September went by in the blink of an eye, and some of us at Ishtar Games have started showing up to work with warm plaids and hot beverages. The weather in the North of France is unforgiving at this time of the year!
A few weeks ago, two members of the Lakeburg Legacies crew have been invited to present the game on the Games Made in France stream. It was the occasion to show how much has changed since last year! Viewers were also able to catch a glimpse of our brand-new dating system... đ
Rework of the Dating system
Itâs been cooking for a long time, and itâs finally here! As one of the core features of Lakeburg Legacies, it was important for us that the Dating system offers players a fun and satisfying experience. Unfortunately, it appeared during the closed beta that our old Dating feature was way too passive, and rather difficult to understand. It was so forgettable that we had to fish for feedback, as it was rarely mentioned by our beta players! That just couldnât do it.
The player now starts by choosing whether a villager will date locally or find someone from out of town.
Then itâs the swiping phase! Weâve made sure the suitorsâ profiles were easier to understand. That way, players who want to optimize their play can make sure the best match will also be the best addition to the villageâs workforce. Instead of their previous likes and dislikes, characters also now have topics of interest that they like or dislike. Compatibility between characters is based on whether they enjoy or hate the same things.
Once a satisfying match has been found for a villager, it is time for them to properly introduce themselves! They will go on a series of dates during which the villager will try to entertain their suitor, and players will have to choose between two conversation topics to do so. Remembering the suitorâs likes and dislikes is key in order to avoid a dating faux pas! đ
Finally, if the dates have been satisfying, the villagers will directly proceed to getting married.
A new background
Itâs been a while since we havenât produced new backgrounds for the events! But since weâve also started using them in the dating events, we figured it would be best to draw a few more locations. Want to invite your date to a charming picnic on the riverside? Weâve got you covered!
Animations
We still have a lot of work to do on the map of Lakeburg, but itâs been a pleasure recently to start working on giving it a bit more life! Players can now encounter sheep đ and hens đ while strolling (or scrolling) through the town, and the houses and mill now feel like they are truly inhabited!
Tooltips
We recognize this is a part of the game that we have neglected for a while to focus on implementing new features. Tooltips are an extremely important part of management games, and it is true some of our beta testers have struggled to understand how some parts of the game operate for lack of information. But fear not! We have finally found the time to integrate tooltips where they were needed.
New assets for the children
Lately, as you have probably noticed, we spent a lot of time drawing new assets for the villagersâ portraits. It was only natural that we give the same attention to the kiddos! They can now be generated with a wider variety of hairdos and outfits.
Weâre working on some very exciting features right now, and we canât wait to start unveiling them! Buuut you know the drill: that will have to wait for the next dev journal. Until then, take care, and enjoy the spooky season! đđ»đŠ
We canât believe summer is already almost over! The past months have been pretty hectic on our side. The development of our next big features is moving forward, and the team has gone through a lot of changes. âBut what changesâ, you may ask. Well, let us dive right into it!
The team is getting bigger (again)!
Weâre happy to tell you that the team working on Lakeburg Legacies has grown drastically a few weeks ago! Indeed, we have been joined by some Ishtarians who were until then working on another (secret đ€) project. Thanks to them, we're able to tackle more features at once. This will prove useful with everything we still have to produce and refine to bring our players the best experience!
Let us introduce you to our new team members:
Anthony worked as a Programmer on The Last Spell for a while before he brought his skills to other games
Julie is the Art Director on another project, and is joining us part-time to help with a very special feature...which weâll tell you more about in due time đ
Jacinthe has worked for a long time on our serious games as a Senior Artist, and joined the secret game project last fall
Morgane previously spent years in the serious games team as a Senior Game Designer before working on indie games, and is now bringing her experience to Lakeburg Legacies
Emma also previously worked on serious games as a Junior Artist before they joined the same secret project
Nicolas comes from the serious games team, and worked as a Senior Programmer on another project before he joined our programming team
Two more interns have also joined us for the summer: Iris joined the programming team, while Marion is working with our Game Artists.
