January Project Update: Important news about project roadmap
about 1 year ago – Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 05:17:36 AM

Hello everyone

First of all, we wish you a happy new year 2024!

We have an update on the release schedule of the game. Sadly, this is to announce a delay. 

We have been having problems that we tried to work around but it’s impossible for us to meet the June deadline we had as a goal. We are very sorry and we understand this is a letdown; we owe you an explanation, so here it is.

Before having the Kickstarter campaign for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant in February last year, we were in talks with a publisher (and a pretty good one). We had a “pre-deal” in which they told us they would fund the base game (the minimum viable product) if we had a successful Kickstarter campaign. Said campaign would be to fund the features we had to remove (the stretch goals) and a limited physical edition, which the publisher didn't cover.

The Kickstarter campaign was released and thanks to the backers it was a success, and the publisher was happy with the vertical slice (demo) we showed them, but the actual signing of the deal was being constantly delayed.

The publisher stalled for several months until they finally said it was not a good time to make that deal, leaving us alone. Their reasoning was that the game industry as a whole was not in a good place and that they had to prioritize “minimum risk projects”, i.e. an already finished product (so, already funded) with over 20000 wishlists on Steam that is 100% ready to port to consoles and launch.

We were obviously not at that point yet, and to be honest, we wouldn’t have needed a publisher if we were, other than for the promotion and marketing.

As these “pre-deals” operate on good faith and are not really legally binding, we can’t do anything (and we don’t want to go to court). Also, similar situations have happened to other friend studios during 2023, it was just not a good year.

So, we were left with roughly half the budget to make the base game. Thanks to the Kickstarter money and a grant we got from our country’s government we could keep working on Revenant, but we still needed a publisher or an investor to finish it.

This is the reason we have been going to events like Gamescom and Paris Game Connection, to try close a deal with a publisher that is up to fund the rest of the development. While we have several publishers interested in the game, we haven’t signed a deal with anyone yet, and it looks like it will take some time. 

This means that, unfortunately, we will need to extend Revenant’s development, as we currently do not have enough people to finish it before the milestone we set (June 2024). The publisher’s funding would have been invested in hiring more professionals to hasten the development, so without that money we can’t reach that pace. On top of that, several members of the team have been dealing with personal problems (health-related and others) that haven’t precisely helped with the project.

On the other hand, and to have a closer release of a product that can help us gaining some money to inject into Revenant’s development, we have decided to shift focus to the remake of the first Sword of the Necromancer we announced as a stretch goal that was never reached, Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection. 

This project has a way smaller scope and is something that we can finish in a relatively short time with the team we currently have. Also, if this remake is at least as successful as the original game, that means that there will be more people waiting to play the sequel.

We know this would not be the best received news ever, but we have tried everything to be able to finish Revenant, and 6 months away from the alleged release date, it’s clear that we won’t be able to. That’s why we want to be transparent with you and share the state of the project.

In order to compensate for this delay, we want to offer all backers a free copy of Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection for Steam once it’s ready. This way you can try the new combat and summon mechanics, as well as revisit the original game’s story or discover it in case you haven't played it yet. We can’t currently promise console versions, as those have an extra cost for us that we can’t assume now.

Also, shifting focus from the sequel to this remake doesn’t mean we have halted Revenant’s development. As both games share engine, mechanics, models and animations, we can work on both simultaneously, but our current priority is having the remake ready as soon as possible in order to be able to get more funds for Revenant. We will keep sharing updates about Revenant's development as we have been doing.

Again, we are very sorry we couldn’t deliver in the time we promised. We don’t want to half-ass Revenant and our purpose is to give you the game you pledged for, but these are difficult times for game development indeed (and for anything actually). Let’s just hope things go a bit better this new year. 

Thank you very much for your support

December Project Update: Dungeon Mechanics and Revenant Special Attacks
about 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 22, 2023 at 11:55:51 AM

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Sorry for the late update everyone! We've been very busy sorting out several things, so we thought that at this rate it'd be better to do a 2x1 and delay the update until the holidays so we can also use it to send you our best wishes!

The refactoring is 90% done, and by doing that we have solved almost all of the problems we encountered while showcasing the game at Gamescom and other places. Also, it seems we have optimized the game a bit "by accident" while making things in this new way, so that's really nice.

