I know it has been a long time since the last update. I have good news this time! Lasso Games has recently converted into a worker co-op and has gotten a lot of new activity lately, and I think we are going to be able to put together a plan to get this game finished!
I'm providing a super high-level development road map to let yall in on what we are planning.
Levantera: Tale of the Winds Game Development Roadmap Phase 1: Framework and Core Mechanics
Objective: Establish the basic framework and core mechanics of the game.
Tasks:
Develop the combat system, including mechanics for defeating enemies and bosses.
Implement the ship combat mechanics, focusing on ship-to-ship battles and boarding actions.
Design resource gathering and trading mechanics to support the player's progression and ship upgrades.
Create a system for inventory management and item durability, drawing inspiration from "Breath of the Wild" and "Sunless Sea."
Establish the narrative foundation, introducing key characters and setting up the main conflict.
Phase 2: Chapter 1 - Introduction and Setting Exploration
Objective: Introduce players to the world of Levantera and set up the initial storyline.
Tasks:
Design the starting area and tutorial segment to familiarize players with basic mechanics.
Introduce essential characters, including the protagonist and supporting cast.
Create quests and objectives that encourage exploration of the initial areas and introduction to ship mechanics.
Implement dialogue systems and interactions with NPCs to establish lore and world-building elements.
Phase 3: Chapter 2 - Gathering Allies and Resources
Objective: Expand the player's crew and gather resources to prepare for the looming conflict.
Tasks:
Introduce new characters and potential allies, including the Green Sage.
Develop quests and missions that involve recruiting crew members and acquiring necessary supplies for ship upgrades.
Expand the world map to include new areas and ports for exploration and trading opportunities.
Integrate narrative elements that hint at the growing threat posed by the antagonist.
Phase 4: Chapter 3 - Uncovering the Truth and Facing Challenges
Objective: Deepen the storyline and confront the challenges posed by the antagonist.
Tasks:
Develop pivotal story events that reveal more about the antagonist's motives and backstory.
Create dungeons or challenging areas that test the player's skills and resolve.
Implement narrative choices and consequences that impact the progression of the story and relationships with characters.
Introduce unique gameplay mechanics or obstacles that require strategic thinking and problem-solving.
Phase 5: Climactic Battle and Resolution
Objective: Build up to the final confrontation with the antagonist and provide a satisfying conclusion to the story.
Tasks:
Design the climactic battle sequence, incorporating elements such as force beams and sky combat.
Develop cutscenes or scripted events that heighten tension and emotion leading up to the final battle.
Implement multiple endings or resolution paths based on player choices throughout the game.
Polish and fine-tune gameplay mechanics, balancing difficulty and player progression.
Phase 6: Post-Launch Support and Iteration
Objective: Gather player feedback, address any issues or bugs, and consider post-launch content updates.
Tasks:
Monitor player feedback and analytics to identify areas for improvement.
Release patches or updates to address bugs, balance issues, and quality-of-life improvements.
Explore opportunities for additional content updates, such as new quests, characters, or gameplay features.
Engage with the community through forums, social media, and other channels to foster a positive relationship with players.
By following this roadmap, we aim to deliver a compelling and engaging experience for players as they embark on their journey through the world of Cerrawyn.
As this is functionally a total overhaul of the title, the final product may be different from the direction the game has taken so far. However, the main concepts and art style will be the same. I hope that with a new approach to development and a planned approach we will be able to release an update soon and start getting feedback once more from the community.
Thanks so much for sticking with us all these years.
A Long Journey, Concluded
Howdy everyone, Jack here.
I've spent a little over a month trying to figure out how to write this announcement.
The Post-Mortem
There has been a lot of heavy weight on me to deliver something to yall and to complete this title as promised, but it seems as though at this point in time, the trajectory of completion is going to result in a final product that is nowhere near what I intended this game to be when it was conceptualized in early 2015.