This means weâre now a dozen working on the game, plus three interns and four more people handling the communication and marketing!
Weâve celebrated the arrival of our new teammates over some tasty snacks!
The Journal
The good folks of Lakeburg now have their very own Journal! đ° Thanks to this new addition to the game, players can keep themselves updated with whatâs going on in the village. A Castle without a Sovereign? A new birth in town? A Service Gauge threatening to distribute diseases to the poor Villagers? The player can customize what they want to keep themselves informed about not only by topic, but also by degree of importance!
The lack of notifications was one of the types of feedback we received the most from our beta testers in June, and weâre really glad we can finally reveal the solution we bring to this issue!
If you havenât already noticed it on our Discord, you can see that we also revamped the timer đ to make it approximately 60% smaller and 200% prettier!
New assets for the portraits!
You surely must be familiar with our villagersâ portraits by now. Well, we were a bit tired of always seeing the same outfits and haircuts, so we added a lot of new assets to make sure every single character has their own unique style!
In addition to new outfits for unemployed Villagers and new haircuts, we also added new mouths, eyes, eyebrows and noses.
Resource management
The inhabitants of Lakeburg can produce a lot of different resources by working in the dedicated buildings: wood at the Lumberjackâs lodge, bread at the Bakery, furniture at the Carpenters' workshop... As they progress and gain experience, their needs will increase, and so will the consumption of resources.
In order to give players a better understanding of whether the current production can sustain the use of resources, we added a new informative screen. Each resource is now limited by its maximal stock level, which can be increased in exchange for Gold. đž
We have a lot more under production, but that will have to wait until our next dev journal! đ Until then, take care, and enjoy these last few days of August!
First Closed Beta of Lakeburg Legacies: Review and Analysis
Hello, Rulers!
As promised, we're back with a very special Dev Journal!
As you may already know, we have launched a closed beta on June 7 which ran up to June 21. This was quite the adventure, as it was the very first time players could give Lakeburg Legacies a try. Even though they played a very early version of the game, we managed to learn a lot thanks to the people who took part in this closed beta session! đ
So... Why a Closed Beta?
We recently made a lot of changes towards improving the early game experience.
At the beginning of the year, we had folks from other teams at Ishtar Games play Lakeburg Legacies for the very first time. This internal test, which we jokingly named the âishternal testâ, allowed us to gather a lot of feedback about the game feel, and see what needed to be addressed first.
Following this, our Creative Director decided that the early game experience was to be completely revamped, and therefore took some decisions:
The game will start with only one Villager, instead of a dozen.
It will be possible to recruit Villagers from out of town in exchange for Gold.
The Dating system will now allow a Villager to meet suitors from out of town. If the date is successful, they will then end up married and the suitor will join the population of Lakeburg.
The Birth system will now allow same-sex couples to adopt children in order to not penalize them compared to opposite-sex couples.
In order to make all that possible without encountering pace and balancing issues, we also needed to add the following features:
A Traveling Merchant, to whom the player can sell goods in exchange for the Gold đ° needed for recruiting new workers;
Upgrades for the production building, so that even with a smaller number of workers it is still possible to produce enough resources;
âŠand, of course, menus and a basic tutorial so new players would not feel too lost while discovering the game!
We think those changes helped steer the early game experience in the right direction, but it also meant that we needed to test everything we added or modified in order to make sure we met our goals for the game. And what better way to know if that was the case than having our dear followers test it?
Finding our Beta Testers
The Closed Beta was announced during the ActuGaming French Direct on May 6. We were both surprised and excited to realize that more than 300 players had filled the registration form! đ± We didnât expect so many people to be interested in testing such an early version of the game.
