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Steam News13 May 20233y ago

"Tales of Vogar - Lost Descendants" - Release: 15th May 2023!

What a journey... what a journey. It has been 15 years since I had my first ideas about Tales of Vogar. Back then it was called "Magic - Feel the Power".

Full notes

Full Tales of Vogar - Lost Descendants update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

1 fix2 additions3 changes0 removals
  • UI and audio
  • Gameplay
  • Compatibility
  • Fixes
  • Events
changedI had an injury. While this sounds bad at first (and it really was), I had weeks of time to go back to a hobby I had almost forgotten about. You guess which one. I opened the old RPG Maker and set the goal to achieve the same thing I did years ago (30 % completion) again, but on the newest engine "RPG Maker MV". Side note: Looking at the project now, that was perhaps 10 %.
addedCovid hit. And it hit hard. Quarantine and again lots of time on my hand, I kept working like a maniac. A massive step and a lot of work was the port from 4:3 to 16:9 ratio, which did not add anything to the story but was work that needed to be done. At some point in 2022 it hit me again: Damn Torsten, it looks like you could actually finish the game.
addedUntil then, I never thought I'd be able to properly finish the game and saw it as a hobby that I worked on from time to time. With realizing that I could actually finish it, a new motivational boost made me add even more hours into finishing the game.
changedIn Q1 I decided to set the release date to Q2 and started reaching out to beta testers all over the planet. I was honored to get in touch to people from the US (massive thanks for the grammar and spelling checks!), Europe, South America and Asia. A little summary from Q1:
fixedMore than 300 small-to-major bugs crushed. -Reworked some cutscenes down to the very bones they stood on. -Took the feedback for the story and improved it - added explanations and fixed inconsistencies.
changedIn Q2 I worked on more fixes and the finale. Thanks to my big vision that was a pain: Depending on your final party, the ending changes and oh boy, that were a lot of variables and events to program and follow up upon. I literally created excel-sheets to keep an overview about the whole mess I got myself into.
massive step and a lot of work was the port from 4:316massive step and a lot of work was the port from 4: increased, buff

Tales of Vogar - Lost Descendants changes

changedI had an injury. While this sounds bad at first (and it really was), I had weeks of time to go back to a hobby I had almost forgotten about. You guess which one. I opened the old RPG Maker and set the goal to achieve the same thing I did years ago (30 % completion) again, but on the newest engine "RPG Maker MV". Side note: Looking at the project now, that was perhaps 10 %.
addedCovid hit. And it hit hard. Quarantine and again lots of time on my hand, I kept working like a maniac. A massive step and a lot of work was the port from 4:3 to 16:9 ratio, which did not add anything to the story but was work that needed to be done. At some point in 2022 it hit me again: Damn Torsten, it looks like you could actually finish the game.
addedUntil then, I never thought I'd be able to properly finish the game and saw it as a hobby that I worked on from time to time. With realizing that I could actually finish it, a new motivational boost made me add even more hours into finishing the game.
changedIn Q1 I decided to set the release date to Q2 and started reaching out to beta testers all over the planet. I was honored to get in touch to people from the US (massive thanks for the grammar and spelling checks!), Europe, South America and Asia. A little summary from Q1:
fixedMore than 300 small-to-major bugs crushed. -Reworked some cutscenes down to the very bones they stood on. -Took the feedback for the story and improved it - added explanations and fixed inconsistencies.

What a journey... what a journey. It has been 15 years since I had my first ideas about Tales of Vogar. Back then it was called "Magic - Feel the Power". Already the title back then already shows, how much I lacked creativity and how much I wanted to make an AWESOME game with magic and power and... stuff. I was 18 years old and just downloaded the "RPG Maker 2000".

It took a while until I was able to accept criticism for my story which was -let's be honest here- really bad. That however started motivating me to dive deeper into how to write a good story. After setting the pillars of the story and creating more realistic characters, I was about 30 % done with the game when it hit me: The old engine was not enough to realize the vision I had for the game. That was after I already swapped to the newer "RPG Maker 2003". With that realization I took a rather long pause until two things happened:

  1. I had an injury. While this sounds bad at first (and it really was), I had weeks of time to go back to a hobby I had almost forgotten about. You guess which one. I opened the old RPG Maker and set the goal to achieve the same thing I did years ago (30 % completion) again, but on the newest engine "RPG Maker MV". Side note: Looking at the project now, that was perhaps 10 %.

  2. Covid hit. And it hit hard. Quarantine and again lots of time on my hand, I kept working like a maniac. A massive step and a lot of work was the port from 4:3 to 16:9 ratio, which did not add anything to the story but was work that needed to be done. At some point in 2022 it hit me again: Damn Torsten, it looks like you could actually finish the game.

Until then, I never thought I'd be able to properly finish the game and saw it as a hobby that I worked on from time to time. With realizing that I could actually finish it, a new motivational boost made me add even more hours into finishing the game.

In December 2022 I got the steam page up and running - with a trailer, that I worked on for weeks and cost me a lot of nerves... but I think it was worth it!

In Q1 I decided to set the release date to Q2 and started reaching out to beta testers all over the planet. I was honored to get in touch to people from the US (massive thanks for the grammar and spelling checks!), Europe, South America and Asia. A little summary from Q1:

-More than 300 small-to-major bugs crushed. -Reworked some cutscenes down to the very bones they stood on. -Took the feedback for the story and improved it - added explanations and fixed inconsistencies.

In Q2 I worked on more fixes and the finale. Thanks to my big vision that was a pain: Depending on your final party, the ending changes and oh boy, that were a lot of variables and events to program and follow up upon. I literally created excel-sheets to keep an overview about the whole mess I got myself into.

Now it is 10 pm on Saturday, the 13th of May 2023 and it is only two more days until the game is available for the public. Yesterday, I finished the last scene in the epilogue and I almost started to cry. It was a lot of pressure. But it was also SO MUCH fun. This is the biggest project of my lifetime for sure.

I'm incredibly proud to share this game with you all and can't wait to get your feedback. I hope the heart, sweat and tears I put into the game were worth it and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Take good care of my baby!

Source

Steam News / 13 May 2023

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