Bladesong News

It’s time, blacksmiths – the BLADESONG PLAYTEST is here! In this special edition of our “The Cutting Edge” DevLog, we are going to summarize all the goodness, big and small, that you’ll find in this playtest.

• Added: A first preview of Campaign Mode gameplay
  
• Added: A first narrative location, The Den
  
• Added: Playtest available in five languages (English, German, Japanese, Polish, Simplified Chinese)
  
• Swordmaking: Morphing of sword parts (stretching/bending)
  
• Swordmaking: Sinking of sword parts to close gaps
  
• New Parts: Hexagonal grip set (grips, risers, ferrules)
  
• New Parts: Various new pommels
  
• New Parts: Rectangular Pointed quillon
  
• New Parts: Two rain-guards (round and hexagon)
  
• Usability: Tweaked behaviour of blade editing gizmos and various abilities
  
• Fixed: Blade jitter when using high curvature values (this might change appearance of strongly curved swords from the previous playtest)
  
• Fixed: Crash bug when deleting ability while dragging gizmos
  
• Performance: Improved performance of blade editing
  
• Performance: Improved performance in scenes with 3D environment (floor, anvil etc.)
  

Let’s have a closer look at some of these.


We’ve been laying the swordmaking foundations with Bladesong’s Creative Mode for some time now, so let’s start showing Campaign Mode some love!

In Campaign Mode, you take the role of a blacksmith who arrived in Eren Keep, a last haven of a dying world, to forge swords for guards, mercenaries, common folk and others. Customers request certain physical properties, and it’s your job to make the right sword for them.



We’ve started building this gameplay mode quite some time ago to gather publisher interest (before signing with the fantastic Mythwright folks). Initially, the commissions were all manually set up, which proved to be both work-heavy and fairly rigid. Instead, commissions are now based on randomly generated swords that increase in complexity as you unlock more abilities, get access to more vendors and learn to craft new sword parts.



Once we have a sword, we analyze its physical properties and build a commission based on that. Keep in mind that this “origin sword” is one possible solution – but not the only one! You’re always able to solve commissions in multiple creative ways.

With enough solved commissions under your belt, you will level up and explore the skill tree to unlock various kinds of goodness:




The big new feature for Bladesong’s swordmaking core is Part Morphing. Remember when sword parts used to be static, lifeless pieces? Well, no more. From now on, they will bow to your will.



This also means that grip parts (that used to scale only in a single direction) now scale like everything else, and can be stretched with the new morphing feature. If you don’t want any bend, hold [Shift] to constrain.

With bent parts, you might run into situations where gaps occur that you’d like to close. Bladesong now allows you to sink parts into each other using the [ , ][ . ] keys.




In the last edition of The Cutting Edge, we’ve already shown you the Lionhead pommel we’ve been working on, which has become the base for a tech rework to be able to make parts with much higher fidelity (read: supporting baked normal maps and ambient occlusion maps). While we’ll never neglect our beloved historic sword parts, this now also allowed us to finally foray into fantasy territory with some new pommels. Here are some examples:




The plot of Bladesong thickens, and with this playtest, we wanted to give you a first idea of how we’re planning to integrate narrative into the swordmaking and shop management gameplay. Things got a bit bigger than planned, so enjoy around 10,000 words of written dialogue in The Den, Eren Keep’s tavern where everyone’s welcome.




The Playtest is live now until December 13. We are excited to see your creations and to hear your thoughts, so please join our Discord and say hello! We will be in touch soon regarding the popular Community Challenges.

Thank you all for joining in!
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

Video games in general have a surplus of weapons. It's gotten to the point that if I had any freelance budget, I'd commission somebody to count them up. Just give me an approximate running total for the industry at large, so that whenever next a shiny-eyed producer regales me with the prospect of enchanted lazurite rapiers at a preview event, I can quietly ask how many enchanted lazurite rapiers we're talking about, then open my laptop and generate a scrolling image akin to those comparison pages for stars and planets - a cosmic mountain of points and pommels, with the new game's armoury forming a pixel-wide foothill in the bottom left corner. "Are there not enough enchanted lazurite rapiers," I will kindly enquire, as the producer sobs brokenly into my shoulder.

Read more

We will show you an exclusive preview of Bladesong’s Campaign Mode, a first story location to visit, and an improved Creative Mode with new features and sword parts.

► Request Access on our Steam page today!
(if you have played previously, Bladesong Playtest is still in your library and will simply be unlocked again on December 4th.)

Thank you all for being part of this journey! Can’t wait for December 4th.
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

These past few months, we’ve been working hard on finding the right partner to help us make this game a reality. Today, we can finally share the exciting news:

[h3]SUN AND SERPENT, the development studio working on BLADESONG, has signed a publishing deal with UK-based publisher MYTHWRIGHT![/h3]

Mythwright has only recently been founded by a team of veterans with decades of combined industry experience, having worked with games such as Alan Wake II, PC Building Simulator, and Going Medieval. We are proud that Bladesong is one of the first few games to be signed under this new label.

What does all this mean for the game? First of all, it means that we are now able to build up the team a little more. Narrative designer Harry Tuffs is getting to work effective immediately, and my brother Jonas Kuri, who has been my trusted advisor from the day the idea first came up, will work on the game’s design full-time from September.

Christian, David and Harry inspecting a Petersen Type H replica.

Second, it means that Mythwright will take care of all the things that we don’t have time for or aren’t particularly good at. They will help us keep track of social media, support community events and spread the word about the game through their marketing sorcery. They will also make sure the game is properly localised and tested (though the fixes are still on us 🙃), and advise us in questions of the game’s creative development. But, and this is a very important point, both sides understand what Bladesong is all about and agree that SUN AND SERPENT are the creative owners of the game. Our vision for the game will not change, nor will the way that we interact with you, our community.

To kick off the collaboration, Mythwright came to visit us in our hometown Braunschweig last week. In addition to numerous discussions around the game and where we’d like to take it, we visited the Municipal Museum in the old town hall to find a huge Zweihänder, and inspected and held some modern-day swords so everyone could get a feel for them.

The massive Braunschweig state guard Zweihänder we found.

One of the reasons we spent several months talking to numerous publishers is that we wanted to find the right partner, not just the one that leaves us with the biggest piece of the cake, but the one where our guts say “Yep, these are the people we want to work with.” We have without a doubt found them in Mythwright and we’re proud to be partnering up with this fantastic team.

The gang united, Stuart of MYTHWRIGHT and David of SUN AND SERPENT crossing swords.

If you have questions, our Discord is the best place to ask. Ellie (@eball__) and Amy (@amy.mw) from Mythwright are around and together with us devs, will answer what they can!

Onwards!
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

David’s daily reminder to never swing decorative swords.

The Yogscast team will be streaming Bladesong during the Tiny Teams event on August 13th at 8PM BST / 9PM CEST you can check this out on Steam, Twitch or YouTube ⚔️

We look forward to seeing the team's creations and all of you in chat!

- David and the Bladesong team