Kynseed News

Hello Seedlings!

Soon you will be Seedlings no more, but beautiful, growing trees.

Our street date for V1.0 is December 6th 2022!

That is the time we open the castle portcullis, after many years of crafting, scribbling and redecorating and send our creation out into the eager arms of our loving community.

Guided by your feedback we will be continuing to tweak, balance and polish V1.0 while mixing meaty new content for your gaming pie.

The tavern update will follow early in 2023 with beer crafting, entertainment hiring and mopping up the mess from happy gnomes and fairies. The months after will bring two large story updates with more characters, events and intrigue.

We also found a mysterious cloaked figure lost in our castle dungeon (it’s a deathtrap down there!).

When he revealed who he was, we discovered it was gaming legend, Sir Ian Livingstone!

Sir Ian is best known as one of the founders of Games Workshop (Warhammer), co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy series of adventure gamebooks, Eidos (Tomb Raider) and a General Partner at Hiro Capital. Sir Ian is an investor, advisor and business mentor at PixelCount, and has lent his decades of expertise in gameplay mechanics to the development of Kynseed.

Here is what he had to say…

“When I first discovered Kynseed, I immediately wanted to find out more about the team behind it,” said Sir Ian Livingstone. “I reached out to Neal and Charlie in 2020 and learned that they were former members of the Fable team at Lionhead. To my mind, Kynseed was a game with incredible potential, and I wanted to help them bring their vision to the world. There is so much to do when playing Kynseed, from exploring, questing, foraging, farming, and crafting to thrilling combat with strange creatures. The combat alone deserves to be a game in itself! I hope people will enjoy Neal and Charlie’s beautifully-crafted game because what they have developed is something rather special.”

Sir Ian now sits like a warlock in our highest tower as chairman of PixelCount. His invaluable experience, guidance and skills have proven to be a great boon for the game.



We want to take a moment to thank you all for your tremendous support over the years.

To quote our co-founder Neal…"Kynseed is the game we’ve always dreamed of making,"

This dream wouldn’t exist without our community and those who took a chance on our humble little (little?!) game, so for that, we are eternally grateful and hope you enjoy V1.0 and the start of a deeper story.

Love

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
That's right, you heard it here folks! Kynseed is finally reaching the end of it's Early Access path and we are happy to share that the release date will be December 6th 2022!

The team at PixelCount is ecstatic to finally be able to give you the news you've been waiting for and we hope you are looking as forward to the release as we are! Keep your eyes peeled on our socials over the next month for a variety of treats. Let us know what you think of the new look!

See you in the Vale soon,



~~~~~~

P.s. Don't forget you can join us on Discord to discuss the game and chat with the devs.

Hello Seedlings!

It’s been an incredibly busy time here at the Castle as we polish everything with our very finest cloths and the best ear wax we could find.

We don’t have much to show this week, except for this lovely little tease of artwork…



Just what is it? What could it possibly mean?

It’s all starting to get very exciting down here in the cellars, where we continue to craft our magic.
Bugs are being fixed, polish is being applied and the art of balancing is underway.

We even sneaked in a few extra Fairweather items which our Art Dept are busy creating the art for today.
Cutscenes are being tidied, sounds are being applied and lots of playtesting is going on.

So keep your eyes peeled for much more goodness coming in the very near future and we would love to hear your thoughts and comments below on the magnificent art above, as well as anything else.

Til next time, friends,

Love,

Hello Seedlings!

A bit of a late update this week as we awaited a slightly delayed dev build with all sorts of goodies held within. The blacksmith crafting is one feature that underwent a much-needed revamp (and our final bit of UI that needed updating to the new way).

The minigame stays much the same, with some behind-the-scenes tweaks, but the actual crafting part was visually upgraded and given an extra ‘feel’.

CRAFTING FOR APPRENTICES

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So, how does one go about forging their own masterpieces? Firstly select a mould from the range on offer. Moulds can be purchased from the various Smithy’s or given if you buy their shop. Then you can select an ore type and its Quality.

Fae ores have mystical properties and make the targets in the minigame move around and even phase in and out! All ores have a base Flexibility that affects the minigame. It also has Durability, and the aim is to make that as high as possible. A bar in the top left shows your Quality progress. Star rating also affects the minigame - the better the ore, the harder the crafting!

The first stage is simply to puff those bellows to heat the pure ore and melt it into the mould. You must then heat up the metal bar, stopping the gauge in the green zone if you can.

With the metal nice and pliable, we can now hammer it on the anvil. The aim is to try to cover the rings with the hammer.

Your Strength stat comes into play here. You get 1 hit per 1 point of stat. Each hit scores points (or loses them if you miss!). If you get three misses, you break it and lose the item. The indicators in the top left of the UI show your misses.

Then it is time to cool it, and this plays much the same as heating. Press a button to start the arrow and again to stop in the scoring zone. If you have made a sickle or sword, you get one extra stage - the grindstone! Here you must remove all the green areas. Miss them, and things start to turn red, losing you sharpening points. You are then scored, and the average of Ore Quality, Durability and Sharpness is totted up for your overall score.

You may then keep the item on you or send it to the Orders shelf or the Stock Cupboard.

We hope you enjoyed that glimpse. We have a few polishing bits to do, such as making the results screen pop animate and have nice sounds; the grindstone to have its arrows added and then we will balance it all.

Until next week, crafty friends.

Love