Myself and a small group of developers started Lasso Games as a partnership in 2015. Levantera was just a little tech demo I called "Project Tradewind" and it looked like Simon Belmont jumping around on some blocks. It looked hilariously bad and I never really intended, at that point, for it to be a commercial "product."
Shortly thereafter, a small group of friends of mine who were talented artists, musicians, and programmers all sort of volunteered to help me flesh the game out and get something going. It was a lot of fun at first, and we all collectively decided to turn it into something marketable. We started working on a Kickstarter campaign, and after reading every Twitter dev's kickstarter post-mortem we possibly could, tried to do every growth hack trick in the book to get the project funded. We asked for $25,000 to fund the title, and to this day I'm glad we fell short of that goal because there is no way that would have been enough to pay 6 of us to work full time on the project. Then, we would be in even worse shape than I am now having to come to hundreds of fans, hat in hand.
The failed kickstarter was a pretty heavy blow. About half of the team decided to move on, but 4 of us decided we would try and see the game through. This is about the time we also started working on MiniLaw: Ministry of Law, which thankfully did see its launch day on New Years, 2020, right before the world ended.
What Went Right
Working on Levantera has given Lasso Games a ton of opportunities to develop as a growing business in Appalachia. We have put on programming camps, showcased the game at expos and trade shows, and worked with local academic institutions to teach young people game development as not just a hobby but as a discipline and a marketable skillset.
The game looks really cool, and mechanically is pretty fun to play. It has a lot of neat easter eggs and references, and could have been a pretty cool complete play experience. Maybe someday that will be reborn in another title, or in another game build published in this namespace.
We used our time together as a team to compete and win in a couple of game jams, and even came in honorable mention in a game jam that sparked a very successful currently published title. See if you can guess which one we submitted:
The team members learned a lot about collaborative development remotely. With developers in Alaska, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia; we did remote work before it was cool, because it was necessary.
We also had the opportunity to mentor a host of fledgling developers who all worked on the game, and have gone on to do bigger and better things. Levantera was always sort of a sandbox for new devs to get their hands dirty and make meaningful contributions to what was and still technically is a published commercial title. At the bottom of this post, I will credit every contributor to this project since many of you will never see the in-game credits (though they are technically accessible if you can make it to the "final boss" and hit him in the head one time with a wind blast )
The game actually got selected by a panel of experts hired by Taco Bell for sponsorship. It was such a wild and surreal experience, and it even resulted in us auditioning for a reality TV show about game development that never came to be.
What Went Wrong
The failed kickstarter was a omen of things to come. After the campaign was concluded and the group went its separate ways, we never reached the same energy (in my opinion) that we had the final weeks leading up to the Kickstarter launch. I still am not sure what possessed us to try and finish the game from this point considering how short we were from our goal, but we certainly did go for it.
Scope creep became such a constant and frequent issue that had to be resolved that at one point, we literally cut the map in half to try and get a build released. Even still, we had new features creep in after the settings were decided, new plot points injected after the story was written, and new mechanics injected after the gameplay was set and the levels were being designed, which brings me to my next point.
Creative differences are always going to happen when you are working with a team of collaborators. It's almost an inevitability. What this project really suffered from though was poor direction, and that is on me. I could not effectively communicate boundaries, scope work, or write requirements well enough to give developers a clear enough goal to match my vision. Every time I thought I was suffering from some control issues, I would relinquish some of that control only to have the codebase dramatically altered in a way that would need to be fixed. Other times, I would be the one ripping the guts out, and someone else would have to clean it up. It is not an effective, fun, or rewarding way to work and it shows in the product's results.
A high stress work environment and overextension were two things that my counselors told me I had to resolve immediately. Almost every team member was also working a full-time day job and several of us just wanted to release a title with the hopes that we would make enough money that we could survive off of being game developers as our full-time gig. This never came to fruition after Levantera went Early Access and after MiniLaw was fully released. In the time between 2015-2019, I would work from 9 or 10pm to nearly 2am every single week night. My sleep pattern suffered and my mental health plummetted. In 2019, I moved out of my house and into an apartment, and filed for divorce from my spouse at the time. I had hoped that drastically altering my schedule and other major life changes would help me get a foothold on my mental health, and it did in some respects, but then 2020 happened and a whole new set of problems arose for me (and pretty much everyone else on the face of the planet).
