Hey friends! Were excited to announce that we have just released the mobile version of Ash of Gods: Redemption for iOS!Thank you everyone who responded and helped with testing thanks to you, we quickly passed the review stage and found and fixed all issues. The game is now available on the App Store at this link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ash-of-gods-redemption/id6737623223 At the moment, its the 1.0 version of Redemption, but very soon well add an improved combat system, an updated card system, and many other changes that are already live in the PC version. Make sure to try playing Ash of Gods: Redemption on your iOS devices and embark on a journey through a harsh, dark fantasy world, where danger waits around every corner and no one is safe from death. Take part in thrilling tactical battles, make decisions that will affect the fate of your characters, and stand against the brutal and mysterious Reapers, who seek to drown the world in blood to awaken their sleeping gods. Don't hesitate to rate our game honestly and give your feedback in the comments or in Discord we carefully read everything!

[ 2024-12-22 15:19:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Turn-based RPG Fest begins on Steam today, and we hurry to deliver you a good discount and one more major update for our reworked game. This time we concentrated on balancing and correcting some important flaws. More information below.

IMPORTANT FIXES

Tutorial is fixed now it doesn't freeze on one of the steps, and the enemy cant play cards anymore. Another important fix relates to the mistakes which happen in the last turn of the round. The characters could start getting double bonuses from certain skills all of a sudden or simply lose their armor for no reason etc. Now everything should function according to the rules.

CHARACTERS

[img=https://i.imgur.com/hoU60IK.gif][/img] First of all, we decided to get rid of the skills which requires health points to inflict damage. Now the meme-like situations where the enemy units particularly, crossbowmen and spearmen kill themselves or deal damage with the negative health points shouldnt happen.
One more important change relates to the Gells faction. They had quite an obvious weakness earlier a low level of energy. Thats why the battles with them could seem boring and predictable. Now the energy level has significantly increased so youll need a new strategy. We also reduced the cost of certain abilities for all enemies and adjusted many base stats and multipliers.
These changes have affected player's characters as well. Gleda still use her health for some strong attacks, but restores it when she kills her enemies.
Besides, she becomes too powerful on high levels so we increased the cooldown of some skills and also lowered the damage of the skill which inflicts damage to both health and energy of an enemy.
Lo Pheng also had to change. As the Warrior of Peace doesnt fight alone and doesnt take turns after each enemy anymore, we lowered the cooldown for almost each of his skills to make his upgrades in the second tier of the role-playing system more rewarding. Spearmens speed (Fisk, Bolla) was significantly increased, so now these glass cannons can hit and then hide behind the backs of more powerful allies. [img=https://i.imgur.com/kWhtfjA.gif][/img] Their characteristics were also increased a bit, and their defensive free action skill is now without cooldown. Now they are more resilient, but we still recommend to increase their health with items and upgrades, and maybe take the Cleric to the battlefield.
The important change touched the class of the Warrior. Due to resource dependence on the characters attack power, upgrading the Onslaught skill at higher levels required too much energy, making the character lose his flexibility. We removed the additional energy cost but also reduced the power of the upgrade.
Hammermen (Helm, Kendi) got the fix for the skill that increases their speed. All skills in the characters role-playing system should now display correctly as well.

CARDS

The enemies started to use cards more frequently. Besides, when the level of Reaping increases they become more powerful and diverse. In some battles enemies use special decks instead of random ones. We also corrected the mistake where the opponent could play several cards in a row in one turn. Additionally, the card that gives a significant boost of attack was removed from the enemies decks. It happened because some enses used it to one-shot almost any character (an archer as a rule) thanks to the skill that hits almost across the entire battlefield, dealing damage equal to 300% of the characters attack.

ITEMS

We reworked many items to make them more useful, especially in the early stages of the game. Their cost remains the same.

GAMEPLAY

Now, when positioning characters before a battle, you can see the enemy health bars by hovering over them this will allow you to plan your initial moves better and help you set your first targets for elimination. The high level of Reaping no longer grants additional experience from battles. This option provided a significant advantage, allowing rapid character development and making fights very easy.
Thanks to all these changes, battles became not so easy, although not really significantly. However, there are still frustrating spikes that really increase difficulty at certain points in the game such as during the escape from prison. Weve made some adjustments to these battles to make them more balanced, but we'd really appreciate your feedback here. [img=https://i.imgur.com/lV7fuRa.gif][/img] Besides, we added the button for skipping dialogues. If you press it, youll move to the nearest choice or will finish the dialogue if there are none of them.

THE MOST IMPORTANT

[img=https://i.imgur.com/jflJgPc.gif][/img] Please share your impressions from the changes in the comments or visit our Discord we read everything very carefully. We also ask you to support us with the review on Steam so more people can learn about the changes the game receives. Its really important for us.
And we remind you that you can buy the game at a discount starting from today as our game is the part of Turn-Based RPG Fest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2024-09-30 17:30:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello folks! We continue to work hard to add the features that werent included into our recent Major Update, carefully reviewing your feedback and fixing bugs. As a result, we've compiled quite an extensive list of improvements that we hope will make your adventure in Ash of Gods: Redemption much more enjoyable.

ACHIEVEMENTS

First of all, achievements should now work correctly in both the original and the reworked versions. Happy hunting!

BALANCE

Weve also listened to your feedback and made significant changes to the strixes mechanic, increasing the initial number of shards in the beginning of the game.
These adjustments apply to both the reworked and original versions of the game, but only in Story and Classic modes the Hardcore mode remains the same, and there your characters may still have to draw the short straw if luck isnt on your side. In addition, we've fixed an issue with low level characters who join your party as the story progresses, making it irrational to use them in battles. In the reworked version we want to give you as much freedom as possible to experiment with your party, so now the level of new characters will be a level lower than the maximum level of your party.
Also, as a reminder, all characters in your team now gain a standard amount of experience, even if they don't participate in battle, ensuring that any of them can be useful throughout the game.

BATTLES

As a top priopity, weve fixed certain battles where the new rules werent working correctly. Let us know if we missed anything or something works wrong. In the meantime, were continuing to improve the new combat system, making important adjustments to the existing mechanics.
Now, additional abilities that previously could only be used before the main action can be used at any time you can first attack an enemy and then, after approaching a group of foes, apply a counterattack or defense to your character.
These additional abilities are marked as 'free actions' in the description.
Special class abilities which were previously almost unnoticeable, are now displayed much better in both the original and reworked versions of the game the icon is now significantly larger and got a special animation after activation.
During the positioning phase you can now swap characters by holding down the SHIFT key, reducing the number of unnecessary actions. A reminder of this will always be displayed at the top of the screen.
The bug where the enemy couldnt play a card and use a character in the same turn was also fixed. Now all participants in the battle are in an equal position. Weve fixed the problem with the speed of some characters. The improvement of abilities and usage of special items increases characters speed correctly now.
We have completely removed the hidden timer from the game, and turns are now passed only manually. The round counter that replaces the timer has also undergone a slight change it now tracks the progress of all characters on the battlefield rather than being unique to each team. Additionally, we've fixed the issue with the camera that stucks in certain battles, and the mouse wheel now functions consistently with other screens, zooming in on the battlefield when scrolling forward and zooming out when scrolling backward.

UI

Weve listened to requests for a larger interface for big monitors and TVs, and weve added a special slider to adjust the size of the interface. We hope this solves the problem.
The arrows showing the movement of the Frisian army on the map have returned you can now once again track the enemy's movements.
The issue with UI elements freezing during interactions with characters is fixed. For example, in the first battle between Lo Feng and Atraakh, the icon Talk to Pelko Soturi will disappear.
Another change is the fixed layout in pop-up event windows. The forth line was too squeezed into the third, but now it should look fine and your eye won't be stumble over it.
The display of some item stats is also fixed their properties are no longer hidden behind the purchase button and won't be a surprise to you.

SAVES

Wed like to note that the 'missing' saves after the update for those who already had progress in the game should no longer concern players. The issue was due to a Steam cloud storage glitch it simply wasn't copying game files to the correct folder.
If you still have this problem after the update, please copy your saves from \Steam\userdata\{USER_STEAM_ID}\691690\remote to C:\Users\{USER NAME}\AppData\LocalLow\AurumDust LLC\Ash of Gods. If this doesnt resolve the issue for any reason, please let us know.

KNOWN ISSUES

We are a tiny team and are unable to test completely all 24 hours of the game, so please let us know if something works wrong. We will fix it in the next update.
At the moment we know that all Lo Pheng's skills except his basic attack put a cooldown on his free skills which shouldn't work this way, so we advise you to use them before the attack.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT

Please support us by leaving an honest review of the game it means a lot to us. We also carefully read everything you write and are ready to answer any questions and help on Steam forums and in our Discord channel. And for now we go on working on the next update for you to enjoy new improvements which well tell about soon. https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2024-09-07 19:01:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

We have finally finished with the new battle system testing thanks to your invaluable help as well, and now are ready to show the first improved version of Ash of Gods: Redemption! Pay attention that its not Redemption 2.0 yet we keep working on voiceover, translations and other improvements, and will also attentively study your feedback to make corrections. We hope that this update will give you a lot of positive experience, so please support us with reviews on Steam. Its very important for us especially if you had left a negative review about the original battle system. So whats in the box?

VERSION CHOICE

First of all, we considered the requests of those who would like to be able to play the classical version of Redemption. So the first tough choice awaits you right in the beginning of the game.

NEW TURN-ORDER SYSTEM

One of the biggest changes is the new order of turns which was requested by many players. Now smaller squads will not get the advantage over bigger ones: all the characters must make a move to start a new round. There's a tiny advantage for a small teams left, though, as they are always the first to start a new round. The exclusion is Blance being a strong character who is able to destroy enemies all by himself, he can act after every enemys turn. The same is also true for Lo Pheng in his first battle against the Reaper.
On the top of that, we have finally disabled 300 seconds per turn limit, and made this space fail-safe timer more useful. Now it shows the number of a round and its progress based on how many characters made their move and its number.

NEW MOVEMENT SYSTEM

Another major change is an entirely new character movement system that we borrowed from our secret developments on an unannounced game. In the original version, the hero could only make one movement, and using a skill immediately ended the turn. Now characters have more freedom: they are only limited by movement points and can move after using abilities. It provides more opportunities for tactical planning you can now break the distance with an opponent after attacking, hide a weak character behind the backs of allies, or change your decision if you make a wrong move.
It is worth mentioning that you can plan your moves from the very start as we have also added the ability to check your enemies and their skills during the positioning phase.

NEW CARD SYSTEM

We have literally destroyed and rebuilt the combat cards to make them more useful and interesting some were removed, and others were reworked. Additionally, the player now starts the journey with fewer cards in the initial deck (two instead of five). The cards themselves no longer require a separate turn you can play a card and then act with the chosen character.
We also got rid of the mechanic of obtaining cards by collecting their fragments no more worrying about missing them and spending gold on them. Now, cards are awarded for key battles and can also be obtained in story dialogues. This way we've added an additional progression to the game, introducing stronger cards gradually, and you won't be stuck with the same options through out the whole game.
The UI of the cards has been improved as well: available cards are shown by default during combat when you can use them and are hidden when they can't be played.

SKILLS REWORK

Its also worth mentioning another problem from the original Redemption that annoyed many players the use of powerful skills requiring a substantial health sacrifice from the character. We have significantly reduced the cost and effectiveness of such skills for most classes and completely removed them from archers as they did not make sense either tactically or narratively. However, we decided to leave these abilities for assassins, who can restore health when killing enemies.
We may get back to this issue and completely remove such skills for regular classes, making players pay for powerful abilities with energy, thus reducing their mobility in the new movement system but for now, we await your feedback.

EXPERIENCE REWORK

Party management was another pesky problem of the original game. As you can take only up to six characters to a fight, the 'benched' party members did not get any experience, gradually and hopelessly falling behind in progress, which made their use in the future significantly more difficult. New version of the game fixes the issue. Now even those who do not participate in fights receive a standard amount of experience. But it is also worth mentioning that characters on the battlefield can earn additional experience points by last hitting opponents.

OTHER IMPORTANT CHANGES

Firstly, the game now supports 60 FPS instead of 30, making it feel much smoother and more pleasant for the eyes. Secondly, we have improved the enemy AI they will no longer ignore you, hiding in the corner of the map.
Thirdly, we made quite a few improvements to the UI adjusted item management and tooltips, added an indication of receiving new cards, and indication for save slots with mode labels and Reworked version is marked with 'NEW' banner. Additionally, we seem to have fixed the issue of supposedly disappearing saves previously, this was resolved by re-logging into your Steam account, but it shouldnt occur anymore. Please let us know if this is not so.
Meanwhile, we continue to work on new improvements there are still things in our list, so expect more changes soon. A huge thanks to everyone who participated in the testing many changes were made possible thanks to your help and prompt feedback. Remember, you can always contact us in our Discord channel and leave your opinion in the #feedback section. And please support us with an honest review on Steam if you like what we do it's most valuable to know that our players appreciate our efforts in improving the game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2024-08-23 16:10:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Great news a demo version of Ash of Gods: The Way is now available on our page. Its fully up-to-date and includes all the changes the game has received since its release. If you hesitated about buying or were planning to do it later, now you can try it absolutely free and purchase the full version if you like it.
To make this offer even better, weve added a special 50% discount to all versions of Ash of Gods: The Way and its DLC.
You will be able to:

• test yourself in the puzzle battles of the first championship;
• master two decks, the powerful Berkanan and the full of tricks Bandit deck and create as many of your own as you want;
• forge beneficial alliances that will help the main character in his deadly mission;
• enjoy the stunning art and voice acting;
• try all three difficulty levels Story, Classic, or Hard!

The button to download the demo version is available on the game's page:
We also remind you that we are releasing the mobile version of Ash of Gods: The Way soon, and you can help us a lot by pre-registering and adding the game to your wishlist: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.theway
Be sure to try the demo if you haven't purchased the game yet, and join our Discord to share your feedback, ask any questions and stay tuned!

[ 2024-08-12 19:54:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello folks! We go on working on the new alternative battle system of Redemption and are ready to demonstrate first changes and get your honest feedback. The new build is already available in Steams beta-branch and is waiting for everyone who is ready to test it. To get access to it, please, join our Discord you can get all the information there in the #announcements section.
What changes did we manage to make? First of all, the order of turns has been changed now small squads no longer have an advantage over large ones: all characters on the field must take a turn for a new round to begin. The exception is Blance being a powerful character capable of destroying enemies single-handedly, he can act after each opponent's turn. The same applies to Lo Pheng in his first battle against the Reaper. The next thing we did was significantly change the combat cards. First of all, they dont require a separate turn anymore you can play a card and then act with the chosen character. This should significantly improve the dynamics of the combat.
Secondly, many cards have been significantly modified to make them more useful. Because of this, the player now starts the journey with fewer cards in the initial deck (two instead of five). Thirdly, we gave up the mechanic of obtaining cards by collecting their fragments, which were available from merchants or as battle rewards. Sometimes, the necessary parts wouldn't appear until the very end of the game, which noticeably frustrated players.
Now all cards are issued as a whole usually as rewards after important battles that you wont miss. Another change is cosmetic. Available cards are now shown by default during combat when you can use them, and hidden when they cannot be played. Changes also touched on some combat skills that require health expenditure to use we did not have time to thoroughly discuss this mechanic, so for now, they require fewer resources but are also less effective.
Small fix came to items management as well. Now you can drag and drop an artifact to the character who's already chosen for a fight, not just via team section as that was before. The enemy AI has also been improved enemies no longer stand idly, skipping turns, but actively participate in the battle. The last important change is that the game now supports 60 FPS instead of 30. We have already tested this in Ash of Gods: The Way and know that even our frame-by-frame animation looks significantly smoother in this mode. We hope you will like it too.
We also remind you that all future changes will also be applied to the mobile version of Redemption, which is already available for purchase on Google Play. Additionally, we will soon release its spin-off Ash of Gods: The Way on Android. We would be delighted if you follow the link and add the game to your wishlist (pre-registration): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.theway Thats all for now, friends. See you and thanks for your support!

[ 2024-07-26 15:33:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! We have finally released the mobile version of Ash of Gods: Redemption and while we are working on the updated version, we're starting to port The Way on Android!
Pre-registration has already begun, and you will help a lot if you follow the link and add the game to your wishlist by clicking Pre-register button. This way you will not only support us but will also be notified when the game becomes available: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.theway Of course, we plan not only to port the game to mobile devices, but also adapt the battle and dialogue UI to make the gaming experience more comfortable for you. Our special goal is to ensure accessibility for Russian users were planning to find the variant that will suit everyone.
Soon we plan to start closed testing of the mobile version. If you want to be the first to evaluate the game and help us improve it, join our Discord channel. You can also give your feedback and ask questions here. Thats all for now, friends well keep you updated about our progress. Pre-register on Google Play and join closed beta testing. Were really grateful for your support and for staying with us!

[ 2024-07-15 16:24:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! The first version of mobile game Ash of Gods: Redemption is already available on Google Play! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption At the moment it suggests the experience of the original game, but with some changes for mobile devices, but with some changes for mobile devices which should significantly improve your gaming experience. These are not all changes that we planned, so dont hesitate to share your feedback in Discord. Besides, the mobile version will get all the future changes that will be available for Steam: an alternative battle system, improved translations, voiceover and others. You can read more about it here.
CHANGES FOR MOBILE DEVICES So what changes are already in the game?
First of all, weve improved the combat UI: some buttons became bigger, we added separate windows for tooltips that wont get closed due to taps, and texts got larger. Besides, weve made battlefields much closer so that you wouldnt need to change the size by hand in every battle. Additionally, we've significantly reworked the UI of healthbars closer to what we have in our recent game, Ash of Gods: The Way to make them easy to read. Do you think we should transfer this UI to the Steam version as well?
The comfort of reading texts was our top priority, so we spent a lot of time experimenting. We increased the font sizes and space between lines in the dialogues, and also added special buttons to make it easier to select responses.
Similar adjustments were made to the event screen. We maximized the height of the window, which allowed us to make the texts significantly larger. Special buttons to choose answers easily like in a regular dialogue were also added.
Additionally, we increased the zoom capability on the global map for more comfortable exploration.
The next change will also be included in the PC version of the game: weve added special arrows that indicate the scene can be moved this should improve the gaming experience, for example, in the first scene with Lo Feng, where this option is not obvious. For mobile devices, we also modified the icons a bit to make them as easy to interact with as possible.
Additionally, weve moved all game achievements to Google Play, so now important plot points and battle successes will be marked on mobile as well. A big thank you to everyone who participated in the closed testing thanks to this, we were also able to fix a significant number of bugs. We plan to continue monitoring your feedback and will also start working on the PC version of the game. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption

[ 2024-06-27 14:04:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Were finally ready to announce the start of the closed testing of Ash of Gods: Redemption, mobile version. Currently, we haveve included only some of the important changes for comfortable gaming on small screens. The rest will be added in the next updates taking into account your feedback as well. To become part of the closed testing, please, join our Discord-channel more details in #redemption_mobile. You can also ask all the questions and share your feedback there.
No matter if you plan to take part in the testing or if youd like to play the game on release, please press pre-register button on the page of the game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption

! FOR THE OWNERS OF RUSSIAN ACCOUNTS

Now there are some difficulties with Russian accounts on Google Play, but weve prepared a simple guide for you. It will help you create a foreign account and take part in the testing: Guide to Creating a Foreign Account In case of any problems, please, dont hesitate to contact us on Discord we thoroughly read all the messages. And thanks to everyone who responded youre awesome. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption

[ 2024-06-01 16:16:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Thank you for your response to the news about the release of the mobile version of Redemption! We really appreciate your enthusiasm and wed like to tell you more about our progress.
Please subscribe on us in Google Play and help us reach 5000 pre-registrations it will help us get the featuring from Google for the further development of the game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption
Meanwhile, we have assembled the first fully playable mobile version of Asf of Gods: Redemption and we hope to get the one with all the achievements which we will share within the closed testing. If you want to be the part of it drop by #redemption_mobile channel in our Discord.
Our main focus now is on the convenience of playing on mobile devices. Were adapting the game for taps, increasing the touch areas and the size of the text, and also adding some extra elements for indication. Some of these changes will later be included in the Steam version as well for example, arrows on long scenes indicating the possibility of moving between areas.
At the same time we continue to work on updating the combat system, AI-voiceover and localisation, announced earlier and well tell you more about it after the release of th mobile version and collect your feedback. And we remind you about adding the game into the wishlist on Google Play its the best help and the best feedback you can give now. Thank you.

