A co-op (or single player) action RPG. Follow two heroes as they battle through dungeons, puzzles, and bosses to reunite the elements!
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hey everyone! Hope the start of your new year has gone well, and hopefully we can look forward to a better 2022 than 2021. 🥂
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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:
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.
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