Errant Kingdom
The Future of Errant Kingdom
We hope you’ve been doing well and have been in good health since our last update.
As of today, we’re reducing the price of Errant Kingdom from $20 USD to $13.99 USD.
While this means fewer earnings for our small indie studio, we felt it was an important change to make after closely listening to your feedback — specifically, your disappointment with how Errant Kingdom was released.
We understand a years-long development cycle isn’t the easiest thing to follow, so we wanted to summarise everything here for potential new players and deliver some other news we have.
We value your trust in Lunaris as a studio and know that what we delivered was, as some of you have pointed out, not up to our regular standards.
As many of you know, development started in March 2019 and the Kickstarter was funded in September that year. Episodic releases started in January 2020 and lasted a year, but we paused those episodic releases in August 2021 due to a number of issues. This is when we decided to switch to working on completing the game in full before we would release any further updates. It’s been a long journey — and a tumultuous one.
Before the pause in episodic releases, we had been delivering on our promises for over a year, but at this time, the pandemic really began to impact our team, especially those of us who are core workers juggling both that important day job and working on Errant Kingdom in what little downtime they had. Of course, on top of this, all of our team members also have day jobs and personal lives we must contend with. We won’t be sharing our individual struggles, but as a small and close-knit team, what we can say is that Lunaris will always pride itself on putting our developers first.
We’re people, and speaking as a leader, I see my job as primarily caring about the incredible folks I’m lucky enough to work with. I know many, if not all of you, would hold me to the task of treating my developers in a humane way — as should always be the case. Game development is hard, indie game development is even more so, and we want our developers to have the best experience possible so that they can make the best games possible. But of course, nothing can prepare you for a global pandemic, so I hope you’ll understand the issues we experienced as a result.
Aside from the pandemic, we also ran into the kind of issues that typically arise from a game’s development. We had a large number of players experiencing issues with the game engine that we were initially using, which helped us realize it wasn't fit for episodic releases. We attempted to salvage the game on this engine, but it began to feel like a drain on our incredibly limited resources. We felt the best thing we could do was port the game, which already stood at over 300k words, over to Ren’Py; an engine we were already familiar with. This was a huge undertaking for our two programmers — one of which is me; one of the writers of the game and the person who oversees the project as a whole. As this was only our second game, we also underestimated how much work we would need to do in order to complete such a huge project. We learned a lot — the hard way! We’ve always appreciated your understanding of our growing pains.
We’ve been listening, and we want to make things right. Lowering the price of Errant Kingdom is the first step.
But it’s not the only one! Not only are we discounting Errant Kingdom, but we’ve kept a really careful eye on your feedback — thank you deeply for the measured, valid, and genuine criticisms. As a result of how kindly everyone has taken the time to offer feedback, we’ll be doing an intense edit pass on the game. This will allow us to move closer to the version we would have liked to release in a world where we didn’t face so many development challenges.
With full transparency, it’s pretty hard to see the changes we’ve needed to make after several years of chaotic development. As we previously mentioned, Errant Kingdom began development in March 2019 — several years ago, and vitally before a global pandemic. Big studios and development teams have the resources to hire consultants up to several times throughout a game’s development to aid them with this; as a small indie team, we don’t.
That’s why your feedback has been instrumental in allowing us to figure out what we should specifically hone in on. We’ll be addressing various narrative criticisms so that Errant Kingdom feels more cohesive and respectful of your choices. We hope the changes we implement will bring about a more satisfying experience.
We love Errant Kingdom and, despite the other projects the studio has needed to devote time to in order to survive, we care deeply about its success and how much it resonates with our audience. Crucially, this won’t impact or take resources away from Call Me Under — this is an undertaking we have scoped for and are confident we can deliver on.
We don’t have a timeframe for when the edited version of Errant Kingdom will be published, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Thank you for reading this and for the time you’ve devoted to playing Errant Kingdom, offering feedback, and following our projects. Your trust in us means everything as a self-funded, self-publishing indie studio, and we never take it lightly. We hope that, despite our stumbles and imperfect development cycle, this post is reflective of that.
