Demo Recap + Moving Towards October Early Access Launch

Demo Recap

Early July I launched the demo and it went far better than I was expecting. Response was overall quite positive and now I am getting more wishlists in a day than I used to get in 2-3 weeks. Not earth shattering but very positive for a solo developer. This has been important because this helps justify more commissioned art for the game.

Changes As A Result of the Demo

There were about a dozen different hot fixes released as a result of the demo. While there were a few bugs reported and only two crashes, all of which have been fixed, the majority of the feedback was around UI and usability. Everything from adding a Wait button for units in battle, a rest button on the world map, to making it more clear to predict damage from attacks and making it more clear how some of the mechanics work.

What Has Also Changed

While responding to the demo feedback, I have also been making longer term changes. This includes slowly adding in commissioned artwork, adding in more world events to the game to make it even more interesting, balancing and refining mid-late game content, etc.

What Art Is Changing

All the settlements will have commissioned art, similar to the below one for Villages. Also underway right now is replacing the Ratkin faction. After that I plan on slowly replacing each faction and then replace a lot of the existing terrain and obstacles. It takes time so likely not all will be replaced by go-live.

What's next?

Over the next couple months I am focusing on getting this ready for the Steam Next Fest first and foremost. There will be more commissioned art coming (settlement portraits and starting to replace faction images), UI refinements, an early game tutorial and other ways to make the start of the game smoother for non-hardcore players.

Also, I will be finalized most/all of the content for the mid-late game. Just because it is implemented doesn't mean I think it is complete. After they are added in, I fully expect to need to tweak and rebalance that quite a lot. Right now the mid-late unit builds can get very over powered so I need to refine that a lot.

Will I Translate Into Other Languages

I will be adding in backend support for localization. However due to costs, I very likely won't be translating for any other languages prior to launch simply due to I am a solo developer spending most of my spare money on commissioned art and I am not going to disrespect anyone by using Google Translate. Based on how the launch goes and interest from other languages, I am 100% open to having this translated into those languages.

What Will Be In Go Live

• More commissioned art.

• The 80% of the other content not in the demo

• This includes another 15 factions to fight, higher rarity backgrounds, rare loot to find including relics, ascending units to demigod level, enemy variants to fight, monster lairs, castle battles and end-game threats

What Will Happen In Early Access

• More commissioned art. If the launch goes the way this is looking, then I should be able to replace all in game art with much better commissions.

• Lot's of polish and balance. This game has very deep mechanics that all are tied together. It also allows very over powered units while I purposely have some extremely deadly rare enemies in there. It will take a while to balance this all out.

• New world events make exploring the world more interesting

• Based on enough interest, I will look at adding in localization for specific languages.