We are planning the next sprint with December approaching and we thought it was a good moment to talk a bit about what's going on with localization and language-related stuff, let's say. We are receiving hundreds of messages from players all over the world asking for Alaloth in their native language and we would like to clarify that, as developers, our will has always been to release the game providing the highest number of languages in. This has been one of the main reasons that brought us to sign with our former publisher back in 2020. The original plan from us was set to deliver a D1 release with at least 7 languages in and English dubbing for narration, companions and main quest as starting point. As you know, taking the game back has been a very long process and the plan changed. Localization is a really important part of game discovery, since it opens up so many new potential markets for us. For example, the Chinese market, is massive on Steam. If the game isn't translated into Chinese, most of the millions of Steam players in China won't even see it as a default game in their Steam store. That's how localization and discovery interact. This is just a sample to say that we do know how it works but once again, it's about budget and available resources. Just to give you an idea: Alaloth is around 300.000 words now and the original content we thought to be considered for dubbing was nearly 75.000 words. To give you a bit of context: The Lord of The Rings trilogy [books] is 455.000 words circa. Neverwinter Nights is 200.000. Baldur's Gate II is 188.000. 300.000 words means roughly 60.000€ per language [translation, implementation and testing], which is a huge amount of money, considering that we decided to go with a very user friendly price point in many different countries. Despite the great sales we had, these countries should sell x10.000 to make the investment reasonable. We are trying our best to build-up a plan to go through this, but it will take some time [and some tech work too]. We've met new potential publishing partners willing to help with this and we confirm our will to slowly include new languages on the way [one by one in case, if still self publishing] but of course it will take some time. We have to say that many indie groups offered their services for free but we didn't like the idea of taking something without giving back anything so, at least for now, this is not an option. If you want to help us, just point your friends here, use your social networks and bring people on our Discord server if they have questions. You know we are always on! It was a due update, thank you for the support as usual!
Time for a new development update and celebrations!
Hello Champions!
As we already said in our Discord server, we are finally back in action after a crazy October! Last month has been full of meetings and we have been busy with a relocation in the UK [not moving the studio, just opening a new office here!]. The team in Italy worked hard during this week and we've just released a new patch, so check the latest changelog and download the latest version of the game which is full of quality of life fixes and some new cool stuff to check. We have to say that we are a bit late with the plan. It's not about contents, everything is almost ready, but we've realized on the way that splitting updates on the way is not the most convenient thing to do at the moment, considering what's happening around us. Time ago, we sat down and decided to go on with small updates adding locations, quests, chars almost on weekly bases. We tried to work like this but we decided to revert and go big with a massive patch expanding the world map and including all the changes announced a few weeks ago. Again, nothing to be worried because nothing changes for the long term, but we really understimate what was happening around us and we already knew that development is not about coding stuff only and communicate things properly is pivotal. Even if we are looking for new people to join us, our team stays super small and business related stuff took 100% of the time of the people usually taking care of this [Alberto. Me]. We apologize for this but it is how it works. We literally didn't have time to sit and write down stuff: flights, trains and meetings in four different countries drained our energy. Not whining, all has been great but still a lot of work to do! At some point we've announced that we were running for the Indie Development Awards at Game Connection and we are proud to announce that we've won Best Hardcore Game! Game Connection is one of the most important business event in the world and we love celebrating such an important achievement.
Game Connection has been a RL event of course but it was not the only one we were attending last week. Just a day before the kick-off in Paris, we've received other amazing news from the US, with five awards won at Nyx Game Awards, PC Game category. Alaloth has been awarded as:
Best Indie Game
Best Gameplay
Best Visual Art
Best Role Playing Game
Best Game Direction [lovely personal achievement]
Past editions celebrated games like Dying Light 2 Stay Human, The Last of Us, It Takes Two and many others, no need to say how much we are happy of this. All of this is a breath of fresh air for us, after the storm we've gone through before the release. We are still giving 110% to improve the game, with new features, balancing and all the adds we've promised.
