Hey everyone! Firstly, a quick thank you for all your support so far during Next Fest! We've gathered a lot of good feedback and appreciate you all sharing your experience with the demo.
For the next hour and a bit, we'll be answering as many questions as we can in the broadcast's chatroom. Feel free to ask us (almost) anything!
In that spirit, we also invite you to join our Discord server where we've just passed 1000 members. We're always available to answer questions in there as well!
We're extremely excited to announce our participation in Steam Next Fest from February 21-28. For the duration of the event, we'll have a brand new demo available for you to play!
Be sure to join us at 6PM EST on Monday as we broadcast gameplay from the demo and drop a new trailer. We'll also be hanging out in the chat and available to answer any questions you may have!
Happy New Year to everyone! We hope you all had a safe and happy Holiday. With 2021 behind us, we wanted to give you a quick update on the development status of the game. You may have already seen us share this information elsewhere, but for those who who haven't seen it: the game is close to being ready, and we are currently targeting a Q1 2022 release. We have one more demo planned which will be available in late February during the Steam Next Fest. For those who have played the previously available demo, this new one has quite a few changes, and will run the average player about 45-60 minutes. Needless to say, we're very excited about the next few months, and we can't wait for you all to see what we've been working on!
Gameplay Video
In that spirit, we wanted to share a 5minute montage of combat gameplay from our recent playtests. Some enemies and abilities still need a bit of balancing, but we feel the combat is in an enjoyable state at the moment. Hope you like it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcS0X4bQRyg
Character Portraits and Class Skins
Another thing we wanted to share was our finalized character portraits. As mentioned in a previous update, each portrait face is customizable by the player (aside from the wrinkles from aging). There are 5 male and 5 female faces, but their appearance can change quite drastically based on the toggles and choices available. This is something we'll continue to expand upon after release, so you can expect the addition of more faces, hairstyles, tattoos, etc.
We also have added a few alternate skins for each class sprite, so you can more easily tell apart characters that are of the same class.
When you change the hair color and skin tone of a character's portrait, those changes will also be reflected on their sprite. For now, their hairstyle won't change, but we'll be adding that capability sometime after release.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading and we wish you all the best in 2022!
Hey everyone! We've been hard at work these past few months: finalizing quest content, polishing and bug fixing, and creating and implementing some new environments. We're still working long hours at the moment, so this update will be brief, but we did want to share a sneak peek at 4 new environments we've added to the game:
Crypt
Dunes
Marsh
Fort
We hope you like the look of them; let us know what you think! We've tried to make sure that each environment in the game has at least 1 unique hazard or quirk to it to help keep combat fresh. We've also added a few new generic hazards that are shared across multiple environments (such as falling stone from a ceiling). We might go into detail on the different hazard types in a future update if there's interest in that. Either way, you'll be able to see a few of them in the next demo we put out.
The Future
We've previously mentioned in a few places that our current release target is Q1 2022. This remains the case, though we're not ready to give a firm date quite yet. Before we release, we are planning on putting out one more public demo during the Steam Next Fest in February '22. We were considering participating in the one that started yesterday, but since we're only allowed to choose 1 more, we opted for February as it lines up better with our intended release window.
Thanks for reading! Please be sure to wishlist the game, and join our official Discord community if you haven't already done so! We're almost always around and ready to answer any questions you may have. See you next time :)
Combat Improvements
Hey everyone! As mentioned in our last update, we recently made a bunch of combat improvements and QoL changes that we're excited to share with you today. We're also in the process of adding some new combat environments such as the Tundra that you can see in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtZ1m9OcZ7g
1) Movement & Route Planning: You can now plan out your route by holding 'Shift' and drawing along the path you'd like to move. This is useful for avoiding hazards and potential attacks of opportunity. It's not shown in the video, but as an alternative you can now move your character multiple times so long as they haven't travelled their max distance. So if your character's movement value is 3, you can move 2 cells, and still be able to move 1 cell afterwards. So long as you don't take any damage or incur an attack of opportunity, each movement can be undone as well.
