The Hand of Merlin News

Hey folks!

After the success of the Steam Summer Games Festival, we wanted to join some other conventions to show the game. Helps with marketing and getting the game a bit more visibility.
We’ve applied to several conventions (all of which are digital due to the alien invasion), and so far we’ve gotten a confirmation of attendance from GamesCom, PAX Online, Digital Dragons, Tokyo Game Show and the Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition. They will all be linked to our upcoming demo on Steam which will feature the entire first zone of Albion playable. We’ve been running playtesting for the past week, and so far the internal feedback has been positive - which is a testament to the efforts made by Mia and Mat for the overworld gameplay and combat gameplay respectively. There are still bugs to fix, which MarkoZ and I are working on as fast as we can, and will most likely continue fixing as long as we get them reported.

The first of these conventions is GamesCom, which starts tomorrow (at least from what we’re told). The demo will be available normally through Steam, so should you play it, we’d appreciate any actionable feedback. Things that don’t work as expected, crashes, issues with UI, unexplained features, etc. I know Mat will be present in most of these discussions on our Discord server relating to gameplay, while I will be there for technical issues. We're still not 100% sure if the demo will be available between the conventions and festivals, so be sure to try it out just in case, and let us know what you think on the Discord!

I want to get back to fixing those pesky bugs we have on our issue tracking spreadsheet, so I’ll leave you with a few screenshots of the combat action. Join our Discord server if you wanna chat and report those bugs, and follow my Twitter so I can feel wanted.







MarkoP

Hey there!

As we’re working frantically on getting everything done for the impending demo, I wanted to show some of the maps you’ll be able to see in it.
Just a short preface: we’re making a demo of the game with the entire first zone playable. This includes enough encounters to have different experiences in consecutive runs, 3 heroes recruitable in case you lose some, all of the tier 1 Skills for all hero classes, the first 3 Spells for Merlin’s Guardian Core, about X Relics, etc. We’re hoping to get the demo into PAX and Gamescom for their digital shows, but even if we don’t get in, we’ll at least be able to give you the ability to play it and give feedback which we can use to improve the game for the final version. :)

So here are some screenshots. Join our Discord server if you wanna chat, and follow my Twitter for no reason.

















MarkoP

Hello, reader!

The most significant way to improve your units as you traverse the lands is gaining renown through your actions. Fighting bad guys (or things) and doing good social deeds will net you some renown. There are rare cases of small renown penalties - infamy if you will - that you’ll have to decide whether are worth taking for the potential rewards they grant.

Gaining enough renown will allow you to increase the rank of each hero in your party. Ranking up for the first two times grants every unit a new Skill slot, so units will have at most 4 Skills to use in combat (not counting movement). After that point, each rank allows units to upgrade their existing Skills. Every Skill can be upgraded two times, and each time there are 3 possible upgrades for you to choose from. The upgrades are exclusive per branch, so picking branch A will make branches B and C unavailable to that unit for the remainder of the run. Should you lose that unit to the ravages of war and find another of the same class with the same base Skill, it might be down a different upgrade path! We’ve decided that finding new heroes to replace lost ones would make them always be the same rank as your other units, but with randomly picked Skills and upgrades.



The upgrades to Skills vary from unique mechanical changes to changes in numbers. Number changes come down to changes in cooldown, charge count, action point cost, damage, stronger status effects, etc. Mechanical changes would be ones that grant additional effects, like added knockback, extra status effects, or changes in how the Skill functions. An example of the last one is a WIP Skill currently called Lunge, which moves the unit to the target tile and damages a unit adjacent to it. The upgrade for it (called Jump) makes the unit - wait for it - jump to the target tile and deal damage to an adjacent unit. The implication of moving versus jumping is that jumping doesn’t trigger any reaction Skills on the way to the target, which makes it fairly strong against some enemies that use Overwatch or similar Skills.

Of course, most of these are still being playtested and may not appear in the final game in the shape I describe them here, but hopefully gives you an idea of the things we’re playing with to make upgrading Skills meaningful and useful. Most of the Skills will surely get a numerical upgrade, but we’re looking to make as many mechanical changes to Skills as we can muster.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions about the game, the whole team is on this Discord server here, and I’m on Twitter.

MarkoP

Hi!