As we told in the last update, we've been working on the game's new HUD lately. We also added more info for both playable characters and monsters, so you can see for example if a monster (be it one of your summons or an enemy) has a stat buff or an ailment. If you have equipped an Accessory with the special attribute "Sensor" you can see extra info like the regular enemies' health bar!

Today we will explain a bit on how the dungeons will work in this game

New Dungeon Mechanics

The first Sword of the Necromancer was very simple in this regard: you had a dungeon level where you had to find a key; once you got it, you could open the boss room door, and if you defeated the boss you advanced to the next dungeon level. Every level was bigger than the previous one and (potentially) had new traps. Do this a few times, and done, you're before the Final Boss.

The problem is that this didn't allow us to put puzzles or more interesting levels, because players should be able to beat the levels no matter what they had on them. If we put a puzzle where, for example, you needed a bow to hit some switches and the player didn't have a bow on them, what do we do? Gift a bow so they can complete the puzzle? Make it so they can skip the puzzle in case they don't have a bow? That would defeat the purpose of the puzzle, so we ended up removing these situations.

We wanted to go back to that idea we couldn't give form to, and we thought of different solutions.

As you know, Dark Chronicle is one of the inspirations for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant, so we decided to take some clues from it. And the most important change is this one:

Level Selection Screen

While dungeon levels will be mostly procedural (some will be handcrafted), we decided to make them shorter but put more of them. Each level will have its own pool of monsters, items and everything else, so even if they will have different layouts, the experience will be similar between playthroughs.

This allows us to introduce "missions" for each level, like clearing it in less than X minutes, or not use certain weapons. By completing these missions you will earn special rewards, but you won't be obliged to do them. Think of them like "pseudo-achievements", like getting the 3 special coins and reaching the top of the flag in a Super Mario game.

As you can see, we are showing the difficulty level for each dungeon floor. This means that sometimes, you will reach a branching path and there will be an easy way (maybe longer and/or with lesser rewards) and a difficult one (with more rewards and potentially shorter to reach the end of the dungeon). Or maybe one of the branches requires you to have a specific item or monster to continue! With this we solve the problem we had to introduce puzzles and blocks to bypass.

By beating different levels in succession you will build up your Dungeon Chain, which will make you get more EXP from battles and better items from chests. Which brings us to another option: now you can exit the dungeon at any point from this Level Selection Screen, so even if you need some healing or an item you don't have, you can just continue later after going to the cities to prepare or save your game. Exiting the dungeon will make you lose your current Dungeon Chain, though, so think about it!

Now, boss levels are just a level like the others, so you won't be forced to beat the boss for a chance of leaving the dungeon, like in the original game.

Lastly, some levels will have Special Conditions that are imposed to you when you enter it. For example (as in the image above), one level might forbid you from using summons, while another will not let you heal yourself. With this, we can give each dungeon floor its own flavour, and come up with engaging challenges.

We hope these changes help to make the Dungeon Crawling part of the game more interesting!

To wrap up this update, as it will probably be our last this year, we would like to show you one thing we've been cooking for a while.

Revenant Special Attacks

During our playtests (going back to when we were having the Kickstarter campaign), several people commented that, while Revenants were useful and more powerful than the regular summons, they lacked some "oomph" that justified to use them instead of 3 monsters that can cover a bigger area even if they are way weaker. 

The way Revenants were envisioned was more for boss battles, where they could lend you a hand if you were having some difficulties, at the cost of not being able to use regular summons for a while. The Revenants themselves are also time-limited, so you wouldn't be able to cheese your way against a boss by not fighting and let Revenants do everything.

So to make them more special, we took advantage of said time limit: if you summon a Revenant for long enough without getting it killed, when its time is up, you will see a prompt to unleash a final attack before automatically recalling it.

As we are in Holiday Season, we will show you the attack of the Revenant that most resembles Santa Claus (?): Castel, the Amber King.

Castel's Finishing Move is Roar of the Lion. With it, you can hit up to 5 enemies with a devastating Fire Element attack. You can also get a glimpse of the Revenant's Theme by Dale North here!

These attacks can come in handy, but you need to stay alert to trigger them! If you lose your opportunity, the Revenant will just disappear and you won't be able to summon it again for a while!

We hope you like these new finishers and use them when you get to play the game! We are having a lot of fun making the animations, giving them a nice "Tales of..." Mystic Artes vibe.

That's all for today's update. As you can see we were saving up some things to have a meatier one as our year's last!

We wish you happy holidays and a happy new year!

