Playtest 1.0.2.8d version of the Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn alpha has been released!
# Audience
Improved character collisions during the audience in the third month (M3). This should potentially reduce this problem with characters walking into each other and blocking each other and audiences.
Improved camera movement in third month (M3) dialogues,
The peasant woman from the looted village, Guillemette, from M2 should appear in M3 if the player commanded her to do so.
In the conversation with merchant Jaques, options to give him grain when we don't have any should not appear (the lord is not going to go into debt).
Priest Simon should correctly return to the audience when the player so decides. Unfortunately, there may still be bugs in his return dialogue, which will be fixed in the next patch.
# City
Peasant Pierre and the refugees associated with him should correctly respond to the choices the player made in the first month's audience (M1).
Consul's son Jehan should correctly respond to the choices the player made in first month audience (M1).
Minor corrections to the dialogues of the background townsfolk.
# Castle
Guiscard should no longer try unsuccessfully to enter the audience room through the locked door. We force the door to open first.
Hiding redundant choices (e.g. Guiscard at the beginning of M2 and the two options with the map question).
# Map
The levitating lord's hands will no longer remain level when the player exits map mode.
# Graphics
Improved collision, which will allow enable player to enter the warehouse.
# Audio
The hammer sound has disappeared from M1. In fact, the hammer sounds have been removed from the entire game. They will return in the next patch, but only to places where they actually should be, e.g. to workers rebuilding the inn.
# Other
Talking to Roland's sergeant in the courtyard in M2 will no longer overwrite the player's decision from M1.
Minor corrections of typos and graphics.
Known major bugs we are working on:
The blocking of the third audience, and in the first place problems with Father Simon when he is sent away to return later. Further problems with merchant Jaques and peasant Jacob returning during the third audience.
Dialogues in the city that don't work, including the lack of character response to our decisions from the first audience.
Playtests have started!
Dear nobles,
we are launching the second playtest of the fragment of Noble's Life alpha version.
You should have access to the build within an hour of the publication of this news. If it does not appear after this time, we strongly recommend restarting Steam. However if this doesn't help, let us know, e.g. via a comment to this message.
We would also like to take this opportunity to encourage you to read the information about the content of the playtest in the news Noble's Life playtests start next week!, and, above all, to complete the survey after playing the shared fragment of the game. Survey results have a real impact on the future of Noble's Life.
Unfortunately, we also discovered some more serious bugs at the last moment, which can block the end of the demo when choosing more obscure options. However, we did not want to delay the playtest again. If there were problems please report them on our Discord ( https://discord.gg/b5xCPD5WbQ ).
We are planning the first hotfix for tomorrow, or Monday-Tuesday at the latest. It willl fix at least some of the most pressing issues.
And... despite this, and the fact that it's still a fairly early version we hope you'll have fun with it!
Noble's Life playtests in just two days!
Dear nobles,
Unfortunately, we still need a bit of time.
Over the past week we've fixed and improved a lot of things, but there are still a few key bugs left that we deemed serious enough not to release the playtest with them.
Most of our developers are finishing fixing them as we publish this news, but those extra two days are also to make sure they haven't broken something even more. Still, it will be both this week, and in November.
That doesn't mean we've fixed everything. After all, Noble's Life is still late, but still, alpha. And because of that, a lot of things: be it animations, sounds or dialogues can have some problems, but we mean for you to at least not get blocked anywhere.
We hope that any issues will be compensated by the fact that we will show almost twice as much game content as in the previous playtests in February!
we know that we made you wait for quite a while, but we are on the final stretch! Thus we can finally announce that the second playtests of Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn will begin on Tuesday 28.11.2023, sometime after 1pm.
What will be available in the playtest?
As for the content of the shared fragment of the game, we will present additions and features we announced during the October Steam Next Fest (details here).
More specifically, the first two rounds (months in the game) shown during the February playtests got significantly improved (also thanks to your suggestions!) and, most importantly, developed further. Hence, you will be able to explore the city after the enemy invasion and have a lot of additional interactions.
