo is a playable showcase of the swordmaking technology we've been working on. It is what we affectionately call the game's Creative Mode, i.e. a freeform creative swordmaking experience. We will be setting up a feedback form and listen closely to what you have to say to make sure that we keep developing this core aspect of the game the right way.

What is the Tech Demo not?
The Tech Demo is not feature complete and we will keep working on the swordmaking for quite a while. The Tech Demo is not final quality, as we're still early in development and iterating on pretty much everything. The Tech Demo is also not showing any actual gameplay loop – if you have seen our Steam Page, you will know that we have a lot planned, and save for the core swordmaking, none of it is in there.

Can I stream/record the playtest and share my swords?
For sure, we very much encourage you to share your experience and the swords you create, with us and the rest of the world! We'll set up a dedicated Discord channel for this in time. If you're a streamer, content creator etc. and want to cover the Bladesong playtest, please get in touch so we can make sure you get all the info you need.

That's it. June 29. Swords shall be made.

⚔️ David and the Bladesong team