Unfortunately, we couldnât invite all of them to take part in the Closed Beta, since we would end up with too much data and feedback to process, and we only have so many hands and eyes. For that reason, we had to select about 50 players based on their answers and the time they could put towards playtesting (and believe us, the choice was very hard).
The future beta testers were then added to channels created specifically for the occasion on our Discord server, so that we could keep them updated before and during the Closed Beta.
Ready, set, go!
During the days preceding launch, our Discord server was bubbling with anticipation, while the team scrambled to make last minute touches to ensure a smooth experience for everyone.
Fortunately, everything was ready for June 7, and without any nasty bug in sight (or so we thought), we gave access to the game to our very first beta testers! đ
During the first few days, we had to juggle between answering playersâ questions, investigating the few problematic bugs which had been reported, and pushing fixes for said bugs. We were happy to see the game was pretty stable, since our players didnât encounter too many serious issues. đ
One of them, which made loading a save impossible for some players, was particularly tough to fix. It turned out the problem was related to gray-haired Villagers đ”: some of them were considered both young (without gray hair) and old (with gray hair) at once, and the game obviously didnât like it!
During the two weeks of the Closed Beta and particularly the first few days, when people were understandably more active, we kept exchanging with our beta testers on the dedicated Discord channels. It could be about answering to gameplay-related questions or ask for more feedback about a specific feature (the Dating system, for example, which surprisingly wasnât the focus of many discussions at first).
Results
This Closed Beta made it possible for us to gather a lot of data and feedback: beta testers had to fill a form after their play session, we read every discussion that took place on Discord, and we gathered everyoneâs saves and logs for further analysis.
Obviously, the game still needs a lot of work and improvements. Some of our key findings were as follows:
The Dating system was considered too passive by our Beta players, even though it is one of the core features of Lakeburg Legacies.
It was difficult for players to effectively manage their population size at first try, resulting in villagers massively dying after a few years before they had access to key buildings.
Recruiting Villagers from out of town was generally considered more interesting for increasing the workforce than mentoring children from the village until they became adults, which means we need to improve the âlegacyâ part of the game.
Beta testers seemed to enjoy our Events, but their number was lacking. This was expected, as we omitted a significant amount of Events from the Beta, which only included about 30 of them. Fortunately, we should be able to content them by the time the game is released!
Players lacked guidance and short-term goals while discovering the game.
Beta testers also generally noted a lack of information and tooltips that made it difficult for them to understand every system in the game.
Players encountered a lot of user experience issues.
We have a lot to focus on, and should be kept busy during the following months! Several features need to be refined, but overall, we were glad to see that we are going in the right direction. Furthermore, our artists received a lot of well-deserved praise for their work! đ
Whatâs Next?
We're extremely grateful for the insights we got from this Closed Beta and are hard at work on iterating on the highlighted systems.
Weâll be able to tell you more about our new priorities very soon (spoiler alert: the Dating system is about to go through its second big rework)! đ
Of course, the teamâs focus was mostly on the Closed Beta we launched at the beginning of the month (including hunting down nasty bugs đ and exchanging with the beta testers), so weâve had less time to work on our next big features. But we still have some novelties to share with you!
Launch of the Closed Beta!
The main highlight of the past month has been the launch of our very first Closed Beta! Indeed, it was the first time players outside of Ishtar Games were able to play the game. Louis has joined us right before the Beta started, and so far has been of great help in gathering and analyzing player feedbacks.
It was pretty interesting to watch players discovering the game and exchanging tactics and tips with each other. Some of them even reached the 100-year milestone, and with it the first version of the gameâs victory screen! đ Of course, it is a very early version and will change a lot by the time the game is released.
Service Gauges
Service Gauges (Health, Protection, Faith, Entertainment) give information about the townâs overall condition. They can give out temporary negative traits to villagers: the lower the gauge, the more devastating the consequences!
The Health gauge, for example, can make the inhabitants of Lakeburg catch a cold đ€, but also diseases a tad more dangerous, such as the plague. â It is thus extremely important to maintain it as high as possible!
