Ylands News

Ahoy Ylanders!

We're now very close to releasing update 1.11 and are getting closer to 2023 with every passing day. And because of that, I would like to use the Dev Diary to tell you what some of our plans are for Adventure in the next year.

In 2023, if everything goes as planned, we would like to release three large updates - 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14.

We've been working on Dungeons for some time already and based on their current "fun factor" (or the lack thereof) decided not to release them with 1.11 but to keep working on them until we're happy with the result. They may be released in 1.12, but because there is another feature that we definitely want to release with that update, Dungeons may appear as late as 1.13.

That "must-have in 1.12 feature" I mentioned is something we've been thinking about for about two years (and even mentioned it once or twice during that time :) ) and now it finally feels like a good time to add it to the game. We'll provide you with more detailed information in one of the January Dev Diaries, but - in a nutshell - we want finally to give players a stronger incentive to explore both the game world and various features. Make every game you play a bit less generic and a bit more of a story. And, finally, give players more goals to achieve.

As much as it would be cool to start naming cool future features the very important thing to say is that we still feel the game is not in the state we want it to be. After roughly two years of making wrongs right and getting back to the roots we believe we are now back on the right track... but there are still far too many things that need to work better, and, more importantly, be more fun.

Sailing and ships are a major part of the game and yet there is still a ton of work before we utilize their full potential. With the Energy, we barely touched the surface. Crafting, even with the UI improvements coming in 1.11 is still something that needs a lot of love. And we could go on.

Long story short - even though the next year will see new features coming to Ylands, our priority will be to take the things that you already like and make them better. All this is based on your direct feedback, just like the last two years.

That's it for today, so stay classy, Ylanders!
Aleš

Ahoy Ylanders,

With the update release coming closer, our work is focusing on polishing all the details and quirks. This week we held an event called a focus test. What is a focus test you ask?


"Focus tests help us find out information about our game through the eyes of new players. While working long enough on one project your view of the game can become subjective (you know how everything works, where to find everything, and what to avoid doing). It essentially prevents you from seeing the game the way a first-time player does. We try to follow how people understand the main menu, and user interface, if the player knows where to find everything in the inventory and other screens and if tutorials and hints are helpful enough. We have had a great experience with focus tests in the past in our Ylands team and I find them an important part of game development."

- Michaela Bódi, QA Lead


We invited some of our friends to come to play the game in our office and give us honest feedback. They have never played the game before. This time we wanted to know what a new player thinks of the tutorial, progression, and overall feel of the game. We had designers and marketing there to collect all the information and after 2 hours of playing we sat down with our testers and they told us what they think of the game.

How did it go?

Everyone loved the day, our friends had fun exploring a new video game and we got pages and pages of valuable feedback. We already had a first meeting where we discussed our notes. You will see some changes regarding clarity and simplicity in the future, that came from our focused feedback. Huge thank you to everyone involved!

Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders!

Update 1.11 is just a few weeks away so it feels like a good time to remind you of some of the cool things you will get to experience in the Adventure mode when the update comes out.

Let's start with some good news and bad news. The dungeons we told you about some time ago look great, and we're very excited about them. Originally, we hoped we would be able to release the dungeons in the upcoming update, but we decided to delay those until 1.12. All the systems needed for it are ready and working. We are generating random dungeons filled with both easy and sophisticated random encounters. It is possible to enter those with your friends (similar to traveling somewhere with ships), fight enemies, and solve encounters leading to the final ones you might call "boss fights". A lot of pieces have already fallen into place with the exception of one - the gameplay is simply not as smooth and fun as we would like it to be. It simply needs more time to tweak. And after far too many hits and misses with other features in the past we rather delay a feature in progress (or even entirely scrap it, if need be) than release something that we are not happy with. So, no dungeons in 1.11. On the other hand, working on dungeons made us give more focus to fixing issues related to combat and pathfinding. The first minor fixes are already present in 1.11, with more coming in 1.12.

The rest of the planned features ( and a bit more :) ) is coming out with 1.11. You can expect a reworked crafting UI that lets you easily find what you're looking for and utilizes some principles and ideas you proposed. On top of that, we are discussing ways how we can open the recipes more gradually in the future and for this to feel more rewarding.

We have a brand new loot system in place so that things that mobs drop will be more varied in numbers and objects and specific monsters and hostile characters will drop rare things or parts of armor sets. There are a whole lot of things to look for and look forward to!

Many new players have told us that the initial yland wasn't enough to decide whether to buy the Exploration Pack or not, so newly for those without the Pack the whole tropical region is now open and we've also added options to unlock the regions one by one instead of opening them by only getting the Pack (which, however, remains the most efficient way to experience all of the Ylands content as intended).

As the night falls, cool ghosts (with some really, really cool stuff they can drop) may appear at various random encounters. Just beware - destroying those can be difficult without the right equipment ;)

Ghosts are, however, not the only new inhabitants of the world of Ylands. Scheming pangolins or colorful morays are nothing compared to the epic tamable creature, that can be acquired only by those who have tamed all the other mythical creatures.



As usual, you can expect more than just these bigger features plus a ton of fixes and smaller improvements. Hopefully, you'll like that!

Stay classy!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

Many of you have been spending countless hours not just fighting or exploring, but also building. You've built houses small and large, elaborate ships for your avatars to live in, and much more. And when the update 1.11 lands, in addition to capturing those you will be newly able to share them with others. That way, even if some may not have the skills or ideas, they may still be able to build such great creations as well (although they still need to get all the resources, obviously 😉).

Since you can now create in the Editor elaborate Blueprints that players can build in Adventure, we're adding something that will help to create even more spectacular content.

Something we call... Custom Toolbox.

If you build your houses, ships, cars, and everything else directly in the game, this probably won't interest you that much. But if you're one of those that are going to use the power of the Editor to, for example, build a Blueprint of a magnificent mansion to act as your base (or pretty much anything else, for that matter (smile) ), you should read on.


So, what is it?

The Custom Toolbox is a tool with which editor-side scripting should cover all those specific issues players can have like selecting objects based on their color, changing position and rotation for every stone axe in the game, and replacing all wooden beams with different wooden beams...you get the idea. But maybe you are a scripting guru and want to take a shot at a tool that generates pictures based on imported .xls data? Spheres, circles, and weirdly bent walls? Or dig tunnels under a path? We've got you covered! These tools, once scripted, can then be shared with other players, who can use them without any scripting knowledge - by simply selecting the parameters. Each tool comes with its own Custom UI editor, which can help with giving instructions to the user or may add a couple of handy buttons and inputs to use.

How do you like it? Will you give it a try?

Let us know and we'll talk to you again in a week. Until then... stay classy!

Hello, fellow Ylanders,

We have been conquering quite a few social media sites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitch... But one contender was missing. Well no more... We have launched our TikTok.

Our TikTok


You can find funny Ylands-style takes on vines and memes, ridiculous bugs, or different builds/trailer videos. TikTok allows us to show you a bit different and perhaps a sillier page of our game.
For example, you can find the "Hi, I'm Renata bliss your freestyle dance teacher" Ylands version there. We also prepared quick building videos for inspiration. Or just get immersed in a special version of our trailer from 2021. There's much more in store for our TikTok in the future. And I have to say that I'm having so much fun creating the videos. It is a space where you can let your imagination and humor go wild.

The short video format is easy to follow to see what's new and hilarious in our game. So don't forget to subscribe! And tell us what else would you like to see there?



Stay classy...

And see you on our TikTok!
Anna - Community Manager