It is the end of February, and that means technically we are leaving winter behind and spring is upon us. We are in Denmark though, so that is not really the case in practice, but the thought still counts!
That also means it is time for another edition of Dinolords Monthly! This month we are looking at some new art and UI improvements that has made it into the game, as well as talking about our trip to Copenhagen Gaming Week!
Calling it a trip might be a bit of an overstatement, as it was practically in the same neighbourhood as our new office, but we ent to Copenhagen Gaming Week's Tomorrow's Awesome Games Showcase (TAGS for short).
We brought a build of the game to the show floor with one level, The level was straight up just the current state of the game, and not tailored towards a convention experience. Usually, when we have shown off the game in previous iterations, we have created a small, condensed level specifically made to take 10 minutes to complete from start to finish, as this seems to be a sort of sweet spot where people have time to get a sense for the experience we want them to have, but also does not sit and play for so long that other people can't have a go.
This version took more like 40 minutes, and a lot of people had a blast playing from start to finish. It was such a joy to see people interact with the game and have fun playing it! We also really wanted to have some stickers printed for the event to hand out. Unfortunately, they arrived in the mail 3 days after the event had ended. So now we have 500 super cool Dinolords stickers ready for the next thing we will attend. We also want to say a big thanks to everyone who visited our booth, it was great meeting you all and sharing our excitement about Dinolords with you!
We want to share some of the unit paintings made by Pablo. These are used in cropped form for unit representation in various parts of the UI like your warband or barracks. Pablo absolutely nailed the vibe we remember from strategy games of our youth, have a look: Philip has been making some landmarks in the form of runestones, they look almost too good:
Or, I guess "good" is in the eye of the beholder, maybe the Vikings would prefer less resistance..
Anyway, combat in the game is seeing a lot of iteration currently, and we are discovering and playing around with a bunch of things to make combat both interesting and satisfying. We want there to be a good amount of skill expression in combat, so it is something you can be good at or get better at, where a combination of your skill and your lords abilities and stats both affect the outcome.
Put in a different way, we do not want combat to be purely a numbers game or feel like you're just comparing numbers on a spreadsheet. One of the things we are trying out is execution/finisher moves where, if a larger enemy is downed, you can take them out in a glorious finishing move, sure to improve legion morale and discipline! We are currently experimenting with having this heal you (and possible your units) to provide an edge in combat, all of this is of course subject to change, but it needs to be both cool and impactful.
Here's a short recording of a raptor being sent to the shadow realm: Additionally, we are working on the feel of combat, many small tweaks and additions all work together to make combat feel juicy and make every hit feel impactful and cool!
Check out this small gif where the enemy animation is tweaked and fine tuned:
That concludes this Dinolords Monthly.
We have been exploring and experimenting a lot this month, and a lot of pieces are falling in place. There's been long design meetings, discussions that lead to good solutions, and also a few funny debates like; could a knight ride a deinonychus - our conclusion is no, but a brute could definitely manage two in chains. Although this edition was slightly delayed, I hope you guys find some of the stuff we are working on just as exciting as we do. Until next time!
-panxter