[ 2024-05-17 18:27:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello folks! Thank you all for the support of our idea about the rework of Ash of Gods: Redemption. However, we completely forgot to tell you about another important thing you will be able to play Redemption on your phone or tablet in a month.
Please, add our game to the wishlist (Pre-register button) in this case you wont only support us, but also get a notification when it becomes available: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption Lets specify a couple of things. The first release will be a classic version of the game currently available on Steam. But all the changes we have promised earlier a new option for the combat system with altered turn order and other enhancements, voiceover, and improved localization will also be added to the mobile version with updates. Currently, Ash of Gods: Redemption is only available for Android, but we may be able to delight iOS users in the future.
What are we doing right now? First of all, were integrating all the changes made for Redemption since the moment of release into the build. Then, were working on UI for mobile devices to make your experience as comfortable as we can. And were also fixing some of the flaws in the PC version, which will also be part of a major update on Steam.
Were planning to conduct closed testing of the mobile version very soon. So if you want to be among the first to evaluate the mobile version and help us improve it with your feedback, please join our Discord channel. You can find information on how to do this in the #redemption_mobile section. Please note that the number of players in the closed test is limited.
In the future we will tell you all in detail about the changes we plan, and will also share the results and of course, thoroughly read your feedback we read everything carefully an consider your opinion. Once again, a huge thank you for your activity under the previous post it is very motivating. We hope that you will enjoy the mobile version as well. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aurumdust.ashofgods.redemption

[ 2024-05-03 16:11:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! All of a sudden we have some free time on our hands, and we decided to spend it improving Redemption. However, we really need your feedback for that.

NEW BATTLE SYSTEM

We are always carefully reading your feedback and talking to our community, so we are aware that some players are irritated with our battle system as it is not fair enough due to the fact that characters in small teams gain more turns. We already worked on these flaws back in 2020 when we published a small demo for the Steam Summer Fest Ash of Gods: Arena. It has a different turn order and improved dynamics for example, the usage of cards doesnt take the whole turn now.
The feedback for the demo was really positive, so we decided that we can transfer this system to Redemption with some refinement, either making it an option by default or completely replacing the old one. So the main question is: would you be interested in such an update, and if so, which variant would you prefer? Please, share your thoughts in the comments, we read them all carefully.

VOICEOVER

Redemption is a narrative-heavy game with a lot of characters, and the dialogues notably lack voiceover. Were planning to experiment with the development of high-quality, emotive voiceovers using neural networks and voice-to-voice technology. It presupposes the work with live actors whose voices can be adapted to suit each character's required timbre, all facilitated by AI. We hope it will let us create compelling and natural voiceovers without much effort. What are your thoughts on this approach?

LOCALIZATION IMPROVEMENT

Another issue of Redemption is the quality of translations. The original language of the game is Russian. Therefore, to achieve high-quality English translation, the author should collaborate with an interpreter to directly convey his ideas. Unfortunately, it wasnt feasible at that time, but the English translation has seen regular improvements, so it should be more or less fine. Regretfully, we cant say the same about other translations, because many were done by the community, and we couldn't ensure their quality. For instance, Brazilian Portuguese works well in the first chapter according to the players' reports, but then it gets replaced with automatic translation from services like Google Translator.
We understand that such issues significantly detract from the gaming experience. Thats why we want to fix it with the help of an algorithm that uses several neural networks and combines simultaneous translation from multiple languages to ensure the most accurate results. This should considerably reduce the risk of distorting the original meaning and were sure that the result will be much better than the problematic localizations that currently exist in the game. As for the stylistics of such translations, only you, our dear players, can answer this question. Were going to run various tests, so join our Discord channel if you wish to take part in them. And please share your thoughts on the quality of localization in your language.

NEW LANGUAGES

With the method described above, we intend to add new languages to the game first of all, Korean and Japanese. If you know these languages and support the idea, please, let us know. If you have any other ideas for improving the game, please let us know about it in the comments as well. Also, support the news with a like, please it will let us understand how necessary the changes are and make informed decisions. Thank you. https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2024-04-12 16:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Its official! After several years of development, multiple demos and a lot of feedback from the community, we are over the moon to announce that Ash of Gods: The Way has officially been released and is now available to play worldwide.

Watch the official Ash of Gods: The Way Release Trailer:

[previewyoutube=I-FR-BG3NgI;full][/previewyoutube] Ash of Gods: The Way is available for 24.99 / $24.99 / 20.99. The full game features 4 tournaments, 4 playable card decks, 5 total card decks to be used by your opponents and a gripping storyline thats shaped by the choices you make. All of these features add up to shape what we believe to be a greatly replayable experience!

Get it here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/

Summary of Ash of Gods: The Way

• Many battles spread across 4 tournaments every battle is a completely unique and tailor-made challenge of wits and strategy
• Put it all to the test with Challenger Battles rematch previously won battles with new mechanics and stronger enemy units, and be handsomely rewarded for a victory!
• Customize your decks to your liking with unit, item and spell cards from 4 different factions, all with unique playstyles, strengths and weaknesses.
• Try 3 difficulty modes: Story, Normal and Hard. The Story mode is for those that may struggle with the gameplay and want to focus on the story and Hard mode is suited for veterans of the strategy, deckbuilding and tactics game genres.
• Experience a gripping story about war, loyalty and revenge your choices will shape the road you walk. Explore many different endings and story paths, fully voiced in English.
• Localization for English, German, French, Spanish (Spain), Ukrainian, Simplified Chinese and Russian.

Explore more of Ash of Gods

What edition of the game is right for you? Explore your options below!

Ash of Gods: The Way Deluxe Edition

Alongside Ash of Gods: The Way, you get the full soundtrack of the game and the digital art book. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31866/ash_of_gods_deluxe_edition

Ash of Gods Universe Bundle

Get the full story of the Ash of Gods universe with this bundle including both Ash of Gods: The Way and its predecessor Ash of Gods: Redemption. Keep in mind that Ash of Gods: The Way is not a sequel to Ash of Gods: Redemption and the stories are separate from each other! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31865/ash_of_gods_universe_bundle

Ash of Gods Fan Edition Bundle

Experience all of Ash of Gods so far! This bundle includes both Ash of Gods: The Way and Ash of Gods: Redemption, as well as all their digital extras. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31820/ash_of_gods_fan_bundle

Lets hear from you!

We would love to hear what you think of Ash of Gods: The Way! Feel free to start a conversation in the Steam discussion thread or join us for a chat on our Discord server. Reviews are important to us, as theyre a good way for us to gauge the current state of the game as well as general player sentiment. So, wed like to ask you to leave a review on the game whenever you feel like youve played enough to get a feel for the game. Whether the review is positive or negative, an honest review is whats most important to us! Encountered a bug or issue? Make a post in the Feedback & bugs section on Steam or find us in the support channel on our Discord server. Fixing issues is our main priority after launch, so well make sure to get back to you! [hr][/hr] From everyone at AurumDust, thank you all so much for your love and support on the demos and the big release. We were especially happy with the reception of the Ash of Gods: The Way Prologue and the feedback we got! 92% positive reviews is a big deal to us, as it lets us know the game is in a good spot. We hope to continue the transparency and make this game the best it possibly can be!

For questions about the game, be sure to check out our FAQ.

Connect with us

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshOfGods VK: https://vk.com/ash_of_gods Discord: https://discord.gg/ashofgods YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Es3rxqdtXgpgQzJdbXGOw

[ 2023-04-27 11:02:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Our new game, Ash of Gods: The Way, releases in less than 48 hours! All of this was made possible by you who supported Ash of Gods: Redemption. For this reason, we feel its only right to offer everyone who owns Ash of Gods: Redemption a loyalty discount on Ash of Gods: The Way! If you do not yet own Ash of Gods: Redemption, now is your chance! Its currently available with a 60% discount. You can get it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/ Ash of Gods: The Way, will become available on April 27th at 24.99 / $24.99 / 20.99 and will include a launch discount of 10%. Your loyalty discount is another 10% and will stack with the launch discount, totalling at a 20% discount on Ash of Gods: The Way! The loyalty discount will last indefinitely, but keep in mind that the launch discount will only be available during the first week after the initial release. Additionally, the loyalty discount only applies to the base game and does not change the price of the extra items that are included in the available bundles.

You can find Ash of Gods: The Way here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/ [hr][/hr] Again, thank you for supporting Ash of Gods: Redemption, and we hope to see you around for this next game!

Connect with us

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshOfGods VK: https://vk.com/ash_of_gods Discord: https://discord.gg/ashofgods YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Es3rxqdtXgpgQzJdbXGOw

[ 2023-04-25 14:04:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Weve officially reached the final week before the release of Ash of Gods: The Way! As were working our ashes off to get everything ready for release, wed like to share some details on the final things were working on, from changes, the game to an exciting announcement!

Nintendo Switch Release

Ash of Gods: The Way will be released for Nintendo Switch on April 27th and the pre-orders are now live! If you like to take your games on the go, you can grab the game on the Nintendo store. This is super exciting news for us as well, as we really do feel like the structure of Ash of Gods: The Way works really well with a portable console! Though you could also buy the game on Steam and play it on the Steam deck ;)

Watch the Nintendo Switch Gameplay Trailer:

[previewyoutube=tY89BQRBs7c;full][/previewyoutube]

Changes to the game

We previously announced some changes we wanted to make based on your feedback on the Ash of Gods: Prologue. At the time it wasnt quite sure what we could add in time before the release. Well, were very happy to announce that all these changes are implemented in the game upon release. The full changelog will be available on release day, but for now, lets highlight a couple changes.

Restarting a battle

Weve added a button the the main menu to restart a battle, where previously only the Surrender button was available. This makes it a lot quicker and easier to restart a battle if youre struggling. Previously, with the Surrender button youd be sent back to the tournament screen and talk with some characters about your loss, but you gave us feedback on how this took too long. Now, with the addition of the Restart button, you will still have a talk with some characters after you restart a battle if this is important to the story. However, if theres no dialogue, youll be able to dive right back into the battle without exiting to the tournament screen.

Battle pacing

We also implemented a toggle to slow down the enemy movement during the end of a turn. Normally, all units on a team would move at once, attacking the target in front of them simultaneously. You let us know it was hard to keep track of what was going on and you were running into situations where you dont know why you lost a unit. When you enable the slow down enemy turn toggle in the menu, all the enemys units will move one after another instead of all at once. This should make it a lot easier to see whats going on. Your own turn remains unaffected as to not slow down the game too much.

Language support

We have expanded the accessibility of Ash of Gods: The Way by adding Ukrainian localization for interface and subtitles. The game now supports English, Russian, French, German, Spanish (Spain), Simplified Chinese in addition to Ukrainian. You can change the language in the Language and Sound menu, where weve now also included a message explaining that a restart of the game is required for a language change to apply.
[hr][/hr]

Loyalty Discount for Redemption players

Players of Ash of Gods: Redemption will get 10% off for Ash of Gods: The Way. This loyalty discount stacks with the 10% launch discount! Thank you for playing our games and sticking with us, we really appreciate it. We hope you'll give Ash of Gods: The Way a go! [hr][/hr]

Connect with us to stay up-to-date!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshOfGods VK: https://vk.com/ash_of_gods Discord: https://discord.gg/ashofgods YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Es3rxqdtXgpgQzJdbXGOw Only seven days to go until the release. We hope youll join us on April 27th! In the meantime, we would really appreciate it if you could wishlist the game to support the release. It means a lot to us! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/

[ 2023-04-20 13:02:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! We heard your wishes for more gameplay previews, so lets go big! We just released a brand new trailer for your viewing pleasure, showcasing the gameplay you can expect from the full game.

Watch the new Gameplay Trailer here:

[previewyoutube=4cQy_gYacsU;full][/previewyoutube]

Remember, you can still try the free Ash of Gods: The Way Prologue and experience the opening chapters of the game.

Find the Prologue in the Steam store, or find the direct link in the comment section.

New Gameplay Mechanics

Once you finish the first tournament, youll have to face many new challenges and gameplay mechanics. So what can you expect from the rest of the game?

• Participate in three more tournaments and face off against their Champions
• Play with two new card decks; one focussing on defensive tactics and health drain, the other on offensive tactics and sniping the enemy commander
• Flesh out the Bandit deck and unlock powerful new cards for your trusty Berkana deck
• Upgrade your favorite cards to new levels and give them new abilities based on your playstyle or needs
• Unlock powerful new Commanders with game-changing special abilities
• Put your skills to the test by clearing Challenge Mode battles and be handsomely rewarded
• and plenty more yet to be discovered!

[hr][/hr]

Connect with us to stay up-to-date!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AshOfGods VK: https://vk.com/ash_of_gods Discord: https://discord.gg/ashofgods YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Es3rxqdtXgpgQzJdbXGOw

Be sure to wishlist Ash of Gods: The Way to support the game and follow the page to get the news right in your library!

Find it in the Steam store or in the comment section.

[ 2023-04-06 13:04:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Its good to see you here. Were super proud to announce the release date for Ash of Gods: The Way with you and get the Prologue version into your hands!

Watch the official release date reveal & story trailer here:

[previewyoutube=CytheVNQXZs;full][/previewyoutube]

Thats right! Ash of Gods: The Way will officially release on April 27th, 2023!

[hr][/hr]

Play the free Ash of Gods: The Way Prologue now!

Now, we get that youre eager to play the game. So, to fill the gap, we just released the Ash of Gods: The Way Prologue! The Prologue is a standalone version of The Way that spans across the opening chapters of the game, similar to the previous demo. One of the big changes, however, is that all of the in-game dialogue is now fully voice acted! We really feel like the voice acting elevates the story of the game to a higher level, so please do check it out and let us know what you think! The text of Ash of Gods: The Way has been localized for English, German, Russian, French, Spanish and simplified Chinese. Ukrainian localization will be available on the full release of the game. The Prologue is what you can expect from this section of the full game when it releases on April 27th, aside from any issues that may arise!

You can download the Ash of Gods: The Way Prologue through the dedicated page in the Steam Store.

The Ash of Gods: The Way Prologue will be available for a limited time only [hr][/hr] Wed like to thank all of you who followed the development of The Way, whether you just got here or have been following us since Redemption. Youre all amazing! Join us on the Ash of Gods Discord server to discuss the Prologue and talk about the upcoming game release! Well be hanging around there, so feel free to say hi!

[ 2023-03-09 12:02:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=saGxqFCmEQY;full][/previewyoutube] Experience a gripping story in a world torn by war and violence. You're sent on a mission that may save your country; failure is not an option.

[ 2023-02-02 15:42:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! It's finally Christmas time and we here at AurumDust wish all of you very joyful holidays and a hopeful 2023. We want to thank you for being with us all this time, for your support and help, we really appreciate it. We wish you a plenty of nice moments and the most wonderful games! Cheers! And we remind you about a Christmas present from us. Now you can get Ash of Gods: Redemption with 80% discount. Hurry up while Steam Winter Sale is on! And have a joyful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

[ 2022-12-26 15:34:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! We are stoked to announce that, as part of the #TurnBasedFest event, our brand new demo is now available to play! Experience what weve been working on over the past half a year since the last demo. Several changes have been made based on player feedback, so were eager to hear what you think.

Watch the new trailer here:

[previewyoutube=avkKlmGkbFU;full][/previewyoutube]

Main features to try out in the demo:

• Play through the tutorial and the first tournament of the game. Prove your worth and abilities to your king!
• Try out two different decks: Your trusty Berkanan deck and the ever devious Bandit deck!
• Three difficulty settings! The pesky difficulty bug has been fixed, so youll now be able to pick a difficulty level before starting the game. Normal mode is generally recommended for most players. More interested in the story than the gameplay? Story mode is for you. Want to explore every nook and cranny of the combat? Challenge yourself with Hard mode!

You can download the demo on the Ash of Gods: The Way store page!

While you're there, be sure to follow and wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/ Want to give feedback on the demo or discuss something with the developers? Join our Discord!

[ 2022-12-08 14:16:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello friends! Were beyond excited to let you know that next week, as part of the #TurnBasedFest event here on Steam, a brand new demo will be available for you to play! Weve been hard at work this past half year, implementing changes and improvements based on the feedback we got on our last demo. Well explore these changes in-depth next week, but heres what weve been working on:

A new and improved main menu has been added. Were really happy with how it looks now!

Lots of rebalancing. We fixed a few things for classic mode and reworked both story and hard mode. The latter is still a work in progress, but we hope these changes will result in an improved player experience.

We made numerous improvements to the story you can experience in the demo.

This includes improvements to the tutorial and story from slightly later in the game that have been moved forward to make the demo more interesting. The story and dialogue in The Way has been reworked as a whole, though you wont see much of this in the demo.
If youd like to discuss something with us or give feedback on the demo, join our Discord! We also released a (new) dedicated subreddit for the Ash of Gods franchise! Youll be able to discuss all the Ash of Gods games with others in the community, give feedback, share your thoughts & fan content and help each other out if you run into trouble. All official announcements will also be posted there! Find it here: r/Ash_of_Gods Want to stay up-to-date here on Steam? Follow the Ash of Gods: The Way Steam page to get all developments directly in your Steam library. While you're there, consider wishlisting the game! It helps us out a ton with getting the game out there. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/ See you next week!