The city has not yet fully recovered, but the player's actions can speed that up.
There will also be queue control, warehouse and letter writing mechanics, and a few other minor ones. In addition, we will share a fragment of the third, never-before-presented month/turn, the content of which we do not want to spoil, although it will introduce the beginnings of many promised mechanics.
You will also see and hear major changes in graphics and audio. We added, among others, more than twice as many animations as the version of the game from the February playtest had. In terms of sound, we increased the number of different sounds to make the environment feel more alive. Unfortunately, there will be no dubbing yet. Yes, it is planned, but we should expect this addition in the next presented version of the game. We are sticking to our plan to show the game multiple times before its premiere and benefit from your opinions.
Additionally, unfortunately, there are still some minor bugs in the game, animation stutters, missing sounds, strange behaviour of NPCs, etc. We have already fixed the most serious problems, we will continue to correct the minor ones until the start of the playtests and also during them. Although, it is possible that we may not fix all those issues by then. However, we did not want to postpone the playtests any further, and ultimately the game is still a late alpha version.
How to join the playtests?
To join the playtests, you must be logged in to your Steam account. Go to the Noble's Life Steam page, scroll down a bit and click Request Access.
The people who signed up for the first playtest in February 2023, do not have to ask for access again. We are going to grant it to those players.
Important information - people who did not participate in the first playtest will be additionally informed via mail about the beginning of the playtest. This will not be the case for the people who participated in the first playtest (that's how Steam works).
Therefore, we encourage you to follow our Steam page and add Noble's Life to your wishlist and follow it, because then information about news like this will be more accessible.
The playtest will last about two weeks, but the precise ending date will be given after they start.
If you have any questions - feel free to ask in the comments here or on our Discord server ( https://discord.gg/6TS85b3PGY ).
We hope you will like the new version of the early stages of Noble's Life!
Noble's Life demo delayed
Dear nobles,
Unfortunately, once again, we have to delay the next presentation of the game and thus cancel the showing of the demo at October's Steam Next Fest.
Before we explain why, we want to highlight that this does not mean that there will not be another presentation of the game. On the contrary - the demo, already out of the festival, will appear in November 2023.
What happened
Bugs. By the time the previous news was published, the demo was almost ready, but we over-optimistically hoped that we would be able to fix all the problems that arose with such a large expansion of the game in a few weeks. We even crunched a little, but it still wasn't enough.
New month, modification of the queue for audience, warehouses, a city to explore with dozens of events, a great many consequences of the choices of the first months of the game, more options only for specific origins, letter writing, better representation of coats of arms, new characters, option improvements, more extended scenes, a handful of secrets, etc. There were plenty of new features.
However, they have resulted in the build no longer being stable. Fortunately, there are no bugs that would block our work on the game in some serious way, what’s more - the demo can be completed, knowing which options are the problem, but we did not want to publish it in such a version. This is because it would have to contain solutions like: avoid exiling François if you previously ordered the innkeeper to return, as this will block the dialogue with Pierre.
Moreover, a bug in which a beggar when we give 1 écu of alms takes 75 quarters of grain from us (but not the loss of that 1 écu) can be funny. On the other hand, the fact that with a particular origin and choices our advisor, Guiscard, leaves us alone in an empty audience room for eternity, leaving us with no way to continue the game is not funny (well, maybe a little funny, but you know what I mean). We want to get rid of the bugs that we know about, so that we can play the game smoothly and so that we can again gather valuable feedback from players.
Sometimes the guards in the Baron's castle are terribly naughty.
So our programmers will fix any problems. Graphic designers, on the other hand, will once again polish the already finished levels to make this part of the game look even better. Anyway, there were quite a few streams (in fact, one is still ongoing at the time of this news) of the early September version of the game on the Steam page of Noble's Life, and I hope you can see significant progress relative to February 2023. Although we point out that we avoided showing there some of the functionality that will appear in the demo.