Right now, we're putting together the new locations and yes, we are a bit late as already explained, but of course what will be delivered will be way bigger than expected and way bigger than what we've announced, with way more contents available than originally scheduled. So, yes, Rockstarn, Arrowtooth, Mountain's Hands and Fal-Thalas but even Windscar [a new city in Edherest] and Na'Sharak [an orcish port close to Vokhen-Mahl]. And a few secondary locations filled with quests and new NPC. We've finally defined the new FA as well, with new bosses from The Spectral Circle and other vicious creatures from the abyss. And much more, details to follow! Can't wait to see you playing and get new feed on the balancing.
Time-sensitive quests are now better communicated via ad-hoc UI elements.
Banner notifications will state if a quest is time-sensitive on pick-up and/or progress.
Where the context allows an hourglass icon will be appended to the quest name if time-sensitive (i.e. Quest Log, InfoLocationBox, Zone Overlay).
A summary of all the stats of the character can now be accessed in the Character Tab.
When blocking using mouse and keyboard the character will now face the pointer as long as the blocking button is held.
Changed
The headgear toggle has been moved in the General options menu and its effect will now be global.
Fixed
Input will now be properly stalled after opening a Booty Chest.
Quick shortcuts when navigating lists could end up out of bounds.
Bogromon's boss introduction was leaving the player unarmed: weapons will now be correctly re-equipped.
Alaloth's boss introduction could make the camera unresponsive to player movement when attempting to pause near the end.
Fixed a bug that made some hardware configurations unable to provide at least one valid FPS cap: a FPS cap equal to the monitor’s refresh rate will now always be available.
Disallow Character UI to open itself if already engaged in a wandering fight when in World Map.
Counterattacking could make the game misbehave if triggered on the same frame of the counterattacker's death.
Transitioning from World Map to Main Menu wasn't properly stalling AI behaviors for the entirety of the transition.
Fixed a bug that caused enemies behind walls to be able to be locked when switching to next/previous target with mouse and keyboard (default E/Q).
Fixed a bug causing loading screens to occasionally get stuck.
Fixed icons inside texts overlapping surrounding characters with wide resolutions.
Fixed a bug in Keyboard Control Settings where the Game Menu could be closed as soon as a remap attempt was initiated, making the menu unusable for the session.
Fixed a bug in Keyboard Control Settings where changing remap category by clicking on relative arrows with mouse while an entry is selected makes it impossible to close the page.
Fixed a bug in Control Settings allowing it to close the whole Game Menu upon receiving the relative input to open/close the Game Menu.
Fixed a rare bug on death of last AI character in FA, making successively spawned ones unresponsive.
Added default sorting for items: navigating item lists should now be more manageable.
Fixed a bug that could leave the UI unresponsive when acquiring a new skill/trait/stat point.
Fixed a bug that could result in an entry being skipped while navigating any list (i.e. items, codex entries, quests, etc).
Fixed a bug that resulted in floating texts for damage received not being spawned correctly.
Fixed a bug that could make some NPCs in Thilaris being clipped by the camera.
Fixed A Mother's Gift quest day/night hints
Fixed a bug that caused blacksmiths craftsmanship progression not to match the original design intent.
Improved mouse support during gameplay
Mouse left click can now be used to interact when in range both in world map and within gameplay locations.
Holding the cursor movement button (ALT by default, freely rebindable) will make the player/pawn move towards the cursor to mimic joystick input.
Attacks and skills can now be directed via the mouse cursor without requiring for the target to be locked: just hovering over the target will make the character turn towards it.
We have been nominated! Vote for Alaloth for the People's Choice Award!
Hello Champions!