The remaining work to be done to make this product anything I could consider being proud of is far too much for me to muster. I have attempted to sell the IP and have someone else finish it, but I don't think there is really any interest from any party to do that, and even if they did there's no telling how much further it would be from the vision I had 7 years ago.
The Wrap-Up
I think after 7 years it's finally time to let the project rest in peace. I don't really know exactly how I want to walk it back but I'm ready for it all to be over. I've poured so much sunk cost fallacy into the project that I can't really justify continuing to pour blood, sweat, and tears into it knowing it's probably just going to fizzle out on launch and be commercially non-viable.
The amount of work it will take to get this project anywhere near what my vision was for it, from this point with all the engine overhauls and compatibility issues...it just doesn't seem feasible or worthwhile anymore.
This experience (among a few others) has opened my eyes to how god-awful the socio-economic paradigm we live in truly is. It has crushed the very reasonable ask of being able to work at a decent pace on creative projects and make enough money to live.
Every opportunity I had to do something with this company has resulted in either an uphill battle with the hopes of getting some crumbs at the end, or an outright crushing defeat.
We've been stiffed on contract work, we have been passed over for funding by publishers, denied dev kits by console manufacturers, and the whole time governments and agencies have had their hands in both of my pockets taking the full extent of taxes and fees out of the very meager earnings we have managed to accrue, while much larger and successful businesses take easily forgiven PPP loans and have their tax and fee burdens offset.
Now, the game is a Ship of Theseus which barely resembles what it was when I started on it. I just hope that it has stood to serve as an outlet for someone over the years because it stopped being that for me around April or so of 2016. At this point, the project is feeling to me like a "Synecdoche, New York" level curse and I have to allow the sunk cost fallacy to be put aside.
I do feel like there is a story to tell and a gameplay experience in here somewhere, I just don't know how I'm going to go about coaxing it out of me and making something tangible out of it from here.
I hope this message is well received and is paired with an understanding that I am bringing this to you from a place of authentic appreciation for each and every one of you, and for each contributor to this project over the years. I don't like this outcome, and I have hoped for the last several years that I could avoid it, but unless I take a genuine step back and earnestly evaluate what this company's place is in my life I won't be able to make any decision that makes sense for myself or anyone else involved.
Final Thoughts and Credits
I will be keeping the title on the steam store with this announcement, because I do intend on working on another project soon. I have developed a lot of skills over the last 7.5 years and I am confident that starting fresh from the planning phase I would have the tools to get a smaller title out the door in a more reasonable time frame.
if you still want to support future endeavors, you are still welcome and encouraged to purchase this title, and play what it was when I was proud of it, and to get an idea of the state of mind we were in when we decided to put it out there into the world.
Thank you all so much for your support over this time. I can't stress enough how much it has meant to me and how much I value your words of encouragement and financial commitments to our tiny studio effort.
I'd like to offer thanks to everyone who has had a part in contributing to this title over the last 7 years:
ART
WIL WHALEN
JEFF ZHANG
GARY DAVIS
ED SIBLEY
OLIVER SIBLEY
CAMERON ASBURY
JACOB HOWELL
LEVI LILLY
ATHENA DANIELS
JACK DANIELS (That's me!)
MUSIC/SFX
WIL WHALEN
MATT DE SOUZA
ATHENA DANIELS
JACK DANIELS
LEVEL DESIGN
COCO DANIELS
ED SIBLEY
OLIVER SIBLEY
JACOB HOWELL
CAMERON ASBURY
LEVI LILLY
CHRISTINA D'ATTOMO
GARY DAVIS
JACK DANIELS
PROJECT CONSULTATION
KENT SIMON
ENGINE DEVELOPMENT
JEFF ZHANG
NICK MARTIN
ED SIBLEY
CAMERON ASBURY
JACOB HOWELL
LEVI LILLY
IZZY BENNETT
GARY DAVIS
DIRECTOR
JACK DANIELS
Thank you all so much for joining us on this voyage. I hope we can set sail with you again soon.