[ 2022-12-01 15:10:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! We've been off the radar for a little while, but we're back with a blog discussing the current state of the game, the feedback we got after the last demo, as well as the changes we made for a new demo you'll be able to play soon! Want to know more? Check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1293460/view/3529162235824272604

Interested in The Way and its development? Wishlist and follow it to never miss an update! It supports us a ton.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/

[ 2022-11-25 15:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! Steam Next Fest has come to an end, and wed like to thank you for your engagement and useful feedback left in a questionnaire at the end of the demo. We have yet to read and analyse every reply, and well make a more detailed report about it later, but today we want to share the first resultsyour marks of our work.
As you can see, most players liked The Way. At the moment the average rating of the game is 4.44 points out of 5. Its almost 89% of positive marks. For us its a very strong indicator that the huge work we made over the game wasnt for nothing. At the same time we have to say that the demo has a big and unpleasant bug that considerably influenced the game experience. The thing is that if there are no earlier saves, the game doesnt offer the player to choose the level of difficultyand a new game starts by default in the easiest Story Mode.
A lot of players marked this fact and reported that the fights are too easy and in some cases dont demand any planning. It happened because in the Story Mode many fights dont work like they shouldit was created for those who doesnt want to deal with strategic challenges. We will make sure to fix this for the next demo so that you could assess the fights in the Classic and Hard modes. And for now we prolong the access to the demo for one more week, and you have an opportunity to try the game for yourselves (yes, in the Story Mode) and give us your feedback. Well surely read it. If you want to become a tester of Ash of Gods: The Way and to be one of the first players who will see the fights of the new championships, join our Discord channel andthe main thingadd our game to the wishlist! Thank you again for your feedback and support, Aurum Dust.

[ 2022-06-21 15:23:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! Its been half a year since our last demo, and for this time weve made a great deal of work, putting a lot of changes which weve been describing in the posts UPDATING BATTLEFIELDS PREPARING FOR A NEW DEMO into the game. In the new demo-version you will see: A new colourful cinematic (still a work-in-progress)
Levels of difficulty (we recommend playing the demo in Classic Mode)
New animations of the battlefields, making them much more vivid
A redesigned screen for changing a card before battle fixing the problem with accidental swap of the important unit as it was in the previous version
The animation of free cards that allows you to plan your moves better
Considerably reworked and much more convenient UI
And of course, much more balanced fights with improved mechanics!
Attention! The demo is available on the page of the game:
We hope that youll like our new demo and were waiting for any feedbackit really helps us make the game better! You can share it by answering a short survey at the end of the demo, in the comments to this post or joining our channel in Discord. We also want to thank you for your support and engagementyour likes and comments really motivate us. And dont forget to wishlist and follow the game! Have a nice game, AurumDust team.

[ 2022-06-13 16:58:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! As you know, we are preparing a new demo for Steam Next Fest, and you can already play it on Monday. Apart from balance corrections, we have removed the restriction of 30 FPS, and that made our game way more smooth and pleasing to the eye. We've also considerably changed battlefields and made them more vivid, placing a lot of new animated objectsthey look way more classy than Redemptions.
We have also added a new redesigned intro (it's not a final version though), the choice of difficulty level, free cards animation, an improved screen of card replacement before the start of a fight and a lot more.
What we haven't added but we will for sure: we'll add a new screen for the main menuit still demands some work with animations and music. We also plan to partially rewrite dialogues to make the story of the first tournament more complete and interesting. And of course, we'll bring back voice acting when all the texts are ready.
And for now follow us in Discord, add the game to the wishlist and check for updateswe'll inform you as soon as the demo will be available.

CATS & MEMES

Working on a demo is a hard and tiring process, but we always work as a team, and that's why we chat a lot and try to cheer each other upsometimes with absolute nonsense. And today we want to share some with you. For example, we couldnt go past the telling expression of Finns face in one of the new cinematics. Originally this meme was in Russian, but we managed to find an English alternativea phrase of Daniel Day-Lewis from the Gangs of New York movie.
Sometimes, after a hard working day our artists join the Dark Side of the Force. I blame Disney and the new trilogy for all of this.
Here, the artist who works with battlefields took the condition In this battle your opponent will get an unexpected reinforcement a bit too literally
And our art-director, while testing animations, turned a poor guardian into a dirty swine, putting flies on him, because there were no corpses nearby.
Also he says that hes added a scroll to a Frisian version of Kleta to punish Finn for bad fights in the tournament.
And he claims that he didnt try to draw a young revolutionnairejust wanted to attach the girl to the mother. Of course, we dont believe him.
But sometimes the game creates memes itself. For example, a ghost of a Hammerer appeared in the deck of Berkanas champion. Spooky!
By the way, our team is quite young. Some of us are old enough, though, to remember a very ancient meme about Techno Viking
Anyway, we all are millennials, so the memes are usually pretty classic:
And not always funny (but quite honest!)...
We also share photos of our favourite pets with each other. And it seems, all of us are crazy cat lovers (the image is clickable).
Its quite weird, but none of us has a dog. We would gladly accept them into our company though. But we have other pets too.
We hope that our pets and our stupid sense of humour have lifted your spirits. At least, just a tad.
Regretfully, we wont likely post regular updates and tell you about our game in detail anymore. Weve always tried to create interesting quality content, but it takes a lot of time and effortand for now these efforts dont pay off and dont bring enough wishlists.
Nevertheless, if you like our updates and youd like to keep reading them, its high time to add Ash of Gods: The Way into your wishlist and subscribe to the game to receive important updates. Unfortunately, Steam doesn't let us to put a direct link here but you can find a clickable GIF above the description on Redemption's store page. Comments, likes and reposts of this post are also very welcomethanks a lot for your support, anything like that is very precious for us. Besides, you can join our Discord channelwe are always glad to talk to the players and answer any questions. Thats all for now. We remind you that on Monday, with the start of the festival, our new demo will be available for everyoneand we are waiting for your feedback. Be sure to tell your friends about us!
And, of course, have a nice weekend!

[ 2022-06-10 16:13:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! Our team is intensely getting ready for the Steam Next Fest, preparing a new demothe old one is deactivated and isnt available anymore. Besides, we have finished the battles for all the games and will announce the search for players for a closed testing. If you want to be among the first who will see what we have made in new tournaments, join our Discord channel, pleasewe will post an announcement there, when the time comes, and well also collect feedback there. And today well tell you about other important updates which make our game better.

Cinematics

We have already shown our progress with new cinemanics. As you remember, a lot of images were black and white, and they had a lack of details.
Weve considerably moved forward finishing our work with separate images and making them much more colourful and rich.
Every clip sets the atmosphere of the places where Finn goes and reveals the characters he has to meet much betterand also shows emotions and relations between characters.
Almost all the cinematics are already put together, and well start adding sounds and music to them. But you will see a refreshed version of the intro in a new demonot a final one, were planning to elaborate on sounds and music.

New looks

As you know, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Thats why weve redressed Finns companions into Frisian costumes so that they wouldnt outtand from the crowd.
They also got new poses and animations to look more alive. Thats how, for example, Raylo will move and look:

New animations of battlefields

We also go on revitalising battlefieldsadding different effects, things and animals. By the way, according to the number of locations and the variety of animations, The Way is far richer than Redemption. Well make one more update a bit later, and now here are some cats deciding what to do with a fresh-caught lizard.

Animation of cards

New visual effects have become one more important detail of fights. We consider it important to highlight free cardsthe ones that dont make you spend a turn when playing. Itll help the player identify them faster among the usual ones.

Menu

We have also redesigned the menu: weve changed the concept and the colour scheme to make it more suitable for the theme of the game. But regretfully it wont probably be in a new demothere is plenty of work with animations ahead, to revitalise the picture and to make it more warm and cosy.
Thats all for now. Be sure to add the game to your wishlist, subscribe to the updates to follow the news and join our Discord channel to talk to us and share your feedback. See you!

[ 2022-05-20 14:57:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! While we were telling you about the lore and the characters of Ash of Gods: The Way, our team was going on working on the new tournaments. For each of them we tried to create unique screens and, of course, battlefields, trying to underline special traits of the areas whether it is dry Rigga with gloomy deserts,
...snowy Gollah, surrounded by proud mountains,
or strict Wodan with its architecture of straight lines.
If you have already played our new demo and finished Berkana Tournament, in new battles there will be new challenges and mechanics, waiting for you: Different traps and runes
Fighting for checkpoints
Special tiles with different buffs
In this arena you will see almost all buffs. IInterestingwhich combinations will be the most successful?
Weve also been thinking about the improvement of the general look of battlefields. At the moment were redesigning the crowd, leading people in different tournaments (citizens, soldiers, slaves) to the uniform style. These berkans, for example, will replace their more diverse predecessors.
We also want to liven up every scene at most, and thats why we experiment with different weather effects
and add animated objects:
We also want every field to be full of life. For example, here are some birds that peacefully look for food while the battle is on:
Were only experimenting with these things but as soon as we reach the final result, well definitely show it to you.
Well tell you about some other important changes in our game, but for now thats all. Share your impressions about new animations in the comments, follow our page and be sure to add the game into your wishlist! And also join our Discord community!

[ 2022-05-13 16:03:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! Today wed like to tell you about one more useful character who will follow you from tournament to tournament the merchant. From this article you will find out what he sells and why you should visit him quite often.
The merchant doesnt appear from the very beginningEik brings him to the tavern in the second half of the tournament, when Finn turns to challenger battles. By this moment our character has enough goldlets see what he can spend it for.
CARDS The part of the assortment of the merchant is cards of characters and supportitems and charms. But you can also buy an elite fighter and considerably strengthen your deckSkovos will come in very handy in challenger battles!
EXPERIENCE If cards of characters and support can be received in the battles later, the experience is never too much. You will definitely need it for the card upgradeif not in Berkana, then in Rigga. With every tournament points of new fractions experience will be added, but players will be able to gain the experience for the rest of the decks they play.
COMMANDERS You can get a unique card from the merchant as well. Its one of the commanders a bercanan lancer Ainsly. She can buff the attack which will definitely help in the fights with powerful Frisians.
The merchant can onsiderably diversify the game. He has goods for any taste and strategyanything you can afford. But remember that you will also need gold for the improvement of cards of supportand you wont be able to call off the deal. Choose cleverly! Explore the assortment of the merchant in our demo-version, share your opinion which goods youd like to see in his shop, follow our page andthe main thingadd the game to your wishlist.

[ 2022-05-06 14:57:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! We go on talking about Finns companions, and today we want to meet you with Raylo.
Unlike Kleta, Raylo is cold, sarcastic and prefers to keep his distance. It seems a typical aristocratic snobberynot to meddle with those who are unworthy of his fair company. But this young man living in the Scarlet Tower is not that simple.
Being a member of a noble family, Raylo doesn't flaunt it, thinking that respect of society shouldn't be granted by birth and detesting life consisting of balls and boring receptions. Thats why he decides to make a career in Bercanas intelligence service, where he achieves great success and not only becomes the best student but the first candidate for the mission in Frisia. Why is Eik uncontent with his candidacy?
Eik is worried that Raylo is too ambitious. He thinks that its not wise to trust the one who put his intentions above all with the important mission. Thats why, not having other options, he addresses Finn who is not interested in fame. Its not easy for Raylo to accept the fact that his mission is entrusted to some untrained squirt. He thinks that Eik patronizes his foster son, and in the beginning just refuses to help, but then he follows the group to Frisiathough he is not very happy about this fact. Finn will have to put a lot of effort into earning Raylos respect.
There is one more challenge for the young aristocrate in the groupKleta. This old and rude intelligence agent with a total lack of manners becomes one more target for Raylo, on which he can take his discontent out. The mockery of the aristocrat towards Kleta and Finn often infuriates the intelligence agentand not only him.
But in spite of his character Raylo can teach Finn a lot of things. Its him who demonstrates how to use new decks, telling everything about their basics and tricks. He is also always ready for a fight for Finn to train his skills with different decks and strategies.
Raylo is the most difficult and controversial participant of the mission who happens to be in the group against his wish. Will the young aristocrate manage to work together with the group? Share your ideas in the comments, train at Raylo's in our demo-version and dont forget to add the game into the wishlist!

[ 2022-04-29 14:56:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! We have already told you a lot about an upcoming tournament in Rigga and the deck they use, which you have likely missed because of Steam's malfunctions. Today wed like to meet you with Finns companionsKleta and Raylo. Weve often mentioned these characters in our previous articles, and today were ready to tell a bit more about one of them.
Its hard to imagine two people who are less alike. Raylo is a young and ambitious nobleman, a sarcastic snob, putting himself above others. And Kletaa man of the people, straight and quite rude, and he has no warm feelings for prudish and pompous aristocrates. How hard will it be for these two to get along? But both of them have something in commonthey both are never at a loss for words.
Kleta is a close friend and a comrade-in-arms of Eik, our main characters foster father. Its hard to believe that this unpretentious bloke is one of the best intelligence agents of Berkana and one of those who stole The Way. Risking his life, he spent long years in Frisia, almost died there, and was happy to finally retire and go back to Berkana. Eik and Finn fin him in an old tavern.
Kleta hoped that hed have a peaceful life now, but he has to take a new challenge soon. First he has to teach Finn tricks of the game, and then follow him in Frisia.
The old intelligence agent is definitely not happy about itbut his sense of duty doesnt let him refuse. No matter how crazy Eiks plan seems to him, hes not the one who will hole up putting all responsibility on the shoulders of an inexperienced boy.
In the game Kleta is responsible for the deck management. Its also him who gives Finn the First test after which he gives Eiks foster son the first of the four commanders with special abilities.
Finn is definitely lucky to have such a companion. In spite of the fact that Kleta can push one away with his rudeness, you can hardly find a more devoted person. And the point is not only that his loyalty is always with Eiks foster son and hell always support him with wise advice. He will never lie for the greater good and will speak out even the most unpleasant truth. But if things go completely wrong he will stay with his friends till the very end. And an unfavouravle outcome of their mission is definitely possible. In the next post well tell you about one more companion of Finn, Raylo. And now learn from Kleta in our demo, share your impressions in comments and be sure to add our game into your wishlist!

[ 2022-04-22 15:18:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! After giving the general information about Rigga tournament, wed like to pay special attention to a Frisian deck what it looks like, in what way it is unique and what new opportunities it opens to a player.
Frisians are a fraction of control. And when you first see it, the characters might seem pretty intimidating you wont find such high number of health points either in Berkana or in Bandit decks.
But when you finally breath out you can see that the attack points of the characters are quite low so they cant cause a lot of damage. Does it mean that there will be a long and boring fight? No way! The goal of Frisian soldiers is to hold the enemy back as much as possible, and to take away the opposing commander is the task of the Frisian warlock. Its impossible to resist the damage he causes, so its in your interests to finish the fight as soon as possible.
The warlock appears in the battlefield with the first summoned Frisian fighter who has the ability Life drain. At the start he doesnt take much, but this ability grows as almost any Frisian appears in the battlefield.
Now, when weve found out why it is profitable to drag the fight, lets speak more closely about the opportunities of the characters. First if all, about the balance of the attack and protection. Frisian soldiers are quite hard to kill, and one of the possibilities to make the fight longer is to block the way to your commander completely while the sorcerer drags out the enemys life.
Its also a good strategy for the Frisians to stay as close to the position of start as possible. A lot of characters of this fraction make only one step at a turn. Its quite enough so that the space near the commander would get filled with the unbreakable wall of the fighters. Its also convenient to hide weak fighters with useful effects behind the back of slow but powerful characters. For example, quite a fragile Templar, who considerably weakens the enemy, can hide behind the Centurion and become unreachable for the opponent.
Nevertheless, in the deck there are some characters who are quite good in destroying the enemys fighters. For example, Frisian Crossbowmen move quite fast and cause a great deal of damage. But even their attack becomes twice lower when they shoot at the opposing commander
Speaking about synergy, the Frisian deck is something average between the Berkana and Bandit Decks. All in all, the Frisians are quite powerful on their own, but some of the characters can considerably strengthen their comrades. For example, the Frisian captain improves the armor of his fractions fighters.
Its much more interesting, though, to have a look at how the deck of the support synergizes. There are, for example, the cards that can increase health of a group if characters, lower the attack of the hostile fighters, boost the speed of all the characters or slow down separate ones.
Its Raylo who teaches you how to play the Frisian deck and you can also ask him for a training fight either for this fraction or against it.
Youll be able to try a Frisian deck yourselves very soon, and for now subscribe to our discord channel, get some experience playint the Berkana and the Bandit deck in our demo and add the game to your wishlist!

[ 2022-04-15 14:55:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! While we were talking about Ursus, the team was working hard on the rest of the tournaments. And today we'd like to show you Rigga and give you more information about what kind of place it is and what is waiting for you there.
Rigga is situated in the place where the rocks and the desert meet. Unlike green Ursus, it's a rainless land, and people there have neither merry nor gentle personality.
Rigga is situated in Gelliathe country which has already been a part of Frisia for some centuries. But if the majority of severe highlanders in other parts of Gellia remained true to their traditions, in stone-made Rigga built by Frisians, Gellian culture is closely intertwined with the frisian one. Assimilated Gellians began to shave and to wear Frisian clothes. Animal skins were kept as decorationsas, for example in the costume of Quinna Rosette.
Quinna is a supreme commander of the army of Rigga. This is quite unusual as for Frisian as for Gellian women. Some people say that it's because both Gellian and Frisian blood flows through her veins. Others mention her extraordinary talent as a commander. And only few dare whisper about her crueltyand there are less and less of them, because they end up in dark dungeons where Quinna herself takes their skin.
The fight with Quinna takes place in the arena that resembles the Coliseum.
But to get there Finn will have to prove himself worthy in other arenaslike the one looking as sundial.
There are many other battlefields reflecting the gloomy and dark beauty of the lands of Rigga and its inhabitants' personality. And our characters are already waiting for you in the tavern!
See you in the second tournament! And for now follow us on Steam, join our channel in Discord, and, most importantly, add our game to the wishlist.

[ 2022-04-08 14:57:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! Last time we were talking about how to get more tactical possibilities with the help of card upgrades. Today we're going to tell you about one more variant using commanders.
As a rule, commanders are located on the battlefield you have to lower the enemy's health to zero to win the fight. You get the first commander in the beginning of the game and he doesn't have any special abilities. But playing the game you can find some other cards of commanders buy them from the trader or get them in sidequests.
The second commander Milten comes from Kleta. He is a healer. He can restore the fighters' lives which will be a very useful skill on the battlefield. There are many battles in the game, where an opportunity to heal a character so that he could stand one more round determines the outcome of the fight.
The fight against the Punisher, who you have to hold back at the cost of the units' life, is exactly like this. Another example is the duel, where the damage comes after the fighters death. But use this ability reasonably Milten heals his allies at the cost of his health and only once in three turns. Besides, he cant restore your fighters lives if he has to spend all of his health points to do it.
The next commander Ainsly prefers attack to protection, and thats why she offers one more tactical opportunity boost of the attack for a chosen fighter. The attack increases till the end of the round and can help to destroy a strong enemy fighter with a high number of health poins. This is also a powerful support against the Frisian deck which fighters are famous for their strong health. Its lucky that you can buy a new commander from a trader at the beginning of the Rigga tournament. You can use this skill as well as Miltens healing every three turns.
After that we get commander Deming, the strategist. He becomes available during the second tournament, in one of the quests. With the help of this commander you can play one extra card every three turns during the round. It can become a good deal of help in the beginning of the fight or will help to decide a definite tactical fight in a necessary moment. The ability is active till the end of the turn and combines perfectly, for example, with a Field Equipment card. So you can get extra cards from the deck to balance them in the most effective way.
The last commander who we get in Golla is Jarlet the necromancer. He can resurrect any of your characters who have died in the fight earlierbut only once during the fight. Regretfully, the gear of the resurrected character will disappear, but the upgrade will stay. This action isnt considered a move so you will still be able to summon one more character from the deck. You will be able to see the commanders in action very soon, and for now add our game into the wishlist and follow us!