When he was not investigating random issues (such as âwhy do gray-haired villagers make the game block?â), Simon was working on something we were eager to have for quite a while: displaying the cost of unlocked worker slots directly in their interface, rather than in a tooltip. Indeed, hovering every slot to discover how much they cost was a hassle. It became especially true after we added the possibility to use Builder Tickets to decrease the cost of unlocking slots.
This may seem to be a small improvement, but it makes playing the game much more enjoyable!
New Event backgrounds
Manon has taken a break from working on interfaces in order to create new stunning backgrounds for the locations where game events take place. From telling stories in the kidsâ bedchamber to enjoying a romantic walk in a peaceful forest at night, our villagers can now bond (or sow drama and discord đż) in new locations.
Pick-up lines!
With Tindra, the townâs local matchmaker, players can browse through the profiles of potential suitors to find the best match for their villager. In order to give them more personality, Ambrune has spent hours doing some very serious and extensive research on the art of pick-up lines. Thanks to her, potential suitors now introduce themselves with dozens of cheesy pick-up lines (we privately call them âdisquettesâ)! She also made sure that the ones she selected or adapted werenât sexist or related to harassment, and were instead funny or absurd.
Building icons
In addition to a background, each building is represented by a unique icon. Justine beautifully illustrated the ones we were missing, as you can discover below!
Well, itâs a wrap! We will come back within the month with a special devblog dedicated to the Closed Beta in order to reveal you a bit more of what happened behind the scenes! đ
In the meantime, you can join us on Discord to chat with us & other players!
So, the catâs out of the bag: you must have seen by now the news about Lakeburg Legaciesâ first closed beta. Itâs something weâve been working on for a while, especially since we have recently reworked the entire early game experience. But donât worry if you missed the news or if you havenât been selected to take part in this closed beta: weâre definitely going to launch more beta sessions in the future!
In the meantime, letâs have a look at what weâve been working on lately.
Upgrades for the production buildings
In addition to buying new worker slots, players can now also buy upgrades with varied effects. Manon, our Art Director, is currently spending her time revamping the interface of the production buildings in order to replace our old placeholders.
For now, thanks to Simonâs programming magic, two different upgrades are available: thanks to them, the player will be able to increase resource production, and reduce the amount of materials needed to produce some resources. Moreover, weâre definitely planning on improving this feature and adding more upgrades in the foreseeable future!
The Assassinsâ Guild
As usual, Justine has created gorgeous backgrounds to illustrate the many buildings you can build in the city of Lakeburg. One of them is the Assassinsâ Guild, which is the last of the Illicit buildings to appear, when the number of villagers becomes high enough.
Indeed, the appearance of Illicit buildings depends on the populationâs size. They can have highly negative effect on the village, unless their worker slots are filled.
The Assassinsâ Guild might be the most terrible of them, since it has the potential to greatly diminish the villagersâ life expectancy⊠đ
English localization
As you perhaps already know, the entire team working on Lakeburg Legacies is located in the gorgeous cities of Lille đș and Bordeaux đ·, in France.
In order to translate the game from the baguette đ„ language to English without losing the medieval and light-hearted style our Narrative Designer Ambrune adopted, we called on a professional translation agency. After preparing the localization kit, Ambrune has been going back and forth with their linguists for the past few weeks in order to ensure they had every information they needed.
When the game is released in 2023, the game will be playable in French, English and German!
More backgrounds!
Another background Justine has recently worked on is the Painterâs workshop, where workers produce paintings for the most distinguished people of Lakeburg.
Fun fact: in order to gather enough references, she had to dive deep into the âweird medieval paintingsâ side of the Internet, and has obligingly shared her funniest finds with the teamâŠto our great delight!
Final preparations for the Closed Beta
Since we are organizing our very first Closed Beta for Lakeburg Legacies, the past few weeks have been filled with playtesting the game and checking for bugs.
