The plan is to make it before the demo release. The interaction needs some juicing. Couple of months ago I shared with you my concerns regarding dice. TLDR; we couldn't come up with a satysfying solution to a problem of implementing a feature of a physical game in a PC game.
The best solution turned out to be... a solution to a completely different problem. As the interaction with NPC is our key feature, we weren't happy with the fact, that all the text was spawned immedately after selecting the appropriate button. Imagine searching for a suspect for few minutes only to interact with them by choosing a button, and reading a dialogue.
We believe that stretching the core experience will serve the pacing of the game. It won't affect the mechanics at all, but will make the game feel less rushed. You can remember from the trailer, that the whole interaction flow looked like that:
It consisted (actually still does) from: 1. Fading. 2. Zooming the camera. 3. Choosing a theme. 4. Choosing a method. 5. Displaying a result of the "dice" roll and presenting a dialogue.
How are we going to stretch it? 1. Fading. 2. Zooming the camera. 3. Playing a welcome animation. 4. Choosing a theme and displaying a pile of cards with possible answers. 5. Choosing a method. 6. Playing interaction animations. 7. Revealing a card from the pile. 8. Displaying a text response in chunks. 9. Displaying a result of the "dice" roll and presenting a dialogue record.
The points 6-8 are where the magic is going to happen. Hope you will be compensated for not being able to feel the plastic cubes.
You Want It Darker
Good evening.
We need you. Are you depressed enough to find yourselves in such a gloomy reality as in those screenshots? Or to put it bluntly, isn't this game too dark? If we were to make this world for ourselves, it would look like this. That's what Mercyful is right now, and we'd like to stay with the appearance.
I highly doubt we will let any sunlight into the game. This is a purely aesthetic choice. We want to stay in a wooden, underexposed styling to get something like the atmosphere that bothers you during attic and basement scenes in horror movies.
Nevertheless, our overwhelming darkness is a part of a coherent artistic vision... that can be called a whim. After all, it's you who are gonna play the game. Can you see anything or should we turn the lights on? We don't want you to fall asleep. Magnified, sanctified be thy holy will.
Epidemic
What's the main factor that keeps the game from being an idle clicker? Plague. A painfully secondary concept that has found another incarnation. Previously, you may have known it, for example, as a doomsday clock. Or just hit points. It is pure coincidence that our designer, Lord Baltimore, called this feature one way and no other, just before the world plunged into such and no other panic.
A plague is a combination of two elements: 1. The daily schemes of the opponents of the Church (we established that the plague would increase randomly every day by smaller amounts - so that there was pressure). 2. Feelings of safety of the inhabitants and their attitude towards the player (the higher the plague, the less trusting they are towards the main character).
It is influenced by scenario elements such as kidnapping / murder events. But we can also increase it by ineffective attempts to interrogate the inhabitants or by murdering innocent people during torture.
Fighting evil, annihilating enemies and using divine powers shows the inhabitants that the church is awake and that evil will be judged. Somehow, righteous behavior hampers the progress of the plague. Good keeps us alive.
TLDR; Plague is just a „global” statistic that tries to thwart your plans. It’s called „plague”, because Mercyful Flames’ story takes place in Dark Ages.
Climate Change
We have a family atmosphere in Asmodev, and we talk a lot. So I asked our 3D bandit, Adrian von Bond, why the hell he's still changing the graphics as we need him to do some useless stuff. This game is not about visuals after all. It's about fire, crime investigation, and pagan altars. And he answered: BECAUSE I DON'T WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE FUCKING ASSET STORE FLIP, YOU PIECE OF PHLEGM. I wanted this game to be Infernal Radiation on coke, so the current look is good enough for me. However, I'm afraid Adrian won't stop after getting a PhD in creating the comic-minimalist atmosphere of B-class horror. He may go into realistic graphics then. Please stop him.
Oh, and we just got the pubs opened in Poland. I am attaching a tribute.
Castle Flipper - Premiere
Hi Folks!
I know you wait for some content from this game but our friends have a premiere of Castle Flipper.
Along with it comes:
• Stream that should start in few moments • Giveaway - for the best Medieval jokes we will be offering some Steam Keys of Castle Flipper • Great deal on launch with very nice price - just 18.99$ - 15% • Royalty bonus for those who own House Flipper or/and Train Station Renovation
• Be quick! The offer lasts between May 26 – June 2
The main mechanics of Mercyful Flames is based on interacting with objects. Usually, just like in the Middle Ages, objects are human beings. As you can guess, we try to get confessions from people that can help solve the investigation. Suppose Mercyful Flames is a board game / RPG. As some of you remember, this is how we created the game's prototype. We also balance it in its physical form. With that fact in mind, try to imagine that all the information we need to gather in order to be successful in the investigation is hidden in piles of cards. We deal with human-type objects in four ways:
a) by conducting chats, b) trying to bribe, c) intimidating, d) torturing.