November Project Update: New HUD + Alternate Outfit
about 1 year ago – Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 05:49:00 AM

Hi everyone!

This time we don't really have much to say. We keep working on the game at a steady rate (most of the originally planned monster models are done, as their attacks VFX). 

We are still busy with the refactoring of the code that controls the games entities, which is going well, but taking a bit more time than we expected. In the meantime, we are also redesigning the HUD of the game, so it looks better and has more animations and all that (it was a bit too static).

There is a lot of information to show on screen, we had to design carefully with lots of "floating" messages and parts that hide themselves when they are not needed so they don't eat much of the screen.

Here you can see a comparison of the first HUD we had (top), the new one, and how it looks when EVERYTHING is being displayed at once (that shouldn't happen a lot though)

We've also been working on the alternate outfits that were result of the "Social Stretch Goals" of this campaign, see Kara with Sanzo's outfit! 

With this one, we have the 3 "classic outfits", based on the original game. Remember that these outfits will be free DLCs for all backers!

Lastly, this past week we were at Paris Game Connection (a business event inside Paris Games Week) having meetings with some publishers and investors and pitching the game to them. We have a good feeling about some of these meetings and hope a deal comes into fruition!

That's all for today's update, a rather short one. And as usual, we take this opportunity to recommend a campaign from someone we know...

Check this Kickstarter project! Mariachi Legends by Halberd Studios

After finishing the fantastic 9 Years of Shadows (which we had a collaboration with in the first Sword of the Necromancer, in the form of a special unlockable weapon, Europa's Halberd), our friends at Halberd Studios are working in a new awesome project: Mariachi Legends.

Based on Mexican folklore, this is a new Metroidvania game in which you will control a detective who made a deal with Death itself to gain the powers to transform into a superpowered being named La Sombra in order to dismantle a violent gang.

Explore a vibrant town, power up with traditional Mexican cuisine and fight the powerful members of the Mariachi Legends gang until you find the man who defied Death's authority and became immortal!

They have almost reached the base goal (only about 2000€ left!), but Halberd Studios has a lot planned for this game in the stretch goals. Take a look to their project and back them if you like what you see!

Kind regards! See you in the next update!

October Project Update: Magic + Boss and Revenant backer design results!
over 1 year ago – Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 09:14:51 AM

Hi everyone!

We keep on working on the game, still implementing the feedback we got from our time at Gamescom and Indie Dev Day. In fact, we are redoing the way the characters and enemies work to help us make those changes easier.

Without entering into much detail, we are making the features of character and enemies (or how we name it, the "Entities") more modular, so things are less intertwined between them and fixing one thing has less risk of breaking another.

This is something that is taking a bit of time, but was necessary, as the way it was before made making any big change very difficult. We want to future-proof things a bit so when we tune up controls or movements of the Entities it doesn't result in too much work.

As this is something we can't actually show you because it's an internal part of the game (and from the outside it mostly looks like it looked before unless you play the game yourself), we will explain one of the features of the game: Magic!

Koko's Spells

Both Tama and Kara can use the Sword of the Necromancer (if case you didn't notice the logo of the game, yep, there are two of them) and summon monsters, but Koko refuses to use it, so she's more limited in her moveset, right? Thanks to Magic, that's not the case!

Instead of a submenu to summon monsters, Koko has access to several magic spells she will obtain throughout the adventure

The effects of these spells may vary between healing, support or attack, here you have some examples:

•  Kuraci: Heals everyone inside the area but the user. Remember, Koko can't heal herself! 
•  Sildo: Temporarily increases the defense of the user and nearby allies
•  Lanco: Throws magic spears to the target

These are the ones that can be seen in the gif above, but there are more!

•  Spegulo: Creates an aura around the user and nearby allies that temporarily reflects magical projectiles
•  Fokuso: Temporarily increases the Critical Hit ratio of the user and nearby allies
•  Forlogajo: Creates a copy of the user that can be used as a decoy for enemies
• ... and more!

After using a spell, you won't be able to use it for a while, and they also have a small Stamina cost (as does summoning), but being able to cast magic makes Koko a very versatile character. The spells can also be enhanced by speaking to a certain character and spending some resources.

We hope you enjoy trying the spells and introducing them in your combos and builds!

Boss and Revenant backer design results

In our last update we showed you the designs backers in our Discord server came up with for the 2 Revenants and 2 Bosses we would include in the game as part of the Stretch Goals. We had a voting period, and these are the results!