Aaaaannd thatâs all for today! We canât wait to have players outside of the Ishtar Games team test the game and give us their feedback! Weâre planning on dedicating a special blogpost to the Closed Beta in July, so stay tuned! đ
Join the closed Beta!
Greetings Rulers!
Yes, you've read it well: a Closed Beta is coming for Lakeburg Legacies from June 7-21! We are looking for a few players to try the game and you have until May 18 to register.
Everything will happen on our Discord, from information to bug reports so make sure to join!
And with the ActuGaming French Direct we've published a brand new trailer for Lakeburg Legacies: watch it now!
Dev Journal #6 - Early game, Dating and Recruitment
Hello, Rulers!
If youâve read our previous dev journals, you perhaps remember that we held our first internal playtest session at the beginning of January, with the help of our dear colleagues at Ishtar Games. Following the analysis of their feedback and data, we decided to make quite a few changes in the game, and have been working on refining our existing features as well as adding some new ones ever since. And today is the day we can finally show you a preview of some of these changes!
One Villager to rule them allâŠ
Matthieu, Creative Director of Lakeburg Legacies, has decided to completely change the pace of the early game. Instead of starting with a dozen villagers of varying ages and profiles, the player now starts playing with one single character and their Woodcutterâs Lodge, and has to build the town of Lakeburg and make its population grow from there. In order to keep things interesting and well-paced, it was necessary to completely rework some pre-existing systems and add some new ones⊠đ
The Dating System
One of the main issues our playtesters encountered was that their attempts at setting up their villagers often kept failing. Some of them even couldnât make their population grow for lack of suitable partners, and were doomed with seeing their village slowly wither and die⊠đ That simply wouldnât do!
After the player has selected one of the available singles of the village, Tindra the Fortune Teller đź will introduce them to potential suitors from out-of-town, and help them figure out if they would be good matches. Manon (Art Director) has really enjoyed creating this interface, while Simon (Lead Programmer) did his magic and has given it life!
Finally, now that the player has selected the right partner for their villager and has got the opportunity to learn more about them, the couple is going to start dating. If all goes well, they will marry after some time, and the suitor will join the people of Lakeburg! đ
The people of Lakeburg attaches a lot of importance in educating its youth. Workers in the School building serves this purpose perfectly by boosting all childrenâs intelligence, which in turn results in faster learning when theyâre put under the guidance of a mentor. Justine (Game Artist) has summoned her best memories from her elementary school years when drawing this background. đ
New names for the Villagers
When sheâs not wreaking havoc in Lakeburg through the events sheâs writing, or masterfully managing our localization kit, Ambrune (Narrative Designer) enjoys adding new smaller content to the game. Lately, sheâs been hard at work diving into lists of medieval baby names and expanding our names and surnames database in order to make sure our villagers will be as varied as possible!
Aaaaand itâs a wrap! Weâre very proud of the direction Lakeburg Legacies is taking, and we hope youâre as excited by the newest additions as we are! đ„
Dev Journal #5 - Love, NPCs and Buildings
Hello, Rulers!
We hope youâre doing great! Spring is (finally!) coming to the north of France and we at Ishtar Games, have started enjoying it in our new office, which we moved in a few weeks ago. Weâre keeping on improving Lakeburg Legacies for our next milestone, and we hope weâll soon be able to tell you more about it. đ For now, let us dive into about what the team has been working on lately!
Non-Playable Characters
Manon, the Art Director on Lakeburg Legacies, has been having a lot of fun lately creating Non-Playable Characters for the game! They will help the villagers in developing Lakeburg into a thriving town.
Some buildings, instead of producing resources, directly affect the villagers. For example, the Bardâs Hut boosts their morale, while the School facilitates the childrenâs apprenticeship.