Each of these interactions has different chances of success, relates to different stacks of cards, and has different side effects. I probably won't surprise you with my confession that the inquisitor can specialize in a given type of interaction. By investing in the appropriate investigation technique, we increase the chances of its effective use. So classic, so simple and so nice to implement, right? You just need to convert the 100 sided dice to the algorithm, right? Well, just no. We have encountered a difficulty while adapting the system.
In board games, the mere roll of the dice is a part of the fun. It's some kind of a ritual. We hide pleasant-to-touch pieces of cheap plastic in our sweaty hands. Sometimes the cube will fall into our beer, sometimes it will get stuck in ketchup on our ham free Hawaiian, so we can dig it out. Finally, if we manage to trap the dice and naively shake clasped hands, we can puff the alcoholized air between our thumbs, and throw the plastic only to watch how it happily avoids pieces of pizza, drinks, and an ashtray, and falls on the carpet, and stops right in front of the mouth of the troll sleeping under the table. Dice show 20. Our character has a statistic of 21. Oh shit, failure. We throw again, it wasn't rolling enough. I am writing this crap to draw attention to how much fun in board games, due to their physical imperfection, is enchanted in LASTING.
In digital games all this synthetic pleasure is replaced with a single algorithm that does all the calculations in one frame. It's too short. It is not satisfactory. For this reason, we are looking for a solution that will be the most pleasant substitute for malicious plastic. We have an inventory of ideas on how to fill this gap in the experience, but we haven't realized all of them yet. If you know any solutions from other games or your brains, let us know, as it might save us some nerves.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I had to vent today's frustration.
ːpraisesunː
Asmodev Newsletter - Champagne Problems
How are you doing heavy metal maniacs ːpraisesunː? As our games are interconnected, I came up with the idea to spam you with all the updates with one sheet, just like supermarkets do. I think it’s a fair spam, we all live to spend money in supermarkets. There is no logic behind the order that I would be aware of - I acted intuitively. And I doubt I’ll stick to the same order every time. But let’s get down to business. Can I get a witness?
I picked up the main issues we had to deal with this week, and probably will still be dealing with during the next one.
We’ve already learned the lesson. The art must be coherent. We lost our vision here and there during Infernal Radiation development, now we’re taking care of the cohesion of Booze Master. This week we’ve been trying to make the windows fit together. We chose the „general feel” of UI, and it’s almost finished, but there are still some areas to improve. Firstly, some elements are still too mobile, which doesn’t go very well with a three-dimensional, realistic world. Secondly, there are parts that feel too modern, which doesn’t go very well with the cartoon/wooden aesthetics we decided to stick to.
Our meat plant was too far away. Too far away from home, too far away from the main street, consequently too far from the vendors, and too far from the clients. It meant the game looked a bit like a running simulator. You’d kill us for backtracking. I mean, you’ll kill us for backtracking anyway, but rather softly, because it doesn't hurt anymore. I feel all flushed with fever, but that’s a farming game, for fuck’s sake. You’ll love the the coziness of our tiny town, and the duplicity of our small community. Of course, relocating the factory resulted in, among other things, redoing the environment, moving tutorial triggers etc. Well, that's what we're here for. Look at the picture to imagine the difference.
Believe me, we want this demo to be out as badly as no-one in the whole world, even you. What must be done in order to release it? We have to polish this shit because we're still ashamed of some of some details. We’re good with feeling ashamed of our story, AI, graphics, hardware requirements, but not things like that you can see on the screenshot. There will be no levitating trees in Priest Simulator, apologies.
Oh no. This was a typical week of invisible steps. What I mean is that we’ve got nothing new to share with you, as we’re fulfilling a duty of refactoring the code. Mercyful Flames got bigger, we designed new features to make the game more engaging, and that resulted in the necessity of renovation the old features. Live is life. We all give the power, we all give the best.
I think I’ll be repeating this each time we meet. If you want to support us, please add our games to your wishlist or buy any of them. If you already have played one of our games, and you liked it, please leave us a review, may be a short one, because it simply results in development of our team, and quality of the games. ːironfistː
It's Mercyful Flames now
Hello.
We updated the title, as promised. Also, there is a short teaser available now. See you soon with more screens, more gameplay, more updates and more everything.
[previewyoutube="pqEIK97pJZs;full"]
I just noticed some translation errors, will fix them ASAP... and will reupload it on Steam when I get old. For some reason it takes dark ages to render this damn file.
We tweaked the aesthetics a bit to give the game a more gloomy feel. New screenshots available now. UI free, because we haven't done localization yet, but it's a matter of a few days. We have the promised teaser ready, and will reveal it very soon together with the new game title. Let's be honest, the current one sounds extremely clunky. A bit as if the Lord of the Rings were called The Hobbits: A Wizarding Journey through a Magical Land.