Development is not dead!
Howdy, Jack here.
I know a lot of yall have been wondering why there have been no updates to this game in like...a long time?
Well, the folks that have been hanging out in our discord, following us on twitter, and those that know us personally know that there have been a lot of things going on behind the scenes this whole time, and a lot of things that have come up in our personal lives that took Lasso Games off track a bit.
But! This is not a bad news announcement. It's a good news announcement! A lot of major overhauls are underway that will completely transform the gameplay experience of this title.
A couple examples:
The combat system is getting completely overhauled. We are looking to totally transform the way combat is done in this game. As much as I love the old school Castlevania style combat, we just don't think that it is going to make for an engaging play experience in 2021. So we are adding attack combos per weapon, blocking, a sprint mechanic, the ability to walk backwards and parry/riposte to the arsenal of combat options for The Captain.
Shields are gonna be a thing! You will be able to block more effectively with them, or bash with them so you can actually use them as a melee weapon in a pinch! This will tie in with the new stamina bar somehow and affect your combat options to make the whole experience more fun and strategic.
The enemy AI is getting WAY more sophisticated. Each enemy went from having a handful of properties like HP and move speed to a whole bunch of robust and customizable advanced behaviors. This overhaul will allow us to create a broader array of enemy types that are smarter and more engaging to encounter. Now they will do things like be alerted, back away from you, duck, block, have attack sequences, and so on. And this is all just from any standard enemy, not even counting bosses or advanced enemy types.
You will be able to dual wield! Like a proper pirate, you can have two swords if you want, a sword and a pistol, sword and shield, a two-handed weapon, or the classic sword and sub-weapon combo. We've had to totally overhaul the way the weapon logic works to make these configurations possible but it should make for a robust and dynamic play experience as you travel Cerrawyn.
We are experimenting with some new visual effects to help us clean up your screens and collect garbage from our code. As badly as we wanted to be NES-Pure early on, we realized that it was coming at a great cost to our artistic vision and limiting us in ways that just kept us from being able to get our art into your hands. Subtle things like particle effects and shaders will help us to reach our visual style goals more effectively without having to spend time trying to fit our round peg into the square hole of the medium.
As always, these steps take time and effort and energy that has been in short supply these days. Many of us are struggling to survive these days and have faced a terrible onslaught of tribulations this world has brought upon us. We cannot thank all of you enough for your support over the years as we work on this at a pace that keeps us all from losing our sanity. There will surely be releases in the future that have bugs, or features that need to be addressed. But after all is said in done, we are most interested in bringing this project to you as a fully realized work that is FUN first and foremost.
Thank you all so much for your continued support, and as always, follow us on social media for more updates:
Jack here again, I know it's been a very long time.
Before we get started, I just want to remind and reassure everyone that this project is still very much underway and we have no plans of giving up on it. At all. Ever. It's going to be finished and that's that, so you are stuck with us.
This update is primarily bug fixes, but there has been quite a bit of content added that I think will give mid-game play a lot more mileage. We are in the middle of a major re-balancing so feedback on weapons, item drop frequency, and overall gameplay is always welcome.
Do be aware we did not fix every bug so the forums will still act as the top priorty bug report but there are many channels to get your feedback to us for action.
**WARNING: YOU WILL NEED TO START A NEW GAME FILE DUE TO IMPROVEMENTS WITH THE SAVE SYSTEM. THESE WILL ALLOW US TO IMPLEMENT MULTIPLE SAVE SLOTS IN FUTURE UPDATES.**
Here we go:
New Stuff:
Added some Halloween looking objects in East Landing.
Changed up dialogue and layout of Port de la Douleur warehouse.
