Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind News

Hey riders!

That's right, we've got big news for you today. Six Ages will officially release on Oct 17, 2019!

That's less than a month away! *Sweats nervously*

But finally, you can immerse yourself in a place of old gods and magic in this storybook strategy game. Make hundreds of decisions and watch it build into an epic, multi-generational tale of survival... or ruin.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Make sure you wishlist the game on Steam so the algorithm spirits are appeased! And if you want to chatter amongst other clans, feel free to hop onto our Discord or Twitter.

Cheers,
Victoria

We're in the last stages of development and ready for fresh eyes to find fresh bugs!

If you're interested, you can sign up now. Just join the Kitfox Discord and check the pinned note in the Six Ages channel to get started. We'll contact you in the coming days or weeks if you're selected (randomly).

With your help, we hope we can finally settle on a launch date.

Thanks in advance!

Hey chieftains!

Progress rides like the wind~

We’ve started beta-testing the game, and our players (picked from the Discord) have found some great bugs. With their help, things are starting to feel pretty solid in terms of being able to play the game. It’s still going to take more time to polish everything and try to optimize for low-end machines, but we’re getting there.


If you’d like to meet David, creator of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, *in real life*, you’ll be able to catch him at PAX West! On Sunday and Monday, he’ll be hanging around Booth 6120 (the Kitfox Booth) with… A PLAYABLE PC DEMO OF SIX AGES! For the first time ever! Yesss, you’ll be able to get your hands on it in real life, provided you’re at the con, of course.



You can also catch him and a bunch of other friendly designers (from Bay 12, Brace Yourself Games, Bungie, Subset Games) on a panel called “System Design, on Fire, All the Time: Controlling Chaos”. It’ll be happening on Monday, September 2nd, 11:30am.

Can’t catch it in person? You’ll be able to catch the livestream here: https://www.twitch.tv/pax2



That's it for now. Hope to see some of you around the show floor!

Cheers,
Victoria

Hi everyone,

Many games can be brought to new platforms with some careful attention to the user interface on the new device. You may need new art assets, and certainly a bit of new coding. But most of the game code is identical.

Back when I started working on Six Ages, this was my plan. Basic development was on iOS, in part because the tools were more reliable. I had experimented with two different solutions to bring that code to other platforms, and was optimistic that I’d be able to just rebuild the game. Then I’d be able to polish it, add support for platform-specific achievements, and start a new testing cycle.

Things didn’t work out as I’d planned. Both of the porting libraries I had expected to use were discontinued (one formally, one not formally abandoned but clearly not viable).

So instead of just recompiling, we were faced with rewriting. That’s a way bigger hurdle. And that’s why it’s taken longer than our original plan.



I’ll discuss this in more detail in the future, but we’re pretty much at the point of adding support for platform-specific achievements. QA has been testing the port, and we hope to bring in outside beta testers soon. Our publisher has suggested that people interested in testing the game join us on Discord. If you’d rather wait until the last bugs are out, wishlist the game.

- David Dunham, Six Ages Director and Designer

Today we hit an important milestone: “Ride Like the Wind” for macOS and Windows is far enough along to be declared “Alpha.” Different studios use that term differently, but for us it means it’s essentially feature complete. The various tutorial elements are not implemented yet, and there are a number of known bugs and things to polish. But the interface is all there, and the game is playable. Rusto Games has done a great job adapting to a very different game engine.

Our QA team has started taking a more thorough look at the port. Their available Windows machine had a smaller screen than I thought we could support, but it seemed to run well enough. That’s a good sign. It can also run on a 5120 x 2880 Retina display connected to a Mac.

Once it’s had more testing, and the Guide and Tutorial are in, we plan on doing some beta testing with a small number of players. We’re still planning the particulars with our publisher, Kitfox Games. (Kitfox mentions: If you're interested in maybe taking a stab at it, the best thing to do is drop by the Discord.)

Once we have beta feedback, we’ll be in a better position to know a release date. One reason this is hard to know in advance is that it can depend on other games. With a couple hundred games coming out each week, you obviously can’t avoid all conflicts, but there can be games you don’t want to release simultaneously with.

Meanwhile, we’ve been working on the next game in the saga, “Lights Going Out.” The art style is defined and a reasonable amount is complete. It’s hard to know how much writing we’ll need until you can play the game from start to finish, but I think we’re close to having half the necessary scenes written and coded.

“Lights Going Out” lets you continue a game of “Ride Like the Wind,” so you can determine the next chapter in your clan’s saga. As a practical matter, you might want to save any games you’ve completed.

- David Dunham, Six Ages Director and Designer