The life of Margrave of Amberspiel is full of concerns and worries. You have to balance between the interests of your vassals, resolve crises and at the same time remain an exemplary ruler worthy of the Sovereign's trust. That's quite a feat!
But even busy feudal lords sometimes get an evening of leisure. Do you want to breathe a sigh of relief and press “End of Turn”? Do not rush, because soon you will have many opportunities to spend the time with benefits… or at least to have fun.
Now we are actively developing core gameplay and we are pleased to introduce the Activities. This mechanic gives you more control over gameplay, more customization options, and lets you play your character the way you want.
Work on this mechanic started with the thought that our Margrave, like a prospector in an adit, is constantly working: resolving disputes, executing and pardoning, organizing city building and dealing with plenty of other state issues.
Such a gameplay had two significant issues: firstly, the player mainly reacted to external events such as crises, conflicts, demands, always taking the role of the responder. In addition, as our testers noticed, suffered the immersion - it felt not like the life of the feudal lord in its entirety, but rather like an unceasing job. Truly, where have you seen a feudal lord who does nothing but works? That's how we arrived at the idea of giving the players control over what Konrad does in his spare time.
First of all, we asked: what, in principle, can a feudal lord do at his leisure? We thought, read and googled and an approximate list appeared (It is typical that the first one there is the activity “get drunk”).
The list looked like this.
This list was to be reworked into mechanics. At the very least, all this splendor had to be categorized. After all, we won't force the player to choose from a few dozen options every time. We tried different options. For example, we divided the areas of activity into economy, war and religion, into duty and leisure, into regular and unique activities.
Ultimately, we decided to divide the activities according to their gameplay functions or, in other words, according to the game parameters that each group affects. The end result is this system:
Faction-related activities: temple visits, entertainment, and walks around the city will change your relationship with the Church, the Holders, or the Trade League, respectively. Most of the time the change will even be positive! Moreover, it could affect both a faction as a whole and its specific representatives.
Resource-related activities: such as conducting an audit and holding the trial will test your worth as a ruler and give you a good chance to earn gold or raise authority.
Activities related with Margrave himself: reading books from his father's library, self-improvement and… sleep. These activities do not seem like the others, and for a good reason. We'll tell more about them soon!
The Margrave's leisure will begin with a window like this
But how does all of that translate into gameplay? In quiet moments, the game will give you a “Free Evening”, opening a separate menu where you can choose something to your liking. The chosen activity will not only give you a direct and known effect (for example, visiting a temple will have a positive effect on the loyalty of the clergy), but will also let you play a small, two or three stages long, thematic event with unforeseen meetings, incidents and dilemmas. You will run into your old acquaintances or ordinary subjects as you walk the streets; discover unexpected items of expenditure during audits; be forced to choose between utility and justice during a trial.
During any event, even recreational, you should follow common sense and knowledge from the game's Codex. Unfortunate decisions could inflict heavy losses. After all, the world of Demesne seems calm and blissful only at first glance. In fact, it is harsh and does not forgive mistakes. We hope you will appreciate this combination of story-based roleplaying and “numerical” game mechanics.
That's not the end of Margrave Konrad's leisure, because the next dev diary will be devoted to the mechanics of Ambition. Unlike Activities, Ambitions require constant time investment (maybe you'll even have to miss a couple of feasts!), but in return, provide long-term benefits that change the characteristics of your character and domain.
Stay with us!
And make sure to add Sovereign's Will to your Steam wishlist if you haven't already for some reason!
We have been silent for a long time and decided to fix it.
Development is moving slower than we would like, but it is still ongoing. Every now and then life throws delays and interruptions, but Sovereign's Will is a dream project and we will keep working no matter what happens.
***
We’ve been working on several new game mechanics to make the game experience more complex and diverse.
📜 The first is the mechanic of activities. From time to time, you will get the Free Time event with several options to spend time. Do you want to sit in the library poring over ancient volumes or maybe you could visit the ancestral chapel or walk around your capital? Will you order a hunt and a noisy feast for your feudal friends?
Each choice not only affects the resources, but also gives special events: an accident could happen on a hunt, an ancient treasure might be hidden in the chapel, and in the city you can hear bards singing praise or cursing you for cruelty.
Currently in the demo version the player only reacts to the events that the game offers him. The activities will introduce an element of direct control into the gameplay.
📜 The second mechanic we're working on is the Council mechanic. The game has 15 characters with written biographies and personalities and for now these are just portraits on the map, but soon you will be able to interact with them directly.
Seats on the Council are limited, you will have to decide which characters are most useful at this stage of the game. Each of them has unique properties, both positive and negative. For example, the scholar feudal lord Balduin von Rassum will give a bonus to the economy and construction, but prestigious noble dynasties will be unhappy that you have given a position to someone from such a humble family. By accepting Olivia Hanström into the Council, you will be able to improve relations with the indigenous people of the Ikdari, but this will scandalize the clergy and Olivia herself may have more expectations from you.
