Hey again everyone! Hope you're all doing well today.
This week, we're going to take a look at magic in Vahrin's Call.
When it comes to our magic system, we have some really cool things in the pipeline that I'm just dying to talk about. However, it's not quite ready for the spotlight just yet. So, while I wait for the all-clear to do a deep dive, I thought I'd go ahead and give a little introduction to magic, for those of you that are new here.
In the world of Leyda where Vahrin's Call takes place, there exists Aeternyte, magic that has taken physical form. Aeternyte is one of the main sources of magic in Leyda, and is what you'll discover and use to your advantage while out adventuring.
Magic spells in Vahrin's Call come in all shapes and sizes, so regardless of your playstyle you're sure to discover a spell that matches your pace. You'll come across various elemental spells, healing spells, as well as some unique spells that don't fall under any of those categories...
Aside some of the ones that I'm not able to show off just yet, one of my other favourites has to be the Crushing Ice spell. So much power!
Now, with all these awesome spells to unlock, I'm sure you guys are wondering how you can get your hands on them.
Well, much like weapons and armour, there's more than one way to get your hands on all these wizarding spells; so explore the world for hidden loot, conquer some side quests and maybe save up a little coin for your next trip to South Vale Hamlet!
As I mentioned eariler, there's more we're going to be able to talk about with our magic system once it's more polished, but in the meantime, these little introductions and teasers are unfortunately all we can provide.
Game development takes a long time and I know nobody likes having to wait, but we promise we're doing everything we possibly can to make this brand new adventure one you'll never forget.
Have a lovely rest of your week, stay tuned and I'll catch you all again next Friday!
Cheers all :)
Time to Armour Up, Mercenary!
Howdy all! Hope you're having a splendid Friday and are getting ready to chill out for the weekend.
Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about armour in Vahrin's Call.
While traversing the abandoned city of Vahrin and its surrounding areas, you'll come across a range of different armour types that you can utilise in combat. Everything from minimalistic armour that keeps you light on your feet, to the big bulky sets that offer up the most protection.
Different sets of armour can be acquired through different means. Looting them from chests while exploring the world, collecting materials and crafting them at the local blacksmith or maybe even as a reward for completing a side quest!
Plus, I'm sure those bandits won't mind sharing some of theirs if you ask nicely enough...
Now, with all this different armour and apparel that you can use to customise your mercenary, I should probably talk a little bit about gear weight.
Every weapon and piece of armour in the game has its own weight, and your character has a weight threshold.
What does this mean? Well, when equipping items onto your character, you'll find your dodge distance decreasing depending on the amount of weight placed upon your character. The heavier the items and the nearer you get to that weight threshold, the shorter your dodge distance will be.
As an example, if you have a weight threshold of 100 and you equip a helmet that weighs 10, your dodge distance will be reduced by 10%.
Now, some of you who prefer big, tanky, brute force builds might not see this as a problem. Why dodge when you can tank all the damage and slice your enemies to pieces before they've even dented your armour? Very true! But dodging can be incredibly useful in many situations, especially when you're put up against ferocious bosses with big, deadly attacks.
Alright then mr Vahrin's Call developer man! I want to be able to equip all the shiny new gear I find, but still dodge a decent distance; how can I do this? ....I hear you asking.
Well it's quite simple! Level up your mercenary.
In Vahrin's Call, your stats increase naturally depending on the activity you are doing. For example, your stamina stat will increase the more you run, jump and dodge.
Your gear weight threshold is tied to a few of your character's stats, meaning the more those stats increase, the higher that threshold becomes. Using the example from before, your weight threshold might be 100 at first, but you could increase it to 200, meaning that helmet weighing 10 would now only impact your dodge distance by 5%.
if you don't want heavy armour and weaponry impacting your dodge distance as much, you'll need to grow and develop your character.
So! To summarise what we've learned today:
Vahrin's Call has a range of weapons and apparel to discover throughout the world
Each piece of gear in the game was its own weight.
Some gear is heavier than others, but you can equip anything you like at any point.
Your character has a weight threshold.
As you near this threshold by equipping items, your dodge distance will start to decrease. Your dodge distance will be impacted even more if you exceed the threshold.
You can prevent how much your dodge distance decreases when equipping items by increasing your weight threshold.
The threshold can be increased by levelling up your character's stats through various activities associated with each stat.
And with that, I hope you guys enjoyed today's post!
I'd be interested in hearing what builds you guys are planning to go for when you dive into the world. Remember, you can equip and unequip armour and weapons whenever you like, so there's no reason you can't switch playstyles in the middle of a playthrough.
Have a lovely rest of your week and I'll catch you all again next Friday for another update~
Cheers all!
A Wondrous World Waiting to be Explored!
Hey again everyone! How are you all doing today?
For this week's post, I wanted to try something a little different.
I was running around the world not long ago (recording footage of something I am VERY excited to show you all), and it dawned on me just how much the environments in Vahrin's Call have improved over the past couple of years.
