Shrine's Legacy - A SNES-styled 2D Co-op Action RPG

Created by Positive Concept Games

A co-op (or single player) action RPG. Follow two heroes as they battle through dungeons, puzzles, and bosses to reunite the elements!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Shrine's Chronicle #1 : First Monthly Backers-only Update!
about 2 years ago – Thu, Mar 03, 2022 at 06:52:07 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Survey Progress, Demo Release on Steam and More
about 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 02:05:03 AM

Hey everyone! Hope the start of your new year has gone well, and hopefully we can look forward to a better 2022 than 2021. 🥂


SUPER MAGFest

Unfortunately, as we anticipated we didn't end up going to MAGFest due to the state of COVID-19 at the time, but if anybody reading this went, we hope you had a good time! We are still in good terms with the organizers, so we're hoping that next year we can make it. 


Backerkit Surveys Progress

Thanks for your cooperation in filling out Backerkit surveys! So far 89% of backers have completed their Backerkit surveys. If you haven't completed yours yet, you should have received an email from Backerkit linking to your survey. It should generally only take about 5 minutes to finish and doing so will help us with reward fulfillment.


Shrine's Legacy Demo now officially on Steam

With most of the red tape stuff dealt with for now, we've gotten back into proper development of Shrine's Legacy. We decided to start by getting a proper version of Shrine's Legacy on Steam that anyone can download without having to be subscribed to our mailing list.


IMPORTANT NOTE: We are going to have to deactivate the Steam demo builds that come with the mailing list, as they conflict with the new demo version on Steam. I.e. It seems that the new demo won't download while the mailing list version of the demo is in your library, so expect that to happen tomorrow. Sorry if there's any inconvenience! The old DRM-free versions of the demo will still work, though!


You can download the v1.6 demo on Steam for free here!

Shrine's Legacy on Steam


What this means is that if you or someone you know was wanting to play the demo, it's now easier than ever to try the demo. It won't be required to sign up to our mailing list anymore. We'll still use the email list to offer some occasional unique content such as some new letters in the future though, so there will still be purpose to the mailing list. 😉


This new version on Steam also comes with a few updates / adjustments (mostly bug fixes and improvements to the presentation of Co-op mode). You can check the full patch notes via the above linked Steam page, they should be live within an hour of this Backer Update being sent.


Backer Design Rewards

We've begun reaching out to the Producer tiers for their design rewards, which includes a couple dungeon and boss designs! We're very excited to work with backers to make some very cool stuff! Next up we'll be reaching out to Enemy and NPC design backers, so if that's you then expect to hear from us within the coming month or so!


If you've donated for a message in a book or a Spirit in the Uncharted Lands, we'll be reaching out to you a little later, once the game is more fleshed out. However, if you already know exactly what message you want, feel free to let us know via any of the avenues of contact you have with us (Kickstarter message, email, Discord, etc).


Additionally, all design reward tiers include Beta access, so if you'd like to wait until you've played a beta version of the game to choose your NPC's or messages, you are welcome to. If you are designing an enemy in particular, we might require a little earlier notice since they can be somewhat integral to the gameplay. But we'll contact you and we can give you info and feedback to help you with your design as needed!


Next Steps

Now that we've finished preparing the demo for its official Steam release, our next goal will be building out the bones of the world. Getting to where you can play through the whole game and beat it. It won't be "fleshed" out at first, just a skeleton. But it'll be something. Working this way ensures that no matter what happens we'll be able to present the full narrative of Shrine's Legacy when it's time to launch. 


We plan to be working in "waves" so the first wave which we are working on next is the basic skeleton. These waves are subject to change as we actually go about development but consider it an outline of the general process we plan to be taking. We also haven't totally decided exactly how much time each of these waves is being dedicated yet, but the goal is to start polishing by early to mid 2023 so we can send out a solid beta test build to all backers around that time for proper testing and feedback.


Some things, such as art, boss fights and music, won't necessarily be dedicated to any particular wave but will instead be created as it makes the most sense to timing-wise.


Below you can see the current planned Roadmap leading up to the launch of Shrine's Legacy:


Roadmap

Wave I - Basic Skeleton: All rooms which contain any cutscenes or major battles will exist in at least a basic form. All major cutscenes will exist and play out, but with only the text in its most basic form and the characters standing still.

Wave II - Room Skeleton: All base planned rooms (regardless of whether they contain a cutscene) will exist in a basic form, with connections on the correct sides holding them together with the rooms around them. The world will be properly connected with itself in full.

