First of all, please allow me to introduce myself and give you all very heartfelt thanks for how the last two weeks have been.
My name is Scott, and I'm the developer behind The Wyndfinder. Over the past four years, this game has evolved from being a hobby, into a side hustle, and who knows what's next. If we can keep the current momentum going, I feel like the sky's the limit.
The Land of Tarlisalia
So, thank you all for being a part of the very start of this journey. I've been working on this game, in various iterations, both table top and video game, since I was 16 years old. And I have some grainy photos to prove it.
A yellowed parchment, showing the first map I ever drew. A blocky translation for an implementation in BASIC on my first computer. And this was just the beginning. A decade later, as an adult, and I get somewhere with a full rewrite of the lore through a three year tabletop campaign, still centering on the city of Jestril but with a much richer sense of place, of characters, and narrative. Skip ahead another decade or so, and I rewrite it again, only this time, the story means something.
The Myth of the Solo Developer
And it wouldn't be where it is right now without help. Firstly, having an artist like Witch Bolt sign on for the soundtrack has really helped capture the essence of how I want to feel when I play it. If you like what you hear from the soundtrack so far, I encourage you to check out the rest of his work.
And MLC Studio has come on the past few months, taken my very amateurish art and is bringing these characters to life in ways that I had to admit I could not. So much for the "magical solo developer".
There is some amazing artwork coming to the game soon, and I can't wait to share that with you. The character portraits and facial modeling work are really important to me to get exactly right, and I'm thrilled with the direction it's going in.
The Roadmap
I think this is getting a bit long for an introduction, so let's keep this brief. Here's what's on the docket for the next two months, executed in two-week sprints:
Prepare for a Closed Playtest. I've got Steam SDK and Analytics integrations working, and am putting the last major designed feature into the game. This is a system I've wanted to build for a while, a rich Bestiary that let's each character use their trained Skills in the first round of the fight to advance their knowledge of their enemies. Progress is tracked, and bonuses kick in after enough growth. So far it's pretty fun! A detailed update on this system is probably the next update.
The Playtest will focus on the first hour of the game, and I have a bit of work to do on the starting town of Cartha, it's people, and a few of the quests. Much of the work here is complete, but I will spend two weeks here ensuring that each narrative choice has the right level of variety, that the writing is up to the current standard (some of Cartha was written as long as three years ago, and needs editing if not wholesale rewriting).
Continue QA of the Playtest build, covering each class across as much of the viable narrative paths as possible. During each of the sprints I've mentioned so far, I'm also working on designs for areas, encounters, and people in Act 2 of the game, as well as "grey-boxing" many of those scenes.
If all goes well, it's mid-July and I'm ready to start the Playtest. I'll be handling this via Steam Keys to the private playtest build, distributed on the Cat Lord Games Discord server. It's quiet in there now, but maybe we can change that. The goal of the Playtest is to smoke out any deal breakers before this build turns into an official Demo.
I think that's enough for one post. I'll be updating here after each sprint to keep you appraised of the progress. Onward!
Scott