The Council will react to your actions. The peace-loving characters like Balduin or Reverend Albert are disgusted by cruelty and resent the focus on the military while others will eagerly reproach you for showing weakness and pandering to the crowd. Member of the Church will expect you to follow the traditions and won’t support something they would think a heresy. A character dissatisfied with you may even want to leave the Council and you would have to negotiate.
Moreover, it will be necessary to take into account how the characters in the Council fit together. The unbridled Olivia and the prim abbess Augusta hate each other, and this may result in an event for their confrontation. On the other hand feudal lords Gottfried and Gerhard get along pretty well, however that might threaten you with an excessive strengthening of the feudal faction.
⚒ Along with the mechanics, we are gradually improving the audiovisual component. We’ve improved the Codex, redesigned the event window, and added sounds for interacting with various parts of the UI, for example the sounds of turning pages.
📝 We have also more than doubled the pool of random events so that the game grows not only in depth, but also in breadth. Expect new short stories about different aspects of life in your lands from political intrigues to amusing peasant superstitions.
Many thanks to everyone who follows the game. Your support and interest give us the strength to continue! We will try to be more active and publish development news more often.
Long live the Sovereign!
Demo Updated!
Hello to all of you who are waiting and hoping!
We're happy to announce that we're still alive and continuing to make the game despite all the hardships of indie development.
In parallel with the development of the main version of the game we decided to update the demo as well. We would like to report on the latest changes.
We completely rethought the first exposition events. Now you can learn more about the politics and religion of the game world from a special event, neatly woven into the overall story. However, if you want to go straight into the main events and gameplay, this particular event can be skipped freely. We'll be disappointed, but we understand.
The Codex has been updated with new articles on the political structure, history and religion of the Demesne — right down to the commandments and architectural features of the temples. Yes, we're really getting into it.
We developed an innovative system that allows you to freeze the state of the game world at any chosen point in time to randomly reproduce it at the player's command. Simply put, we now have a save and load.
A lot of small interface fixes: colors, borders, interposition of elements. The Fallen One is in the details.
Made a few improvements under the hood, which will allow more efficient creation of localizations (including fanmade).
Created pages on Facebook, Twitter and VKontakte. They can now be accessed via social links in the main menu.
Other little things that we ourselves have already forgotten.
Thank you very much for your support!
DevBlog: February plans
Hello!
We would like to make the development process more transparent, that's why we will try to regularly tell you what we are doing.
In New Year post we said, that we would participate in Steam Game Festival in February. After closely examining our abilities, pros and cons we decided to skip February and take part in Summer Festival. Steam's rules forbid to take part in more than one Festival per year, so we decided to take more time to prepare. It won't affect our update schedule: demo will be updated on time.
And here are our plans on February:
1. Codex overhaul: new articles on politics, history and religion. It is unnecessary to read them all, but if you want to know more about the world of the game, you'll definitely need them.
2. Mechanic of character visits: margrave doesn't have much time to deal with the conspiracy, so you will have to choose people to turn to for help. Powerful merchant, wise keeper of the archives, furious mercenary - everyone of them is your potential ally, but they all want something in return. Every time you hit the road you may gain the upper hand over the conspirators, but also you may lose everything with every wrong move.
In the end the friends you choose will define your ability to cope with the plot and will shape your reign. This is a new part of the story and it all will be available in demo!
3. Save&Load system: due to new additions to the available storyline these functions are vital. How do you think, should the player be given an opportunity to load the game after bad decisions? Share your thoughts in the comments!
4: New random events: about conflicts of peasants and landlords, day-to-day life of native peoples and margrave's personal life. Your reign will become more diversified.
5. And, of course, we will continue polishing and improving the UI, bug fixing and balancing. Please, continue sending us your ideas and reports! We read closely every one of them and take them into consideration when thinking of what to do next.
Happy New Year!
Dear friends!
To all of you who await the update and even those who have lost faith. On these holidays we want to share some words with you.
First of all, despite the lack of news we continue to work on the game. We work on it all the time: when we write new texts, optimize the code, add ideas to the Trello board, when we read books, watch movies and play other games. The more time we devote to the game, the more polished the text and graphics, the clearer becomes our vision.
In 2020 we diligently worked on the game setting, creating and reworking details of the game world, religion, locations and character backgrounds. The result is a large Codex that will serve as the foundation for the further story. We also added new gameplay features: modifiers that change the world and characters that can appear or disappear based on player actions; the ability of factions to fight the player character or support him; and the mechanics of Decrees and Domain management.
During the Steam Festival we have released a demo version and gathered a lot of feedback and wishlists. We saw the visible results of our work for the first time and verified our assumptions concerning the story and game design. The first gameplay videos from random players are invaluable to us.
We still plan to release the engaging feudal simulator and still intend to provide the true narrative variety without false choices. This demands a lot of time to consider, test and polish new additions, but we believe the efforts will be worth it resulting in a gameplay with a freedom of choice and a deeper immersion. In February, the next Steam Festival will begin, and we will present a major update to the demo version - with new mechanics, events, choices, and a significantly redesigned storyline.
Thank you very much for your support! Thank you for believing in self-taught indie developers on their way to the dream game! Your feedback, suggestions, and comments that you leave in our Discord and Steam communities help us determine and correct the way we're going.