Of all the Service Buildings that you can build in Lakeburg, there are four which serve a greater purpose by increasing the villagersâ quality of life: the Healerâs Hut, the Barracks, the Church, and the Theater. Indeed, the population of Lakeburg need to be healthy, feel safe, have faith and stay entertained. These needs are represented by four gauges (Health, Safety, Faith and Activity) which are continuously affected by the villagers.
Illicit Buildings also have a negative influence on the four gauges. These buildings automatically appear when the population increases, and can have various effects on the resources and villagers when they're left unattended. Letting these gauges reach certain values will have a negative effect on the population of Lakeburg, so make sure to have enough workers in the corresponding buildings as a countermeasure!
Our Game Artist Justine has worked on illustrating them: you can discover below the Theater (which has a positive influence on the Activity Gauge) and the Church (which increases the villagersâ Faith).
The Workshop
Another particular building is the Workshop. This one produces a very special kind of resources: Builder Tickets that will allow the player to decrease the price of constructing new buildings or buying new workers slots. Simon, our Lead Game Programmer, has been making sure that this new addition to the gameâs interface is extra shiny! âš
New backgrounds for the events!
Our Narrative Designer Ambrune has been secretly brewing some new events in her magic cauldron, while Justine has created gorgeous environments to foster drama among the villagers! Lakeburg sure does look peaceful, but beware of what could happen during a nice walk at the village square or during a date at the marketâŠ
Thatâs all for today! A lot more exciting surprises are on the way, and we canât wait to tell you more about it! đ
Lakeburg Dev Journal #4
Hello, Rulers!
A LOT has happened since our previous blogpost! Weâre very happy with how the development is going right now, but as always, when we finish one task, we realize that we still have a million other ones to do! But thatâs what we call game dev!
First of all, after the demo we presented at the Games Made in France event at the end of October 2021, the team reached another milestone! At the beginning of the year, other folks at Ishtar Games playtested the game in order to collect feedback and figure out what to prioritize next.
Thanks to this internal test (or âishternal testâ, as we decided to call it đ), we were able to identify what worked well and what needed more time and refining in order for the players to fully enjoy the game the way our designers intended to. It was also pretty exciting to have people other than the core team play Lakeburg Legacies for the very first time and see what they think of our work so far!
That said, letâs have a look at some of the new features and content we recently implemented.
The Map
The map of Lakeburg has changed a lot within the past few months: with new buildings continuously being added, it was necessary to reflect these evolutions on the village, and make sure the landscape turned from forests and rocks to a nice medieval town smoothly. Manon, the art director on Lakeburg Legacies, tried a lot of different combinations for the different buildings, and is finally satisfied with the current one! ⊠For now. đ
The Mentorship system
Until very recently, villagers werenât able to work before they were adults, meaning that players had to wait a long time before the children and teenagers in the village could start gaining new skills and improving their stats.
Our villagers used to look almost the same from their teens until the moment they reached old age, which was pretty confusing! In order to better distinguish them from their adult counterparts, Manon spent some time giving them a more youthful appearanceâŠincluding some of the lesser-appreciated facets of puberty, because even in the world of Lakeburg Legacies acne wonât spare anyone! đ
(Of course, the whole team has helped a lot by providing her with pictures from their very own youth as reference!)
Royal events
Now that the Castle is fully in place, our narrative designer Ambrune has started to integrate some of the many events she wrote lately, starting with a new type of events: the royal ones. These events will appear from time to time once the Castle is built, provided it hosts a Sovereign.
They will confront the player with a situation in which representatives from two classes of villagers (nobles, artisans or peasants) are at odds with each other and came to the Sovereign to ask for judgement.
Depending on the playerâs choice, the Sovereign will favour one or the other of the classes, which will reflect on the newly-implemented Peopleâs Satisfaction gauge in the Castle. But, beware! It is of the utmost importance to keep the people of Lakeburg at least a little happy, because who knows what might happen once their satisfaction reaches 0!