As you move along through the world and the game, new enemies will appear that are tougher than enemies found in previous zones. There are several ways to compensate for the increase in enemy power:

1. Acquiring new skills for your units
   
2. Upgrading your existing skills
   
3. Finding mana to cast spells
   
4. Finding and equipping relics with various bonuses
   
5. Purchasing blacksmith upgrades
   

The blacksmith upgrades are class-wide upgrades that apply to all units with a specific class. It’s split into two paths - weapon and armor upgrades. Weapon upgrades will boost attributes related to attacking enemies (like power, accuracy, or attack range), while armor upgrades boost attributes related to surviving attack from enemies (like armor, defense or move distance). Purchasing these costs gold, and the costs increase for higher tiers.
Note: armor is a layer of points above health, and defense is used to offset accuracy and calculate the chance to hit.



We’re balancing the upgrades such that reaching the end of the first zone will get you to about tier 2 of most upgrades, then tier 3 for the second zone, and slowly inching towards tier 4 and 5 for the rest of the game. We’re also considering how things will work out if you start the game with a party filled with a single class type since in that case, you’d only be buying upgrades for that class. We want to make it possible to play that way should you so desire, and it should be interesting to see if the game can be beaten with only fighters or mystics.
Besides the blacksmith upgrades, relics also play a role in becoming stronger, as mentioned in the previous blog post. Relics can also be purchased in a relic shop for gold, as well as sold. Just be careful not to sell the Grail :)



The blacksmith and relic shops are mainly found in cities, but you'll potentially find some of these in random encounters during your travels, depending on your actions. The blacksmith upgrades can also be gained directly without purchasing as a reward, similar to getting relics.
Thanks for reading. If you want to discuss this (or any) topic related to the game, join our Discord server, or send me a message on Twitter.

MarkoP

Heya folks!

Let me introduce you to the concept of Relics. The demo during the Steam Summer Festival featured a couple of these, the Grail being the first one you always get at the start, and several others obtainable during normal gameplay. Relics were created to fill gaps in character builds, and as a way to improve the characters attributes outside of the fixed upgrades per class. Originally they were just stat boosts, but after a while, we found we can make them also have abilities. The original roster featured 22 Relics, spread across granting a single attribute (like +1 Power or +2 Accuracy), granting multiple attributes, and granting abilities. An example of an ability Relic would be the old "Refilling Flask of Dragonfire", which created a fire ground effect that damaged all units caught in the blast.

As we moved to the Serious Engine, we had to reimplement most of the Relic functionality, and doing so didn’t focus on reimplementing all of the old relics. Recently we started looking more into them as we’re gearing up for the next demo which will feature the entirety of Albion. Their role had to be reevaluated so they're not doing the same thing as Spells and unit Skills. In the end, we decided to make Relics be a weaker version of both Spells and Skills. Since none of them are tied to a specific unit type and can be swapped between units at any point in time, they have to provide a more generic boost to any unit that has them equipped.



So our current direction is to create stat-boosting Relics that don’t overshadow the importance of gear upgrades (which are permanent for the duration of the run) and ability-granting Relics that don’t overshadow Skills nor Spells. Spells are designed to be strong abilities that are capable of winning you the combat or at least tipping the fight to your advantage. Skills are the baseline capabilities units have, and once chosen during the ranking process cannot be changed for that run. Relics provide the flexibility to fill any gaps your characters might have, by getting a healing effect that can be used once per combat, or creating area denial effects before you pick the Mystic Skill which grants it.
Some Relics might also have some unique abilities not seen elsewhere, and we hope that being able to get Relics often will provide the players with the interesting choices of which Relics to equip to the characters. Of course, as you progress through the game, you’ll encounter stronger Relics or Relics that provide more things at the same time, providing a sort of natural progression of power. Some Relics will also be consumable, meaning once used they are permanently gone, but will provide a stronger effect to compensate.



A special type of Relic will be the Grail, and we have only recently decided how it will work and how it's represented. At the start of the game, you’ll get a Grail Relic which you have to take all the way to the end of the game to save the world from the Cataclysm. The Grail has to reach the final zone and will be the focus of the travel. We decided to not treat the Grail as a special thing, and make it a loss condition: if you lose the Grail, you lose the game because it will then be impossible to save the world. Our intent is to make equipping the Grail a big choice: do you stash the Grail and not bring it with you into combat, or do you equip it on a hero to gain its bonuses and risk it being lost if that hero dies? I just hope nobody sells it to a vendor. :)

Thanks for reading. I’m interested in your thoughts on this decision we made for the Grail. Do you expect this to be a pain in the ass or provide an interesting choice as you play? Give us your thoughts on our Discord server, or send me a message on Twitter.

MarkoP