2) Line of Sight Changes: We've made a few tweaks to our line of sight mechanic. Like before, larger obstacles will block LoS entirely, and characters you don't have vision of won't be viable targets. Enemies and smaller obstacles (such as a barrel or waist high rock) can partially obscure LoS. If you only have partial line of sight to your target, your attack will do 50% damage. Previously, partial line of sight incurred an accuracy penalty instead of a damage penalty, but for the sake of reducing RNG and saving frustration when an ability misses (thus wasting a charge), we decided to change that mechanic.
3) Swapping Places: We've changed up our swap mechanic do be more useful and easier to use. Swapping allows you to trade places with an adjacent ally. Previously it was a secondary action on the hotbar, and using it expended that character's turn. We felt it was a bit weak however, and ending the character's turn removed some potential player creativity. Swapping is now done during the 'move phase' of a character's turn by clicking on the ally you want to trade places with (so long as they're within movement range). After swapping, the character is still able to act like they normally would after moving.
4) Reviving downed allies: Characters can now help up an adjacent downed ally, which is activated in the same fashion as swapping (targeting a downed ally during the move phase of a character's turn). The other methods for reviving a downed ally are still viable (using a potion or heal ability).
5) Knocking targets into objects: You can now push a target into terrain, objects or another character, triggering extra damage from the impact. Additionally, they become 'Staggered' for 1 round, which prevents them from evading attacks. It's now even more important to pay attention to your positioning and surroundings, as certain enemies can do the same thing to you!
6) Knocking targets into pits: You can now push a target into any pits/holes that exist on the battlefield. Similarly to the above, the target will incur extra damage, but instead of being Staggered they will be Stunned for 1 round. We know it's not entirely realistic that the target survives such a fall, but we didn't want to make it an easy way to insta-kill enemies (and bosses especially!).
7) Unique Traps & Hazards: We'll be giving each combat environment at least 1 unique hazard. The new Tundra tileset has a special terrain type that cracks when stepped on. After being stepped on twice (or if a character stands on it for more than 1 round), the ice and snow will give way and open up into a pit.
8) Day/Night/Weather Effects: For now these are purely visual just to mix things up, but we do have some plans for them to have an impact on combat (such as night time reducing visibility to 2-3 cells out from your characters, or a lightning strike on the battlefield).
That wraps it up for this month's update! As always, be sure to Wishlist & Follow if you haven't already done so. We also welcome you to join our official Discord server where you can stay up to date and interact with us and the rest of the community. See you next time :)
The Overworld
Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well and enjoying the weekend! We've been busy the last few months finalizing and polishing various features of the game, and for this month's update we wanted to primarily share a quick look at our finalized Overworld.
We haven't shown a ton of the map previously, other than a small portion that was in the demo and our most recent trailer. The map has undergone some changes over the course of development and internal playtesting. It now consists of 5 regions (instead of 9) and 18 cities (plus 3 faction hubs). Though it sounds like a significant alteration, the overall size of the map hasn't changed too much. We did this because the original map had some regions that were too similar and redundant (now each region has its own distinct biome), and the size of the counties were too small and cramped with as many cities as we had. We also felt that with our original version it was harder to keep track of and stay connected to the world and its ongoing affairs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGdKJbWjz3s
One of the many changes we've done recently was also finalizing our fonts. Judging by past feedback on our previous fonts, I don't think we'll be able to please everyone, but hopefully the majority of you approve! Above all, we want to make sure both the headers and main text are always clear and readable, which wasn't always the case with the previous pixel art fonts we had.
As we continue to finalize and polish things we'll have more to share with you over the next few updates. Next month you can look forward to seeing some combat functionality and quality of life changes that we're excited to share! Here's a sneak peak at one of the QoL changes: visualized movement paths!
Lastly, we wanted to give a shoutout to our composer, Alex, who recently collaborated on an awesome album with Dark Souls composer Yuka Kitamura. You can listen to it for free on Alex's Bandcamp and YouTube. It's very cool to see him teaming up with such a high profile composer and we're thrilled that he's part of our team :)
That's all for now! If you haven't yet wishlisted the game we would really appreciate you doing so. We'd also love to have you join our growing Discord community! Thanks for reading and we'll see you next time! :)
Mod Support
Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well! Before delving into this month's update, we'd like to welcome you to join our Discord server if you haven't already done so. We're always active in there and it's the best way to stay up to date with the game's development!
