Prologue Patch and Experience

Greetings all! 

The Skald Prologue has now been live for almost a month. It’s gotten tons of praise and been a wellspring of vital feedback. In other words, it’s safe to say it’s been successful.

What better way to celebrate, than with a new patch and a mini post-mortem of the demo launch!

Skald got its first fan-art (that I know of)! I’m so happy to see people nerding out over my game!

Thank you so much to all of those who’ve played, rated and offered feedback on the game so far! If you still haven’t given it a go, I highly recommend you check it out!

Note that patch 2.0 will likely not be live on GOG till over the weekend:

Here is a brief overview of Patch 2.0 and some of my experiences with launching the demo:

Patch 2.0

Patch 2.0 has focused on fixing bugs and typos as well as adding quite a few new features that focus on Quality of Life improvements.

The biggest job, by far, has been reworking the save system. Save-times are now pretty fast (around 0.5 second) and this allows me to be a lot more generous with having the game auto-save often (a much requested feature).

The only drawback to this, is that the patched game will no longer be able to load old save-files. I’m sorry for the inconvenience this causes but I hope you’ll take the opportunity to perhaps try a new character-build. Keep in mind that the game also allows you to skip the intro and start directly at the shores of Idra if you don’t feel like playing the intro again.

Another highly requested feature that I found time to put in, was “Windowed Mode”:

Did I mention that “UFO” is amazing?

This should make the game a bit easier on the eyes for gamers with big screens and you can now even play it discreetly at work.

Thankfully, I managed to fix the dreaded “broken screen” bug that caused the game to look like this on certain set-ups:

Kill it with fire!

This bug was the source of the game’s only negative Steam review so needless to say, I’m relieved I managed to fix it.

I’ve also spent some time trying to find better ways of offering feedback in combat. I’ve done some experiments with hovering text and I feel optimistic for it:

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Under gameplay options, it’s now also possible to ajust how much feedback you get in combat; making it as fast or as slow as you want.

Finally, I’ve tried to make the game a little bit more balanced by having random encounters scale in difficulty and giving the option of attempting to flee or sneak away if you’re keen to avoid the encounter alltogether:

In summary, here is an (in)complete overview of changes made:

Features
  • You can now play in window mode
  • Random Encounters now scale in difficulty dynamically
  • Simple volume controls
  • The game auto-saves whenever you enter or leave most maps or camps
  • Pressing SHIFT now highlights interactable objects
  • Combat info is now shown as floating text on the screen
  • damage ranges for melee are now slightly more compact with the strength bonus now added as a flat modifier
  • Added 1 more point of movement to all characters
  • The rogues back-stab ability now triggers on flanked opponents as well (not just stunned or surprised opponents)
  • You can now choose to see or not see combat results for the player or opponents in the Options -> Gameplay menu
Bugs
  • Trying to select a spell from an empty spell-list would lock up combat
  • The game sometimes booted with the UI elements small and shifted to the lower left corner of the screen
  • You can no longer assign character points to the “header” during the “Stats” screen in character creation
  • FIxed bug where you couldn’t flip pages in inventory
  • For certain models, weapons would blink in and out of existence
  • The sword/bow target icon should now correctly show as a bow if you have a ranged weapon or a sword if you have a melee weapon equipped
  • Resolved a performance issue that caused frame-rates to drop as you gained more items in your inventory
  • Dozens of minor bugs

Launching a Prologue: A Mid-Mortem

Launching the Prologue has been pretty time-consuming and demanding at times. Nonetheless, I’m incredibly happy I did it and here are some key take-aways:

Launch the demo as a standalone Steam/GOG application before the main launch: This as opposed to having the demo build be part of the main (already launched) application.

“Backbone” has become a recent case-study for this strategy with their highly successful prologue. Data seems to indicate that having the demo as a standalone application, increases wishlisting, and post-launch wishlist conversion-rates for the main game.

It also means that it’s possible for players to offer reviews and these seem to go a long way towards driving interest for your game as well as insulating the game from any negative feedback from the demo.

Finally, you should consider how long (if at all) you let the demo live after the main application launches. It’s fantastic to have a demo out before the main game launches. Once the main game goes live however, you should certainly consider if it’s better to perhaps take down the demo. Remember: Steam’s generous refund policy will basically allow players to test your game even if it’s not free.

Double your time estimates: Steam reviews all applications before launch. It can be hard to predict if they will approve or not and you might need to make changes. Each cycle of changes can add 2-3 day of waiting for review. The take-away is to submit the game well ahead of your planned launch date.

Drink from the community firehose: If you’re lucky, people will care enough about your demo that they offer feedback. I truly believe that this is pure gold for any game-developer. Especially if you, like me, don’t really have access to professional testers and QA people.

The silver lining with handling feedback in a good way, is that it’s also a fantastic way to make people feel invested in your game in the long run. My experience is that gamers who end up seeing their feedback being taken seriously, tend to become life-long fans.