Stay safe, take care, and see you next time.
Patch Notes for 03/06
- Certain CGs not unlocking in all routes
- Minor sprite errors
- Spelling mistakes
- Some romance specific lines triggering incorrectly
Patch Incoming 3/5
Just a really quick note to let you know that we have a small patch incoming on Sunday 5th March to fix a number of small bugs. We'll provide full patch notes on Sunday but just a quick summary of a few of the things we're aware of that we're patching;
- Sprite errors (anime girl showing instead... sorry)
- End CGs not unlocking on some routes
- Small typos/inconsistencies
Thankfully nothing game-breaking, so we're happy not to rush this patch and our beta tester is doing a final run-through to catch anything additional. If anyone has seen anything else you think is worth us looking into please feel free to comment below and we'll investigate.
Also thank you for the support since we completed the game, we're very humbled and appreciative that a lot of you still had such an open mind after the development issues.
Errant Kingdom: The Finale
This is it. The big one. We're finally done with Errant Kingdom and will be moving it out of early access. We once again want to reiterate how apologetic we are about how long this took us to complete, and we're truly grateful to those of you who stuck by us despite that.
This update is 190,000 words long with 22 CGs and 23 end cards (good and bad endings). This brings our total word count to approximately 590,000. We really hope you enjoy the game as it draws to its conclusion. We'll also be removing the game from early access.
The team is now solely working on Call Me Under, which will be out later this year on PC and Mac. We'll be releasing a new demo for that in April, so please keep a lookout. Be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates.
PATCH NOTES
There were a number of small typos and some inconsistencies throughout the three routes in our previous update which we have fixed, but no major error fixes to report. While we did have an amazing beta tester for this absolutely massive update, we will keep an eye on reports of any bugs and patch accordingly before the end of the week (if required).
Patch Notes 02/12
Errant Kingdom: Part Five - Out now!
UPDATE NOTES
- This update brings our total word count to 403,325k
- This is the penultimate update! Our next update in two weeks' time will be our epic finale
PATCH NOTES (FIXES)
AMBASSADOR ROUTE
- The end of the previous update was looping the throne room scene after the end screen had finished displaying. Now fixed. If you saved at the end screen this shouldn’t give you any issues.
- Due to a variable being misdefined, if you entered the Raiden & Lucien poly route via Raiden’s romance you will need to replay the previous update from the menu choice, "Lucien would be very upset," in the castle gardens to ensure your Raiden & Lucien poly route triggers in future updates.
KNIGHT ROUTE
- A line of text introducing Lucien to the scene in Maja’s atrium was missing, this is now added.
- A repeated block of text has been deleted from the scene where you either speak to Roux or Erik underneath the tree. There was also a line referring to Erik being present in Roux’s romance route which has now been removed.
- Due to a variable being misdefined, if you entered the Raiden & Lucien poly route via Raiden’s romance you will need to replay the previous update from the menu choice, "As much as you like Lucien?" in the market to ensure your Raiden & Lucien poly route triggers in future updates.
NOMAD ROUTE
- An error where, in the Erik romance route, a variable for a menu option in his cabin was not defined correctly and may have produced an error screen. This is now fixed.
Errant Kingdom Part Four: Out Now
A new dawn after a strange night, and you don't wake alone. It's time for your paths to converge under the watchful eye of the Gods.
UPDATE NOTES
- Romance routes are here (all 24 of them + our three no-romance routes)
- Poly and Ace flirt buttons are now active (apologies these weren't added sooner, I do all the coding myself and required some assistance)
- To enter a poly romance route (Maja & Erik or Rai & Luci) please utilize the poly flirt button when it appears during this chapter
- This update brings our total wordcount to 343,325k and our total CG count to 45
FIXES FOR ERRORS FROM LAST UPDATE
- Some save names were incorrectly labeled as 'Four' instead of 'Three,' this has been fixed but if you want your Part Three saves to be correctly labeled you will need to replay and redo your saves
- Repeated line deleted in Raiden's Nomad romance route
- Someone requested that we add an 'auto-forward' option to the quick menu and this is now available (thank you to the person on the discussion board who helped me with the code for this!)
