Hey everyone!
Hope you're all doing well. We have some fun things to show you this time around! While editing and finalizing the final chapters of all three routes, we realized that we wanted to add a few more CGs to the game to give it that extra 'oomph.' After starting work on Call Me Under which has a more cinematic style/approach when it comes to our visuals, so where we have a little more freedom (and all-important extra time) finishing up EK without any strict deadlines, we figured it was the perfect time to add things.
Things we're adding/working on!
Race selection tarots
The first thing we wanted to add was more of those beautiful tarot cards that our wonderful artist Lennox did for the character selection. We decided that the race selection would be the perfect place to flex Len's art so we've included additional tarots for The Leathan and The Human at the character 'creation' stage, which makes this starting point a little more interesting and interactive. We'll also be adding some more information about those races so you can make a more informed decision on who you would like to play as, similar to the information you get when selecting your role of Knight, Nomad, or Ambassador.
New key art
We were looking back at the key art that we created back in June 2019 (!!!) and, while it's still obviously super beautiful, we wanted to give it a well-deserved update so it feels more recent and fitting with the rest of our artwork. Anna has been drafting some sketches and we're really excited to reveal the final product upon release. It's going to be extremely sexy and fit for a movie poster.
Leathan improvements
One major piece of feedback we had from the released chapters was that people felt like the game was lacking enough unique dialogue for those players who chose the Leathan race. With Roux being one of our love interests/main characters, the topic of the Fae is brought up often, and I think it was both an oversight on our part and also a little bit of corner-cutting with our tight deadlines (in the interest of being brutally honest!). So we've gone back and are taking steps to ensure this isn't something that we feel like we half-arsed this time around. We hope this improvement is noticed and that you enjoy the extra little touches for your Leathan character that will undoubtedly make them feel more fleshed out and add to that unique playthrough element that we think is one of EK's strongest points.
Cinematic CGs
Last but not least are the 'cinematic' CGs we're adding to the final showdown! The climax of EK is pretty dramatic, as you would (hopefully) expect from a high-fantasy tale, so we wanted to step away from our more simple love interest type portraits that you unlock via romancing, and added some exciting scenes, mostly action, that will definitely bring some more excitement to the grand finale of the game.
As always, we'd like to thank you for the patience and grace that you've shown us throughout this delay. We truly can't express how important it is when people actively support and encourage indie developers to take their time. I promise you that none of us want to delay releases, but at this point in time when the world is basically on fire and burnout as a result of that kind of stress is such a prevalent thing, having people applaud us for being kind to ourselves when it comes to our work is the most amazing thing. We'll continue to keep you updated as we progress and will never leave you in the dark, and the promise that you will most definitely see Errant Kingdom in 2022 is still one that we will stick to. See you next time and don't forget to keep up with us on Twitter!