The winners are:

•  Revenants: Lucefine and Ophelia
•  Bosses: Ophelia (again? :P) and Cancellardore

Coincidentally (or maybe not, and that's why people chose them), these Revenants and Bosses are two sets of Revenant + Boss. So the idea of Ophelia's author (Storm) was that you fought the boss version and after you defeated it you obtained Ophelia as a Revenant, while Lucefine and Cancellardore have some sort of relation according to Notafiumi (their author, who also won the Monster Design Contest with Atterrenti!).

We love that attention to detail, and we will keep it in the game, to the extent that is possible for us and makes sense with the rest of Sword of the Necromancer's lore.

We have already started working on them, first by adapting their designs to the game's style!

Thanks a lot to the rest of backers who participated in our Discord, we would love to include all the designs, but that'd be a lot of work! Also, if you are a backer who pledged for the Monster or Boss tiers, check your email! We have sent you the guidelines to submit your designs!

And to end this update...

Check this awesome Kickstarter project! Cataclismo by Digital Sun

Our friends at Digital Sun (makers of Moonlighter and The Mageseeker - A League of Legends Story) have just started their crowdfunding campaign for their new game Cataclismo.

Cataclismo is a gloomy mix of real-time strategy and tower defense featuring base builder mechanics. Construct your fortress by day stone by stone, up to the last detail and defend against the hordes of Horrors that will attack you mercilessly at night

They are looking for a bit of help to self-publish and expand the game, so if you like what you see, go back them!

That's all for today's update. Until the next one! Kind regards!

September Project Update: Back from Gamescom/Indie Dev Day +Vote for the Revenant and Boss backer design to appear in the game!
over 1 year ago – Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 05:24:09 AM

Hi everyone!

This has been a VERY busy month. We had to prepare the demo for Gamescom (August 22-27th), go to Germany for almost a week and do lots of meetings while attending our space in the Indie Arena Booth.

We got lots of feedback, and lots of bugs, but the game was very well received! After getting back from Germany, we had a small time off and then got back to work, to fix as many things as possible for the next event: Indie Dev Day in Barcelona, which was this past weekend (September 8-10th). After having ironed a couple of things, the reception was really great this time!

However, there's still work to do to make the game feel better.

We have also talked with several publishers interested in the game. In the following weeks we will see if we can close a deal with any of them, which would help development a lot. This deal may imply some changes in the project, as the release date (because it has to conform to what the publisher desires or thinks it's best) but we won't change anything about the product itself that does not fit our vision, so you don't need to worry about that.

Almost everyone who tried the demo was surprised about the game's features, like the City Building aspect of the game. It was very nice to see people smile when they saw that they could do this or that. Anyway, we have to work on communicating better what can be done in the game.

We also were visited (both in Gamescom and Indie Dev Day) by people who played the first game (even some backers! It was nice to see you in person) and they were very pleased with the jump to 3D from the first one (one backer even told us he was very concerned, but ended up liking it a lot!).

We plan to make the demo we showed at Gamescom/Indie Dev Day available for backers at some point. We still need to fix many things we were told, and also make sure it works correctly (the demo crashed at some points), so please be patient.

Vote for the backer designed Revenant and Boss!

Some backers in our Discord server have been designing Revenants and Bosses to appear in the game. After the deadline (set to August 31st), now the voting starts!

Here the Revenants

And now the Bosses

Thanks to all the backers who contributed with their designs and backstories!

You can know more about the Revenants and the Bosses, and how your fellow bakcers have imagined them by going to the #backers-revenant-design and #backers-boss-design channels.

In the #backers-sotnr-private channel (like the two channels above, only available for those who have confirmed their backer status by answering the post-campaign survey sent on March 11th) you will find a poll for Revenants and another for the Boss Monsters. Vote and discuss there! 

The winner will be selected on October 6th

That's all for this update, but before ending...

Check this Kickstarter campaign! Anima: Song of the Abyss

Anima Song from the Abyss is an action role-playing game (ARPG) with hack and slash style elements in which players explore an interconnected world. In the adventure you will take simultaneous control of two different characters, the knight Soren and the strange entity Noein thought a journey that will take them through the remains of an ancient extinct civilization to discover the secret of its fall...

You can check their Kickstarter campaign and support them if you like what you see in the next link:
https://kickstarter.com/projects/animaproject/anima-song-from-the-abyss