Hello everyone, William here again. I am the Chairman in WizDream Games, and also the project leader for this game.
First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates last month. I was supposed to update you with how the game's skills work, amongst other things. So let's fulfill my overdue task first, albeit briefly.
From simple stat increases to creating new interactions - buffs, debuffs, status effects, etc... The idea behind them is to provide uniqueness to units and heroes. The latter, in particular, will easily be able to equip additional skills to use, which makes them far stronger than standard units.
Honestly though, I think it's better to explain how the game plays first without these skills, before we actually talk about them. Without any context on how the base game plays, it's difficult to explain what these skills are supposed to add to the game.
For now, we can just showcase some progress on the skills' visuals.
As you can see, skills are provided into 3 types:
Hero-exclusive skills
Unit-exclusive skills
Generic skills (some with restrictions)
While the heroes will be able to equip generic skills in addition to their own exclusive skills (a major part of why they will be much stronger compared to the recruitable units), we will provide ways for the troops to equip more skills too, albeit on a more limited manner.
We will share more about heroes and units (and exactly what each of these skills do), all of which are unique to their respective factions once we have enough materials to show.
We had an internal playtest around early May, and we came away feeling unsatisfied with what we made so far. While our visual issues were obvious, the implementation of the game's concepts were sadly, lacking as well.
For a game that is dubbed as the "Time-Travelling Roguelite Tactical RPG", we felt the game at that time was not time-travelling enough, and not roguelike enough. The only part suitable is the "Tactical RPG" part, and this is not something we want to provide to you. As the project has been in full development about 8-ish months at that point, it's really not a good thing to say.
However, better late than never to see the problems, isn't it? As the project's concept is recalibrated, so does our timeline and milestones. Our goal of providing a demo by June is sadly, not going to be possible. Furthermore, it is better to test the game on a more controlled environment before putting up that demo. Therefore, I would like to share with you our revised timeline for the project:
Aug 2025: Steam Playtest
Oct 2025: Public Demo
Feb 2026: Steam Next Fest (tentative)
Q1-Q2 2026: Release window
New to the plans - The Steam Playtest should serve as a major milestone for us, while allowing us to further validate the game in a less pressurized environment. With what we gain from it, we aim to bring you the best public demo possible! Additionally, we aim to keep updating the demo - adding more content and/or bugfixes, adjustments etc.
What will this Playtest contain? Here are our goals with it:
Approximately 5 missions with the Winterbrand Faction
Visual polish that will be close to the final version
The complete roster for Winterbrand and Fleuretta factions (or at least, enough for the Playtest)
All of the game's features listed so far in our Steam Page, except for the Prophecies and those we ended up reworking or cutting (in these cases, they are replaced by newer, more fitting features)
Story content is likely to be minimal or otherwise not available
With all said and done, our initial release window of 2025 appears not achievable by now. For this, I would like to sincerely apologize for the delays...
To address the other elephant in the room (visuals), the team is working hard, but more importantly, smartly to resolve our current issues. Let me show you some of what we have been doing.
This is a screenshot from the actual game (not mocked up at all).
The Steam Page screenshots have been updated sometime around May to at least increase its standards. Still, there were plenty of room for improvements, and I'm glad that we are capable of improving to where we want to be.
The next blog should be ready before our Playtest is live, as it would serve as another reminder of our schedules. In it, I would like to share with you the latest visual updates, along with what we have done to properly convey the "Time-Travelling Roguelite Tactical TPG" tagline in our game.
See you in the next devblog!