Made it so weapons don't disappear when you die, just sub weapons.
Added Hammer
Added Whip
Added Hand Axe
Added slight pitch variation to talking to make it a little less grating.
New narrative events in Corydon.
Added narrative events in Kazan Volcano.
Special music for Lava Twins battle.
[Img]https://i.imgur.com/vklYdS0.gif
Bugfixes:
Increased drop rate of potions and mana potions from chests.
Fixed a ridiculous bug where a phony sword prop would drop when you equip the axe tool.
Added Banker to Ciudad del Viento
Fixed bug with walking farmer stepping on Jonathan dialogue in the first Horizon Village visit
Opening inventory in mid-air now returns state and animation to idle.
Brackshire and Wakeford fish vendors now sell fish by x15 instead of 1.
Added a collision box to Bleak Fjord Pier to prevent you from swimming to your death.
Lahitte food item vendors don't give you mana potions now.
Put an invisible wall on Zuotian pier. Quests can no longer be repeated after they've been completed.
Fixed a bug with spawning random 2h weapons from the tools menu.
Improvements to the blob enemies to prevent them from getting stuck in patrol zones and to clean up their smaller forms.
Added a script for general enemy collisions but no invis colliisions.
Improvements to item gravity to keep them from snapping to moving platforms.
Fixed arrows so they will stick in the wall and you can hop up them, and they now despawn properly.
Made bombs and items clip through the semi-solid platforms, though they can still get stuck inside the platform if they reach apogee and start to fall even the slightest bit.
Fixed hurt sfx for noarm skeleton and takeshi I.
Made fishing net return when hit the sea floor and made groups of 3 fish worth 3 food.
Fixed giant vendor in Bleak Fjord
As always, be sure to click Follow to be notified of announcements like these! Also, check us out on social media. It always helps to have people like and share our social media content. If you're on facebook or twitter, look us up! :D
Been awhile since the last update, but we've got a big hinge in place now to springboard gameplay to the end of the main story.
Here's some of the stuff that got done:
<*>Added a few Sea Devils players around Cerrawyn. Currently playing the game has no stakes or real benefit, but it's coming!
<*> Added some dialogue lines to late-game bosses to explain what to do.
<*> Added basic animation to the bear quest mini-boss.
<*> Fixed mana drops to occur after you can cast spells.
<*> Added self-portrait to the wisp at the end of the huntzone to prompt return to ship.
<*> Added some new mechanics to the big treant boss fight to make it less lame.
If you are in the Huntington, WV area this Saturday, Sep. 1, come to Big Sandy arena and see us at Power Up Retro Gaming Convention and play Levantera and MiniLAW and meet up! :D
As always, be sure to click Follow to be notified of announcements like these! Also, check us out on social media. It always helps to have people like and share our social media content. If you're on facebook or twitter, look us up! :D
There was a window-sizing bug that went unnoticed for a few days that was induced in one of the recent updates, and it is now patched.
Thanks for the reports in the bugs forums!
Still working on the Linux controller crashes, hope to have something in there in the next update.
0.3.0 - It's been a bit!
Howdy!
Took a long Memorial Day vacation to meet up with my family and some of the long distance dev team! Was good to get together, but ready to get back to work.
Couple big things we are trying out in this build.
One major bug that was fixed was highlighted in a couple stream events I had the pleasure of seeing last week, and that was a sequencing bug with Crow's back story.
The flashback sequence should be a little more palatable now and less prone to bugs.
Another thing we are kicking around is a prototype of a card game called "Sea Devils." It's going to be a narrative device for another crew back story but if I can get the gameplay nice and balanced we will probably deploy players around the world of Cerrawyn and implement some kind of extra-curricular gameplay goals. :)
If you can figure out how the system works, feel free to critique it and let me know how I can make it better!
