Early Access Dev Log 07
Hello, lovely people of Steam! ːhypnoheartː
We hope that this update finds you well.
In just 3 weeks, this year will be over. If anyone knows where the difficulty settings are for this simulation, please change them to “Easy” – the world could use some breathing space to process all that happened and continues to happen.
In the world of Rund, everyone is also getting ready for the end of the year festivities, which this year falls on the season of the Phantom Moon.
The mages that cooperated well with the Inquisition will get extra food rations, and maybe a brief unsupervised walk outside of the walls of their Sanctuaries.
And the mages that did not cooperate would get a gift anyway: a few days without beatings and forced labor, while their guards eat and drink and stay mostly in their well-lit, warm barracks.
Let’s dive into what our team has done over the last week:
[h3]“STORY MODE”[/h3]
We’ve been fleshing out the 3 stories that will arrive to Chapter 1, iterating both the content and the interface. In the space of these days, we’ve gone through at least 3 concepts of how a story flow may happen better and settled on a version that combines the dialogues and the narrative text.
As always, the ultimate test for us is in whether a new feature or content feels as “extra” – or if we ask ourselves, how the heck we didn’t think of this before. All the best solutions always feel “obvious”, and it’s the same with the story mode.
Stories deliver the lore, stories deliver choices, stories make encounters meaningful. And we’re certain that the story mode is the most impactful change that you will experience in the December update (just God help us finish it on time, and without too many bugs).
The way it stands, we will now produce stories for every chapter, and in fact new chapters will be produced based on stories rather than based on biomes and creatures.
Which reminds us of the time in the production of Gremlins, Inc. when we launched a multiplayer-only game, got multiple requests to add the single-player mode, and only after releasing it discovered that over 30% of all game sessions do happen in this single-player mode – to which we were completely blind (same as with the stories) on our own.
[h3]MORE CLARITY IN THE ENCOUNTER USER INTERFACE[/h3]
A second thing that we prioritized (just because it can be done by a different part of the team, to be honest) are the improvements in UI during encounters.
You may think that we’re happy with what we have right now and expect you to just embrace it – but we’re not =). We fully realize how many things can get better, and when we look at the user interface, it’s like a writer who looks at another draft of a novel: never finished, always with space to get better.
Here are a few things that bothered us for a while:
On top of that, a few top players sent us the screenshots with 20 and even 30 tokens applied to opponents, and in the current “stacking” visualization that’s not pretty – for sure, it is a rare case, but it shows that the system does not scale well.
And here’s what we aim to deliver:
We’ve gone through more iterations than I dare to remember, but finally, we think that we found an option that works for every team member.
[h3]SPIRE OF SORCERY: PROLOGUE[/h3]
Aside from the development work, we’ve been looking at the stats of how the game sells, and we’re seeing good conversion between “tried the demo / visited the page / purchased”, but the game could use more visibility.
Since Steam limits visibility in Early Access (and rightfully so, one may say), nearly every developer is looking for the extra opportunities to show their game to more players.
One of the options that works is releasing a demo as a standalone “Prologue” app in the “play for free” section, which exposes the game to a whole new audience.
Next week, we’ll follow this route and launch Spire of Sorcery: Prologue. No changes, it will be the same demo as here, just more visibility for the project.
[h3]QUESTIONNAIRE IN THE DEMO[/h3]
Another thing we’ve done to get more player feedback is a questionnaire that we now show after someone played the demo. It asks about what you liked and what you didn’t like, and the first results are already helpful.
It’s one thing to ask people in general if they like the game. It’s another to ask specifically those who played the demo and have fresh impressions.
What we see so far is that the story and the user interface are the two things that beg improvement, and we’re relieved that we ourselves share the same opinion and work exactly on these things.
[h3]WHAT NEXT?[/h3]
We’re about a week away from the release candidate of December’s update, and just a few days away from the deadline when we can send the texts to our translators. These days will be spent writing all the missing texts to be on time. ːnotebookː
In the meantime, if you enjoyed the game but didn’t yet have the time to leave a review, please consider doing so as an early Christmas gift for our team. Every review helps other players to understand if this is the sort of game that they will enjoy.
If there is a particular thing that you like about the project, and a particular thing that you think is still raw, it would be helpful to let the others know what they might enjoy and what they should expect, so that whoever reads your review, can make a better decision of buying – or not buying.
On our side, we update the store page description from time to time for the same reason – to be clear. It’s a game with deck mechanics. It’s a game with tokens. It’s a game with hex-based map. The better we explain, the more accurate the decision. And then there’s the demo, of course.
Enjoy the first snow ːfrost_tokenː ːfrost_tokenː ːfrost_tokenː,
and see you next week!
/ Team CO /
We hope that this update finds you well.
In just 3 weeks, this year will be over. If anyone knows where the difficulty settings are for this simulation, please change them to “Easy” – the world could use some breathing space to process all that happened and continues to happen.
