Greetings, Explorers! ⚔️
Welcome to the third Zarktor's Realm Dev Diary. We'll provide regular updates to keep you informed of what's happening behind the scenes to bring you this fantastic game.
GammaCon 2022 🎮
On July 23rd, we attended GammaCon 2022 in Canberra, Australia (our hometown and local event). It was our first time presenting the game publicly and getting feedback from talking with attendees.
We had a playable demo of Zarktor's Realm and gave expo attendees the opportunity to play the game!
Our dandy quite quaint stand!
The Journey So Far 🏰
We're now just over a year into development and all the major technical components have been worked out so we can focus on assembling assets and level building into coherent locations in the game, writing and recording voiceover dialogue and quest lines, and focusing on the main bosses and working out equipment stats, balancing, particle effects for magic, etc.
The playable demo was a catacomb scene allowing the player to explore a dungeon with plague husks which could be attacked on foot or on horseback using ranged or melee weapons. We'll be adding NPCs, pets, and a quest system into this playable demo so you'll be able to download it and try out the gameplay for yourself!
We've another year to go before release so we're halfway through this exciting adventure! And the feedback we got from Expo attendees was amazing - here's a brief sample:
- "It looks absolutely amazing! The sunset and sunrise are stunning! Beautiful graphics!"
- "Reminds me of Tomb Raider!"
- "You can ride the horse into the dungeon? Cool!"
- "Controls are so smooth"
- "I don't have a steam account, but for this game, I'll get one!"
- "Very intuitive"
- "Love it, can I buy it now?"
- "I don't have a computer right now, but for this game, I'll get one!"
- "Wow!"
- "Did you build this yourself?" - "Yup!"
- "I love pets. But can we have a unicorn?" - "Yep - the horse has a horn I can unhide"
- "Skyrim, Monty Python, and Metal? Tell me more"
- "If you complete the main quest line with all 12 characters, you should unlock a special dungeon level" - that suggestion from a very clever aspiring young game dev called Simon who attended our stand. Simon, that is an awesome idea and we're going to make it happen. Thank you!
You get the idea.
You are welcome, now you know how these kinds of events look like without the crowds lol
Where We Are Headed To 🗺️
It was pretty nerve-wracking going to Gammacon - it wasn't something we've ever done before and we're showing "our baby" to the world for the first time. However, our fears were unfounded, the reception was amazing and we had a lot of folks who want to be part of the project including writers, animators, voice actors, a band wanting to do a cameo in the game, and an author who creates their own languages.
We are now reaching out to our new friends to see how we can make this happen because it is going to make the game even more awesome.
We're very keen to find the game's hook and it seems to be "Skyrim meets Fallout 3, with a sprinkling of Monty Python and a side of Heavy Metal". We're not quite sure about what that means, but we'll be trying to make that a reality over the coming months!
Our beta testing strategy will take the current demo and make it a small segment of the actual game playable as a downloadable demo from the Steam page. This will have all the game mechanics and significant interactions along with a boss so you're getting the Zarktor's Realm play experience without it ruining the game storyline, etc.
Our birb NPC staring at me when I'm not making the game.
We've been working on controls and have been playing Skyrim and Fallout 3 recently so the default gamepad and keyboard controls are very intuitive and likely to be a blend of the two, but you will of course be able to customize them too.
Over the next few months, we'll focus on getting the playable demo into the beta test phase right through launch mid-next year. We'll be taking your feedback onboard and prioritizing it either as pre-launch content or as post-launch content.
Either way, we are keen to make a game that we enjoy playing and we hope you enjoy playing too. There will be lots of replayability, humor, easter eggs, and Heavy Metal! Beta testers will be able to provide valuable feedback and will get their name in the credits of the game.
Finally, one of the things we've decided is that there will be a thirteenth player character - "the Bard" - who brings "the Metal" to the game. It's going to be a ton of fun integrating the music, lute-swinging, bar-fighting, poem-reciting Bard content into the game!
Cheers, Explorers 🖤
We hope this article has been interesting for you. We'd love to hear from you, so please drop into our friendly Discord server and follow us on the social media platforms.
Stay tuned for the next Dev Diary update!
Thanks for visiting.
Martyn
Founder, Zarktor Studios