New patch should be up for Linux too, just haven't had a chance to address the Xinput bug yet. Sorry, still working on that one :(
As always, be sure to click Follow to be notified of announcements like these! Also, check us out on social media. It always helps to have people like and share our social media content. If you're on facebook or twitter, look us up! :D
I got a Linux build pushed out to a new OS depot and updated the store page. I got the Linux build to compile on a VM but I can't exactly playtest it in that kind of environment, so the ball is in your court!
I added the Linux depots to the default branch and will try to keep them up to date alongside the Windows builds.
Let me know if you have any questions or bugs with installation and I will try to get them sorted!
Also, let all your $root sudo apt-get install -y cmd penguin hat notwindows buddies know there is another game out there for you! (Sorry I'm a Linux noob, forgive me!)
As a tiny indie studio trying to make ends meet, the future of our development depends on your support, mostly in the form of spreading the word! Always hit us up on social media and help us get the word out!
As always, be sure to click Follow to be notified of announcements like these! Also, check us out on social media. It always helps to have people like and share our social media content. If you're on facebook or twitter, look us up! :D
Jack again. This time with patch notes for a minor update.
I have spent a lot of time in the last 2 weeks fixing bugs from the forums and adding new content to Cerrawyn! Hope you guys have a more enjoyable play experience and find some new things in familiar places.
New Stuff
<*> Key Customizer works and saves from an active game session. Technically it works from the menu screen too, but it doesn't pass through to a new game.
<*> Some slight improvements to Crew AI. They should put up a better fight in the hunt zones now, though they still have a long way to go with navigating terrain and having cool animations.
<*> Added a tiny island somewhere with a fun crossover from another developer friend. (If you haven't checked out Ocmo on iOS, you really ought to!
<*> Added a little location display for when you first set foot on land. Should help players keep some familiarity in the world and also assist with bug reporting!
<*> Added a couple of 2h weapons.
<*> Made skeletons weak to blunt weapons.
<*> Added a few visual effects to various game objects
<*> Added some new tile decorations to various parts of the world map.
<*> Added another treasure map location.
<*> Added a quest sequence that will reveal some backstory for a crew member!
Bugfixes
<*> Fixed some freezes with enemy objects in huntzones and some of the Kagawa wilderness areas.
<*> Removed red color from enemies and improved the way the flicker effect works.
<*> Fixes to female hero that was preventing bows and guns from working.
<*> Fixes to player movement and jumping states that should make platforming action a little smoother.
<*> Added a choice to the warps at the ends of the huntzones.
<*> Improved the map scrap menu.
<*> Wholesale edits to a significant portion of NPC object variables to prevent some crashes and add future functionality to NPCs.
Please continue to feed us bug reports as you find them, we are prioritizing Steam reports over any other source. I'll do my best to keep pushing small patches when there are showstopper bugs and will log every report I get into our fix queue. Thanks for your contributions to the community hub!
As always, be sure to click Follow to be notified of announcements like these! Also, check us out on social media. It always helps to have people like and share our social media content. If you're on facebook or twitter, look us up! :D
This new build has lots of improvements on things that have been reported in the community hub, and a couple of things that have just been outright broken.
Broken stuff:
Key customizer just straight doesn't work for now. The guts are hanging out of it and it is passing inputs from keyboard and controller and storing aliases properly, but we need to do some more work on it to get it to detect key conflicts and some other stuff. We are going to try and have a new build up tomorrow with this fully functional.
Fixed stuff:
<*> Lots of improvements to player movement and collisions. Should be a lot tougher to get stuck in corners, and a lot of jittery movements have been remedied. Also you can change direction properly in midair now.
<*> Quest added, see if you can find it.
<*> Fixes to some area music and odd teleports.
<*> Made bomb explosions break breakables.
<*> Added some stuff to "log entries" to tell you stuff about the game when some events happen.
Feel free to keep hitting us up with bug reports. There may be some other new bugs induced that we may have missed. Thanks for your contributions to the community hub!
As always, be sure to click Follow to be notified of announcements like these! Also, check us out on social media. It always helps to have people like and share our social media content. If you're on facebook or twitter, look us up! :D