[ 2022-04-01 16:03:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! After the stories of Eik and King Ho, we decided to get back to gameplayand today well tell you about the change in the mechanics of card upgrade and about the opportunities it gives to players. Upgradeand the whole deck managementis Kletas responsibility. Hell teach Finn to improve his cards when the time comes.
In the first version of the game there were a lot of levels of upgrade, but the process was totally simple and linearwith every new level a character used to get a bonus for attack or health.
It goes without saying that the growth of the characteristics comes handy, but how useful is it for the monk who, as a rule, stands behind the tank?
Such an approach didn't give any special benefits and almost didnt widen the opportunities of the player, making the card upgrade a boring and almost useless activity. Thats why after listening to your feedback we totally changed this system and concentrated on the unique abilities of our characters.
The only thing that remained unchanged was that you still need experience points to upgrade the character cards. Every faction has its own points which you can get in the battles. In the new system we made the number of the upgrade levels considerably less, but we added nonlinearity. The player gets the choice on the first and the third levelsdepending on his needs or preferences you can teach the monk to heal the ally in front of him more effectively or improve his mass heal skill. If the monk increases the abilities he already has, some characters can get new ones, which allows them to use these characters more effectively. For example, the battle sorcerer can get a useful counterattack skill which will make him a very serious enemy.
Don't worry about making mistakesyou can drop the upgrade of any separate card or of the whole deck any moment and get all your experience back.
The cards of support are also available for upgrade. They don't require experience points necessary for the upgrade of charactersall the improvements are paid with gold. The upgrade itself is linear, but the bonuses you get will allow you to make the deck considerably stronger. When you drop the upgrade you get all the amount of gold youve spent on that.
Dont be afraid to experiment. Invent and test new strategies, change the variants of upgrade for your characters depending on your needsand you will be able to win any fight. We hope youll like the new variant of the card upgrade. Download the demo and share your impressions in the comments. And also follow us and add the game to your wishlist!

[ 2022-03-25 15:22:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! We go on talking about the destiny of Redemptions characters. Last week we told you about Eiks life, and today were going to share King Hos story.
The future prince had been prepared to reign since childhood. But life in the palace never seemed appealing to Ho. The future throne seemed like a heavy chain on his neck, and endless bows,receptions, shallow intriguesall that Jeranas aristocracy lived forgave him only feelings of hatred and repulsion. His only consolation was lessons of martial arts that the boy was taught on the demand of his father, crown prince Trig. Training was easy for the prince, and he became proficient in fencing and shooting. But it was dagger throwing where Ho showed his real talent. Not only did he use them perfectly in melee combat, but he also threw them with such accuracy that his teachers advised Trig to continue his sons education in a different place. Ho admired this idea. He was pretty tired of the special treatment he got in the palace, and he asked his father to send him to an archers company in Albus, in the kingdom Odalaas far as possible from Jerana where every dog knew who he was. Trig didnt stop his headstrong son and agreed with the burgomaster of Albus about the transfer. But he insisted that young bodyguard Sop would accompany his son. At first, Ho was unhappy with his fathers decision, but he changed his opinion fast, when the young warrior became his friend. Thats how the young prince got to Albus. Hiding his background, he changed his name and started calling himself Hoda. But it was much harder to get rid of the manners, giving out his noble roots. Even trying to keep as friendly as he could in the company of fellow fighters, joking on himself and on the others, Hoda didnt become a close friend to anyoneapart from Sop, of course.
However, the young prince enjoyed his life as an archer and quietness far from Jeranas palace. But this peaceful time came to an end, when the Reaping started. Hoda joins the group of a resigned captain Thorn Brening and leaves Albus, devoured with disease. He heads to Ursus, where his grandfather, the king of Jerana lives at the moment. But the group gets caught in an ambush, and Hoda gets a bad injury. Blance, who turns out to be near, saves the young man, but at the same time the old king dies from a heart attack.
The throne passes to Trig, who finds out about the sad events in Albus and tries to look for his son. The father and the son meet in Opakumbut Sop, who is charmed by the reaper, murders the king.
Hoda is destroyed by grief. His family is dead, his only close friend is the victim of evil charms, and his duty makes him do the thing he was trying to escape so hard to put on the crown and ascend to the throne. When Ho buried his father and Sop, he got down to businessconfidently, harshly and cleverly. Like a monarch. The previous young guy with a disdainful and impudent smile stayed in some other life.
When the war ended, Berkana was in ruins. Dozens of destroyed towns, hundreds of burnt villages, thousands of people left without home, unplanted fields were a threat of hunger and death. There were hard years ahead. The new king started to restore Berkana. The first thing he sacrificed was the luxury of the palace. He collected all the decorations and changed them for grain in Vandilia. He ordered to give the grain to people and thats how he gained their sincere love. The people appreciated their unpretentious, ascetic monarch who preferred simple and convenient clothes to embroidered camisoles and royal gowns. But there were some things which the king didnt manage to do. As Ho concentrated on restoring the country and getting common people back to normal life, he couldnt prepare to a new threat.
In spite the king understood perfectly that the new war with Frisia was inevitable, he still hoped to get more time. But his calculations were wrong. And now he and Berkana have to face a new challenge. Luckily, there are true people like Eik near him, who are ready to give life for the countrys well-being.
The story of king Ho goes on, and it depends on the main character of The Way Finn only how it is going to end. Download the demo-version, meet changed Eik and king Ho and share your impressions in comments. And also follow us and add our game to your wishlist.

[ 2022-03-18 17:13:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! As many of you may know, the story of The Way begins twenty years after the story of Ash of Gods: Redemption. The Great Reaping and the Last War have passed, but Frisians are planning to attack the kingdom of Berkana. King Ho and his true subject Eik, the veteran of the Last War, remember the horrors of the past very well, and they understand how crushing the consequences of a new war can be. That's why both of them do all their best to avoid iteach in their own way. What has happened to the characters for all those years? Have they changed since the time of Redemption? We're going to share their stories with youand today we'll talk about Eik's way.

EIK

Finn's mentor and the foster-father started as a common soldier. Military science seemed easy to him, and being high and looking tough, Eik stood out from other recruits. He was thought to become Prince Trigg's bodyguard, but he gave Eik another honorable positionJerana's Guard Master. As some malicious tongues saybecause of fear of looking small near such a giant. The real cause was that Trigg trusted the warrior. He understood clearly that behind the exterior of a simple and rude soldier there is a clever, loyal, attentive and scrupulous man, who trusts nobody without a reason. So even being a Guard Master he treated his subordinates as equals which helped him to be completely aware of everything that the Prince needed to know.
When the Reaping started, Trigg sent Eik to come with Hopper Rouly in search of his son Ho because he was one of his best and most trustworthy warriors. The situation with the Harvest got worse because of the war with Frisia, and Eik almost died in the fight near Opakum, covering newly crowned King Ho, who got the power after his father's death. When Eik recovers from his wounds, he refuses to become one of the generals of the Berkanan army. All of those people who he considered close friends died in the war, and the giant feels guilty because he wasnt with them. Devastated, he follows the Frisian army alone. He finds and destroys the enemy's spies.
On the border of Gellia he finds a small town wiped off the face of the earth by the enemys retrieving army. In this town he finds a four-year boy crying over his mothers dead body. Eik sees the same miserable and lonely soul in the child, Eik takesthe boy with him.
What does it mean to the old soldierto get a son all of sudden, even if its a foster-son? Realizing all responsibility, Eik is returning to Berkana in hope to get the boy a better life. The warrior becomes a great support for young king Ho, who gives him a position of Master of Surveillance. Eik understands that he has to learn a lot to provide enough help to the monarch and also give his foster-son good education. So he starts to learn himself, studying martial art, history, languages and even etiquette as thoroughly as he can. But even when Eik becomes more well-mannered and moderate, he still prefers to speak discreetly and act decisively. But now this decisiveness is strengthened by knowledge and a lot of experience.
And it all happened thanks to the boy who had become a new reason to live for Eik.
Download a new demo, meet new Eik and king Ho and tell us about your impressions in the comments. And also subscribe to us and add the game to your wishlist.

[ 2022-03-11 17:35:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends. As you know, every Friday we talk about fights in our game, but now it seems inappropriate. Today we want to speak on the situation happening in Ukraine. Perhaps, it should have been done last Friday. But the shock from what had happened was so great that we just went on doing the usual chores. Maybe its for the bestwe had time to think everything over and speak consciously. There are both Ukrainian and Russian people in our team, but we dont divide people by their nationality or some other basis. The only thing that really matters for us is mutual respect. We always try to listen, to understand and to support each otherand we still work together as a team. All of us have relatives, friends or fellow developers in Ukraine. We worry about everyone who is there very much. And its scary for us to understand that we can hardly help them. But at least we are able not to be silent. We are young, and we know about wars only by hearsay. Its frightening to watch the things that are happening now. But we cant imagine how terrified are the people right in the middle of the action. We want all of us to have future. The future where no one has to be afraid. The future where there is no place for missiles and hatred to each other. And we hope it will come as soon as possible. AurumDust

[ 2022-03-04 16:45:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! Today wed like to tell you about the fight that takes place on a narrow bridge. Its the battlefield that makes it uniqueits so unusual that you might want to refuse from the tactics you got used to. But lets get to the details.

HOW DOES THE FIGHT GO?

In the beginning of the fight you find yourself on a short, narrow bridge. Opposite there is the enemy's commander. The task is basicto destroy him.
It seems that its quite handy that the enemy is standing so closebut for the feature of the fight. Every fighter who appears on the battlefield is protected by Charms.
One more peculiarity of the fight is that you will have to take a fresh look at the movement along the battlefield. Its just two cells wide, so you wont have too much space for manoeuvres.
So the fighters of the enemy have considerable advantages just from the start. It wont be easy to bypass them to break to the commander. So what are the options? Eik advises Finn to think about effective bundles and support. But Kleta doesnt think this situation is worth discussing. Its interesting whose advice is better.

DIFFICULTY

We decided to collect much more powerful units in the enemys deck in the challenger battles than in the qualification round. Combined with charms, it made the fight considerably harderyou can easily lose all your ally units and watch helplessly as enemies come closer and closer to your commander, yawning as they approach.
Conditions for the perfect win also have significant limitations. First of all you cant use Shootersno more arrows from the allies backs. And you will also have to refuse evident decisions. Secondly, youre not allowed to use charmsonly items. So youd better double-check your deck!

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT BALANCE

The key feature of the fighta narrow battlefieldalready makes it pretty hard. We wanted that not only the territory would turn this fight into a severe challenge, but at the same time any extra condition could make it unpassable. Strengthening the enemys fighters with Charms seemed like a good decision to us.
Nevertheless, playtests showed at once that in combination with some definite fighterslike the EnforcerCharms make the fight almost unpassable. Thats why we reconsidered the enemy characters deck.
Were waiting impatiently for your feedback about the fight on the bridge. Share your impressions, follow us and add the game to the wishlist.

[ 2022-02-25 15:07:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, folks! This Friday were going to tell you about the fight with adjutant Mirina. This is quite an amusing fight which is considerably different from the others. Lets look at how it works in detail.

HOW DOES THE FIGHT GO?

The first thing to mention is that there are no commanders in this battle. Thats why the one who kills all the enemy's units first is the winner. In the right upper corner there is a counter which shows how many units are still alive. The next important condition is the central bodrer of the field. Neither your nor opponents characters can cross it. As soon as we summon a character and equip him, he rushes at once to the border on the other side of which enemys fighters line up.
The fight with Mirina can remind the duelthe fighters also stand in line and exchange blows. But you can see considerable differences.
Summoned fighters can change linesas in a usual fight. Besides, you can organize their support if you place an archer, a spearman, a monk, a warlock or any unit you consider necessary.
Mirinas deck consists of strong melee characters and the ones who are good at support. Cards from the second deck are also quite powerful, but if you find a proper tactic. you will win easily. But things are not so simple in challenger battles.

DIFFICULTY

To begin with, in the beginning of the challenger battle there is a guardian on the battlefield. There is a monk behind. Thus, you need to destroy not ten but twelve of the enemy's characters.
The guardian is equipped with the Veterans ring. It means that every turn his attack will increase in two points. On both sides of the scene there are walls. On the one hand, its a limitationnow a player has considerably less space for maneuvers. On the other hand, there are a couple of interesting variants for how to turn this limitation into your advantage.
The most interesting thing in this battle, though, is the condition for the perfect victory. Your task is to win using not more than three characters. And its not that easy!

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT BALANCE

The first hard question we faced was the balance of the cards. As it was mentioned before, Mirina summons only melee fighters, and we were thinking if we should make the same condition for the player. But we decided that the freedom from limitations opens up a lot of variants for elegant victory.
The next question was how we can make the fight harder. We wanted to place a vivacious but not unkillable character which will be pretty dangerous for the players units. Thats how we came up with the bundle of the Guardian and the Monk. The Guardian has quite a big amount of health points, and has protection from the objects that are put on him. A low attack is compensated with the Veterans ring, step by step into a real problem. The monk behind is always ready to heal his comrade if you wound him.
We hope that you will like this fight as well. Download our demo, share your impressions in comments and press the follow button on our page. And dont forget to add your game into your wishlist.

[ 2022-02-18 16:09:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! Were going back to telling you about fights and mechanics were using there. Today we want to show you the battle against adjutant Tork. He likes fighting in a big way, so be ready for something epic.

HOW DOES THE FIGHT GO?

The first feature of the fight is that players have more freedom. Contrary to the rest of the fights, here you can play two cards of characters and two cards of support at a turn. Thats why for the fight not to end too fast we doubled all the cards in both decks.
Secondly, six of Torks fighters are already standing on the battlefieldhe will try to protect himself from the first moments.
Thirdly, what catches the eyes at once is a gigantic battlefield with some obstacles. However, they dont archers' shootingand in addition they protect them from melee fighters.

DIFFICULTY

To make the challenger battles harder, we considerably increased the quantity of the obstacles on the battlefield. Barrels and boxes block most of the direct ways to the enemys commander, so the characters will have to move along a kind of trenches which makes them less movable.
Besides, according to His Majesty Hing Hoda, youre forbidden to move his characters between the lines more than once at a turn. You also have to finish the fight in seven rounds.
By the way, it may be a good opportunity to try your bandit deck if you have already got one. You can use such advantages as an opportunity to fill the battlefield fast with your units and the bandits skill to make each other stronger.

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT BALANCE

There were some really hard moments in this battle. We spent quite a lot of time experimenting with obstaclesespecially in the challenger battles. We asked ourselves a lot of questions like how many barrels and boxes should be on the battlefield, where to place them to make the players mission harder but not to totally block his way to the commander. And, as a main thing, not to lose the central idea of the fightan opportunity to use many characters. Finally we managed to come to the view of some kind of a labyrinth where players have to think properly about every move. And you should also watch the units not to block each others ways, use the battlefields advantages correctly and remember that the enemy can use his spells.
Estimating the perfect number of enemys units and what abilities they have became a real challenge for our team. Finally, after trying a lot of variants we decided that there should be units with quite many health points and with archers support. So in spite of the length, the fight feels dynamic and seizes your attention from the very beginning.
We hope you will like the fight with the adjutant Tork. Try to fight him by downloading the demo and share your opinion in the comments. So follow us on Steam and add the game to the wishlist.

[ 2022-02-11 15:21:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! Today we'd like to tell you about the bandit deck, to show its strong sides and of course to share some interesting tricks that give us an advantage over the Berkana deck.
For the first sight Berkanas advantage is obvious. Units look stronger, can wear more items, and the items themselves considerably increase your health and attack. But the bandit deck has some other advantages using which you can defeat a much stronger opponent.
The character who teaches us to use the bandit deck is Raylo a previous but unsuccessful candidate for the mission in Frisia. What do we learn from him? First of all, bandits are experts in teamwork.
Surprisingly, its the bandit deck where you can see the fighting spirit when a definite bandit dies, others get stronger.
Secondly, what kind of bandit doesnt use dirty tricks? If in Berkanas deck almost every unit is a mighty warrior, the bandits are mostly weak characters or at least they look like that. But if you take a closer look youll see that things are not so simple.
Every bandit has a feature which helps to defeat even the strongest enemy you only have to choose carefully who to fight. The slayer, for example, hides a poisonous dagger behind his back. It gives him a chance to destroy any enemy if the slayer will manage to pierce his armour. By the way, usual bandits can also use poison if you cast a proper effect on them. Apart from the poison they can also stun the enemies to win some time and kill them.
Thirdly, bandits can easily outnumber the enemy.
There are a lot of cards in the deck that help to summon more than one unit per move. Really, what bandit will do the job alone? Besides, there are also Ambush cards in the deck. They let you add one more bandit on the battlefield in exchange for some health points of your commander.
In general, if almost all fighters in the Berkana deck prefer to act on their own, when you choose the bandit deck you can get a pretty good combination of units with a bunch of dirty but effective tricks.
Bandits can fill the battlefield practically in a flash and strengthen each other greatly. Their spearman is able to strike from his companions backs. This deck looks like a puzzle which can be rebuilt endlessly, and you will still find more and more variants.
Try to play with the bandit deck in the new demo, tell us about your impressions in the comments, follow us and add the game to the wishlist!

[ 2022-02-04 18:08:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, everyone! Its the eve of the Chinese New Year, and in celebration of this event Steam has run the Lunar New Year Sale! It will last from January 27 to February 3. We participate in the sale with the team 40 Giants Entertainment, and weve got a great surprise for youReverie Knights Tactics + Ash of Gods: Redemption Complete Your Set Bundle! We bring you excellent newsto reward all our faithful fans, we have prepared a way to get extra 10% OFF the freshly released newcomer to the tactical RPG genre, Reverie Knights Tacticsjust use this "Complete your set" bundle and get the 10% OFF on top of any other current discount on the game. And of course, if you're still waiting to get Ash of Gods: Redemption, you can just use the bundle to get the games together, the extra discount will apply to both! So participate in the Lunar Sale, follow us on Steam and be sure to add our game to the wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/24553/Reverie_Knights_Tactics__Ash_of_Gods_Redemption_Complete_Your_Set/

[ 2022-01-27 18:00:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! While we were telling you about our new cinematics, Ash Of Gods: The Way got a prize for the best art at the online conderence Games Gathering 2021. Its not our first prizeearlier we got Excellence in Visual Art at DevGamm Spring 2021 Best PC Game at IndieCup.
And on December, 29 we released our new demo and got a big surprisea review from a famous Youtube streamer SplatterCatGaming. [previewyoutube=puSI7dOC-fg;full][/previewyoutube] Watch the gameplay, try to play the demo and of course leave feedbackwe are always happy to listen to it. Follow us on Steam and add the game to your wishlistthere will be a lot of news!

