Dev Diary #5 Quick and Dirty Gameplay video and updated character outfits.

Hey guys, this is Coralee. I created a quick 3 minute gameplay video for our IndieMega Booth submission to Pax East (hope they pick us!). It is a quick explainer video as trailers or fancy fluffy stuff wasn't allowed in the submission. I also figured out what was going on in our last video and why everything wasn't looking as nice as it should have in the end. It was being recorded at 320 px, the default for the new program we were using (Action!) This new one was recorded at 1020px so it is much clearer and doesn't look so pixelated. Chalk it up to using a new program. I edit our videos in Adobe Premier.

Alexander has been working on updating the character model's outfits, you can see his work in progress above in the video. I'll be editing their textures before release. Yaroslav is the only character whose textures are complete. He plans on working on the castle upgrading system next. It will be where you can upgrade your castle walls from wood to stone for example and pay for town services to open up like a dock and smithy. The castle you see in our trailer is the final iteration, when you arrive, you will have very little in ways of a castle for Kazakrom. 

This is Kazkrom's end result minus the services.

He will also be doing the halberd animations soon. It is what almost everyone in the demo wants to pick when we are at shows. Go big or go home.

Gameacon, Atlantic City Recap, New Demo now available

We had a great time in Atlantic City for the first ever Gameacon. We had a brand new demo to show off with a new audience though we had some people come by who saw us at Boston FIG and said that they loved how much the game had changed and improved since they last saw it.

There were quite a few characters in New Jersey. We had uploaded to our facebook page a player of the day for each of the 3 days of the show. Ms. Curtis was our player of the day for day 1. Her run and scream method worked really well for her, she beat the demo.

Run, Scream, Repeat = win

We found out something interesting about the New Jersey players vs the Boston players we didn't expect. The people in NJ were nicer to the prince. Most of the players in Boston told Prince Volga to "Sod off" in our demo and only 2  dissed the prince in New Jersey. 

Boston has no love for the monarchy.

Check us out on Indie DB, follow us and give our new demo a try, you can submit suggestions and bug find in our IndieDB forum, If you like what you see consider voting for us for Indie Game of the year on Indie DB. We would be eternally grateful and love to hear everyone's feedback.

Now for some more pictures from Gameacon, more can be found on our site.

Our friend from SWDTech games checking out Legacy of Svarog.

Kickstarter Last Days, Demo Available, and Getting Ready for Gameacon

The final days of the Kickstarter are among us. If you haven't pledged yet please pledge now. If we don't make our funding goal, no money will be collected. If we do reach our funding goal then you will get our game upon release for a deep discount. It's a no risk situation for you. We'll keep all of our backers updated on the game regardless of outcome.

While we have been Greenlit on Steam, it isn't our only method of game distribution planned. We are looking into other services such as GOG and itch.io but have made no final decisions yet. If you have a favorite place to get indie games let me know in the comments below I want to look into what people use. 

If you haven't yet given the pre-alpha game demo a try. It is available on IndieDB for Both PC and Mac. The demo includes the beginning of the story and the first combat area plus a bonus area with skeletons. You can choose to play Yaroslav by accepting to help the prince or Vasilisa by refusing to help the prince and asking her instead.

We're now preparing for our next show: Gameacon in Atlantic City. We reserved our booth and booked our hotel for the entire weekend. If you are planning on being in the area come on by we'd love for you to give our game a try.

Implementing War-table Missions and Legacy of Svarog @ Boston FIG

This week I implemented the War-table to the game. This is where you will send you companions on missions or decide to go yourself.
For the first mission, only the character being played can go but the others will be there to give advice. While this may seem insignificant, like all choices in the game, it is quite important. Your relationship level with your companions will also open up additional dialogue choices and therefore, change your strategy. One character may suggest a stealthy option, another might have a defensive tactic, while the last one probably will tell you to throw caution to the wind and just get in there. The choice is always up to you.

Later in the game, if you are more of a stealth or diplomacy type player as opposed to a fighter you can always spend some days in your keep reading. Reading books on particular subjects will increase your character's lore skill.
All characters start with different stats, Vasilisa for example starts with a higher lore skill than Yaroslav. But Yaroslav starts with more strength and hit points.

After accessing the War-table you will go to your armory and choose what you can take into battle. Here you can view detailed weapon stats. For the demo your choice is limited to one weapon option per character but that will change upon release.

The new demo will be the first one with the combat system that we will release online. We had a version of this demo with us while we were at BostonFIG yesterday. We had a lot of positive feedback and people really enjoyed the combat system, many found it difficult due to the "waiting for an opportunity to strike" type fighting. But we found that people who have played Dark Souls fared better.
The new demo will be out by September 21st, I want to smooth out a couple of things that was in the build that was at the show before I put it online. If you want to be alerted when we release the demo, update kickstarter, or other major news you can sign up for our mailing list at www.legacyofsvarog.com

The best part was, we got 7 votes for "The Audience Digital Showcase favorite". And we weren't even eligible as we were in the sponsor area. We were very busy that day and had a lot of interest. Thank you everyone who came by and checked us out!

Preparing for our first show: Boston Festival of Indie Games

Legacy of Svarog has been quite a ride. Development started about two and a half years ago, on and off while I was still working full time as a 3D animator.

In those two years:

  ·  Our basement office flooded – twice.

  ·   We had a data crash scare – Main development machine booted up with the   words: "Operating System Not Found." (Crisis averted thanks to this guy.)

  ·    We had two kids – 16 months apart.

But today it looks better than ever. After just 33 days on Steam Greenlight we have been Greenlit, we have a Kickstarter currently running and we will be attending our first Indie Game show, The Boston Festival of Indie Games this Saturday. If you are coming, check us out, we’ll be next to WGBH and down the row from my wife’s former company: Turbine/WB games on the third floor with all the other digital games.

Right now my focus and time is 100% on developing Legacy of Svarog. While currently we are playing around with company names we haven't established one quite yet, but that will come by release date.

My wife Coralee has been working on some concept art and recently made one of Svarog.  There will be a lot more to come in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

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