Stoneshard News

Hello!

Initially we planned to tell you more about settlement generation, but this system requires some more time to polish, so today’s update will be dedicated to the art rework.

When we first started developing Stoneshard, we planned it to be a small-scale coffeebreak roguelike, taking place in a fairytale fantasy world, kind of similar to Fable and Torchlight ones. Back then our lore was very vague, as we planned to finish the game in a year and move on to more "serious" projects.

However, with a course of time this initial barebones concept was reinforced with many fresh ideas and new mechanics. Then we began to understand that Stoneshard is already becoming that serious project we planned to work on later. So, both our vision and game setting have significantly changed and eventually became something you currently know: gloomy and quite realistic medieval world, torn apart by wars, epidemics and disasters.

Many enemies, items and objects that you may have encountered while playing the Prologue were created at the very beginning of the Stoneshard development back in 2016, when we were making literally a different game. The need to rework some of the art became a necessity, so when we started to revamp many core game systems after Kickstarter’s end, we felt like there’s no better time than now.



Let’s start with skeletons, which became much more gloomy and grim-looking. Previously, they looked like they weren’t wasting their time while being dead: their bones were perfectly white and armor looked new and shiny. Now they seem more dangerous, soulless and believable: we also removed the glowing effect from their eyes to give them more sinister and less magical look. An animated pile of faded bones looks much more threatening than a whitey glowing skeleton in sparkling armor, isn’t it?



These changes also affected the vampires. Previously, they did not look really frightening, and rather produced the impression of transformed people who were not particularly happy with their new vampire lives. Now their bestial origin has become more accentuated, so it will help to perceive them as something they are – dangerous monsters.



In addition, some weapon and armor sprites were also reworked, as their design became more realistic and detailed. We also finished working on the entire line of one-handed swords and moved on to the other weapon types.

Soon we plan to release an update, including fan localizations and many of the changes described above, so stay tuned and have fun!

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Hello everyone!

In today's devlog we’ll continue to explain different changes we’re making to current game system. This time we will go through the health system (except for the system of injuries, as it will be described in a separate devlog).

The health system is one of the core features of our game, so we especially attentively analyzed players’ feedback regarding it. Most often people complained about unfair randomness and some other flaws (such as the interaction of injuries and pain system).

The chance-based system of health was introduced by us at a rather late stage of Prologue development. At that time it seemed like a good idea to us, since we thought it will make the health system a lot more understandable and accessible. However, playtesting showed it was a dubious change: on the one hand it indeed made the system easier to understand. On the other hand, it often worked not as it was intended to.

For example, similar circumstances could result into your character getting agony in 2 turns – or in 10, if you’re lucky enough. Such dispersion seems unacceptable to us, so we decided to return to a strictly deterministic system, where each health scale will depend on the actions of your character in linear fashion.

If earlier hunger and thirst worked randomly (although there was a mandatory interval between the ticks), now they will grow gradually. Skipping the turn will accumulate less hunger and thirst than moving, and moving – less than the attacking someone.

The same applies to pain with toxicity mechanics. Pain will also become a scale, the accumulation rate of which now will depend on how much damage (and which type of damage) your character receives. Fire damage, for example, will be more painful damage than frost damage, etc. By the way, you’ll aslo be able to check the exact values of your hunger, thirst, pain and toxicity levels on a separate Health tab, which we plan to add to the character's menu.

We’ve also slightly simplified the system of health conditions, so it may fit better with the new system of attributes. Now there’s only 3 stages of each health scale, instead of 4 – light, medium and severe.

That's it. Since this devlog didn’t really need any illustrations, have a look at a teaser of our next devlog, which we’ll publish next week.

Could you guess what will we discuss in a week? It's really obvious.

Have fun!

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Also you can follow us on:

• Discord
• Twitter
• Facebook

https://store.steampowered.com/app/625960/Stoneshard/