[ 2022-01-14 15:31:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! As we promised, here we are with your Christmas present our new and considerably improved demo-version of Ash Of Gods: The Way. Weve done a great deal of work during these two months to carry out the changes we were talking about in the posts DEMO FEEDBACK and NEW CINEMATICS. Regretfully, cinematics wont be in the new demo, but youll be able to assess the rest fixed balance in the qualification rounds, completely redesigned challenger battles, amended UI and many other functions. And we really want to listen to your opinion.
Were really happy to have such a great and caring community, and we want to sincerely thank you for cool feedback, comments and likes all these things motivate us a lot and help us make our game better. Pay attention! The demo is available on the page of the game:
We hope youll enjoy our new demo, and we want to know what you liked and what you didnt like. So share your experience in Steam discussions, join our Discord channel and be sure to add our game to the wishlist. We wish you good holidays and to have as many reasons to be happy and as many good games as possible in the new year.

[ 2021-12-29 21:01:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! Today it's Friday, and we decided to cut talking about different mechanics and fights with the news about important changes this time in cinematics. If you have already tried our demo, you know that the intro and the cutscenes in the game differ considerably from its visual style. And of course they lose significantly to the videos from the original project.
So why did we focus on those rough sketches? The thing is that a good video at the level of Redemption would be worth to us as a quarter of the whole game in the form that was planned. Thats why because of our budget restrictions we had to focus on this variant.
Nevertheless, as we started changing our approach to the game and making it more difficult, we understood that the difference between the videos and the level of the project stands out more and more, and players only proved it with their feedback.
Thats why we decided to try and fix the situation and create new videos for the game with help of our amazing artists and are ready to share first achievements.
In spite of the fact that in new cinematics there wont be as many movements as there were in old versions, the result, however, must surpass them by far thanks to accurately structured composition, a brand new level of detailing and a thorough work with colour.
The characters began looking much more naturally. Distorted proportions, very rough strokes, wooden mimic its all in the past. We paid a lot of attention to face expressions so that we could transfer emotions as accurately as possible. Thats how, for example, new Quinna Rosette looks at old Fill. Run, Forest, run!
A great deal of work was done on the surroundings. The old videos were concentrated firstly on the characters and their actions, thats why the cutscenes werent so satisfying with detailing and looked quite meagre. We tried to fix it in new cutscenes.
Its a laborious job, and of course we have to spend a considerable amount of time to finish everything. However, were sure that the result is worth it.
In the ready videos motion effects will be used to make scenes more lively and visually interesting but we will keep them till the next updates.
That was the way our cinematics have passed from rough sketches to arts that are complicated and much more suitable for the style of the game. This happened largely thanks to your responses, and its vitally important for us to get some feedback from you. Please write your comments about your attitude to this upgrade, if you like what you see or not. We are very grateful for any comments and want to express our gratitude to our compassionate community. We wish everybody a merry Christmas and we will be sure to come back before the end of the year with a present a new demo-version. There wont be any new cinematics in it but we will keep you updated about our progress. So be sure to follow us and dont forget to add our game to wishlist.

[ 2021-12-24 15:37:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, guys! Its time for us to tell you about a new battle, and this Friday were going to speak about one of adjutant Mirinas qualifications. Its the fight during which you will have to confront a deadly unit, and you will need to protect your commander from him.

HOW DOES THE FIGHT GO?

This time were not attacked by a bandit horde which we were talking about in the previous post there is only one fighter on the battlefield in the beginning of the fight. But he is worth the whole army.
He isnt called the Punisher for nothing if he gets to our commander, hell destroy him with a single attack. Its pretty hard to kill this unit, but he can be held back. So the main thing is to find the right tactics.
The main goal remains the same to destroy the enemys commander. But this is also not easy he has considerably more health points than ours. Besides, he has quite a nasty surprise a very powerful spell.

DIFFICULTY

Were still testing challenger battles because they turned out to be incredibly difficult due to the large quantity of deserters in the enemys deck their teamwork with the Punisher almost guarantees failure if youre not lucky with your cards. We dont like it. Besides, in the enemy's deck there are three stunning spells able to break any tactics. Thats why we decided to remove bandits from the battle and replace them with Berkanas fighters. You can assess the result in our new demo.
A special condition for the win doesnt allow you to use rangers in this case the victory wont be counted.

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT BALANCE

While were trying to work out the perfect balance in the challenger battles, we would like to mention difficulties we had faced during the development of its original version. To create the Punisher we had to make a lot of efforts and go through numerous iterations. The main aim was to create a mighty and dangerous unit who is hard to confront but is possible to block. Thats why the Punisher has plenty of health points, almost unbreakable protection and poison resistance.
We've been experimenting with the Punishers strength for a long time so that the player had both enough problems with him and enough time to deal with other units allocating the resources properly. Besides, we increased the health of the hostile commander to make attack strengthening as important as the protection of the unit who holds the Punisher back. You can fight the punisher and his tough commander in our new demo. Until then follow the news, subscribe to our page and add the game to your wishlist.

[ 2021-12-17 15:31:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! We go on introducing the mechanics of Ash Of Gods: The Way. The previous post was dedicated to the mechanics of duels. Now were going to tell you about the fight with Adjutant Dofus where you will have to confront the bunch of bandits.

HOW DOES THE FIGHT GO?

The first thing we see starting the fight is a narrow battlefield 3x7 ot the other side of which there is a hostile commander. We have to get to him through the bunch of bandits, who had occupied most of the territory.
Our first task is to pick up fighters who can stand against the onslaught of the outlaws. You should consider that while we can only choose one fighter at a time, the army of bandits slowly comes closer and closer at full force. Yet in the qualification mode the enemys commander cant summon new units but he has a complete arsenal of dirty tricks among his cards of support.
In the beginning of the fight the enemys team has quite low attack and health points numbers. But among the bandits there are those who die and thus strengthen the rest of the fighters. Thats why the best way is not to kill but to block these bandits, not letting them get to your commander.
Like any battle, the bunch of bandits can be won through finding the right key that will help you cope easily with the seemingly unbeatable crowd. But in this fight there are a lot of opportunities to find your own solutions.

DIFFICULTY

In more difficult challenger battles we decided to make it harder in various areas. First, there are more fighters whose death makes others stronger and its harder to hold them back.
Secondly, in this fight your opponent has a deck of characters, so there are more and more enemies in the battlefield with each round which leaves less space for maneuvers.
And finally, the main thing is the new condition of win which is having at least three of your warriors alive when the enemys commander dies. Assuming that you have a standard deck of ten characters, you have to be very careful its not a situation where you can easily afford to lose a fighter.

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT BALANCE

It was very important for us to make this fight interesting and difficult enough for a player and not to turn it into a thoughtless deathmatch. Luckily we found a balance quite fast, varying the number of units whose death strengthens their teammates. Whereas there is only one unit in qualification mode, there are three of them in the challenger battles which turns even the weakest bandit into a dangerous and serious opponent.
A new version of this fight will be available in our new demo press the FOLLOW button in Steam not to miss this news and the information about other mechanics and fights. And be sure to add us to wishlist.

[ 2021-12-10 18:57:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, friends! As you know, the main idea of Ash Of Gods: The Way is constantly changing tactical fights, and we developed original mechanics, scripts and rules for each one. And Id like to tell you about some of them. Im going to start with the mechanics of duels one of the most unusual in the game.

HOW DOES THE FIGHT GO?

In most fights the main character appears in the battlefield, on the other side of which his enemy is standing. In this case, the victory depends on how well you combine dropdown cards and how you use the benefits of the battlefield which can be different in size, shape, presence or absence of obstacles.
However, the duel is something really different every character has an individual fight. The first thing you notice is the unique battlefield. Each leader picks three of his combatants who fight one-to-one. You can see who youre going to confront beforehand and make your choice accordingly. You have to choose your fighters with the utmost care some characters, who are irreplaceable in other fights, will be of no use in the duel, and their abilities (for example, the monk healing the fighter in front of him) will make no sense. On the contrary, the buffs that cover all the battlefield like the increase of the attack by the warlock when he first appears will be really handy. You should consider that the characters cant move or change places. The replacement of the character is also impossible the only way out is to win or to die.
After the evaluation of enemys units and the choice of worthy opponents you can use the cards of support. Your opponent is the first one to do it, so the situation can change dramatically. To fix the situation you can play up to two cards of support per turn. That means that at least one of your combatants doesnt get any support, but you also can hold the cards or use both for one fighter.
After the end of the turn the duels start. The players fighters have an advantage of the first strike. If it becomes deadly for the enemy, the duel is considered won, and the enemys leader gets damage. If the players unit dies, the damage goes to his leader. When the duel is over, each dead fighter is replaced by the new one, and the duels with no winner go on. In the qualification round its enough to win four fights (and not to lose three times) to get your victory.

DIFFICULTY

The next thing worth telling is how the duel changes in the challenger battles which are harder. As you can remember, there are special conditions to win in this mode, some new mechanics can be added, and some old ones can be changed. They dont only increase the difficulty but make each fight unique and challenging. There is more information about it in our latest update.
The main feature of more complex duels is that now its your opponent who has the advantage of the first strike. Besides, now you have to win six duels, but you can fail only once.

IN SEARCH OF PERFECT BALANCE

When we were creating this fight we faced some problems, so we talked a lot to players and studied the feedback for the demo trying to find an optimal solution. Randomness has become one of the greatest problems in the duel mode. By default in the beginning of the general fight you start with three cards of characters and three cards of support. But in the duel mode this mechanic doesnt let you choose the characters, and the result of the duel mainly depends on the luck of getting the starting hand. Thats why especially for the duel mode weve increased the number of the cards you get in the beginning of the fight. Now you can choose from five cards in each deck.
Besides, we've also added the mechanics that lets you replace any card but only one before the battle to reduce the influence of randomness and dependence on the starting hand. So that this replacement wasnt for nothing, weve added a condition according to which a new card ALWAYS differs from the replaced one. This lets the player avoid getting an identical card if there is the same one in the deck. One more problem is an unusual sequence of actions. In the beginning we wanted to make duels where the result would be calculated after the fightback. But this would lead to the situation when the dead character struck back, and it was quite confusing for the players and made it more difficult to understand what was happening in the battlefield. So we finally decided to return the standard sequence of actions, giving the player an advantage in simpler fights and taking it away in harder ones. An updated version of the duel will be available in the new demo which we are planning to release by the Winter sales. And for now add our game to the wishlist and press the FOLLOW button to get the updates about the news, because we are planning to go on telling you interesting facts about the game and its mechanics.
Thanks for your interest and support, A.

[ 2021-12-03 15:35:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! As you know, we released a reworked demo version of The Way a month and a half ago, and I reckon it is time to sum everything up, to discuss your feedback, to share what we are doing with it right now and to tell you more about the game overall.
First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has played the game and shared their thoughts with us. To be frank, sometimes developers spend so much time in their games, and it is hard to recognize an issue or a flaw even if you face it every day. And that's where the community steps in, reviewing your ideas with a fresh eye and providing a clear message about what works alright and what doesn't. You are a really big part of the development process, and we are very grateful for your time and consideration. You are making our game way better than we could do that alone. Thank you so much for that.

So, what do we do with your feedback?

Well, I believe it is worth mentioning that there was a vertical slice of The Way in the beginning of this year, a completely different game focused on gameplay with a simple generic story to follow. It was all about regular fights against different opponents with different decks. The reviews were very positive, and The Way even won 'Best PC Game' award on IndieCup but we also knew that some of you weren't that happy about the game.
We do understand that a great deal of players want us to make a sequel to the original Redemption game while we are making a completely different game of a different genre in the Ash of Gods universe. Your feedback changed that. You want us to create interesting characters, to tell stories with moral choices and dire consequencesand we decided to answer that call. We have spent a lot of time reworking the game to make it more complex and more interesting in terms of gameplay and story. And the last demo we published is the result of that hard work.
This extra work is a huge risk for us, to be honestwe never planned those changes, the budget of the game is very limited and we definitely need more money to complete the game. But we wanted to make something you guys will love, and if the game succeeds there's a chance we can make you happy with Ash of Gods 2.

So, what's the difference between the vertical slice and the new demo?

First of all, we've managed to make almost every battle unique adding new mechanics and scripts. We wanted to challenge players, constantly changing rules to create a kind of a puzzle. No more simple fights on the same battlefield with 3 lines. You should be flexible and inventive to end up victorious.
These battles are also justified with the main story. It is not as big and as complex as Redemption's, of course, due to obvious limitations of our budget and time and the game's genre, but we did our best to make it fun both for the fans of the original game and the new players. There are a few familiar characters in the game, some lore, references to Redemption events and more.
We also created a story for every tournament with moral choices and different outcomes. The first tournament is pretty simple though and mostly focused on exposition and explanation of rules and mechanics, so there are only 3 different and rather simple endings. The second one has 6 possible endings based both on the player's skill and choices, the third one has around 8 and I believe it is safe to say that the game itself has a minimum of 7 different finales at the moment but I guess the true number is somewhat like 14-ish. Of course, there are side questsand some of them can affect the main story.
Another thing worth mentioning is art. In the vertical slice most of the visuals were placeholders from Redemption with a few roughly drawn characters.
We've completely reworked all characters and animated them even better than we did in Redemption (added more movements and breathing). [previewyoutube=RWzjwf7o5eE;full][/previewyoutube] We've also created about 60 battlefields...
3 tournament backgrounds...
and 4 places for camp where you can talk to NPCs.
We wanted to create new battle characters as well but a studio and actors are required to do that, and it was impossible due to COVID-19, so we are stuck with Redemption's units. It is also a certainly costly venture which requires a lot of time, and we desperately need this time and money to rework the game. Now, back to the demo. Of course, we didn't manage to do everything we wanted in time, there are obvious flaws like the lack of balance and some important features are missing but the goal of the release was to learn more about your experiencewhat you did and didn't like, is there any big issues we overlooked or some ideas which work different than we expected. That was really useful for us. We gathered enough feedback to make the game better, and now it is time to share what we are doing with it.

Changes we did due to your feedback

The very first reported issue of the demo was expectedly rough UX. We were aware about the problem, and we are doing our best to make the UX curve as smooth as possible. The qualification round is expected to be pretty simple and enjoyable now but challenging enough to be interesting at this point.
Challenger battles are way more complex. We do not like the idea of simple hard mode fights where you are playing the same battles but against a stronger deck. The idea was to make them unique but understandable, adding additional mechanics, scripts and rules to the original fights, changing the size and the shape of battlefields to make a new challenge. Thus, the qualification round is the place where you can test your strategies and experiment as long as you want, a sneak peek of the real battles, while the challenger battles are the real test.
Since we are talking about challenger battles, another issue is attempts. The idea was to make an additional challenge for a player and also to add more tension and drama to the narrative, to make a difference between an okay-ish and truly outstanding performance which will impact the result of the tournament. I would like to thank fluxit, vladimir.msg and volvovics for the thorough feedback on that matter. We realized that this feature is not just a limitation but also a punishmentyou are feeling uncomfortable and pressured and won't get the reward if you didn't manage to win the fight for a limited number of attempts.
Yet, we needed this feature to determine how good a player was performing. That's why we've changed the original idea. Attempts now are actually the best result of the battle of other tournament challengers. If you beat or repeat it, you get a small bonus in gold and more glory. If you don't, you are still getting the main reward when you finally win the fight. Also, we increased the amount of attempts for every fight to make this challenge a bit more fair. Another problem is a bit of randomness which affects the experience in some fights which could be much easier if you had the right characters to do the job. Of course, we can't completely fix that because it will totally kill the replayability and challenge of the game but we decided to allow changing one of your cards in the beginning of the fight. Also, at some fights you have a bigger starting hand compared to the standard of three cards for each deck.
We also reworked some of the battles to make them more understandable and less random. Thus, we removed 'an unpleasant surprise' thing where you lose all your characters once you placed someone on the battlefield, and changed the mechanics of 'the duels' fight (thanks, alpasy).
We updated the descriptions of battles to give more information for a player about the fight, thanks to DeadlyDan's feedback. We also added an option to discuss the fight with your mentors to get valuable advice and ability to quickly choose one of your saved decks.
Speaking of changes in UI, we are completely reworking deck management at the moment as well as some other important parts, and also adding new things we need like, for example, a merchant UI.
There are a great deal of other changes: we added drag-n-drop mechanics to the deck manager, changed the map, added an option to remove the card's animation to play faster (thanks to devxx), and reverted the scroll for zooming out the battlefield. Also, we are reworking the tutorials and changing the flow of the game to make the experience even better, to show a player some tips he can use later, reworking card upgrades to make them more interesting, reworking in-game cinematics and more.
Of course, some of these things are a work in progress yet. But once we finish this, make sure we will update the demo to learn more about your experience once again.
Meanwhile, I'd like to thank you once again for being such a great community. My special thanks to the folks from Discord (, Ratnik_RUS, KoPLLIyH, res7less) who provided a lot of feedback. You can also join our Discord to share your opinion there or to talk to us, we are always happy to do that. Please, follow us on Steam, add the game to your wishlistand we will do our best to make something you guys will enjoy. Cheers, A.

[ 2021-11-22 16:07:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! We are here to show you another version of Ash of Gods: The Way, a demo for Indie Cup Celebration 2021.
As you may know, we released a demo for Steam Next Festival this summer. We gathered a lot of positive reviews, even won a few awards like Best PC Game on IndieCup and Excellence in Visual Art on DevGamm Spring 2021. But we also carefully reviewed the feedback we gathered on these events as well as publishers', streamers' and players' feedback from private testing and decided to change the concept a bit to improve it. Thus, the game significantly changed since, and this demo will show you the new version of The Way.
The new idea behind the game is tactical combats with constantly changing rules for every fight. Now every encounter is a puzzle with original mechanics, scripts, battlefields of different shapes and sizes and, sometimes, very nasty and unexpected surprises. It is not a simple card battler anymore but a deep and entertaining game where you should adapt your strategy and change it on the go to end up victorious.
Another big change is more focus on storytelling. Every tournament is not just a simple bunch of fights now but a small story with a few different outcomes depending on player's success on the battlefields and his choices in dialogues.
The new demo is a bit rough around the edges, it doesn't offer a flawless experience, it lacks a few important things yet and its balance is probably not perfect, but we want to share it with you to get an early feedback which is very important for us. Please, join our Discord to tell us what you think about the demo or post your feedback to Steam forums. We are really appreciate it. Thank you.

[ 2021-10-07 17:52:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our friends at Lost Pilgrims have just launched Vagrus - The Riven Realms into full release here on Steam.

Vagrus is a turn-based, open-world, dark fantasy RPG. The game moves out of Early Access with well over a hundred hours of playable content . Vagrus and its haunting world were born from decades of tabletop RPG campaigns played by the founders of Lost Pilgrims, which adds vastly to the games unique atmosphere and the richness of its setting. [previewyoutube=ROY7ieCcWWc;full][/previewyoutube]
Vagrus is an award-winning roleplaying game with a narrative focus, open-world exploration, and strong elements of strategy. The player takes the role of a vagrus - a caravan leader who strives to survive in a strange and dangerous dark fantasy world by leading a traveling company on all kinds of ventures.