In order for Ambrune to create a large variety of situations occurring in the village of Lakeburg, our lead developer Simon, has lately been working on implementing new conditions and effects for the events.
The Regency
Sometimes, the Sovereign dies just a little bit too early, whether it be because of a revolt, a disease or plain old age, and leaves behind a heir or heiress who is too young to govern by themself. Thanks to Simon, they are now joined by a Regent, who will assist them in their royal duties until they reach adulthood.
New backgrounds!
In addition to working on new features, our amazing artists Manon and Justine keep fleshing out the game by drawing new background for the buildings and events. Take a look at some of them:
Thatâs all we can show you for now, but rest assured a lot more is coming in the following months! đ
Lakeburg Dev Journal #3
Hello rulers! As promised, we have some development news! As the holidays are getting closer, our team is slowly getting bigger, with a few more people joining us to work on Lakeburg Legacies! After âJeux Made in Franceâ, we came up with a new internal roadmap, with very distinct objectives for 2022. Thanks to the demo that we made for the event, we have a clearer view on what we still need to do before we can release the game. (Spoiler: a LOT)
However, we have some great news!
The team is getting bigger!
At first, Lakeburg Legacies was just developed by 3 people. The team now has nearly 10 people working on the game, which will allow us to make it even better! đ Let me introduce you to the team:
Manon, Art Director. Sheâs been working on the game since the very beginning. đ
Myriam was working first with Benjamin as an intern producer, and has recently been hired as a full-time producer on Lakeburg Legacies!
Justine was also working as an intern artist with Manon, and we were so happy with her work that sheâs now a fully fledged 2D Artist on the game!
So yeah, we now have nearly 10 people working on Lakeburg Legacies, and the team should not change much until the end of the development. This means that weâve entered full production mode on the game, and we are looking forward to 2022 because a lot of things will happen. đ Our goal for the end of the year has been to produce a version of the game which everybody at Ishtar Games can play in order to get some fresh feedback on what we have done so far. Most of our colleagues havenât got the chance to give Lakeburg Legacies a try yet, and we canât wait to see what they think about it!
So, now letâs go back to the game and what weâve been doing this month!
The Castle
We already told you last time about the Castle, a very important building since it is where the Sovereign and their spouse live and rule over the whole town!
Since the latest dev journal, the castle expanded quite a bit! Our Art Director Manon has completely revamped the UI in order to make room for some cool new features: a tax system, a special wing for the royal family, and a way for the Sovereign to monitor the satisfaction of their subjectsâŠbecause if the people is unhappy, who knows what might happen?
Justine, our Game Artist intern, designed some great icons for them.
Illicit buildings
When a village becomes big enough, some strange things start coming out of the shadows⊠Illicit buildings will appear when the number of Villagers increases and have negative effects on the population.
If you follow us on Twitter, maybe youâve already seen the Thieves Guild. Manon has been working on a background for a new building with a very different ambience, as well as a redesign of the entire UI for the illicit buildings, with 80% more sketchiness and 100% more mice!
Yes, we even included a cute mouse in the game.
Since weâre talking about skills, it is now way easier to identify who are the villagers best fitted for a job: Simon, our Lead Programmer, has made it so that they are sorted by ability whenever we enter a building.
(UI Rework in Progress!)
New events!
We got some help from our Narrative Designer Ambrune to design and write additional events in order to make the village more lively. After a long day at work, peasants will gather at the Inn to have a drink (or more!) and chat with other villagers. Yes, drama is bound to happen at some point x)
New backgrounds and UI for the production buildings
Finally, the UI of the production buildings has been updated in order to better show what a building needs and what it can produce, as well as what the primary and secondary skills associated with it are.
Justine and Manon have once again created gorgeous backgrounds for the production buildings! Here are the ones for the Bards, who will raise everyoneâs mood with their music. Other buildings are coming, but we'll show them another time!