Some news for you all after a few days of silence! Lot of cool things are actually in progress and we are in the middle of many super interesting discussions, following-up the meetings we had at GamesCom! We spent the last month in the UK and we are dealing with some top secret corporate stuff now, that's why we have been a little bit slower than usual in answering here or on our Discord server. The World Update #1 has been slightly delayed as you probably noticed, but it will arrive soon along with other features originally scheduled for the next months [more details soon]. A new build is on the way for Wednesday with a great number of fixes, new contents and new improvements for mouse & keyboard, following the major update we've released last month. Meanwhile, we are proud to announce that Alaloth has been nominated in 4 different categories at the Game Connection Indie Development Awards, taking place during the Paris Games Week in November. A world class jury nominated us for The Grand Award [the main one], the Best PC Game Award and for the Best Hardcore Game Award. Moreover, we are competing for People's Choice Award, assigned directly by players. That's why we are asking for your help now: go here and vote for Alaloth. Always remember that anything helping with visibility means more sales. More sales mean more resources to invest in the development. More development means more cool stuff for you in an endless loop of happyness. Thank you for the support, as usual!
Full support for mouse & keyboard is available now with the latest patch, live since a few hours, as we promised with our roadmap update. We were targeting Wednesday but we decided to go on with M&K and split the World Update in different tranches, adding contents in the next days. This allow us to go on with the world dressing the proper way and to provide support with M&K if needed. The update comes with some other fixes and tweaks we did on the way, details in the changelog belowt! Sorry for being slow in answering here on the board and on our Discord server, but we had a few crazy days, traveling here and there for some cool corporate stuff happening. We thought it was good to celebrate all of this with a Week Long Deal here on Steam! Alaloth will be 20% off until Sunday but it even means that you can get our amazing Supporter Edition Bundle with a 36% discount! It includes the Supporter Pack, our 220+ pages artbook and our 4 hours OST! Don't waste this chance to join us, Plamen awaits!
CHANGELOG
<*> Full mouse & keyboard support is now real. Added mouse pointer support: cursor can be used both to interact with UI elements and to lock enemies (while in a fighting area).
Added support for navigating item lists through the scroll wheel.
Fixed many consumables showing a timed icon for its healing effect despite it being instantaneous.
Now various non-healing consumables will not be usable outside of Fighting Areas; all consumables with healing effects will be usable only if the user is not at max hp.
Fixed a bug that could lead to more than one dish being able to be consumed while inside a fighting area.
Dishes consumed outside were correctly overwriting each other.
Fixed a bug that could prevent proper text input while in character creation.
Fixed a bug that could lead some consumables to show a “x0” quantity while used inside the Character UI
Fixed a bug that could lead to a permanent loss of input for a player while in a co-op session.
Adjustments to some boss introduction scenes with new lore-wise intro timeline.
We've just updated our plan for the next 90 days. Check it out!
Hello Champions
It has been a while since we've published our first development roadmap and it is time to update it! As we announced last week, we have done with mouse & keyboard and tested the new features for a while. We had a bit of regression on the way but it was pretty normal, considering that we had to rework the UI entirely. We don't expect major bugs but in case, poke us as usual and we'll try to fix everything at the speed of light. In general, we have to say that we have been faster than what we've originally predicted and of course even if we have decided to stick with the original plan we've drafted, lot of new ideas have been discussed by the team, following your feed and new inputs from new partners willing to jump in and help us with the development. The result is that the contents that we are going to put in will be way more than the originally predicted ones and we hope this would be just one more proof of the effort we are putting in our work, to make Alaloth the great game we've always had in mind. We spent some time data at hand in the last month, checking other games available on the market as well and putting together a few numbers. We can say that Alaloth is currently the biggest RPG game on the market in terms of contents, considering the size of the world, the number of locations and NPC we have and so on. Proud of this! Let's go with some more info for you all!
17 patches released so far [we promised: no slow down], a major update with strongholds in and the very first round of balancing. Two months and half. We would say that these could be considered good numbers and we are happy of the results achieved in this 60+ days. The game sold very well in July, always considering that we've been forced to launch during a special sale and summer is the worst season to launch a game. But hey, no problem, big things ahead. As we said many times, no need to underline that bug fixing, new contents, balancing etc. will be on-going till the end and so, plans may change moving on with the development. By now, we've always delivered way more contents than originally scheduled and we are going like this if possible: it's our baby, it has to be your fav RPG for a long time!