Feature list

• A DARK REALM A vast realm is yours to explore, filled with unique locations, strange factions, lurking dangers, and a slew of characters you can interact with.
  
• BRANCHING NARRATIVE A large selection of longer and shorter stories make up the games narrative in the form of events and quests. The choices you make in these can significantly affect the characters and the world around you.
  
• TURN-BASED COMBAT Take part in turn-based, tactical combat that involves your characters and a large variety of enemies, both humanoid and monstrous. Use a range of character skills and abilities to succeed. Fight against outlaws and monsters commanding your whole traveling company in pitched battles for resources.
  
• RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Most journeys have to be planned and prepared for carefully, lest they end in disaster. Manage your supplies, cargo, and crew effectively to survive. Take on contracts and follow rumors or trade opportunities.
  
• UNIQUE COMPANIONS A wide variety of companions can work for you in versatile caravan roles, such as scoutmaster, guard captain, treasure hunter, or beast handler. Each companion comes with unique combat skills, background stories, and personal quest lines that can upgrade them further when you complete them.
  
• POWERFUL FACTIONS Ally yourself with mighty factions that shape the Riven Realms with their influence on commerce, brutal wars, and constant scheming. From prosperous Trading Houses to criminal syndicates and religious organizations, these groups offer powerful rewards and boons to those loyal to their cause. But take heed - befriending a faction will more than likely antagonize others.
  

Centurion Edition

A special Centurion Edition of Vagrus released alongside the full game. This special edition includes the base game, the original soundtrack, and the Patronage Pack at a special launch price during launch week. Those who already own the base game can also purchase the DLCs individually. Try your hand at Vagrus to see if you can make profit while surviving in the wastelands!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660/Vagrus__The_Riven_Realms/?snr=1_5_1100__1100

Vagrus also has a FREE Prologue available here on Steam

If you are interested in getting a glimpse of Vagrus, check it out here.

[ 2021-10-05 11:05:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! Steam Summer Sale is here, and we are glad to announce 65% OFF Ash of Gods: Redemption, both the original and Deluxe version with a beautiful soundtrack from Adam Skorupa, The Witcher's composer, and our nicely composed digital artbook. Have a nice Summer, everyone! https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2021-06-22 21:07:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! The demo for Ash of Gods: The Way is finally available for everyone on the store page. Ash of Gods: The Way is a single-player story-driven tactical game with constantly changing rules for every fight. Original mechanics and scripts, battlefields of different shapes and size, six factions with two unique decks for each of themadjust to the circumstances to be victorious. Keep in mind, that's still work in progress, there are a lot of placeholders and other small issues in the game. We are also experimenting with fights, mechanics and balance, so a lot of that will be reworked on the release. Please, share your feedback via our Steam forums or join Discord community. We are also going to make a stream for Steam Next Festival to show you The Way as well as to highlight the game to other Steam players. Join us on Monday, June 21th, 10 am Pacific to take a sneak peek at the demo or try it for yourself.

[ 2021-06-17 13:05:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! Looks like Ash of Gods: The Way is following Redemption's steps because it was awarded for Excellence in Visual Art on DevGamm Spring 2021. Also, the game was nominated for Grand Prize and Excellence in Audio, ending up among 5 shortlisted projects. I guess it is a good sign but you will be probably able to test the game in a month on Steam Summer Festival. We are working hard to deliver a more complex and polished experience, so your feedback would be very appreciated. Add us to your wishlist and follow us on Steam, and you won't miss the chance to try the game.

[ 2021-05-20 13:09:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! We do not spoil you with news about our new game, Ash of Gods: The Way, but it just got the very first award on Indie Cup as the Best PC Game, just like Redemption did three years ago. We also got nominated in four more categories. Follow us on Steam and add us to your wishlist if you didn't do that yet.

[ 2021-04-06 22:35:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's Steam Lunar New Year Sale and it is a high time to celebrate it with a huge discount on Ash of Gods: Redemption. You have a chance to purchase the game as well as its Deluxe Edition with 60% OFF 'till the end of the sale which is February, 15. Also, check our new upcoming game, Ash of Gods: The Way. https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2021-02-11 17:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=kedGFiI5I9A;full][/previewyoutube] Dear friends! It is been a while since our last update here about what we are up to and our upcoming projects, and today I would like to change that and introduce all of you to Ash of Gods: The Way.
This is our second single-player story-driven game set in Ash of Gods universe. Keep in mind that The Way is not a sequel to Ash of Gods: Redemption, though it is the same world of Terminum 20 years later and you can visit some places you've visited before, hear about Redemption's events and even meet a familiar character.
Ash of Gods: The Way is a turn-based tactical card game with a unique but simple gameplay. Pick up a card from the deck of characters and put your hero to any of three available lines, then strengthen him up with an item or use a spell from the support deck to hurt or control your enemies. To win you have to reach opponent's commander and reduce his health to zero. If your commander dies, you are defeated.
There are six factions available in the game with a great deal of synergy skills and unique support items and spells. You have to learn about its synergy to create an efficient and original strategy.
At the moment we are working on the vertical slice of the project and it is almost finished. Basically, 1/4 of the game is ready, and now we are looking for a publisher. We are also going to make limited testing via Steam Playtest in the end of January. Thus, if you want to try The Way among the very first players, follow the game to keep yourself updated. We will make a post about it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293460/Ash_of_Gods_The_Way/ Thank you very much for your support through all these years, it means a lot. Yours, AurumDust team.

[ 2021-01-29 17:55:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! It is time to enjoy long and cozy evenings with a cup of mulled wine, eggnog or anything else you fancy and a game of your choice. Winter holidays are here, and we would like to join the celebration with Ash of Gods: Redemption available with 65% OFF 'till the end of the sale. Thank you for being with us through this harsh 2020. We wish you all the best in 2021. Happy New Year, friends. We mean it! Have a rocking 2021. And, of course, Merry Christmas. Love, AurumDust.

[ 2020-12-22 19:14:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! The Steam Awards is here, and it is time to compete with other nice projects for a place in the sun. We hope you will support us and help us to stand proud among the rest. Why Labor of Love? Because we are still working hard to expand Ash of Gods' franchise. There was Ash of Gods: Arena demo available on Steam Summer festival, an improved version of Redemption's multiplayer. We also released Ash of Gods: Tactics on mobile devices and working hard on another PC game in Ash of Gods universe.
Of course, it is up to you to decide if we deserve the nomination but we truly appreciate your support. It is very important for tiny studios like ours. Thank you very much. [previewyoutube=uP2UYFr4IAQ;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/

[ 2020-11-25 18:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ash of Gods: Redemption is available with 70%OFF for the very first time on Steam Daily Deal for just two days! Don't miss the chance to play the game or to share it with your friends! https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/ Ash of Gods is the story of three separate protagonists rising in response to a centuries-old menace once thought to be mere folklore. Captain Thorn Brenin, the bodyguard Lo Pheng, the scribe Hopper Rouley, and many others, do not yet know that the reapers have returned and intend to drown the world in blood so that they may awaken the sleeping gods.

[ 2020-05-06 18:24:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! Its been awhile. As you may know we were busy with console versions of Redemption and a mobile CCG project in Ash of Gods universe but now it is time to move further and to make another announcement. Ash of Gods: Redemption was released about 2 years ago but we didnt have the time to finish its multiplayer. A great deal of players were upset about it because they craved to play with friends and fight each other. So we never gave up the idea to make things right one day. And now we're gonna make it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295480/Ash_of_Gods_Arena/ We are going to release Ash of Gods: Arena, an online game based on Redemptions multiplayer, as a Steam Early Access title to improve it over time with your feedback. So, what can you expect and how it will be different from the original?
There are few reasons behind our decision to make a stand alone title. Since the release of Redemption we received a lot of feedback about the combat, and reviews were mixed. So weve decided to change core gameplay, to make it less random, more rewarding, with a great deal of tactical options for a player. But since Redemptions multiplayer is binded with single-player mode, it is hard to change anything without breaking the whole game. Another reason to do that is to significantly increase the number of players to let them play against each other, instead of fighting AI. Thats why weve decided to release Arena as a free-to-play title. It will allow us to attract more fans of turn-based combats without having them pay for the original game.
As I mentioned before, the game will be released as a Steam Early Access title. This way we can test changes and add new features based on your feedback. On the release it will be a fully functional multiplayer from Redemption with improved drop and stability, and we are going to constantly release new changes over time. What are we going to change? Weve carefully considered your feedback and have set our priorities so far towards a few important things. THE PRIORITY SYSTEM No more priority for small teams and no asynchronous rounds. At the moment players do not get a lot of benefits for killing an enemy character. On the other hand, the smaller team gets an advantage. We will change this.
NEW RULES FOR THE DECK Cards should be used as an additional measure, not to take the whole turn. At the moment you can significantly impact the fight and completely change the course of an entire battle with your deck but the most powerful cards are available only in late rounds while the others are too weak to waste your turn on them. NEW AND REWORKED MECHANICS We are not satisfied with some of the existing mechanics. For example, stun can be really disappointing at the end of the round, special abilities shouldnt require health unless it is appropriatefor berserk class, for example. On the other hand, we want to add more possibilities to impact the fight.
Of course, we are going to make even more changes over time. We intend to improve overall combats dynamic, add new combat modes, improve clans and UI, balance and loot. And we crave to hear your opinions about it. Weve managed to build a small but dedicated community with Redemptions multiplayer and would be very grateful for your feedback and ideas. So, join us in Ash of Gods: Arena discussions and Discord channel to share your thoughts, wishlist the game and follow us on Steam to stay tuned. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295480/Ash_of_Gods_Arena/

[ 2020-04-30 17:13:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! As you may know, recently Steam changed some conditions concerning music. We made a few changes according to these conditions, and now you don't need to buy the game if you want to buy its original soundtrack. It's no longer a DLC that requires a base game.
Moreover, now Ash of Gods' OST is available not just .mp3 but lossless quality as well (.flac). We've also added a bonus song Pray in Wodan, the song Reet sings standing on the scaffold. The soundtrack is written by Adam Skorupa, a famous Polish composer, known for his work with Call of Juarez, Eve Online, Painkiller and, of course, The Witcher.
If you do like our soundtrack and already have it in your library, please, support us and write a few words for Steam review. We'd be really grateful, and if we manage to get 30 new reviews, we will add more bonuses to the soundtrack. Do you want to hear them? https://store.steampowered.com/app/776650

[ 2020-01-30 15:43:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! Here we are, finally releasing Ash of Gods: Redemption on consoles! We know that some of you have waited too long but we are happy to announce the exact date. Ash of Gods: Redemption will become available on PS4, XBOX One and Nintendo Switch on January, 31, 2020. Also, you can buy a retail PC version of the game with DVD and a Steam key. Check out the announcement trailer: [previewyoutube=5u03aWrqCMI;full][/previewyoutube] Thank you very much for being with us and for your support. We wish you the best in the upcoming year!

[ 2019-12-13 15:52:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! This update is not big but still very important because it finally brings Spanish language to the game and also fixes a few nasty bugs which could affect your gaming experience.

SPANISH LOCALIZATION

Yes, we finally did it. It is a shame it took a great deal of time and we didn't manage to make it on the release but it's finally here. We hope all Spanish gamers will enjoy our game and will be pleased with translation. We are still working to fix minor issues in localization and will definitely update it. Please, let us know if something's wrong. And have a good time in the world of Terminum.

ENGLISH LOCALIZATION

After the release we received a lot of complains about English localization, but since that we managed to significantly improve the localization during regular updates. And today we publish the final update for English text (at least, we do hope it is final) and hope you will be pleased with our work. Thanks to everyone for sharing feedback.

CONSOLE RELEASES

They are 100% ready, but keep in mind that it takes time to make physical copies. Approximately, Ash of Gods will hit PS4, XBOX and Switch in the end of summer.

FIXES

• Fixed a bug when two musical tracks played in the same time since Ursus
• Fixed a bug when the game skipped a conversation between Blance (aka Hopper Rouly) and his companions after [spoiler]Thorn Brenin's execution[/spoiler]
• Fixed a bug with empty shop and team management in Ursus
• Fixed a bug with pop-up windows on global map: closing a pop-up window with a mouse click to map do not blocked the map anymore.
• Fixed a fight in Unda's house, now it doesn't last forever.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If your game loading low on WIndows (more than a minute), please, delete devtodev folder. You can dind it here: Users\\AppData\LocalLow\AurumDust LLC\Ash of Gods.

If your game crashing during the battle at Unda's, switch to OpenGL.

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile, please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist]
If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2019-03-28 08:07:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! We haven't posted anything this year, so I reckon it is time to tell you what we are up to at the moment and make a few announcements.

SPANISH LOCALIZATION

As you may know, a lot of players asked us for Spanish localization but unfortunately there were a lot of troubles with it. Anyways, I am happy to inform that Spanish is finally almost ready, we are integrating in to the game at the moment and it will be released approximately in 2-4 weeks among with a few nasty bug fixes. We will also publish another update for English localization.

PS4, XBOX, SWITCH RELEASE

As you also may know, we were going to release Ash of Gods on consoles from the very beginning. And that's finally happening. Everything is already set, and we are going to start final QA in the middle of March. Approximately, all console versions will become available on PS4, XBOX and Switch in the end of Q2 2019.

ASH OF GODS ON MOBILE

We are also going to port Ash of Gods: Redemption to mobile devices (iOS / Android) as it was promised during our Kickstarter campaign but due to the lack of experience in developing mobile games and considering it will be rather difficult to transfer such a big game to small screens with the very first attempt we decided to create Ash of Gods: Tactics first to learn some basics.

ASH OF GODS: TACTICS

Well, if you were wondering about screenshots in this article, it is time to tell you that this is a brand new Ash of Gods' game, the one I mentioned above, Ash of Gods: Tactics: https://youtu.be/L4E6DkdvcSQ The idea was simple. We decided to create a small exclusive mobile title using some assets from the original project to learn more about developing mobile games. This knowledge is necessary because we'd like to transfer Ash of Gods: Redemption to mobile devices as good as it possible.
Tactics is a small prequel to Redemption with completely different gameplay, based on cards. We wanted to adapt the new project for mobiles, that's why its combat is pretty simple (though, the game is probably semi-hardcore) and battles take 5 minutes tops.
What do you need to do? You have two decks of cards: characters' deck and a deck with spells and items. Every turn you can use one card from each deck. Basically, you choose a character and place him on any of three lanes you have, then use an item or a spell on him or any other characters presented on the battlefield. Your turn ends and characters make their moves based on their stats. Your goal is to defeat your opponent's hero reducing his health to zero.
At the moment we are in closed alpha testing but planning to release the game in a few months, its technical launch is planned in April. When it is released, we are going to port AoG: Redemption to mobile devices as it was promised. Feel free to ask any questions and, of course, let us know what you think. Thanks a lot for your support. https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690

[ 2019-03-04 16:58:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, guys! The Steam Autumn sale is on and Ash of Gods is 45% OFF 'till the end of it! It is time to forge the fate of Terminum and to decide who will survive!
It is also the time of Steam Award 2018. We would like to participate in this event and we're also hope you will support us. If you believe that our game is beautiful due to the hard work of our artists, please, vote for us, nominate us in Best Environment category. It is very important for us and we will be very grateful. Thanks in advance! Join us in Terminum! https://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2018-11-22 17:28:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! This update is bringing more languages for Ash of Gods as well as adding big multiplayer feature.

MULTIPLAYER

CLANS From now on, clans are available on multiplayer. Gather your friends, conquer enemies, earn glory to make your clan the strongest. What you can do:

• create and manage clans
• communicate via clan's chat
• set roles for each member
• exchange cards inside clan
• fighting for a clan chest
• fighting each other as friends (doesn't affect personal rating)
• improve clan's rating with your victories

BALANCE

• corrected the rarity and allocation of classes by arenas: you can get 16 out of 24 classes from first 3 arenas and remaining 8 classes for the rest of 5 arenas. You get a guaranteed 1 current arenas card from arenas chests.
• fixed matching of the units to arena: 12 units are available in the first arena for each player and include 6 common units, 4 rare units, 2 epic units. 6 of them are in the team and the rest of them can be opened by player. Each arena from 2nd to 4th gets 2 common, 2 rare, 2 epic units. And 2 common, 2 rare,1 epic and 1 legendary will be added from 5th arena.
• fixed chests dropnow chests will be dropped by mix of table and probabilitiesit guarantees that all the players will get fixed amount of wins and probably same amount of bonuses.
• changed number of dropped-down gold to speed-up the leveling, increase number of obtained awards per win.
• added guaranteed rare and epic cards to chests on every arena higher than 4th.
• fixed free chests in Menhir to start sharing strixes apart from gold and unit cards.

OTHER

• a great deal of fixes for English localization
• fixed windowed mode
• fixed long loading

LOCALIZATIONS

FRANAIS French language is already here. Please, let us know if you find any misprints, bugs or other errors. You can share it on Steam forums or via our Discord. Have a good game.
PORTUGUS DO BRASIL PTBR is also finished and available for playing. We believe we managed to fix a number of problems but let us know if you face anything. Anyway, we hope you'll like the game.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If your game loading low on WIndows (more than a minute), please, delete devtodev folder. You can dind it here: Users\\AppData\LocalLow\AurumDust LLC\Ash of Gods.

If your game crashing during the battle at Unda's, switch to OpenGL.

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile, please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist]
If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-10-30 15:51:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's Deal: Save 35% on Ash of Gods: Redemption!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2018-09-22 17:10:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear friends, we received a lot of questions about Ash of Gods' DLCs and possible instruments for modding. That is why we think to open our Ash of Gods engine for community needs. What does it mean? Our gaming engine (based on Unity 3D) will become available to everyone to making your own modifications and even whole stories based on our project or from the scratch.

What is Ash of Gods' engine:

• Articy: Draft integration and story flow. This allows you to write a story completely in Articy and then link everything to needed assets. Save / Load system is included.
• Combat system engine with possibility to create new classes, skills and mechanics.
• Different tools to work with assets (animations, characters, effects). There are instruments to work with animation, links between assets and gameplay rules, tools to create parallax scenes.
• Tools for localization and translation.
• A number of assets and AoG's story to experimenting with gameplay.

Of course, we'd need some time to make necessary changes and prepare documentation, but before that we would like to know your opinion. Please, tell us, what do you think about creating and using modifications. Is it interesting for you? Do you want to have this set of tools to create your own visual novels or tactical strategies. Would you like to work on the engine with us to make it open and available to everyone? Please, let us know.

[ 2018-09-17 17:51:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

HOTFIX [August, 20th]

• Fixed a problem with black screen after fight with Amma

Hey guys! As you may know, we are working hard to deliver the rest of announced localizations. This update brings Polish language to Ash of Gods as well as a lot of other important features which we need to implement controllers support and other changes we announced in the previous update.

