Category Archives: Gameplay

DevBlog 146 / The adventurer’s diet

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Hello fellow adventurers!

In today’s blog post, we’ll be talking about the adventurer’s diet.

As you may already know, being adventurers yourselves, a dangerous profession such as this one can be very taxing on the body, and at those times where neither magicae nor alchemy are available, sustenance may still be within your grasp if you know where to look!

The adventurer’s diet!

There are, of course, risks involved when seeking nutrition from nature.

Certain sources of nourishment might get you to full strength, while others will surely lead to an upset stomach, or even death.
It’s common knowledge that the berries that are favored by many wild animals are not edible but fungi, on the other hand, can be pretty safe if you know which ones to pick.

What’s your poison? I mean…

There is always reward to the risk involved, even if the result is an undesirable one… * wink wink *

And on the technical side of things, we’ve been performing several optimizations in order for the game to be more stable!

That’ll be all for this week, be sure to stop by again next Friday for more goodies!

Thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 143 / Wait for it…

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Hey there!

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of the Nintendo Switch, in fact, most of us are proud owners of one, and we’ve decided to bring you some new gameplay footage on this platform as we’ve been doing extensive QA on consoles throughout the week!

Wait for it…

We’ve also continued to work on tweaking the lighting of remaining scenes, which has been taking quite some time as there’s a lot of manual work involved, but in return it gives us all the control that we need and allows for our environments to look so much better.

Thank you for reading, we hope that you’ve enjoyed what we had to share today, see you again next Friday!

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DevBlog 128 / Everything old is new again!

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Hello everyone!

The team is currently really busy finishing up some major tasks, so the post this week is gonna be just a quick update!

We are all adding those finishing touches to every aspect of the game that will surely bring the whole thing together and really make it shine. Working on porting the game to consoles is also very time-consuming, and that’s where we’re at.

Here’s a little teaser of one of the early locations, now reworked, that you’ll get to explore!

An imposing statue guards these lands.

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DevBlog 122 / Not the bees!

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Hi everyone!

Today the post is a simple update about some of the progress we’ve made regarding a few enemies, armor sets and overall detailing.

A lot of polishing is being done on the animation side, our animator is doing a bunch of small tweaks and additions so the game feels and looks a lot more fluid.

We have a new temporary addition to the team – the wiz Paulo Pinho is helping us on the VFX side, and the results speak for themselves, but we’ll have to share that in the next post!

Our sound designer has also joined us in the office for some, so the sound/music additions will be faster and better implemented.

On a different note, a new enemy is born – this giant Stinger will haunt you wherever you go! Remember, it can fly… It features a binaural sound when it gets close, for an extra level of creepiness.

Sometimes they attack in swarms!

One of the aspects we wanted to improve on for a long time was the armor set variety. In order to give more options of apparel to the player we are introducing 3 new sets, each tied to a certain location of the game and respective lore. One of these is already in-game, as you can see below. Of course, equipping all the pieces of any set will grant the player bonuses, so keep an eye out and find them all!

The Tradesman armor-set.

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DevBlog 118 / A new hope?

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Hello everyone!

We’ve just finished adding new props to the village, in order to breathe more life into it, as you can see in the image below:

The Song of Drying!

These include clothes drying poles, swings, pottery and more, some of which will appear as you progress through the game. The hamlet will reflect the protagonist’s actions, be it the outcome of a great battle or some other event that took place in a different area, and every time you return you’ll notice that certain changes took place. Could these be signs that life might eventually go back to normal, and that peace will take the place of war?

Cabbage fight!

The pottery is also one of the new destructible items, adding more variety to certain areas of the game, here’s an image on what can happen if they’re not handled properly:

Who knows what may lie inside?

All of the dungeons, or Arx, have been finished and might still undergo a few tweaks in order to make them even more interesting, such as improved enemy placement or even ambushes. Also, some of the new combat animations and movements were polished, and we’ll keep play testing and tweaking them throughout the next week.

On the more technical side, as the time for furthering the development of the console ports draws near, we’ve redone the input system, in order to allow for more flexibility when integrating with other platforms.

That is all for this week, see you next Friday!

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DevBlog 117 / Hammer to the Forge, Mace to the Face!

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Hi everyone!

We’re excited to share with you that we’ve finished the combat animation overhaul, they’re all in-game and being tested as we “speak”!

This brought dramatic changes to the combat’s feel and pace, bringing it much closer to our vision. Here’s a taste to brighten up your weekend:

Mace to the Face!

There’s also another noticeable change which should be quite apparent in the above image if you’ve been following our devblogs for a while, and that is the visual polish we’ve been doing. We’ve tweaked the post-processing and illumination of our initial areas, and also took the opportunity to tweak environment sounds, improve loading times between different zones, tweak the enemy placement, add some ambushes and even some additional surprises throughout the game!