FULL SUPPORT FOR MOUSE & KEYBOARD
Here we are. We started with just partial support for M&K and yes, we knew you hated us. We updated the game introducing some improvements and we promised full support for September. We've finally added mouse pointer support: cursor can be used both to interact with UI elements and to lock enemies while in a Fighting Area. We have added support for navigating item lists using the scroll wheel and all now works properly. Hope to get people waiting for this back on board and hope to get some thumbs-up from people that were rightfully criticizing us at the beginning [but again: we've been forced to go like this, running out of time for the release]
GRIFFINS AND SHIPS
Nope, we are not introducing fast travel, no worries! Simply, each race has a unique character doing unique things [Forgeback, The Red Mage, Nohrged-Kin...] and elves have Kellis, which is way more a char created for everyone [no spoilers but you know]. We thought that would have been cool to introduce something to balance things a bit and Griffin Riders will be available very soon! The Riders will allow elven champions to travel in Larastir riding a griffin, avoiding random encounters and saving precious time while searching for the shards. Only elven champions could be able to use them and only after proving their strenght in battle. The Riders' HQ can be found in Edhenen and it is one of the first new indoor location we are going to add to each city in the future updates. Ships will be available for all instead, just paying money to one of the various organizations connecting ports of The Sea of Solitude. On boarding will be possible in Baystone and Rockstarn and routes will connect these cities with Na'Sharak, the port of Vhoken-Mahl. This is just a first step to set-up new coastal cities and areas in the bottom part of the map that will be developed soon with super cool FA and POI we are going to share asap!
NEW FIGHTING AREAS AND BOSS FIGHTS
Easy as it is. We are working on new FA and boss fights to increase the number of unique fights you are going to have during your run. We are focusing on areas bringing in a bit of puzzling and Indiana Jones-like sections and all of this will come along with a bunch of new mobs we are working on right now. Design in progress but of course we are building up everything to keep a good balance in terms of options for each kingdoms so if we are going with 4 new FA and 4 new boss fights, everything will be splitted among kingdoms as usual. Sligthly postponed dragon fights in our schedule. They are not appearing in the new roadmap but as for anything else: we can suddendly patch the game and you can find dragons in. It really depends on iterations on the way.
COMPANIONS, CHAMPIONS, PERMADEATH
We are slowly iterating every single item, char, mob in the game. Companions and champions are one of the prio as well and we are going to rework them shortly. We think that the first bunch of fixes for companions has been useful, having the chance to bring back them in action if wounded. We are on numbers now, customizing them by lore, increasing poise for chars like Khoran or making dex-focused chars like Vaden or Zian way more lethal. Same for the others, of course. Champions are prio as well, aiming to create unique duels with each of the 40 warriors available, to increase difficulty in Competitive Mode. A lot of people is asking about difficulty settings and we are on this. Permadeath will be introduced soon and we are thinking about a way to offer new challenges as requested.
ARENA, NEW TRAITS, CRAFTING, ALCHEMY
Arena Mode is going to happen. First of all, we are adding The Bleeding of Hashak in-game. It will be the first available arena to test stuff, using the location as part of the campaign. Hashak will be sligthly modified and the arena will be available at given conditions, considering that it is an orcish environment connected by lore with The Hunt and other major celebrations in Baga. The Arena Mode will follow and will be a stand-alone mode of course. Going to give more details as soon as we'll have details to share for the first iteration! We are adding 12 new traits to customize your char as well. Customization is one of the most requested feature and we are starting with this but new stuff will pop-up in the future [can't say anything now about BG-like portraits but hey!]. Crafting will change: new blueprints will be available and the process will be simplified a bit, changing specs of crafting materials, their availability and prices. Alchemy will be available, giving champions the chance to create potions.
Warm-up here...