Fortnightly updates will resume once again after this update. We are now caught-up to where we were with the previously released Unity version and all future chapters will be new content. We only have three more chapters left until the game is completed. See you next time, and enjoy.
Errant Kingdom: Part Three out now!
Hey everyone! We're here with a single chapter update this week due to my being out of action due to sickness for a good week this week.
I didn't want to delay the update fully as Chapter Four was already all tested and ready to go, and we also just wanted to give you something to play as you would've expected, so we decided to drop it solo. Chapter Five is our biggest chapter yet as it's where we have our first proper romance route (all 24 of them... help) involvements and it alone is bigger than one of our usual two chapter updates, hence why with my unplanned time off this week we simply couldn't test it to the level we adhere to for drops with all of the different options and romances which make a very interesting testing process for just two lone developers.
Chapter Five will now come out next weekend and we will then resume our two-chapter, fortnightly updates from the 11th of February, still aiming to have the full game completed around the end of the month. We gave ourselves a few weeks' grace period for stuff like this when we first mapped out the calendar, so we're still on track!
This chapter is our shortest chapter, standing at 50,314 words, which is still PRETTY massive for a single chapter for a visual novel, just shorter than what you're used to with our current schedule, so please bear that in mind. Here you will finally choose your path, be it romance or not, and then with next week's update you'll dive into the really juicy romance and plot stuff.
Make sure you choose your words wisely when talking to Gods, no matter how simple the questions may seem...
Errant Kingdom Part Two: Out Now + Update Notes
Part Two consists of Chapter Two + Three and contains 115,011k words and 22 CGs, bringing our current total word count to 218,011 and our CG total to 37.
We have also added achievements with this update and will add more with each subsequent update (trying to avoid future spoilers by uploading them all in one go!).
We're happy to have stuck to our previous promise of releasing updates on a roughly fortnightly basis despite the team having time off over Christmas and will continue to strive to stick to this. The remaining three parts of the game will be released roughly on a fortnightly basis, with the aim to have the full game released by the end of February 2023. If this schedule changes due to any unforeseen circumstances, we will let you know.
These releases should look as follows;
Part Three: Chapter Four + Five
Part Four: Chapter Six + Seven
Part Five: Finale
Please remember that Errant Kingdom has been fully ported into a new engine (from Unity > Ren'py) due to a large number of players experiencing issues with the previous version and some being unable to play entirely. We are confident everyone should now be able to play on any system without issue.
See you soon with Part Three. Enjoy!
Errant Kingdom: Part One - Out Now
The remaining four parts of the game will be released roughly on a fortnightly basis, with the aim to have the full game released by the end of February 2023. We understand the split release is incredibly frustrating for those of you who have already waited so long, but as you can see above, our wordcount for this game, even for such a small portion of it, is absolutely huge and we are attempting to minimize the strain on the team with testing and fixes with these smaller, staggered releases.
These releases should look as follows;
Part Two: Chapter Two + Three
Part Three: Chapter Four + Five
Part Four: Chapter Six + Seven
Part Five: Finale
Please remember that Errant Kingdom has been fully ported into a new engine (from Unity > Ren'py) due to a large number of players experiencing issues with the previous version and some being unable to play entirely. We are confident everyone should now be able to play on any system without issue and sincerely thank you for your patience during a very long delay.
We recommend deleting your old game to clear space on your system as it no longer serves a purpose.
We understand it will take us some time to win back a lot of players' trust after such a long delay fraught with problems, and we intend to work our hardest to ensure we do so. We sincerely hope that, despite all of the issues, you enjoy revisiting the game with us over the next two months and will enjoy its conclusion.
We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a healthy new year, see you very soon with Part Two.