This is a topic for a whole post in and of itself, but note that “listening to feedback” doesn’t mean implementing every change suggested by the community. To me, it’s about having the mentality of trying to assess feedback objectively and trying to see the case from the user’s perspective. I try to make a general rule of not defending my decisions publicly. I may offer my rationale for a certain design, but if you find yourself arguing with users over their feedback, take a step back.

Consider how long the demo should be: This is a difficult but important decision. The question you need to ask is “will this demo leave the player wanting more?”. You don’t want players to “eat their fill” with the demo and forgo playing the main game.

At the same time, you need to show enough that the demo feels like a good representation of the main game and offers enough of an experience that players feel invested in the project.

This point becomes even more important if you intend for the demo to be available after the main game launches.

In closing: Launching a demo as a stand alone application, before the main game, is a great dry run if this is your first rodeo. It’s also a fantastic way to build a community and provides valuable play-testing and publicity.

Feel free to reach out if you’re a fellow game-dev and have questions!


But for now: Go play the prologue (and remember to leave a review if you feel like it)!

As always, get in touch via the Discord or Twitter for all things Skald-related (I guess now you can also use the Steam and GOG forums).

AL

Introducing SKALD: Against the Black Priory

You awaken to the sound of seagulls. Their crying reminds you of your childhood. Have you gone to your ancestors?

The last thing you remember is chaos and the sea swallowing your vessel. Freezing water and then darkness. How could you possibly have survived?

Legs shaking, you stand up and survey the shores upon which you have landed. There is no mistaking it: Idra. By some miracle, the Emperor has delivered you to this cold, forsaken island. Now, you must find the strength to do his work!

A sickness has taken hold here: Carroleth. Carroleth the heretic! Master of the Black Priory. That foul order of enlightened men, which has strayed so far from orthodoxy. It is to them that you must deliver the Emperors justice – by steel and by fire!

You shudder in the cold breeze.

It feels as though the very land sets itself against you. You will find few allies on Idra and even less hope. Pray your sanity holds…


Hi everbody! It’s time for another update on the SKALD engine and the upcoming title: “Against the Black Priory” (AtBP)!

AtBP sees you in the role of an imperial agent dispatched to the island of Idra to uproot a mystical religious order, turned apocalyptic cult. The expedition is off to a disastrous start however, and surviving Idra will take all your wits and skill.

For AtBP I have chosen to go with a strong retro look and feel. The game draws heavily on inspiration from classic “Golden Age” RPGs like the early Ultima games, the Gold Box Series and the Magic Candle series. In other words: Games we love!  

The game will (hopefully) feature a good mix of each of the four basic RPG pillars:

  1. Explore the enviroments and plot – overland, underground and on the high seas!
  2. Interact via dialogue and “choose-your-own-adventure” style sequences
  3. Fight using a menu-based, fast-paced, tactical combat system.
  4. Develop your party of up to 6 characters.

Visually, I have chosen to work with 16 colors on AtBP. To get the proper retro-feel, I went with the classic C64 color palette:

The basic tile size is 16 x 16 and, for the desktop version, the game runs at 640 x 480 resolution. Note that the SKALD engine is built in Unity3D and is flexible enough to handle any number of graphical settings. However, working within some self-imposed constraints has really helped focus the design of AtBP.

Thematically, the SKALD universe is dark, grounded and unforgiving and I really want AtBP to dip its toes into the cold and dark waters of eldritch horror. I try to stay clear of binary good/bad characters and enjoy writing difficult choices that have real (often painful) consequences.

The Current State

At the time of writing, the SKALD game-engine (and thus AtBP) is 90% feature-complete. There are a couple of important systems that still need implementing as well as a bunch a smaller “nice-to-have” systems I would like to have down the line (but that can wait for now).

The big task ahead however, is adding content. This means designing, writing and drawing stuff. The flexibility of the SKALD engine and its tools makes adding new content a breeze. However, actually creating stuff will take time nonetheless. Fortunately, this is also a lot of fun and it will allow me to start engaging more and more with the community as the focus shifts more from the technical development to actually crafting a roleplaying experience.

The SKALD engine can publish to any platform that Unity supports. AtBP will release first on Steam. Mobile will follow.

The Road Ahead

It’s no secret that SKALD and AtBP is a one-man project that, whilst immensely enjoyable, is taking up a lot of my spare time. Now there are also expenses on the horizon in the form of software licenses, new hardware and, potentially, freelance content-creators (for some of the art and music). This means that I need to find funding somewhere.

After a lot of consideration, it’s starting to look like Kickstarter might be a good way to getting some funding whilst building a stronger community around the game. If everything goes according to plan, May 2019 might be a good time for a Kickstarter campaing (but more on that down the line).


For now, if you want to support SKALD: “Against the Black Priory” the two most important things you can do are to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on twitter! Don’t be afraid to reach out for questions or comments!

Have a great day!