Hello, everyone and welcome to the latest Devblog for "The Gambit Lost to Time"!
We have been very busy for the past month or so, as our game inches closer and closer towards a state that is ready for public consumption.
Personally, I like what I saw and played of our own game. However, there are still a little bit too many "niggles" (bugs, UI/UX issues, etc) that, when piled up, would hinder a player's enjoyment. This means the game needs the attention to detail required to elevate it into something that can be enjoyed as a whole - and we are ready to give that to this project!
Additionally, we participated in a Game Developer Incubation program for a week which we will detail in this devblog. Before that, let's share some of what we have done over the past month!
As mentioned before, TGLT is inching ever closer towards a state ready for public consumption.
Following what we shared last month, we are happy to say that work on the cutscene artwork has been progressing well.
We have also decided to implement the weapon triangle in our game for melee weapon types. So far, it has done some of what we intend to see from it, where there is a clear rock-paper-scissor relationship between the melee units.
However, I end up making a lot of ranged units to compensate... So that's something we certainly can review with further testing. And of course, it does not mean even the melee side of things are final, but things are moving on the right track.
We made sure to pay attention to what happened between the battles too. The Town is important to enhance your heroes, units and the economy behind them. What we did here is to provide a clear "build order" and a faster way to check what each building does, which can be done by hovering over each building icons.
New buildings will allow better units to be recruited during missions, and enhance other features related to it, such as...
The Training Hall, which is responsible for your Heroes' skills! It is already available at Level 1, but you need to upgrade it with your resources obtained during battles to get better skills for your Heroes - including upgrading their own unique skills!
Aside from all of these, we kept iterating and testing the game, ensuring that the overall experience is as smooth as possible - to make sure that your first impression on it is a great one. Please look forward to it!
The screenshots and videos so far have shown mostly two of the three playable factions:
The Empire of Fleuretta
The Tsardom of Winterbrand
Today, we are happy to inform you that the third playable faction - The Monarchy of Verdandia, is starting to be playable! Located in the woods and adapting traditional, spiritual ways of magic, they will be tricky opponents to face, and allies that conform to technical play styles.
Their archers can attack from 3 ranges away - a luxury other factions cannot afford in most cases! We can't wait to showcase them properly in future updates, albeit after we provide the spotlight on the other two factions that have been in comparatively more polished states.
We would like to share a little on the incubation program we participated in from 23 to 28 February, ending with a demo day on 12 March. This program is called GameDev Ignition organized by Gamecomm Indonesia, aiming to be a "support system" for indie game developers in Indonesia. This is apparently the first edition of this incubation program, so I was honored to be invited to take part in it.
In this program, we received mentorships from fellow industry professionals on various topics: Marketing, branding, presentation, even down to the legal aspects of game development.
We would like to thank:
Gamecomm Indonesia for organizing this event
GameDev Jakarta for the invitation to participate
The mentors kindly providing their insights for us
The participants, for us to share our experiences with each other
Being part of this incubation program has been incredibly helpful for us as a studio, and we intend to show the results, starting with this project.
You can check the photos and documentation of the event on Gamecomm's Instagram account.
And that wraps up this month's update! We hope you enjoy everything we were able to share in this devblog. Soon, we will reach an important milestone in our TGLT - which is bringing the game to a publicly-consumable stage! Expecting the unexpected, we will not put any dates yet. But, rest assured that we are moving on the right track.
In Indonesia, we are currently enjoying long holidays in Nyepi and Eid Mubarak. Wishing everyone celebrating these occasions the best as we return back to office on 30 March! We'll take this time to rest, refresh our energies, coming back stronger once we start working again.
See you again on next month's devblog!