Now don't get me wrong, the game has changed and improved massively in every area, but it's especially crazy seeing how certain locations have evolved over time.
I'm sure you guys remember our alpha trailer, right?
Well, part of the reason we recently made the beta update video is because every area shown in the alpha trailer has since been completely re-built from the ground up.
Rebuilding all of these environments is one of the best decisions we ever made, as it has allowed us to hand-craft all the locations you'll visit with complete freedom, ensuring each of them have purpose in the world and are fresh and fun to explore.
One of the earliest examples of this, which you guys might remember from a couple of our devlogs, is transforming the old, uninspired arena into a grand colosseum.
Talking about devlogs, I've come to realise how incredibly outdated they are, compared to the current state of the game. We'll definitely need to post some longer update videos to YouTube in the future..
Anyway, it's hard to fully put into perspective how much Vahrin's Call has changed ever since we first began work on it, and we haven't even touched on what some of the areas looked like before we started sharing updates on the game's progress with you all..
Crazy to think this footage was recorded 5 years ago
Over the countless years this game has been in development, all areas in and around Vahrin have been through multiple iterations to ensure they're as exciting to explore as possible, and offer the most memorable experiences while you're traversing the world.
Seeing all of you embark on your adventure into this brand new, high fantasy world is one of the things I'm most excited about when Vahrin's Call releases, and I hope you can be patient with us while we work diligently to get this game into your hands. Remember, we're only a tiny indie team and this is our very first game, so we want to make sure we get this right!
So! As I mentioned, a bit of a different post today. Not really an update, more a mini-nostalgia trip. We'll dive back into gameplay again next week, but nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed the read!
Have a lovely Saturday/Sunday and I'll catch you all again next week~
Introducing a sneaky approach to combat
Gooood.......Saturday morning/afternoon/evening everyone! Apologies for the slightly delayed post this week. Internet was not on my side yesterday..
Once upon a time, we had a realisation..
In Vahrin's Call there are so many ways to crush your enemies (no pun intended) with brute force and power, but not really a way to sneakily get the drop on them. We wanted to introduce something like that.
So! What did we have in mind? How about the ability to crouch down and sneak around undetected and then stab an enemy in the back for some big damage?
Well, there were several things we needed in order to pull this off, primarily consisting of a lot of new animations..
As you can see from the above gifs, a lot of time was spent working on new animations for both backstabbing and sneaking. Just one animation would not suffice, as we had to take the different weapon types into consideration.
Once we had the movement and stabbing feeling right, it was a case of getting everything set up and functioning together correctly. Things like:
Setting up the backstab animation to play when you attack an enemy from behind
Setting up the backstab to actually deal damage
Ensuring each weapon type is using the correct animation
etc etc...
After this, it was just a case of polishing everything as much as we possibly could, and we finally had a new way for you to approach combat a little more discreetly.
Can pay to have some magic on standby, just in case that backstab doesn't immediately finish them off..
I hope you guys enjoyed today's update, taking a look at the implementation of sneaking and backstabbing, a stealthy way to gain an advantage on your enemies in battle.
I'm curious to hear if you think you'll give these stealth attacks a go, or if the guns blazing approach is more your kind of thing. Be sure to let me know!
Either way, have a lovely rest of your week, and I'll catch you all again next Friday~
It's a Trap!
Hey everybody! Hope you're all having a lovely week and have something nice planned for the weekend~
Today we're checking out claw traps, spiky mechanical devices you probably want to avoid stepping on.
You'll find these things all over Vahrin, primarily used by bandits to keep anyone and everyone out of their territory.
Claw traps have the potential to cause you quite a bit of trouble while you're out exploring, but they can also be an incredible asset!
Crack open that skill wheel and craft some of your own, or just harvest the ones you find throughout the world (carefully), and you'll have some very deadly weapons to use in combat.
By the way, you have our environment artist to thank for making these things look way more menacing than what we had originally..
and if these traps look like they could be a fun way to approach combat in Vahrin's Call, then you'll definitely want to look into all the other varieties of traps you can get your hands on.
You thought the standard trap was deadly, wait until you see some of these in action...
So! After a brief introduction to claw traps, do you think you'll put them to use while exploring Vahrin?
Either way, have a fab rest of your week and I'll catch you all again next Friday!
Searching for a way out
Hello hello everyone!
It's Friday yet again which means another update on what's been happening in the fantastical world of Leyda!
This week we're taking a trip to the farmlands of South Vale, as there was a rather large pit that was in much need of our attention...
So, what's up with this mysterious pit?
Well, with a keen eye and lust for adventure you'll be able to traverse your way down into its depths, where you'll find Redacted
Problem is, it's a long way down.....and there's no way back up.
Our solution?
A huge crane, with huge gears, attached to a somewhat huge platform! Complete with some big old gears to make the whole thing feel like a functioning, medieval machine.
Many thanks to our environment artist and programmer for ensuring our adventures in Vahrin don’t end prematurely!