...die here
MISC
By the end of the year we are hopefully going to have the full picture for the future of the company and the future of the brand. The end of the year is even the deadline set to have the final round of balancing, using the next months to go through every system. Achieving this, we could focus on new massive features we have in mind and you've asked for. By now, it's a slow process that forces us to constantly iterate even with small changes happening. With the right numbers in place, we'll be able to work on new stuff with solid foundations and in a faster way, starting to consider all the ideas you've sent and all the proposals we are evaluating internally. No worries, we are not revolutioning the whole thing just to put in random stuff because they have been requested. We are not going to turn the game into an online game or such. We hope to develop our community more and more, to work using a partecipative design flow, as we've always wanted. If you want to help now, just talk about the game on socials, share your experience, point people to our Steam page or Discord server and if you enjoy the game, drop a review here. It really helps at this stage! Write soon
Time for a new update, fall is coming and we can't wait to show you what we are working on! The good news is that we've been incredibly fast during the summer, so the stronghold update has been released before leaving for GamesCom and we had the chance to gain some extra time for the next features scheduled. Mouse & keyboard is the next big thing. We already explained why we had to release with partial support only, so we are not talking about this once again. We are testing right now and even if we were expecting a bit of regression and UI-related issues, everything seems to be fine now. We hope to be able to release the new patch next week, just let us check the last changes we did. We are running an extra week of testing on our internal branch.
No worries, mouse cursor will be bigger
September is even the month of the first world update. As we already said, we are going to add 4 new areas with new NPC and new quests and we are at work to dress each area the coolest way right now. We had a lot of meetings to discuss how to set things properly and we are thinking to split the upload of the new locations as soon as we'll have ready what we need, instead of sending out a massive patch. We'll probably be back on this in the next days because once again, we ended up in something bigger than expected [with the same time budgeted, kudos to the team]. We are going to update the roadmap soon, because we've already finished these areas, other new locations [arena anyone?] and we've just started working on new FA as well. Not talking about dragons, completely new FA with more puzzle elements, traps and so on, introducing new mobs and features that we thought would have been a great addition to the gameplay [more details in the next updates].
Rockstarn
To summarize: no secret that we had a great GamesCom and we were there to catch-up with new potential partners to help with the future of the game and the brand. After the issues we had in the past, we decided to set-up meetings with trusted people only, big guns and people we really feel could help to make Alaloth great. We have now data and info validating what we've always thought and what we've always said when pitching the game: we have something unique here and there is nothing else like this on the market, which is something that everyone knows, apparently [at least who knows about games, you know...]. No rushes on our side and again, we are not going to promise things that we can't deliver but we have a ton of options to consider now and many cool ideas to work on. Full coop campaign, multiplayer, online features, battlegrounds, sieges, new companions, new modes, DLCs... everything is constantly under discussion and be sure that we'll give 110% as usual to move on and be able to improve the game as much as possible.
Giulia, our Producer, with Rick from Fextralife and a very promising young Game Designer sharing some prosecco at our booth!
Last but not least: we've received hundreds of messages, mails, DM with suggestions, feed and precious comments and we want just to confirm once again that we are trying to answer to everyone as usual. Many were asking about three main things: special sales, console versions and retail. About sales: yes, we are going to discount the game in the future of course, because special sales are the best thing to raise numbers and it's pretty normal doing like this for any studio in the world. For sure, we are not going to discount the game more than 20% at least for the first year and yes, we can confirm that the full release is not going to change the price point, despite the huge number of contents we already put in/we'll put in in the future. That's because we thought it was due to the people that supported us at the very beginning and because we are not going to undersell a product that we think is worth the price, considering that we are talking about one of the biggest indie RPG on the marketin terms of contents/repliability value. Just facts. This is the best moment to start your adventure in Plamen, then don't wait!
We have to say that we are working on a very special anniversary sale and something could happen at some point and of course we have to evaluate special events from time to time, to set-up things properly but again, no promises and new info as soon as possible. along with the community-related activities we've teased a few weeks ago. Consoles? We have very good options with top tier publishers willing to port the game on every existing platform [as announced ages ago] but we've been super clear about this: focus on EA and full release on PC first. Retail? Yep, work in progress: we are partnering with a top player for this, hope to share something very soon!
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