Some new assets were added as well, including new item icons and the town blacksmith’s tools:

Hammer to the Forge!

That’s all for this week, thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 116 / Vines and Warfare

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Hello!

Curious title right? Hope you’re having a great friday, we’re back with some freshly baked goodies just for you!

We’ve been working on vines lately, and we’re not talking about those short and funny clips, but the pesky plants that will get in your way until you can find the means to get rid of them for good. Since we’re so considerate, we did add a few ways of doing so, yay for us!

Vine burning down, still work in progress!

Fire is the key here, you can use a weapon buffed with fire, a spell or even your torch if you get it lit. These will be temporarily blocking certain doors or treasure, and if you’re not able to deal with them at that time, you can always return later to explore. Also, do note that the effect shown above is still a work in progress!

Hope it doesn’t have anything inside that melts!

In order to provide more immersion and some visual storytelling, we’ve built ( and then destroyed, mwhahaha! ) some trading carts, used by merchants and plebs who obviously wanted to take their belongings from one place to another.

Such a lousy parking spot!

There was also an overhaul of the Vallis Sanctum puzzle, which is the largest and most complex obstacle you’ll face in the game.
We’ve actually decided to have 2 floors instead of 4, in order to make it more accessible and feel less of a chore in future playthroughs, for those who enjoy the additional challenge of the New Game plus mode.

Lastly, here’s another work in progress animation for the new movesets, which are nearly done and are adding such a better feeling to the combat overall!

Sword uppercut!

See you next weekend, hope you’ve enjoyed our progress!

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DevBlog 115 / Let the old be new again!

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Hello friends!

This week we’re starting you off with a little treat, a comparison of the old version of the game with the new one!

Let the old be new again!

We’ve also been having a whole lot of fun with the new combat animations, both in their conceptualization and in the in-game testing!
They truly add a whole different feel to combat, putting additional emphasis on the weight of the weapons and the effort put into each specific attack, also allowing for better feedback when it comes to executing the combos. Also, we’re about half-way done with them!

Together with the combat animations, the logic for the Knuckle and Spear weapon classes has been implemented, both being new weapon types that have been discussed before and will definitely provide more options and variety on how to keep baddies at bay.

The canyons sure seem inviting!

The cutscenes are also continuously being refined, we really want them to convey all the emotions and personalities of our NPCs and scenarios, so we’ll keep on tweaking them until we believe they’re perfect.

Always mind your surroundings!

Last but not least, additional props have been created to embellish our world, as the new windows and shrubberies were a good starting point but not nearly enough, so here are some of the latest additions that are specific for caves and the likes, spider webs and roots!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this post, see you next friday!

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DevBlog 114 / Fly like an eagle!

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Hello dearest community!

Fly like an eagle!

Don’t let the title fool you, this animal is actually a hawk, and its purpose is for you to find out, not for us to tell…

So, after setting in some mistery, we’re going to make this week’s blog post short and sweet, like the Elk’s favorite meal, Lulaberries!

All of the audio recordings for the characters’ voices are done and already in-game, and the music is coming along nicely and will soon be complete as well.

A new phase of polishing and balancing will also take place in the near future, together with additional work into the console ports.

On the artistic side of things, the cutscenes are all getting a little bit of shine and tweaking before we’re done with them for good, and more progress has been made into the new combat animations, each of them being added into the game almost as soon as its ready!

POW! Right in the kisser!

Oh, and we’ve been designing and adding some new extra props to populate the scenarios, making them feel more rich and detailed, here’s a screenshot of some additional windows we’ve been crafting:

Care for some window shopping?

As you can see, it’s been an extremely busy week, so we hope you’ve enjoyed the content we’ve decided to share with you all today!

See you next Friday!

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DevBlog 111 / The calm before the storm

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Greetings!

While our teammates from the tech side of Amplify were busy showcasing our products at Unite Berlin, the rest of us kept working on the game… So we do have some goodies to show!
To start things off, here are some shots from the last area of the game. The Palace is still work in progress, but we feel like we can already offer some sneak peeks.

Imponent King Statue !

The calm before the storm…

The process of revamping the terrain meshes is pretty much complete. Below you can see a “before/after” comparison – we added more geometry to help with both the silhouette and the vertex painting.

Terrain mesh revamp!

Meanwhile, the last cutscene is finally in game, featuring perfect integration with gameplay. Also, the intro of the game is going very well – it’s a mix of a cutscene and gameplay.

Next week we will recap the Unite Berlin experience, have a great week everyone!

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