And our designers will make sure that all the commas are in place and that even the strangest combinations of options are included. We already have quite a few interesting options hidden behind conditions such us: player origin, acquired information, being in the right place at the right time or making certain decisions. Sometimes each of these conditions must be met for a new option or dialogue to appear. With a single playthrough, you certainly won't even meet all the major characters, and we hope this does a good job of showing the depth of the game.
What's next
As we wrote at the beginning in November 2023 for the second time we will give you time-limited access to the initial part of the game. Probably in the form of a demo, maybe another playtest. For sure, the next time (and with another portion of news) we will appear in February 2024 at the next Steam Next Fest.
Moreover, these two events will certainly not be the only ones before the release. Before the game is released, we still intend to present, improve and develop it.
We also thank you for your support and many kind words about the game. Recently, quite a few people have become interested in Noble's Life, which makes us very happy and energizes us to keep going!
Noble's Life on Steam Next Fest
Dear nobles,
sadly we will not come through with the playtests in September 2023. We want to show you a lot of new content and that requires time, even though we already have most of it implemented it caused many bugs.
We prefer to spare you from witnessing the lord's space program, e.g. flying guards and catapults, but also many less funny bugs. So that's why we have been working hard.
At the same time the wait will not be long. And that's because Noble's Life demo will become available during Steam Next Fest this fall!
From October 9th to 16th you will be able to check out how the game is doing. You do not have to sign up for it, all you have to do is to find the game on Steam, download the demo and play.
Moreover, we are not backing out of the playtests!
We hope that during the festival we will once again gather a lot of valuable feedback on how to improve the game. That is why we are planning to hold the playtest at the end of the year or right at the beginning of 2024. We are nonetheless hopeful that we will manage to organize them this year.
What is in the demo?
We can also write more about the content of the demo which coincides with what we wrote about the content for the second playtest.
We are going to show you a big part of the third round (third month), so those who have already played will see the continuation of the game, and those playing for the first time will have access to more content right away.
There will of course be, as described in the previous DD (Dev Diary#14 - City exploration and playtest plan), a city to explore. Besides illustrating the consequences of your decisions it will also contain various interactions, some smaller, some bigger.
Additionally we have added multiple minor functionalities. From ones that give you more control over the audiences, through resource magazines, to a letter writing system.
We are constantly polishing the graphics and the equally important audio. In this version, sadly, there is no dubbing (although we are working hard on it!), but there will be much more to hear in the game.
When it comes to the visual design we have made considerable changes. A lot of attention was devoted to the animations to make the characters more lifelike and some events more realistic. We changed the lighting, improved hundreds of models, including the characters' faces.
We are still far from a final version, but much has improved since February. See for yourself in those two short gifs that are showing the current state of the game:
P.S. We know the quality of the gifs is like recording with a potato, but Steam heavily limits file size. Please visit our Twitter/X where we've uploaded it in better quality.
We are going to write more about the presence of Noble's Life at the festival by the end of the month.
We are both excited and a little nervous about this more prominent presentation of the game, but we still hope that you will enjoy it!
Dev Diary #14 - City exploration and playtest plan
Dear nobles,
we are back with the first Dev Diaries this year (how time flies!) and in accordance with our preview we'd like to tell you about one of the most important characters in Noble's Life - the city.
We have already covered the certain level of autonomy of the capital of the player's estates (in Dev Diary#12 - Power and faith), we showed its appearance, we promised free exploration, but today we are explaining some of its functions.
There can be many villages, but rather a dozen than several dozens. Additionally player's character has the ability to create new ones, and even conquer others or lose them. Some of the villages can even come close to the level of a small town. In addition, it is possible to increase or decrease the land's borders or even search for resources, but the city will remain one. In Noble's Life we assume the role of a small landowner.
Due to its uniqueness, city will have its own economic system (that we are going to cover another time) separate from estate map. Industry will appear only in the capital, because it is there that the craftsmen's workshops will be established (that's another subject we are going to return to).