ASH OF GODS PO POLSKU

Język polski jest już dostępny, dlatego mamy nadzieję, że będziecie cieszyć się grą jeszcze bardziej. Jeśli natraficie na jakiekolwiek błędy lub literówki, skontaktujcie się z nami. Poprawimy je tak szybko, jak to będzie możliwe.

CHANGELOG

• Emerald Necklace item now can be used by Lo Pheng
• Fixed a problem with timer and turn order when reinforcements join battle
• Added different leveling for single player and multiplayer
• We are still working on editing English localization, this update brings first three chapters, reworked.
• A lot of spelling fixes for EN, IT, DE, RU
• Fixed a problem with characters apposition in the final battle
• Fixed Atraakh image in lore section

MULTIPLAYER

• Cleric now has more abilities to choose for more rarity
• City Guard has more abilities to choose for more rarity
• City Guard's ability "Might" reduced
• City Guard's ability "Call to Defense" now is not available for two first rounds
• Ense Swordsman has more abilities to choose for more rarity
• Ense Swordsman's abilities "Hidden Potential", "Combat Experience" and "Might" are decreased

OTHER LOCALIZATIONS

FRANÇAIS Le jeu est maintenant traduit en français, et est en phase de QA. Il va nous falloir un peu plus de temps pour tester la version française et pour l’ajouter au jeu officiel. De l’aide serait également la bienvenue. Si vous parlez français et voulez nous aider à rendre parfaite la version française, rejoignez notre chaîne sur Discord, section #french. C’est très important, merci. ESPAÑOL La versión en español está al 40,6%. Vamos a empezar el control de calidad de la localización para la primera mitad del juego la semana próxima. La versión en español está prevista aproximadamente para finales de septiembre. Gracias por la paciencia. PORTUGUÊS DO BRASIL A localização para português do Brasil está finalizada, mas ainda necessita de ajustes, o LQA está em andamento no momento e precisamos da sua ajuda. Se você fala português e gostaria de nos ajudar a tornar a localização impecável, por favor, junte-se ao nosso canal Discord, seção #portuguese. Isso é muito importante, obrigado.

WHAT DO WE DO NOW

• A lot of testing for multiplayer changes we announced before. They are ready and already placed to develop channel on Steam. We really need your help to test everything, so please tell us if you would like to participate or join our Discord channel
• Finishing our work on Portuguese, French and Spanish localizations
• Finishing porting the game to consoles (Switch, PS, Xbox) and transferring the code for controllers support to PC version of the game
• Looking for solutions for problems some players facing: very long loading and crashing on some versions of Nvidia drivers (learn more at IMPORTANT section).

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If your game loading low on WIndows (more than a minute), please, delete devtodev folder. You can dind it here: UsersAppDataLocalLowAurumDust LLCAsh of Gods.

If your game crashing during the battle at Unda's, switch to OpenGL.

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist]
If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-08-16 11:08:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there! We’ve collected a lot of multiplayer stats since Ash of Gods release. Also you wrote us many suggestions how to make multiplayer more interesting. And today we would like to announce and discuss with you new changes in multiplayer to publish them with the clans feature.

Currently we would like to fix following key issues:

• Incorrectly working chests drop—chests with the same type or with the same stuff drop (first arena stuff generally)
• Incorrect allocation of units (classes) on the arenas—new classes appear too slowly and player does not have enough time to level up them or add such units to their teams.
• Classification units by rarity is not always successful.

Let me describe what we are going to do with that issues:

• Correct the rarity and allocation of classes by arenas: you’ll get 16 out of 24 classes from first 3 arenas and remaining 8 classes for the rest of 5 arenas. You get a guaranteed 1 current arena’s card from arenas’ chests.
• Fix matching of the units to arena: 12 units will be available in the first arena for each player and include 6 common units, 4 rare units, 2 epic units. 6 of them will be in the team and the rest of them will be opened by player. Each arena from 2nd to 4th will add 2 common, 2 rare, 2 epic units. And 2 common, 2 rare,1 epic and 1 legendary will be added from 5th arena.

• Fix chests drop—now chests will be dropped by mix of table and probabilities—it guarantees that all the players will get fixed amount of wins and probably same amount of bonuses.
• Changed number of dropped-down gold to speed-up the leveling, increase number of obtained awards per win. Added guaranteed rare and epic cards to chests on every arena higher than 4th. Fixed free chests in “Menhir” to start sharing strixes apart from gold and unit cards.

You can take a look into new rarity table and allocation by arenas here (clickable):

What we would like to discuss with you

We would like to know your opinion on changes, if they could make the game better. What else we should change? Whether we should make changes migration or wipe + compensation would be a better option?
Join discussion in comments. Thank you.

[ 2018-05-22 18:00:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small patch to fix some bugs.

• fixed possible freezing in a fight on the bridge in the very first Chapter on Thorn's storyline
• fixed possible freezing in Sinvicta quest in Heiborg
• updated English localization
• fixed spelling in Russian text

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist]
If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-05-15 14:55:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! This small patch should fix a big problem and some other minor bugs you reported.

• Fixed the problem with a fight on the bridge. Now it should work proper.
• Minor bug fixes
• Updated English localization

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist]
If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-05-14 14:47:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! This small patch should fix some problems you reported.

• Fixed possible freezing of the game in Thorn's storyline in wastelands (Marsh Watch)
• Fixed the problem when in the end of the dialog with Rask in Friga player ended up on the travel map
• Fixed possible logical problem when Gleda's 'resurrection' in the final
• Fixed the problem with two musical tracks playing in the same time in the dialog with Stakhet Vichty
• Fixed visual problem with background over units in the final fight
• Updated English localization

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist]
If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-05-10 12:17:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! In this major update we not just fixed a lot of issues but also added new features, such as hardcore mode 'Iron Man', post-mortem for the story, combat log, portraits and emotions feature for multiplayer and many balance changes for single player.

IRON MAN MODE

As you may know, we were very attentive to community feedback after the release, and one of the very first problems was very high difficulty of the game. Of course, we took it into account and made some changes to make the game more comfortable. But this decision also disappointed the ones who prefer to face challenges, that's why we decided to make a separate hardcore mode for them—and today we are glad to introduce you 'Iron Man':

• You have only one save
• No lowered attributes for AI units
• AI has no limitations since the very first level of Reaping
• You can't change the level of Reaping manually
• Balanced abilities, which can be used to create so-called 'imba-tactics' based on such classes as guardian, fighter and archer in small teams
• Three additional achievements which could be earned in hardcore mode only

POST-MORTEM

Players who already beat Ash of Gods, also wanted to know more about what happened in the end of the story and what happened to the rest of their beloved characters. It was a great idea, and we changed the end of the game with post-mortem, where you can find some additional details about what happened with the world and those characters who still alive. But keep in mind, that fate of characters are non-linear as well and depends on your unique story.

COMBAT LOG

Now you can track everything what happens on a battle field with combat log. It is hidden on default but you can easily turn it on by pressing the icon with 'L'-letter near the clock. Combat log available in both single-player and multiplayer.

PORTRAITS AND EMOTIONS

Now you can talk with your opponent in multiplayer via our chat analogue, which allows to share emotions like 'Well played!' or 'Victory will be mine!' Bots also use emotions to answer you.

SINGLE-PLAYER

• Added new 'Iron Man' mode and three achievements
• Added post-mortem which explains what happened with alive characters and what happened in the final video
• Added combat log
• Added option to turn off autofocus of combat camera
• Lo Pheng's team now getting increased amount of experience—both Pheng and Thorn teams should have equal level in the end
• Strixes usage of Thorn's team increased on three strixes a day
  
• Changed sorting of the deck in inventory (now sorting for level and availability)
• Numerous balance changes for abilities (guardian, archer, fighter, spearman)
• Added Galaxy support (achievements and overlay) for GOG version of the game

MULTIPLAYER

• Added portraits and emotions feature
• Added combat log
• Injuries in common fights are disabled
• Added injuries information to profile's window
• Added version check when connecting to server

LOCALIZATION

• A huge update of English localization from second to six chapters
• Fixed numerous spelling and stylistic mistakes in Russian
• Increased fonts size in Chinese localization for the loading screen in the beginning of each chapter
• Fixed many mistakes in English, Italian and Chinese languages
• Fixed problem for Chinese language with incorrect displaying of hieroglyphs in single-player and multiplayer modes
• Fixed out-of-bonds text on loading screen in Italian localization

BUGS

• Fixed visual bug when enses figures (the blue ones) grew during death animation
• Fixed possible freezes during passive abilities animations because of cards usage
• Fixed logical errors in 'Merchant Sid' event
• Fixed logical errors in 'Sinvicta brothers in Friga' event
• Fixed logical errors in Blance's dialogs in Friga
• Fixed a problem when Silver Diadem item doesn't appear in the inventory if you choose it during conversation with Rask
• Fixed a scene in the woods where trees covers the battle field
  
• Fixed logical errors in Thorn's dialogs in wastelands (if twins are dead)
• Fixed incorrect loading in the beginning of 'Menhir Arch' location which led to skipping a battle against enses
• Fixed unlimited leveling of Thorn's team during battles with frisians
• Fixed displaying of high attributes value in story mode (>100)
• Fixed position of 'Close' button in multiplayer on resolutions less than 1366x768
• Fixed a bug when hints about arenas in multiplayer may not be displayed
• Fixed a bug when battle track froze in multiplayer

WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

• Experimenting with battle system: testing new stun and also agro mechanics, card usage without ending your turn etc
• We finished preparations for clans in multiplayer and now integrating them with server
• Additional fixes for English language with help of two new editors from community: @Reavy and @K. Constantine
• Fixing bugs you are reporting

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist] If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-04-27 20:38:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey guys! It's been a month since we released Ash of Gods. And we would like to celebrate it with 15% OFF DISCOUNT! Get the game right now and forge your story in the world of Terminum! http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2018-04-23 17:51:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey guys! This update is pretty small but it is still very important. First of all, we managed to make some preparations for future updates. Second, we added a significant feature for multiplayer.

CHANGE LOG:

• Added bots for multiplayer for the first three arenas. Thus, new players won't meet more experienced opponent if there's no rivals of the same level
• Updated Steam SDK
• Numerous localization fixes

WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON NOW:

Another big update is already round the corner. You asked us to bring back the original difficulty level and we ended up with a special IRON MAN mode. But before its release we would like to test everything including combat log, different multiplayer changes, balance and many many more. If you willing to help, please, let us know via our Discord channel.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist] If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-04-20 17:17:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the update 1.1.36, we have fixed the problems you have reported, and also added some optimizations to the PC version, which were created for the mobile and console versions of the game.

CHANGELIST:

SINGLEPLAYER:

• Optimized loading time of fights (battles should load up to 3 times faster than before)
• Optimized video memory consumption for video cards of Intel HD Graphics series 2500 and older (until 2012)
• Added the ability to delete the saves
• An additional confirmation question was added during the choice for Hopper - to resist the Reaping or not
• Updated English text with new editing in the last week (thanks to Reavy and K. Constantine)
• Fixed restrictions on wearing the “Emerald Amulet”
• Fixed incorrect text in English, German and Italian in chapter 4 (the text did not correspond to the dialogue)
• Fixed a possible freeze of the game during a dialogue with Ruor in Pheng's camp
• Fixed the quest logic for the 3rd and 5th quests from the line of quests "Sinvicta"
• Fixed switching of fonts in the main menu when switching from Chinese to German
  
• Fixed a bug that made the interface freeze if you opened the biography of the character before the video ended for the death of the character
• Fixed the incorrect behavior of the window for strixes’ distribution, when the team has both Gleda and Mact and there are not enough strixes for the travel
• Fixed an error in leveling up for "Monk" which made one of the skills improve energy instead of health
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented injuries from showing correctly on the strixes management screen
• Fixed a situation in which it was possible to kill a character with a plot armor (Gleda on a number of parts of the game and Mact on some travelling)
• Fixed a visual glitch on the combat help screen at 1024 * 768 resolution
• Multiple edits for spelling for Russian, Ukrainian (thanks @awg), Italian, German and English

MULTIPLAYER:

• Now, when one wins a multiplayer game, the winner gets the chests for his arena
• Removed the restrictions on wearing items in multiplayer
• When defeated, players receive 10 gold for each enemy unit killed
• Improved UI for the team management screen to make removing cards from the hand easier (you needed to aim at the slots)
• Fixed several holes during data synchronization, which allowed cheating when updating skills and leveling up
• Corrected the behavior of UI on authorization and entering the multiplayer mode, if you try to close it by the “Esc” button
• Fixed issue with sorting and displaying items in team management
• Fixed a problem which made the animation for passive skills freeze if the unit was killed with a card
• Fixed a problem with the false indication of new skill points on max level characters
• Fixed problem with duplicate characters in team management
• Fixed displaying of wounds in the popup-window of the results of the battle
• Fixed the persistence of wounds in the current game session
• Fixed the freezing when pressing space button during a match search
• Fixed a possible freeze when changing from multiplayer to single player

WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON NOW:

• We fix the mistakes you report
• We add clans to the multiplayer - about a third is ready
• We test the 'Iron man' mode with high difficulty
• We test the integration of GOG Galaxy (achievements, overlays, cloud storage)
• We test "postmortem" after the final video - it has already been translated into all languages and added into the game
• We test the battle log
• We do additional editing for the English language (now with the help of 4 people - two new editors from our translation company and with the help of community members - Reavy and K. Constantine)
• Preparing for the LQA for the Polish language. If you speak Polish and can help us—please, write in the comments.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.

If you the game crashes on Windows 7 with Intel HD graphics cards 2500, 4xxx, GT3 - please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this text here: -force-glcore Unfortunately, this is a problem with video card drivers that were not updated for these series since 2012.[/olist] If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game in Steam or GOG. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-04-12 10:29:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the update 1.1 we have tried to fix all the key problems that you have reported on Steam, GOG, Discord, VK and Facebook. We also have added more options which should make your journey in the world of Terminum more comfortable. HOTFIX: Fixed a problem preventing access to multiplayer for new players

CHANGELOG:

SINGLE PLAYER

• Added a setting of the Reaping (difficulty) in the main menu.
• Added a displayed numeric value for the level of morale.
• Added skills and walking distance preview during the positioning phase.
• Changed font size on the character selection screen in the Chinese version of the game.
• Fixed the desynchronization of voice over and onscreen text for the Chinese version of the game.
• Fixed combat units’ sound with the animation speed set to X3.
• Added an option to disable voice over in settings.
• Thorn’s party is now healed by 1 upon arriving to Opacum.
• Added a lit campfire to Thorn’s camp.
  
• Adjusted Hopper’s final enemy stats if he is fighting alone, the player did not develop him and skipped optional combat.
• Changed multipliers for chapters 6 and 7 for Thorn’s team if there are only 4 characters left in the party.
• Fixed the problem which prevented damage preview from showing for some skills and classes.
• Changed the AI settings for the encounter after leaving the jail in Ursus if there are many injured units in character’s party.
• Changed the animation for opening/closing the watch in combat (thanks to an artist and our player Oleg Knyazev).
• Removed the preview when using cards with random effects.
• Quest with the table in Unda’s house is made simpler.
• Fixed “White Tower” not showing on the map in the English version of the game.
• Fixed the logic for the dialogue on Druket’s death.
• Fixed the problem with saves in Steam that occured when using slow internet connection and cloud save syncing turned on (sometimes the game would not save or the saves would disappear upon quitting with Alt+F4).
  
• Fixed the receiving of the achievements “We are saved (Rit)”, “Makt survived”.
• Fixed the description for cards disappearing in some cases.
• Fixed the problem on the 7th level of Hopper’s skill “Vamprirism”.
• Fixed Doom showing on Lo Pheng’s camp screen even when he is not in the party.
• Fixed the issue with same random events happening several times on the way to the Marsh Watch and Triple Menhir.
• Fixed the arrow showing “to the right” in the store.
• Fixed the mouse scroll input allowing the pan in cutscenes.
• Fixed the text alignment in some quests for Hopper in the Italian language.
• Fixed team management screen to work correctly on 1600х900 resolution in Windows and Linux.
• Fixed a glitch with a bush on the Ursus screen.
• Fixed odd language and tone errors in the English translation in Thorn’s and Hopper’s storylines in Ursus, Marsh Watch, Firga, White Tower.
• Fixed various typos and textual errors in various languages.

MULTIPLAYER

• Unit upgrade added.
• Opening battle chests and arena chests added.
• Daily chests giveaway and opening added.
• Added 14 new templates and locations for combat (different teams positions, obstacles, locations).
• Added skills and walking distance preview during the positioning phase.
• Added skills preview during opponent’s turn.
• Added ability to see own cards during opponent’s turn.
• Added information about injuries on the profile screen.
• Added “Quit” button to change the user in the GOG version of the game.
• Displays the treatment of units over time online.
• Corrected the behavior of passive skills, items and the system of injuries.
• Changed the format of the time online (as you have asked - we have changed to exact diaplayment of hours and minutes).
• Reconnects after the disconnect now work properly.
• Fixed the problem with desynchronization and spontaneous deviations from the server on hub and during search for a fight on an unstable connection.
• Fixed the timer synchronization for players from different time zones.
• Fixed the resource management screen localization for German and Chinese languages.
• Fixed the issue when “Auto-combat” would display in multiplayer.

WHAT ARE WORKING ON NOW

• We fix errors, add options that you ask for and work on the multiplayer.
• We have finished and are testing the integration of GOG Galaxy (achievements, overlay, cloud saves). We are very sorry, dear GOG players, that it took us so long.
• You have asked us to write a “postmortem” after the final video. We did it and are translating it now.
• We have created the concept for, selected a mockup (with your help on Discord) and are working on the battle log.
• Adding clans to the multiplayer.
• Creating an option to turn off dynamic camera.
• Creating a mode “Iron Man” with high difficulty.
• Further editing the English text.
• We plan to start LQA for the Polish language. If you speak English and can help us out - please let us know in a comment.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

There is still a problem in Unity with detecting the list of available resolutions in some versions of Linux X64. To fix an error «Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile», please, run the game in windowed mode, there is no full-screen solution for now, it is up to Unity.

Games on Unity in Mint Linux, Ark Linux do not work with tiling desktop manager dwm — please use OpenBox or analogues.[/olist] If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game in Steam or GOG. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-04-06 08:11:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

A small patch for a blocker found in previous version of the game.

CHANGELOG:

• Fixed a rare bug with Chapter 1 loading screen

If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game in Steam or GOG. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-03-29 15:48:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey! Balancing patch for the AI behavior at the Reaping level of 4+ (see details below) is on the way which brings some balance to difficulty level and AI behavior. We also would like to explain a couple of things about how it works. The difficulty in the game is set by several matrices—the complexity changes smoothly from chapter to chapter due to the increasing coefficients for AI, so at the beginning of the game we weaken enemy's AI, and in the end we strengthen them to keep up with the developed player's units. The second matrix—regulates the increasing levels of the Reaping, which add up to the parameters of the chapters and, most importantly, changes the key AI settings—its responses to defense, attack, tactical depth of analysis, priority of targets. So, for example, when Harvest level is more than 7, AI attempts to attack units that already have injuries, and on difficulty 2, it almost does not see protection and happily attacks those who would receive no damage.
We constantly collect impersonal combat stats—how many turns and round combat lasts, what units are the most effective, what AI did and how it affected the game. We also constantly read your feedback and recommendations on Steam and Discord and thus we have decided to improve the behavior of AI at levels 5 and above, allowing AI to analyze the field better, respond better to units in defense and counter-attack, better choose its goals.