Of course this is but one of many machines you'll be using to explore Vahrin. These medieval contraptions will be your best friend while traversing the world, so be sure to keep an eye out for them. Who knows, they may even lead to some hidden treasure.
And that concludes today's update! A bit of shorter one this week, but I hope you still enjoyed the read. Have a great Saturday/Sunday and we'll catch you all again next week!
Crafting Arrows 🏹
Howdy everyone! Hope you're all having a lovely week so far and have something nice planned for the weekend.
This week we're checking out all the different arrows you can craft, by finding or purchasing crafting materials throughout the world.
Originally, every arrow in the game looked like the same boring, regular arrow. Not exactly what you would expect when you hear "poison arrow" or "volatile arrow".
We needed something unique for each arrow type....
We started off creating new designs for the barbed and piercing variants, two of my personal favourites.
After finalizing these two arrows, we moved onto the other variants, until we had shiny new designs for every craftable arrow you can get your hands on.
I love how all the new arrows turned out, and with them all functioning correctly in-game it's made collecting materials and crafting new arrows a ton more fun. I can't wait to see you guys explore the world and craft all these different arrows for the first time!
And that concludes today's post! In the future we'll take a deeper look at how the combat system works in Vahrin's Call, but I hope you enjoyed this little peek into what you can expect with our bow gameplay.
A couple of questions for you all:
Do you think you'll give archery a go in Vahrin's Call?
What are some games where you remember really enjoying the bow combat?
As always have a lovely rest of your week and we'll catch you again next Friday!
Cheers all.
Vahrin's New Currency
Happy Friday everyone! Hope you're all doing well.
They say money makes the world go round, and the world of Leyda is certainly no different.
Coin is the currency used by the inhabitants of Leyda, and is what you'll be using to by yourself all sorts of different goodies, on your adventure into Vahrin's depths.
However, up until recently we were using placeholder assets for our coins. We needed something unique, something we could call our own.
Introducing the new coin of Vahrin!
As you can see from the above image, we've gone for different designs for the heads and tails side of the coin.
Most noticeably is the inclusion of the Mundagar on the heads side of the coin, the symbol representing the royal family that rules over Vahrin.
Now that we had a new coin modelled and textured, there was one last thing we wanted to do.
Placing these things individually, or even combining them and placing them in preset stacks can have an end result that looks tiled. We needed a way of randomising this..
And now, with the click of a button, randomised coin stacks!
So that concludes today's update! I hope you guys enjoyed taking a look at the new coin we've been working on lately. You'll find tons of them while exploring the world, but as they're quite small, it's easy to miss the detail we've put into them.
On the topic of money, I will leave you all with one question: If you could transfer all your in-game money into your irl bank account, how rich would you be and what's the first thing you'd do with it?
Hope you all have a fab weekend and we'll catch you again next Friday for another update!
The Drerri Flower
Howdy everyone! Hope you’re all having a fabulous Friday and are excited for the weekend.
The topic for this week’s post is this mysterious plant..flower..creature…..thing?
The Drerri Flower
Originally, this little guy was missing a lot. It couldn’t move, make any sounds, and it had no way of defending itself out there in the big wide world.
A lot of work was needed in all areas to get this thing feeling how we wanted, and animations were the first thing on our to-do list.
We spent time creating 3 animations:
An idle animation for when it’s just going about its business, undisturbed
An attack animation for when you get a little too close for comfort
And a death animation for…...
After freeing this flower from it’s petrification spell, visual effects was the next job waiting to be tackled.
In this case we primarily need something for the creature’s attack, but also a smaller effect for when it takes damage.
With Animations and VFX ticked off, the last thing we had to work on was sound. A sound for it unleashing its poison attack of course, but maybe a little growl too?
Let’s have a listen to those sounds, paired with everything else, in-game! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=katW39lLq4Q&ab_channel=ForsakenRealms
So! Now that you know all about the Drerri Flower, I’m not convinced “Flower” is right… I mean look at it! It’s definitely an evil demon, posing as a flower! What do you think?
I hope you guys enjoyed this first post!
We’re planning to post a small update on what's happening in the world of Leyda every Friday, so stay tuned if you want to see more.
If you’re interested in this kind of content, but don't have time to do all the reading, we’ll also be posting a YouTube short every Friday that has all the same information condensed down into 1 small video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x3I-jYhon3M
Cheers all, we'll catch you again next week!
An Update on Updates!
Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!
As we near closer and closer to the release of Vahrin's Call, we're incredibly busy refining and polishing every aspect of the game to make this story-driven RPG the best it can possibly be.
With that in mind, we would like to start sharing with you all how the game is developing, here on Steam, in the form of weekly updates.
These updates will cover one of the many things we've been working on in the world of Leyda; whether that's a cool environment being built, an interesting mechanic we're refining etc etc.
If you don't follow us on social media but are still interested in how the game is progressing, or just happen to stop by our Steam page while you're waiting for that shiny new game to install, you can expect a new update every Friday.
Either way, we're excited to share more info with you all through these posts and with all the other exciting things we have planned for the future.