In the world of Rund, everyone is also getting ready for the end of the year festivities, which this year falls on the season of the Phantom Moon.
The mages that cooperated well with the Inquisition will get extra food rations, and maybe a brief unsupervised walk outside of the walls of their Sanctuaries.
And the mages that did not cooperate would get a gift anyway: a few days without beatings and forced labor, while their guards eat and drink and stay mostly in their well-lit, warm barracks.
Let’s dive into what our team has done over the last week:
[h3]“STORY MODE”[/h3]
We’ve been fleshing out the 3 stories that will arrive to Chapter 1, iterating both the content and the interface. In the space of these days, we’ve gone through at least 3 concepts of how a story flow may happen better and settled on a version that combines the dialogues and the narrative text.
As always, the ultimate test for us is in whether a new feature or content feels as “extra” – or if we ask ourselves, how the heck we didn’t think of this before. All the best solutions always feel “obvious”, and it’s the same with the story mode.
Stories deliver the lore, stories deliver choices, stories make encounters meaningful. And we’re certain that the story mode is the most impactful change that you will experience in the December update (just God help us finish it on time, and without too many bugs).
The way it stands, we will now produce stories for every chapter, and in fact new chapters will be produced based on stories rather than based on biomes and creatures.
Which reminds us of the time in the production of Gremlins, Inc. when we launched a multiplayer-only game, got multiple requests to add the single-player mode, and only after releasing it discovered that over 30% of all game sessions do happen in this single-player mode – to which we were completely blind (same as with the stories) on our own.
[h3]MORE CLARITY IN THE ENCOUNTER USER INTERFACE[/h3]
A second thing that we prioritized (just because it can be done by a different part of the team, to be honest) are the improvements in UI during encounters.
You may think that we’re happy with what we have right now and expect you to just embrace it – but we’re not =). We fully realize how many things can get better, and when we look at the user interface, it’s like a writer who looks at another draft of a novel: never finished, always with space to get better.
Here are a few things that bothered us for a while:
- Opening Spellbook obscures the whole screen.
- You need to hover over opponents to understand what you can do to them.
- Character stats are a bit overwhelming and are shown in a different way.
On top of that, a few top players sent us the screenshots with 20 and even 30 tokens applied to opponents, and in the current “stacking” visualization that’s not pretty – for sure, it is a rare case, but it shows that the system does not scale well.
And here’s what we aim to deliver:
- Token counters become circular. This scales well, and this takes much less screen space.
- Spellbook will no longer obscure the screen AND you will be able to see at the same all the actions that you can do to them, for better planning.
- Character stats become better structured:
- Progression (notches)
- Same color for each stat
- Consequence of exceeding the stat shown right next to stat
- Progression (notches)
We’ve gone through more iterations than I dare to remember, but finally, we think that we found an option that works for every team member.
[h3]SPIRE OF SORCERY: PROLOGUE[/h3]
Aside from the development work, we’ve been looking at the stats of how the game sells, and we’re seeing good conversion between “tried the demo / visited the page / purchased”, but the game could use more visibility.
Since Steam limits visibility in Early Access (and rightfully so, one may say), nearly every developer is looking for the extra opportunities to show their game to more players.
One of the options that works is releasing a demo as a standalone “Prologue” app in the “play for free” section, which exposes the game to a whole new audience.
Next week, we’ll follow this route and launch Spire of Sorcery: Prologue. No changes, it will be the same demo as here, just more visibility for the project.
[h3]QUESTIONNAIRE IN THE DEMO[/h3]
Another thing we’ve done to get more player feedback is a questionnaire that we now show after someone played the demo. It asks about what you liked and what you didn’t like, and the first results are already helpful.
It’s one thing to ask people in general if they like the game. It’s another to ask specifically those who played the demo and have fresh impressions.
What we see so far is that the story and the user interface are the two things that beg improvement, and we’re relieved that we ourselves share the same opinion and work exactly on these things.
[h3]WHAT NEXT?[/h3]
We’re about a week away from the release candidate of December’s update, and just a few days away from the deadline when we can send the texts to our translators. These days will be spent writing all the missing texts to be on time. ːnotebookː
In the meantime, if you enjoyed the game but didn’t yet have the time to leave a review, please consider doing so as an early Christmas gift for our team. Every review helps other players to understand if this is the sort of game that they will enjoy.
If there is a particular thing that you like about the project, and a particular thing that you think is still raw, it would be helpful to let the others know what they might enjoy and what they should expect, so that whoever reads your review, can make a better decision of buying – or not buying.
On our side, we update the store page description from time to time for the same reason – to be clear. It’s a game with deck mechanics. It’s a game with tokens. It’s a game with hex-based map. The better we explain, the more accurate the decision. And then there’s the demo, of course.
Enjoy the first snow ːfrost_tokenː ːfrost_tokenː ːfrost_tokenː,
and see you next week!
/ Team CO /