We've still been hard at work on the game these past few months, and we wanted to take a some time to talk about our plans are for mod support in The Iron Oath. It's something that has come up recently in our Discord and we felt it would be best covered in a big update!
Mods
The Iron Oath will support a variety of things you can tweak and modify fairly easily. At your disposal will be the ability to make both big and small changes to quests, simulation variables, or custom artwork. For things like quests and in game events we're using modified version of the Yarn tool you can find here. While our version of the tool is pretty custom, quite a bit of the syntax and general tool use is the same so if you want to familiarize yourself with it then I recommend checking it out!
Here is a small sampling of the things you will have easy access to mod when the game is released.
Create new quests or entirely new campaigns that span decades of in game time
Modify basic stats and damage values for player & enemy classes and their abilities
Create custom dungeon layouts and set traps and enemy encounters as you see fit
Create new weapons, gear, consumables, etc (along with your own art) to be set up in the generic loot pool or make something unique to be given as a quest reward
Custom Company & House banner flags as well as custom character portraits
Add new player and enemy color templates
Create custom events for the player to stumble across in the overworld or in a dungeon where you can add your own character interactions, sound effects, and music
Access to most of the variables used for controlling how the game simulation works
Create custom backstories for generated characters and what traits are associated with them
Tons more with other variables you can tweak or icons you can manipulate
The above list is the broad overview of what you'll be able to modify and add to the game through mods but there are plenty of other things to tweak. I hope by the time we launch or shortly after we'll have a wiki setup that details everything but for now I'm going to walk through a couple examples of quests and events.
Sample Quest
-The basic layout of our quest editor with various quests and event nodes
Here is what the quest editor looks like. On the left hand are a list of categories which contains groupings of quests and/or events. On the right hand side of the editor are a group of nodes that contain all the scripting for different quests and events in the selected category. Each node has either details on the quest itself, various events and traps, or scripted encounters associated with it.
-A simple quest can be set up with very few lines of code and then fleshed out with more event node
After selecting a node you can modify any scripts contained inside. From here you can set various rewards, description text, which tileset is associated with the quest, etc. There are dozens of other variables you can configure when creating a quest like making it only appear if there is a plague active in a region or only during times of war. Certain quests can be given to the player through another scripted encounter so it doesn't require quite as many variables to set up since it will be assigned directly to the player from another event. The one above is a repeatable quest you could take when the conditions for it to show in a region occur. It could potentially be found in a city hub given out by one of the town citizens.
When making your own quests you could make a one off repeatable quest that is added to the pool of other quests to be potentially selected by the game for the player to take on or make a multi quest campaign that spans a generation!
Sample Event
Next I wanted to show you how to create a simple event that can be added to a pool of random events you might encounter during a playthrough. This one I'll break it down a little more so you can get a better understanding on what's going on in the script.
-An event you might encounter while traveling through the world
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The trigger is what shows the event. This particular one is triggered by traveling on the world map. This could also be something like when entering a town, or an inn, or when a character dies, or when camping, etc.
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There are loads of regional events that can be active at any given time like a plague, blizzard, civilian revolts, town festivals, or (in this particular event's case) high bandit activity. There are dozens of these states to check with various effects on the region.
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This variable tells the game to not repeat this encounter more often than once ever X number of days. This can also be set to -1 and it will never repeat after being seen once.
<>
This is a function that creates a temporary NPC to be used in this event. These can also be used to create NPCs that persist for as long as needed in game.
**Up ahead, one of your outriders is returning to the caravan with great haste. They stop at the front of the column just ahead of you, and begin to relay something to [FNameP0], pointing down the road while they do so. With a nod of affirmation, [FNameP0] turns about on their mount and heads in your direction.**
This is some flavor text that will be shown to the player for the event. Any text like ** text ** will let the game know this is descriptive text and will do some extra formatting when displayed to the user. There are also some variables in the text that can be parsed so we can modify the text dynamically. In the above text [FNameP0] stands for First Name Player 0. This event will select a player at random from the company to be inserted into the text. There are also ways to grab specific players by different characteristics or tags as well.