Wave III - Fleshing: One at a time, we plan to go to each major area and start finalizing tile sets, room layouts and designs, and getting the ideas for the puzzles and monsters which will be included. Where appropriate, some monsters and puzzles might be placed and finished. Rooms will look much more fleshed out at this time. For places like towns, NPC's will be placed and may or may not have text finished for them. There's a good chance this wave will take the longest to create compared to the others.

Wave IV - Veins: Puzzles and enemies and any other details that were missing will be properly created and placed as needed throughout each of the areas, one area at a time.

Wave V - Blood: Cutscenes will be properly scripted and player/npc movement and dialogue in those scenes will be structurally finalized. Additionally, during this time any NPC's which were missing dialogue or optional scenes which needed to be created will be created. In some ways Wave IV and V might be somewhat interchangeable depending on what feels best to develop in practice.

Wave VI - Polishing: Going through the game and testing, cleaning up anything that needs work. This wave is to make sure that all the game's individual parts feel good and work well together. If anything is sticking out poorly or not working, it'll either get fixed or removed during this stage.

Wave VII - Preparation: Preparing for the launch of the game. This includes a lot of marketing and hype building, and final testing and fixes in the meantime. Also probably a billion more things. This part will be very tough.

Wave VIII - Release: The game launch itself and all related activities to that.

Wave IX - Post Release: Doing any post-release content that we decide to do. Sorry, no spoilers on that for now since it's so far away! 😜 This also includes post-release updates, bug fixes, potential localization work, and more. AND it also includes porting to possible consoles as soon as we can do so, with priority given to Nintendo Switch.


Closing

That's all for now. Thanks again for being a part of this journey with us while we try to make this game a reality. Starting next month, there's a good chance we're going to start doing the monthly Backer-only progress updates, so look forward to that. 😊


Thanks for reading, and until next time,


Joseph

Backerkit Surveys for Shrine's Legacy Incoming!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 23, 2021 at 08:48:55 PM

Phew! It's hard to believe it's been over a month since the campaign ended. It's a been a little while since our last Backer update so we have quite a bit to catch up on!


BackerKit and Preorder Store

We are using a service called BackerKit to help us with three major things:

1. Getting info to help with reward fulfillment

2. Last chance for backers to add certain reward add-ons

3. Allowing late backing in the form of the pre-order store


We've finally finished preparing the Backerkit and just sent out a Smoke Test. What this means is that 5% of backers will get their surveys slightly early as a test run. If all is well after the smoke test, we'll send out the rest of the surveys! So, everyone should be receiving their surveys in the coming days.


Pre-order Store now open!

If you are someone who missed the campaign but still wants to support development, we've now opened a "Preorder Store" for late backing through BackerKit!

Click the link below to check it out:

Shrine's Legacy Preorder Store 


What we've been up to

Taking a break, preparing for conventions, setting up Backerkit, dealing with taxes, and dealing with personal life issues has taken up a lot of time. While there's still some red tape stuff to get done, it's finally almost time to get back into the full swing of things!


Pwr^gg Convention

We just went to Pwr^gg, the small convention in South Bend Indiana this last weekend! It was our first time at a convention, and we had a lot of fun. Alan even took pictures, here's a few of our favorite ones!

Our booth (gamedevs got two tables!)
There were a lot of cool views at the Convention Center!
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo had a really cool booth and game too!

In total there were 4 gamedevs (including us) with a booth and many vendors there! You should go ahead and check out the other devs if you get the chance. Here are links to their Twitters:


Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo : As our neighbor booth, we got to chat with them quite a bit. Two cool brothers making a cozy and professional-looking puzzle adventure game!


Hex of the Lich : A roguelite meets turn-based strategy game about synergy and hex-based strategy!


Bunhouse : Bunnies + greenhouse = maximum cute, and 4 player couch co-op is the icing on the cake! It's also cool that his game is actually released right now on Steam.


While he was just visiting and didn't have a booth today, we also got to meet Tiny Warrior Games!


Regarding showing off Shrine's Legacy, it was very cool getting to see lots of different people playing the game in person. We also got to see how the game plays when you start straight away from the first dungeon, when the demo normally starts at the beginning of the game. 


Our booth stayed decently busy despite the convention being on the smaller side. And everyone who tried the demo seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. Most people even got through the first dungeon's boss before moving on to other booths which was really neat to see. If you got to play the game at our booth and are reading this now, thanks so much for checking out the game! 💖


SUPER MAGFest

Despite how much fun Pwr^gg was, due to the current state of Covid, there's a chance we won't be going to MAGFest in early January. It is a shame because we still would really love to go to meet lots of cool folks and represent Shrine's Legacy to a big audience, but safety is more important. It's not set in stone yet though, we will release an official statement via a mini-Kickstarter update when we have decided for certain, probably shortly after Christmas.


