Hey everyone! I am super excited to bring you the first major milestone for Blood Sword!
The Blood Sword demo is live on Steam, and it arrives on the first day of the Party-Based RPG Fest, which runs from September 14 to 21. You get the opening of The Kingdom of Wyrd with all four heroes, from the first campfire in the forest to the shores of Wyrd, and you can download it right now from the store page!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3645170/Blood_Sword/
The first line of code of this project is from April 2023. The last build, 0.1.14, was done at a quarter past eleven last night, after 26 days of a small group of playtesters breaking it and me fixing it. Between those two dates are almost three and a half years of my life, and honestly, I am a bit nervous :)
The version number in the corner of the main menu went from 0.1.0 to 0.1.14 in the 17 days before the fest, and August closed as the busiest month in the project's history, with 193 patch notes.
The demo is here to stay
This is not a festival exclusive. The demo remains on the store page after the 21st, and I will keep patching it the same way I did for the testers, build by build, whenever you report something. The official Discord is the quickest place to do that, and the Steam forums work just as well.
https://discord.gg/p5sdVTyDWz
It will be back in October for Steam Next Fest, in whatever better shape you have pushed it into by then. If you like what you play, the wishlist button is still the thing that helps a lone developer most.
I have done this once before, with an early Fabled Lands build in the Steam Summer Game Festival of 2020, when the demo was rough and thin and people still took the time to write to me about it. That is the part I am looking forward to this week.
Thank you to everyone who played and wrote back. See you in Wyrd, fellow adventurers!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3645170/Blood_Sword/