{player:0}Sir, scouts report a bandit blockade up ahead. We could try and go around, but it will slow us down. What would you like to do?
The above is used when we want to have a particular character talk. The game will know to display their character portrait and name.
<>
{
{player:$CharacterWithTrait}I say we take 'em head-on, boss. We know they're there, I'd rather not leave them for some unfortunate traveler to happen upon.
}
<>
The above script will check if we have any characters that have the honorable trait and if we do then show some extra text. We could use checks like this to branch the event in an entirely different direction so that even if you see the same event multiple times it might play out differently.
->[Honorable,Brave]Make ready to attack!
<>
->**Attack**
<>
<>
<>
->[Cowardly,SelfPreserving]Let's go around. **Continue**
<>
These lines are how we handle choices being made by the player. Adding -> before a line lets the game know we are about to add a choice for the player to make. Inside the brackets you can see various tags (like [Honorable,Brave]). These tags let the game know this choice is considered to be an action that is honorable and brave. Conversely, the dialogue option farther down is considered cowardly. Depending on who is in your company, making choices can effect how they feel about you as a leader and can have ramifications down the road.
<>
One last line I wanted to touch on is the above. This is what tells the game we're about to get into a fight and will start the flow of going into combat. The SE.WorldEventBanditAmbushEncounter is another node in yarn that contains the details on the enemies involved in this encounter.
I hope you'll see there's plenty of potential for players to continue adding a ton of content after launch and I honestly can't wait to see what people come up with!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2n55Wu48k
Lastly, we've uploaded another design timelapse, this one is for the Imitator enemy. It is capable of taking on the form of your characters and using their attacks against you!
Thanks for reading and for your continued support! As mentioned earlier, we'd love to have you join our Discord, and if you haven't wishlisted the game yet, we'd appreciate that too :) Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the future!
Development Status Update
Hey everyone, we hope you are all doing well! As we are reaching the last few months of the year, we wanted to give you an update on the game's current status and release date. 2020 has been a strange and challenging year for everyone, so it's probably not much of a shock to hear that it's impacted the game's development.
We went into this year with the hopes of releasing in late 2020 or early 2021. Development was going well and and we took the game to PAX East at the end of February. We had a great show, met a lot of existing and new fans and received tons of positive feedback, so we were feeling pretty good on our way back home.
Of course it was around this time that the lockdowns began and development slowed down. Chris has 3 young kids, so when schools shut down he had to begin dividing his time between programming and helping to homeschool his kids. More recently his wife got a new job in Ohio, so figuring out their move from Florida further detracted from his ability to work as much. Progress had still been made during this time, but just not at the rate we had expected or hoped in order to release this year.
For now, things are about as "normal" as they will be for the foreseeable future and we've settled back into a steady rhythm. His kids are doing virtual schooling at home so he still has to devote some time to looking after them during the day. All things considered, we're doing our best under the circumstances we're in now, and we've begun looking for a few additional programmers to help speed things up.
Concerning the release date, it is still TBD. We don't want to rush out an incomplete product, so all we can say for now is that the game will be out when it's ready. As for some good news, the game is now what we consider "Alpha", meaning all the game's features are in place and all that remains is adding more polish and content. So we're excited about that at least, and it brings us one step closer to the closed Beta! We will also be putting out another updated demo on Steam in the future like we did a few months ago. So if you missed the previous event and don't have access to the Beta (via Kickstarter rewards), you'll still have a chance to check out the game prior to release. As always, we'll continue to keep you apprised of our progress, and we hope you all can understand our need for some extra time to complete the game properly.
