Development News

It's been a while since we posted anything, so I figured we should give you guys a brief update so you know we're still alive.

I appreciate the patience of anyone who's been watching and waiting for details regarding out next game since we first started talking about it - this has been a pretty slow and excruciating development cycle for various reasons, but chief among them is that the project is just really ambitious and huge.

That said, we've made some really great strides lately.  Our overworld map is now operational, and functions a lot like the map screen in the old 2D fallout games as far as how you navigate the world and find new places.  Where Battleheart was basically a linear string of arenas, it's successor is intended to be very non-linear, allowing you to explore a big map and discover villages, quests, merchants, dungeons and so on.  There will be various independent storylines to unearth, factions to align yourself with, and hazardous places to delve into - the hope is that most people who play it forge their own unique path, and that you can play it from the beginning many times and find new things, or make different choices.  We're in the process of populating that map with lots of stuff for you to find!

We've also been busily creating tons of unique art for armor and weapons, as your equipment is now visually represented on your character.  This has proven to be a pretty huge time sink, but we're already pretty invested in the idea, so there's no turning back now.

One other thing which has recently hit the 100% mark is our skills/equipment menu system.  Players of Battleheart will be happy to know that we've streamlined the process of equipping items and skills on a character over the somewhat clumsy, segmented system of Battleheart.  Instead of separating items and abilities across an "armory" and "academy" page, everything has been brought under one neatly designed roof, so customizing a character is much quicker and involves far less tapping and fishing through sub-menus.  Further, this character sheet includes an insane amount of data that used to be under the hood.  We frequently got e-mails before asking us if the effects of similar trinkets stacked in Battleheart (fyi, they do) since none of that was really visible in the UI.  Now, things like critical hit chance, movement speed modifiers, cooldown reduction and other mechanics are all exposed to the player, so they aren't left guessing whether their build does what they think it does.

One last thing that's been wrapping up is our music.  Once again, our composer who did some awesome stuff for Battleheart is returning with a new original score, the last of which is expected to be wrapped up in the next couple weeks.  It's always inspiring to get some of the finished music in our hands, and it's great to be able to check one more thing off the endless to-do list!