We hope November treated you well, and so will December with all the Decemberish activities, but we’ve come with more things to show off and talk about. This week also won't have much gameplay to show off, but we’re gonna have a lot of that to showcase soon. Lets get into some of last weeks changes and shenanigans. Starting with the main topic:
As we released more and more freaky beasts and horrors beyond our imagination we’ve realized that the most important characters (our squad), are looking extremely basic in comparison to the rest of the world, like they got dropped from their 9-5 straight into the world of Shards of Order. No more of that, we’ve added characteristic features that connect to their lore and the world around them, now they start to feel like they belong. And here's the result of that ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜
As some of you have already realized in the previous week, the Warriors hand has become more ethereal, ghostly or maybe otherworldly. This makes sense for the story we created for him, it's constantly in our face and makes us wonder, what the hell happened to him? That's for you to find out in the full version.
The scholar was probably the most boring character we’ve had in our demo. No characteristic features, no interesting background, out the window with you. The scholar is now slowly mutating and losing his mind. He’s becoming the Lost. Is this process reversible? Can we save him? Who knows… (we do).
The scholar in particular was a journey to get right, we had to iterate his design quite a few times before we settled on his current look. Any of the previous ones catch your eye?
My personal favourite is the exile, she now apparently shoots magic arrows that float around her, the amount that's floating will reflect the current status of her quiver, which should add some extra juice to her model. What about the halo you probably think, well all i can say is that it's not only a visual, but again, connects to her story.
Tell us what you think about the new looks.
The next feature we’re working on, but it's kinda too early in the development to showcase is the crafting and trading systems. It lets us combine or trade certain items in exchange for others, to be used in quests, upgrading our equipment, or creating little trinkets that help us with our battles.
We’re hoping that these features will add more… familiarity? That it will ground the story down a little? Making what use we can of whatever we can get our hands on in a world that's literally breaking down. This feature can potentially change the entire feel of the game, we’re really hoping that it's gonna change for the better. It's kind of a big change to the economy and balance, so we’re just gonna have to see if it's even possible to implement with the budget we were given.
This is big. We got our hands on some crazy footage that was shielded by a 200 word password, it came straight out of our head artist's secure folder. Don’t ask me how I got this. Rejoice:
Jokes aside this is an enemy for the new area we’re working on, can you guess its theme based on this footage alone?
We’re almost done creating all the mechanics and enemies for the next area and we’re gonna show them off very soon. Things are going well. I’d say so far we’re on track to finish the main story questline by the end of Q1 like we anticipated, but things happen, and if they indeed do, we’ll let you know.
Stay safe!
Fardust team
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