On the art side we've continued to make good progress with our animator Rafael producing some awesome work with our designs. Here's a look at a design timelapse and final animation result of two recently completed enemy characters:
We've also begun to work on the final art assets for the city hubs. We haven't talked too much about this yet, but cities are being done at the same scale as our characters and combat environments. We wanted each city to look unique and immersive rather than just a simple menu. Since we've done it this way we can also occasionally have combat engagements and missions take place within the city streets (as they use the same assets). We can't share the final look yet as we still need some more building variants and other assets (such as citizens standing and walking around), but here's a taste of the building styles for the 3 main cultures within the game:
Midden
Nurren
Tyrosene
That about wraps it up, thanks for reading and for your continued support! As always, if you haven't yet wishlisted the game we'd really appreciate it! We'd also love to have you join our official Discord server to keep in touch with us and the community. Stay safe and see you next time!
Feature Spotlight: Company Upgrades
Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well! In today's update we're going to be talking about the specifics of how you go about upgrading your company, and what type of options are available.
Renown and how to purchase Company Upgrades
Upgrades can be purchased via the management menu by spending Renown Points. Renown is a secondary resource that you primarily earn by completing missions. It can also be acquired during certain overworld encounters based on the outcome (like helping someone out). Renown is essentially XP for your company and is a measure of how well-known you are. After reaching certain thresholds of total Renown you will gain a Renown Point which can be spent in the upgrade screen. There is no limit to how many renown points you can acquire, so given enough time you will be able to upgrade everything you possibly can.
We decided to go with this type of resource/upgrade system because the game already had quite a few elements that put a drain on your coin, and we want to ensure that the player is always able to improve their company over time, regardless of how rich or poor they are. Aside from upgrades, your total renown also plays a part in determining which type and difficulty of missions are available to you. Special organizations and Houses won't entrust their tasks to just anybody, and you will need to reach a certain amount of renown before you gain their attention.
Spending your Renown Points
To spend your points, you can head into the 'Company Upgrade' screen to purchase whatever is most relevant to your current situation. Each upgrade costs 1 Point, however some upgrades require you to have amassed a specific amount of Renown, or to research certain prerequisite upgrades beforehand. Some upgrades are broken up into 2 or 3 segments and can be purchased multiple times to increase the effectiveness of that upgrade.
Upgrades are split up into 4 different categories. The General tab covers things that have to do with your company and caravan as a whole, such as training faster horses and increasing roster capacity.
Expeditions has upgrades related to dungeon exploration and combat. From here you can increase the amount of provisions you can take with into a dungeon (as well as providing a better selection of provisions), and other things like improving your scouting efficiency in the exploration phase.
The Council tab is where you can hire a Battlemaster, Emissary and Spymaster and unlock their various unique actions and passive abilities (We've touched on the Council previously, but we'll have a deeper dive into it at a later date once we feel ready to make a video about it).
The final tab is Alchemy, which is where you research magical incenses for you to burn when camping, providing you with various primary and secondary effects that aid you in combat and dungeon exploration. We'll go over this part more in our upcoming 'Camping' update which will likely be one of the next two.
----
On the art side of the game things are progressing steadily as we get closer to finishing all the enemies and characters that we plan to launch with. Here are two newer timelapses for those who like to see the process!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNKFTgugTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7x1dw_xJ6Q
See you next time!
Feature Spotlight: Exploration
Hey everyone! We hope you're enjoying the Steam Summer Festival and our demo! If you haven't yet, be sure to try it out before the event ends on June 22! And if you like what you see, don't forget to wishlist and follow us here on Steam :)
From now until release, we're going to periodically be posting devlogs that focus on a specific feature in the game, giving you more details about how it works. Today we'll be covering our 'Exploration Mode', which is the view you are taken to when you enter a mission/dungeon from the Overworld map. Each mission environment has its own exploration tileset, and you will see a different tiles depending on the mission you are doing, whether it's a sewer, castle, forest, swamp, or in the case of the demo, a cave.
Exploration
To navigate within a dungeon, you simply click on an adjacent tile to move your party. Moving will cost you Time, which can have consequences down the road (we'll get to that below). From your current position, you are able to see the existence of any adjacent tiles, but you are not able to discern whether or not they contain any events. Moving blindly can sometimes pose risks such as triggering a trap, or giving an enemy the chance to ambush you. These risks can be mitigated by spending additional time to Scout ahead to reveal any events that may exist.
