It’s been a while since we posted any news here on Steam, so I thought I’d share a status update on where we are with the development process at the end of July.
In a few words, we are on the last direct stretch of the road towards releasing the first 1,000 keys under the Limited Early Access program.
We’re currently busy with user interface and world events, as well as locking down the content and balancing a few dozens of game systems. Nothing among these tasks is crucial on its own. The game is turning out just as we imagined it more than two years ago. What’s important to us is not to rush at this last step, so that we can save some trouble by eliminating known issues before the game lands in the hands of our players.
Our test for progressing with the release: when we remove all the issues that we ourselves know about, and which we consider to be annoying enough – then we’re good to launch.
VISUALS
Of the 20 types of creatures and dwellers that will be in the game at its release in Early Access, 18 are done. It’s just Needlebacks (animals) and Oorls (sentient dwellers) that remain unfinished, and we look at this task with pleasure as creating new original species is one of the highlights of working on Spire of Sorcery.
As to the inventory items, we already have so many that I keep losing track of all the new stuff. Among the recent creations are extra equipment and crafting resources (torches, ropes, flax and wool, paint) as well as individual visuals for different potions, ointments and alcohol (we have beer, wine and strong liquor).
We also keep polishing the look of the world map, where a few biomes and objects could use an update. But nothing here would stop us from releasing the game as it is tomorrow, or on Monday, as even where we lack some assets, we already have enough extras to use as alternatives.
In other words, on the side of art assets we are totally ready for Early Access.
USER INTERFACE
A while ago, we gave up on trying to polish the look of the game’s user interface – because to us, it’s a waste of time that can at this stage be better spent elsewhere. We made the decision to focus on “functionality” (can you assign the research of a Special Knowledge to a specific person while she’s still out of Spire, completing her previous quest?) and for the moment, forego “beauty” (once a specific part of the interface will stop changing, we will, with pleasure, make it shine).
In this area, lots of changes happen daily. Including what we call a “reactions & warnings” approach: we try to warn players about possible risks before those risks become impossible to counter, thus saving them from disappointment when their campaign is unexpectedly lost. For example, yesterday I kept killing my mage by overspending his magic energy on the ritual “Call of the Spire” that attracts new disciples. The result? We decided to insert a warning for when players first try to overspend the energy, explaining that it will lead to irreversible harm to the mage.
Most of the work on user interface is rather painful: we play the game for hours, then analyze and discuss the points that felt the most frustrating, and then seek better solutions. Just this week, a few of us were stressed out because we occasionally had idle disciples in the Spire – those who finished their quests and tasks and were simply hanging around – without a good detection system of such characters. And so, we now highlight “idlers” in a separate list, so that when you’ll play, you won’t miss the chance to get absolutely everyone busy with something.
There is still some work left on this front.
If we release the game now, and ask you for your feedback, we’re certain that the first 20 issues with user interface will be already known to us – and so it’s still too early to launch yet.
GAME MECHANICS
There is a lot of pleasure in seeing different game systems work together, creating some very enjoyable moments. Yesterday I tasked a disciple who hated Domestic Magic to read a book on this subject. Within hours, his mood turned sour. In the same session, I really needed someone to study Healing, and so I asked my mage to read a book called “Horrible Diseases of Rund”, authored by one of the Inquisitors. The next morning, my mage was truly unhappy. Hovering over the mood icon, I read: “I’m reading an awful book”.
One of the two major efforts that we currently undertake with game mechanics is removing the features that are not a “must have” while adding the features that are essential to the core gameplay loop. Healing was first removed, then brought back – and thank gods of Rund for that, as otherwise campaigns would end in a matter of weeks, with everyone dead because of parasites, snake bites and food poisonings. Diplomacy, on contrast, was among the core features of the game, but now has been moved to after Early Access release.
The other major effort in this area is balancing – and re-balancing, and re-re-balancing. In the current build (version 116, as of this morning) I sent a party of three to hunt for meat in the habitat of a Forest Cat. The party returned without any incidents. We feel that the outcome should have been different, and so we’re tweaking a bunch of probability values between biomes, creatures and party events to arrive at the right mix. The same applies to how the resources are seeded throughout the world, to how many mushrooms can be collected per day by a person who is low-skilled in Herbology, and to pretty much every other action that you can carry in the world.
From the side of game mechanics, balancing is not a crucial concern: we believe that players who are willing to join the Limited Early Access period are experienced enough to understand the shortcomings and to actually help us with their feedback.
What is crucial, though, is the work on the things that we ourselves already know to need a change. If a daughter of a scholar and a teacher who spent years in the Guild of Magic escapes with a zero value in the skills of Social Magic and Alchemy, we know this is not how we see it, and we want to fix all such issues prior to releasing the game.
HOW TO FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS?
- Every Friday we run a development stream here on Steam. The recordings are available on the studio’s YouTube channel.
- Almost every day we share snippets of our work in progress on the game’s official Discord server.
- Every few days, we post more information about the game and the world of Rund on the game’s official forum (e.g. description of dwellers and biomes).
While we do not have a certain date locked yet as the date of the Limited Early Access release, we’re on the last stretch of the road that leads there. It may be a long road (months, not weeks – no promises in this regard!). But it’s a very straightforward path, and we’re absolutely confident that we will deliver a game that will be quite fun to play with.
Thanks for staying with us – and see you around!
PS
A few weeks after we posted the update above, we recorded a (relatively brief) video that introduces the basics of Spire of Sorcery – from the core mechanics of the game's role-playing system to the structure of its user interface. We hope that it proves helpful in getting a better idea about what the game is about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFTQizIDdiI
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Spire of Sorcery – Character Generator (Steam)
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