Additionally, shutting yourself in the castle and ruling from there is not always a good idea. That's why a trip to the city and examining the situation that you are supposed to decide about, may allow you to acquire new information coming in handy during the audience.
Consequences of the decisions
However, the main purpose of the city will be to illustrate the player's decisions made as part of the main mechanics of the game, i.e. the audiences (described for example in Dev Diary #11 - Audiences).
One of the easy-to-picture examples of decisions: if the player decides to support the inn's rebuilding, they will see it actually rebuilding in the city. If not… its ruins will blemish the city. At the same time, the renovated building itself will not only be a nice-looking gold generator for the player's character's treasury. If the player feels like it, they can enter the inn and hear about their generosity from the inn's owner, listen to the gossip or have a beer.
You won't help people in need? Expect to see beggars in the city. You help wounded veterans, you will see a hospital where they are recovering. Moreover, you may visit them, and once they are healed they might even be recruited again.
Additionally, shutting yourself in the castle and ruling from there is not always a good idea. That's why a trip to the city and examining the situation that you are supposed to decide about, may allow you to acquire new information coming in handy during the audience.
This is the aspect of city that we want to show during the next playtests the most.
The estate's capital is supposed to be developing. At first it's recovering from the damage caused by the invasion (if you don't know what that's about, check Dev Diaries#8 - Kingdom Reborn out) so with every month there will be new places available to see, while others' conditions will change. The latter means that the clues that are available in one round, may be gone in the next one.
Gradually, there will also be more places to visit inside, such as the above-mentioned inn. And it's worth mentioning that by going out we don't stop being a baron. We can, for example, call for our soldiers to do something. This aspect is something we are working on and we will do our best to make it available in some form during the playtests.
Second playtests
And finally, a few specifics about the upcoming playtests. We still want them to take place soon. The most probable term is September 2023, although it's unlikely going to be the beginning of the month. The sign-up will again start in advance.
We assume the playtests will last about two weeks, maybe a little longer, maybe shorter.
As part of the available content, we are going to share the first two rounds (two months) of the game and probably a fragment of the third one. As part of this, you will be able to visit the city described in this DD, although still in a rather unfinished version. In a nutshell: we want to share almost twice as much as we showed in the first playtests!
We believe that this will help you see how many options the full game will have to offer and how much the decisions you make can affect the gameplay.
We will cover the details of the second playtests soon, most likely in the second half of August.
Playtest summary and the project's future
Dear nobles,
Once again it's been a while since our last update. We hope that it won't become a habit of ours.
We'd like to assure you that it was not due to the suspension of our work, but on the contrary - because of the intensive development of Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn!
The future of the project
Sometimes to hear someone talk about the future of a project is a sign of bad news, but not in this case. Not only are we going to continue working on the game, but also over the last few months the core of our team grew by 50%.
Additionally, as you can see by the changes on our Steam page, we acquired a publisher whose support is going to help us continue our work. However, it's not going to affect our creative freedom and the vision we want to implement. The bad news may be that we will almost certainly not finish the game, as we had originally planned a year ago (in this Dev Diary), in the first quarter of 2024. Many tasks just require a lot more work than we had assumed at the time, and our aim is to achieve as high quality of the game as possible. We still are, despite the significant reinforcement, a small indie team.
All we can say at the moment is that we'll do everything we can to bring the game to you in some form in 2024, but we don't want to give a more precise date yet.
Second playtests
As we have already signaled before, we want to give you access to the game and use your feedback to improve Noble's Life. Hence, the February playtests were not the last.
Moreover, we want the second playtests to take place rather soon. We are aiming for the end of August or September 2023.
A slightly larger part of the game will be available for the tests, as well as functionalities that were not there before. We will describe it more precisely in July. First and foremost we are going to present the things that you have pointed out as the most important.