Time & Modifiers
Nearly everything you do within a dungeon will cost you Time. This includes moving, scouting, interacting with events, and every round that passes during combat. There are a number of time thresholds depending on the size of the dungeon, and hitting one of these thresholds will trigger a Time Modifier. A Time Modifier is usually a negative effect, though sometimes something beneficial may occur. There are over 30 modifiers that can be applied, some examples include:
Enemies calling in reinforcements, increasing the number of enemies in future combat encounters
Increased chance of being ambushed by enemies who are now well aware of your presence
Your party can become hungry and request that you camp. Ignoring these requests can put a strain on your relationship and trigger Loyalty loss
Your party can become careless and misplace supplies, causing you to lose a few provisions (such as bandages and potions. Gear and other important items are exempt from this, so newly found armor will be safe!)
Your party can gain a "second wind", restoring some of their ability stamina.
[previewyoutube="RGXO3y91EiY;full"]
Time is an important strategic consideration, and spending too much time in a dungeon can make things increasingly difficult on you. Once you max out the time meter, your party will become disgruntled, weary and insistent on wrapping up the mission. You can still continue beyond this point, but eventually their Spirit and Loyalty to the company will begin to wane. With all of this to consider, it's important to be efficient on your missions and ensure you don't waste too much time backtracking, or becoming complacent in combat by letting too many rounds pass.
Camping
While Time Modifiers can make things more difficult on you, Camping is one way to combat their effects. You can choose to camp on any empty tile, though some locations will be safer than others. Like other actions, Camping costs time, but that time can be spent on various bonuses that can be applied to your party going forward. We don't want to get too far into the topic of camping right now as it's fairly involved and we think it warrants its own spotlight.
Exploration Events
On any given tile in a dungeon, there are a number of events that can potentially spawn on it. Interacting with most events will cost you time, though you will often have multiple choices of varying costs and risks. It is up to you to assess the situation and make the best strategic decision! Examples of events are:
Combat: Obviously this will be the most common! If you scout an enemy location, you can spend time to set up on ambush on them
Secrets: Secrets can be anything from hidden rooms with unique text scenarios, hidden caches of treasure, short puzzles or other findings that can lead to an entirely new mission to tackle at a later date. Without enough Perception however, you may not notice their existence.
Lootables: Various sources of loot such as satchels, chests and corpses. These may sometimes be locked and require a Dexterity check in order to successfully open. Of course, you can brute force your way in with strength, but it may damage the contents. There are risks as well: disturbing the dead may not be the smartest idea, and that shiny chest may just be bait planted by some would-be ambushers hiding in the shadows.
Traps & Hazards: These events can sometimes cause damage to the party, depending on which actions you choose and whether or not you scouted it ahead of time. Perception plays a role in this, and a high enough perception will give you notice and a chance to disarm the trap(with enough dexterity) at the cost of time.
Other Scripted Events: There are a number of other scenarios that can occur that may not necessarily be tied to the current mission you are on. This can range from finding a traveling merchant, encountering an adventurer who offers to tag along, a bounty hunter coming after one of your members, or finding a lost child. It will be up to you to decide what to do, but your party will have their own opinions on what is right.
Blocked and Locked Passages: Some paths between tiles can be locked by doors, or blocked for other reasons such as a cave-in or a magical barrier. In order to proceed you will need to spend time to deal with the issue.
That about covers everything regarding exploration, minus the specifics of camping which we'll discuss in a future update! There's still more polish that we'll be adding to exploration (such as artwork to go along with the various events) in an effort to make it as immersive as we can. Another thing we'd like to point out to those who have played the demo (or will soon), is that the demo's dungeon is fairly linear and short (since it was taken to PAX it needed to be <30 min). In the average dungeon, you can expect more events and alternative paths which will make scouting more of an important factor.
As always, if you haven't yet please take a moment to wishlist the game on Steam and join our official Discord server. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date.