⛄❄ Happy Holidays! ❄⛄

Before we go, we wanted to wish everyone Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever you celebrate. And well, just have a good week in general. 😀


Be well and stay safe! Expect more info soon as we begin building out the rest of the skeleton of the world of Ardemia! And with that, I bid you adieu (for now)!


Until next time,


Joseph

Design-a-Postcat Contest Winners Announcement!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 09:45:49 AM

Hello everyone!


Alan and myself have now decided the winners for the Shrine's Legacy Design-a-Postcat Contest! There was a healthy number of submissions and as a result picking just 5 was very challenging! Please keep in mind that for the purpose of judging, the focus was on creativity, cool ideas, and what we believe would be great and fun in the game much more so than it was about raw art quality, so please don't be discouraged if your entry didn't make it!


Winners will get:

🐈 Your Postcat design will be used in the game (subject to adjustment to fit in)!

🎮🎶 Digital Copy of Shrine's Legacy + Soundtrack on launch

🧪 Beta Access when it's available (sometime before launch)

💕 Credited as a "Postcat Designer" in the in-game credits


Now then, without further ado (and in no particular order), here are the contest winners!


Contest Winners 🐱

 "Postcat Post" by TinyDevilGames

This is silly, and absurd. And...this "post" cat would fit absolutely awesomely in the game as a fun character to meet, maybe even a very short quest to participate in to help it return its form to normal!

--

"Postcat Doll" by Jirushi

This is so adorable. After seeing this, I don't think I can imagine the game without a Postcat doll sitting on a table or floor of a room in at least a few places.

--

 "Trio" by SomecallmeMichelle

Described as a famous baseball star and distantly related to Rio, despite his previous success Trio has been spotted working at the Postcats. While those details can't make it in the final game without some tweaking for lore reasons, the idea of a human in a cat outfit working for the postcats is too hilarious to pass up!


--

"Cat is a little sus" by SuperDerek

We were actually planning to have a grumpy cat that bosses around some of the Postcats at a certain point in the story, and incidentally this submission instantly made us think of that cat and perfectly fits the bill! Also, it's hard to say no to that 'stache.

--

"Ranboo" by Chloe

This cute cat with separated light and dark sides and different eye colors leaves a lot of room for creative variety in how they could be implemented/presented. It'll be fun to come up with their dialogue and purpose.


Honorable mentions:

Although these following entries didn't win, they were very close to making it. And we had a very hard time choosing to not include these postcats! To explain just how close this was, the first Honorable Mention came down to a coinflip between it and one of the winners because it was too close to decide.


Postcat by Erika

This one's super cool and well-made! It had a strong case for making it in because of it's more humanoid look (for variety compared to average postcats) and how well-drawn it is.

--

"Flexcat" by Jason

I feel bad that we couldn't make Flexcat a winner because the pixel art is really well drawn (we wouldn't even have to update it to put it in the game, and it's animated) and we do love it. 💪 But...it only narrowly lost out because of the quantity of entries and the overlap with a certain trio of muscular luchadors we already have in the game.

--

"Various Postcats" by Applepieman1990

Lucky is our favorite of the three cats in the drawing, he looks big and interesting like he'd stand out very well. As cool as he is, the competition was fierce and Lucky just barely missed out.

--


Thank you for reading, huge thanks to everyone who participated in the contest as there are more unseen entries which were very cool, and congratulations to all the winners!


Until next time,


Joseph

We have reached the finish line!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 10:53:22 AM

💚 .... We've reached the finish line of the campaign.


and...

🎉Shrine's Legacy is officially 147% funded by 635 amazing backers! We are beyond words, thank you so much!


Even though we didn't quite hit the Switch Port goal, I wanted to one last time mention that we are still going to do everything in our power to get this game on Switch as soon as we can once the game is launched!


Additionally, we'll be sending a more detailed backer update in the next few days, so look forward to that! In fact, one thing I really want to do in the next week or so is write a post-mortem about the Kickstarter. I want to talk in some detail about a bunch of the things we learned in the process of both running and preparing for this Kickstarter. I hope that it can be a way to pay it forward to other developers making the same journey as we just did in the future!


We can't wait to share more of this journey with all of you! And everyone who has backed, expect monthly backer -exclusive backer updates talking about our progress as the game develops further! 😊


And I hope you haven't got tired of hearing, because I can't think of more important time to say it:


💖 Thank you... Thank you all so much.


Until next time,


-Joseph