Playtests summary
Us taking your feedback and opinions seriously is not a mere slogan. We'd like to thank each and every one of the thousands of you who played our game. We are even more thankful to those hundreds of you who took their time to describe the bugs or express their opinion in our survey!
We analyzed all the answers, read all the opinions. It's a very important guide for us for the further development of the game.
We were very happy that the vast majority of you (82,33%) rated the game positively. We are going to do our best to make sure that those less content of you change their minds if only we are given the chance.
The answers to the question Which of the listed game series have you played? made it clear that most of you are experienced players. Here you can see exactly how many percent of respondents played a given game/series.
We are aware of the graphic issues. What we presented was still a pre-alpha version. We corrected and still are correcting the lighting, models, NPCs and animations. I hope that you will like the outcome, although it's worth mentioning already that it still will not be the final look of the game.
We were also calmed by the fact that the majority of you hadn't experienced technical issues or they were not serious issues. It doesn't mean we are not debugging the game. Since February hundreds of bugs have been fixed.
The picture shows the distribution of answers to the question: Which of the announced features did you miss the most in the shared fragment of the game? The answers are: Free city exploration (27%), More extensive economy (16%), Sieges (12%), Raids (9%); Expanded estate map, Manor, Player character family (7% each); Other (8%), Nothing (6%).
Getting back to what we want to present in the further updates. Above all it's the free city exploration that most of the polled (27%) missed. The ability to freely walk around the city that the player, as the baron, rules and see with his own eyes the effects of his decisions is something we hope will make the game even more interesting. It currently is our top priority. Although a more extensive economy (16%) is also high on the priorities' list.
However, it is the first mechanic that we will focus on in the next Dev Diary in July showing how it's going to work (with examples from the game!). Of course we won't reveal everything so that you can see for yourself during the playtests.
Once again, thank you for your interest in Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn!
Noble's Life's first playtests will end on 17.02.
Dear nobles,
Thank you for so much support and feedback on the first platyests of the alpha version of Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn.
We really received a lot of useful information for which we are very thankful!
Thank you for all the completed surveys, and we strongly encourage those who have played and not done so to answer them. The results from it will be very important for us in decisions about the game development.
We would also thank you for the huge number of suggestions and bugs reported via Steam or Discord. We will try to improve and improve as much as possible.
However, playtests of this type should not take too long hence we will end them on Friday 17.02. More precisely the closing, from our perspective (GMT+1), will take place on Saturday afternoon to make sure that we do not interrupt someone playing from a distant time zone.
We also declare right away - it is almost certain that this is not the last presentation of the game this year. We will be back in a few months filled with game development with an even better version of Noble's Life. Until then, we'll keep you posted on our progress.
Thanks again to everyone who took part, and for those who got access but didn't try, let us inform you that this week is the last chance to do so.
Alpha version 1.0.1.9 of Noble's Life: Kingdom Reborn Playtest has just been released!
It took a few days, but we think we have fixed the most severe bug of those reported i.e. the blocker/infinity loop in the courtyard/at the first dialogue with the advisor (Guiscard).
# Courtyard
Blocker/infinity loop intro or dialogue with the advisor, Guiscard, should no longer happen.
# Audience
Blocker/infinity loop in second month/turn (M2) when player character ordreded (in M1) Jehanne and/or Pierre to return should no longer happen.
It should no longer be possible to enter the audience room before Guiscard which caused bugs.
# Other
Minor fixes of typos and graphics.
Some badly positioned animations have been fixed so characters should "sink to the ground" less often.
Player characters no longer discredit the value of their resources at Jehan. Text of problematic selection has been shortened and changed.
Known major bugs we are working on:
Sometimes interacting with the estate map causes you to fall under it. We are still investigating the sporadic appearance of this bug.
Sometimes it is possible to click on a member of the audience who is leaving, which causes part of his dialogue to be repeated. We know the cause, a fix will appear in the next patch.
Characters in the audience may bump against each other. This should not completely block the game, at most slightly slow it down. We are in the process of fixing this.