CHANGELOG:

• The maximum Reaping level is limited to 10
• Updated localization for the Italian language
• A small update of the Ens faction (sometimes in combat they had difficulties with making tactical decisions and stood in place in a counterattack instead of attacking the player)
• Fixed a bug that allowed to increase the level of Reaping multiple times by quickly clicking on the event pop-up
• Fixed the UI bug on the level up screen (numbers shifted)
• Fixed the UI bug on the level up screen on resolutions less than 1378x768
• Fixed the names of the Reaping for the Italian language
• Multiple corrections of spelling and punctuation in the Russian language (many thanks to all who helps us find them)
• Removed extra scenes from the Steam build
• Fixed a bug with a window that comes up on the first occasion when party doesn't have enough strixes and Gleda is not in the team
• Fixed a bug when Mact "came back to life" in Opakum
• Fixed a bug where the party selection would not save after combat for Thorn's and Pheng's parties
• Fixed incorrect selection of units in the team management in multiplayer
• Fixed the display of the arrows for Friza's military company on the map after 53 days
• Fixed a bug when the Reaper was not visible during the encounter in the forest
• Fixed a bug where icons on the multiplayer screen disappeared when zoomed
• Fixed the inability to give "The Hurricane's Soul" to Assassins

WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW:

We are not only correcting mistakes. You write a lot to us about what the game lacks in your opinion. We are working now on:

• Finishing the multiplayer. We are currently testing: getting daily chests, opening combat chests, leveling up for all the 54 units, correcting mistakes. By the end of April, we plan to deliver you "clans" in online battles and the ability to fight versus AI, which will allow us to do everything that we wanted for the multiplayer version.
• We will add a number to represent the degree of morale (now it is not clear how it changes from your choices)
• We are working on a battle log for both singleplayer and multiplayer
• We are working to allow you to see unit's stats and skills during the positioning phase in combat in singleplayer
• We are working to allow you to see unit's stats and skills during the positioning phase in combat and enemy's turn in singleplayer
• Fixed and are testing the incorrect behavior of skills that manipulate rounds
• Fixed and are testing the incorrect behavior of skills that manipulate rounds
• Fixed and are testing the display of targets for random attacks

We have also started the re-editing of the text in English. You will help us greatly, please, if you point directly, just pictures where the problems are the most obvious - we have performed a full correction of the text by two literary editors in London and New York and all the comments that we sent to this early proofread were often written off to "literary preferences". We are not native speakers, sorry, help us understand where and what is done in particularly poor language.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

In Unity, there is still an unresolved issue with running on some Linux X64 builds with the detection of the available resolutions. To solve the problem of "Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile" you need to run the game in windowed mode - solutions for full-screen mode do not exist yet, it is up to Unity.[/olist] If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game in Steam or GOG. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-03-28 11:25:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

A small hotfix 1.0.37

CHANGELOG:

• Fixed "Continue" button position on global map. Now you won't have any trouble with travels.

We are sorry for inconvenience.

IMPORTANT:

[olist]

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore

In Unity, there is still an unresolved issue with running on some Linux X64 builds with the detection of the available resolutions. To solve the problem of "Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile" you need to run the game in windowed mode - solutions for full-screen mode do not exist yet, it is up to Unity.[/olist] If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. Please, write an honest review about the game in Steam or GOG. Your support will help us to bring more players. Thank you. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods/

[ 2018-03-27 08:24:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

And one more patch with some bug fixes - 1.0.34!

• Added Reaping manual adjustment in the Reaping menu at the map
• Fixed incorrect AI behavior at the wasteland
• Fixed saving bug in Hopper Rouly line in Ursus
• Fixed camera zoom issue during the meeting of Hopper Rouly and Nakoma
• Fixed avatars display during the bad final

Please keep in mind Steam cards enabled with this path also. Don't forget to share your feedback and suggestions in Steam and GOG reviews - this is extremely important for us! If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. If you do like our game, please, write an honest review. It will help us to spread the word. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2018-03-27 01:46:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

New day - new patch! Meet Ash of Gods 1.0.31

CHANGELOG:

• On the level up screen, the description of the characteristics of the leveled up skills is added
• Changed the display of the additional characteristics - the calculation mechanics became visible (http://take.ms/qjOgQ)
• Missing Kickstarter backers were added to the credits
• Fixed problems with "double quotation marks" in credits
• Fixed the skill and its improvement for the "Deadly Jab" skill of Kshama and the Ense Swordsmen
• Changed the threshold of "humanity" for Lo Feng (difficulties with saving one of the party members in the game ending)
• Fixed incorrect behavior of passive skills when dying from a counterattack
• The curse now properly weakens Hopper Rouly
• Fixed a bug that led to a "dead end" in the ending of the Lo Feng's storyline after the killing the final boss
• Fixed bug with dialogue logic with Helm in the camp
• Fixed the icon for one of the ghosts in the wasteland
• Fixed a problem with a blurred screen when replaying the fight
• Fixed scene bug in the wasteland
• Fixed scene bug in the battle with Bran people
• Fixed scene bug in the battle with the Reaper at the western gate
• Fixed a bug with displaying Thorn's in-combat model (pixelated image)
• Fixed a bug in the dialogue scene in Feng's camp
• Fixed low-quality textures in the store in high-resolution settings
• Fixed the conditions for receiving the achievement "Silly Death"
• Fixed an empty dialogue scene with Mushom
• Fixed the disappearance of music in chapters 6 and 8
• Fixed low-res portrait for Fillia in Ursus at higher resolutions
• Multiple edits of spelling and writing in Russian, English, Italian, Ukrainian, German
• Changed Gleda's usage of "daddy", "mommy", "tummy" to "father", "mother", "stomach"

Online game:

• Fixed teleportation of units to the starting point in the multiplayer

Unresolved problem:

In Unity, there is still an unresolved issue with running on some Linux X64 builds with the detection of the available resolutions. To solve the problem of "Receiving unhandled exception in funlockfile" you need to run the game in windowed mode - solutions for full-screen mode do not exist yet, it is up to Unity. (edited)

IMPORTANT:

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. If you do like our game, please, write an honest review. It will help us to spread the word. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2018-03-26 19:31:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear players! Another patch is here, and we are still working on further changes, fixing English translation, rewriting dialogs and testing changes to overhaul the existing combat system.

CHANGELOG:

• fixed freezing on window with strixes dividing after loading game or returning to the global map
• fixed freezing after final fight if someone died or Thorn made the final blow
• fixed a bug when Ramlin's ability turn enemies' characteristics to negative meaning
• fixed freezing of exit window when use Esc button
• v-sync option added

IMPORTANT:

If you having issues with launching the game on Mac, please open Properties of the game via Steam, choose Launch option and copy-paste this here: -force-glcore If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. If you do like our game, please, write an honest review. It will help us to spread the word. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2018-03-25 15:43:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good news, everyone! Patch 1.0.25 is now live at Steam version and bring some balance adjustments and bug fixes.

CHANGELOG:

• Reduced Strixes consumption for Thorn, Gled, Hoda, Fisk.
• Reduced the price of the Strixes from traders by 30%
• All merchants received additional goods with Strixes
• Reduced the impact of the Reaping on the opponents' stats by 5-12%, depending on the chapter
• Thorn's squad will have 30 more Strixes at the beginning of their journey
• The starting curse is reduced by 2 points in one of the branches of conversation between Blans and Koronzon
• Fixed the bell tower in Albius disappearing for Hopper
• Fixed the story event for Hopper with the trader Bred
• Fixed missing characters in items' descriptions in Chinese
• Added option to disable "hems" during dialogs
• "Hems" are now played less often (edited)
• Balance changes for enemy power in chapters 3 to 9. The game should be overall more comfortable now
• GOG version will be updated later today Don't forget to share your feedback in reviews - we are eager to hear more of your suggestions! If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/
  
  [ 2018-03-24 23:01:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear players! Thanks a lot for your feedback about the game, we are carefully read every review and all discussions, gathering information about what you do and don't like in the current build of Ash of Gods. We are going to improve the game based on this, fixing minor and major issues to make your experience flawless. This small patch was released yesterday, and it is just something for a start. Next patch will be released on Monday.

CHANGELOG:

• multiplayer is already available, we're also planning some improvements in the upcoming updates
• AI difficulty level is reduced for the reaping levels 6-10
• fixed some UI issues on 1600х900 and 1600х1200 screens
• fixed a bug with a freezing game during quest with Muellase the merchant

If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/Ash_of_Gods_Redemption/

[ 2018-03-24 13:47:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ash of Gods has just become available for purchase!

MULTIPLAYER WILL BECOME AVAILABLE WITHIN 24 HOURS.

https://youtu.be/7dHuZbpxL10 We also made a Digital Deluxe version for those who fell in love with our game. It contains the original soundtrack by Adam Skorupa, a beautiful digital art book, a comic book, A2 poster, maps of Terminum and a pack of wallpapers for different devices.
If you are not fancy about all the deluxe rewards but want to say thanks to developers, simply buy us a beer: http://store.steampowered.com/app/820870/Ash_of_Gods__Beer_for_Developers/ You will also get a deck of cards with Ash of Gods' characters. If you're facing any bugs or issues, please, report about it via discussions or our Discord channel. We will do our best to fix every problem as soon as possible. And, of course, don't forget to write an honest review about the game, it will help us to spread the word! http://store.steampowered.com/app/691690/

[ 2018-03-23 09:24:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

With only a week left until the release it’s time for me to tell you “See you at the Terminum” (hey, guys, stress on the first syllable). The first issue of our diaries was published on December 22, 2016, and now you read the last one. I’ll also write postmortem, but it seems to me that the format of the statement will be stating the facts and full of bragging or tears. All this time I tried to talk about everything as it is – without special embellishments, lies, exaggerations and marketing nonsense, which is often freely or not freely added to their own diaries by different teams. In this issue, we will get acquainted once again and I will tell about all who somehow worked a lot on the game. I’ll tell you how things are with the console and mobile versions of the game and I will tell you about the terrible dispute between me and our publishing director.

OUR PLANS

Right now we are starting to prepare for porting the game on the consoles (Xbox, PS4, Switch) – we signed an agreement with the publisher “Buka” and they will be porting and publishing the game in retail. As we have promised to you during the Kickstarter campaign the game on the consoles will be released 2-4 months after the PC version. Forgive us for not managing to make the controller support on the PC right at the start – we will add this feature to the PC version of the game together with porting on the console. I really want us to translate the game into as many languages as possible. Now we have Russian, English, German, Italian, Chinese, Ukrainian. Soon we will finish with Polish, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
When we’re done with consoles, we’ll start working on mobile devices (Android, iOS). It will be at the very end of the year or early in 2019. Maybe I’ll try to check on how difficult it is to build a game on Ps Vita – perhaps it’s not as difficult as it seems?

THE "LAST" "HELLO"!

Feel free to skip this, if you do not care who made this game – here will be our funny faces mostly . Yes, it took me only a year to manage to get my colleagues to be generous enough to say a couple of words about what they think about working on the game.

CONCLUSION

The plot of the game is completely ready. We are still plishing it and will be doing this until the last day before the release. We have not finished a lot in the multiplayer – we will do it in the first updates immediately after the release. This includes your rewards from the Kickstarter campaign – the keys to the chests and units. We are still writing the distribution system for you and will do it all by the end of April. Guys, I’m very glad that many of you supported us this year and a half. With his comments, ideas, wishes and constructive criticism. I hope that we will not fail you!

[ 2018-03-18 15:50:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Great news, everyone. First of all, we can finally announce the release date. Ash of Gods will become available for purchase on Steam at March, 23th. Those, who expect Ash of Gods on consoles, will be pleased to know that legendary Russian company Buka Entertainment will publish the game for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One till the end of the year.

[ 2018-03-07 20:05:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello. I’m Ivan Bobenko – one of the game designers of the Ash of Gods project. In this diary I would to talk about game mechanics, bold decisions, favorite combat characters and… cloning. How ethical is it to reproduce the lamb Dolly, if the output is not a sheep, but a real wolf? I want to start with mentioning the fact that I always read the new issues of the Developer Diary with a great pleasure. I am very excited by the informal and emotional delivery of the material from Nikolay. He always writes from his point of view, not particularly shy with his language and without covering up the harsh truth with sweet words. Therefore, I am glad to be able to have the spotlight as well. The feeling when you have spread the numbers over two screens and ponder over edits:

COMBAT EXPERIENCE

Most of my attention in the project I give to the combat system. Without exaggeration, I can say that at the time of writing these diaries, I have played many times more fights in AoG than anybody else. In each of these battles I have pursued certain goals: sometimes to weaken the overpowerful characters, sometimes I have observed the losers of each squad gathering their will into a fist and becoming interesting (to match all the favorite archers), part of the battles was devoted to the AI behavior tests or checking whether some errors were fixed.
Even at the early stages of testing, many fights were quiet spectacular. This is especially true for the most difficult battles, in which the enemies, without any mercy and pity, have disemboweled my modest squad, exhausted by a long journey and the absence of strixes. [quote]Only early on in the game can you skip reading the descriptions of the opponent’s abilities and passive skills, but the further in the Termimium, the thicker are the Enses.[/quote] To win a battle with your last efforts, when the larger part of your party already lies on the ground, without giving any signs of life – it is extremely fascinating.
WebPort is an application for testing AoG combat system, where you can “enjoy” solid color as a background and the machinations of the cruel AI. After spending 100,000 hours there, I thought it would be unfair to leave this legendary training ground in the shadows.

THE CHASE FOR UNIQUENESS

I have tried very hard to make the game classes not only attractive to the player, but also unique in comparison with each other. This feature is even more pronounced when the player begins to think through the party development plan, distributing skill points. For example, you can develop Thorn into a powerful AOEher or an excellent support character.
I’m sure when you start playing, you will have your own favorites in the team. Personally, I adore Fisk and Ramlin – I constantly buy and give them the best equipment, despite the fact that they are very unique and are not always effective. If the story suddenly poses the question of “lose a good friend or save Fisk?” – I’ll answer it easily. Let the favorite characters finish off as many enemies as possible, and with the additional experience they will level up much faster than the rest of the team.
Fisk, who has a weakness for alcohol and has seen things, is in fact a fragile, but very strong damage dealer. If you are not careful with him, in the later stages of the game this spearman may well be killed by one powerful shot. [quote]Some of my colleagues do not like Fisk for his low survival rate (and even by leveling up you will not be able to raise his health very soon), but in skillful hands he can work miracles.[/quote] For this character the turn order is very important. Due to the possibility of increasing his own protection, well-equipped and properly leveld up Fisk can sometimes even tank.
Ramlin is a support character. He had some witchcraft skills from his grandmother and in battle he can strengthen your party members for the duration of the battle. Many people are immediately deterred by his ridiculous attack value of one. But if you develop your strategy, based on the presence of Ramlin in the party, you can achieve impressive results. [quote]A lot of the skills in the game are calculated from the character’s attack value: for example, Thorn’s defence depends on his attack value.[/quote] Ramlin can significantly increase the attack of another character – and then their abilities start to get out of control and become deadly. Also he can take the attack points from his party members and then steal a lot of energy from the enemies.

COOLDOWNS

With the introduction of the system of cooldowns, I managed to liven up the behavior of the player’s characters. Now you need to think at what point it is better to use a defensive skill or how to hold out until the time when a powerful ability becomes avaiable. [quote]Thanks to the cooldowns, we have managed to add truly “crazy” abilities. For example, the possibility for an Assassin class to kill a completely healthy enemy with one blow.[/quote] Abilities this strong are on the cooldown at the beginning of the fight, and the player has to wait until they become available.
Hold on. What are these numbers? 95 HP for Gleda? Whom should I write a ticket with a bug to? No, it’s okay, it’s just fully levelled up characters. In the campaign you willl not see this, so at least look at the screenshot. And the local Assassin Hoda has 45/38 even in the most developed configuration. Surely he is a very weak character!

CRAZY SYSTEM

Even before I’ve joined the team pretty bold foundations were laid for the combat system: for example, the ability to almost infinitly raise the character’s attack in combat without restrictions or diminishes. Or heling, which in our game is not traditional, the one everyone is used to, but is, in fact, a health buff.
So, when healing a completely healthy character, you increase the amount of his health and there are no limits for this. On one hand, it makes possible the use of cheesy strategies, on the other – adds lots of fun to the game and plenty of room for experimentation. [quote]Choosing between the correct mathematical methods of calculations for strict balance and fun, we took the side of the latter – and I’m scared to think of what some ingenious players will be able to create on the release with the opportunities that we give them.[/quote] Imagine that you take two clerics aside and buff your tank – already pretty fat – with health, and then watch the vain attempts of the computer to kill this mammoth.

PREJUDICE

Honestly, before meeting with the developers from Aurum Dust, I saw news about the game and without getting into details, branded it for myself as the “Banner Saga reskin”, having lost all interest.
Spoiler: no, not about the banners. But in reality everything turned out to be much more complicated and interesting. Everyone knows how often gamedev works today: we take a successful project, we attach some new features to it – and there you go: eat our clone on the hype wave. In fact, it turned that Stoic Studio in are aware of development, are supportive of it and even backed our undertaking on Kickstarter. [quote]In addition – in my opinion – in the case of Ash of Gods, the number of unique and original elements (for example, the real death of all heroes or highly delayed consequences of player’s choices) allows the game to break through the cage of its heritage and act as something new and special.[/quote] Therefore, I hope that all those who have already made a hasty conclusion, sooner or later, will come across a review, a gameplay or just a funny meme about our game, which will meke them dig a little deeper and more objectively evaluate the project and decide for themselves whether it is worth to pass by?

IN CONCLUSION

I look forward to the release of the game no less than you do. It is often said that when you develop you have time to play enough to get nauseous, so that later you do not want to see the game again. In my case, this is not so true. On the release day, I plan to run someone’s stream on one screen and play the game myself on the other.
I cannot wait to read and analyze your praising and angry (and you cannot avoid having these) reviews about the release version. The night is dark and full of terrors. March is coming.

[ 2018-02-23 18:52:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Putting a hand on my heart, I can say that I did not plan to write this diary, but in our profiles on social networks a pool of questions had accumulated, which I would like to answer all at once and I just have a little time for it. This time I will talk about how we made content – characters, effects and why there is so much text in the game. I will add a little bit about the readiness of the Feng’s line. I will also talk about the state of the translation and the parallel translation into 9 languages. If the text seems too serious, bear in mind that I am writing it quite sober – this seems to be the first such diary, give me a little slack for it.

MIXING THINGS UP – VO, FX AND SFX

Special effects are one of the most difficult parts in the project. Among our artists there is no an FX-guru. Most of the effects are the result of a collective creativity of our art director Igor and the artist Andrei Zherdev. Most of the effects and techniques of working with colors are his doing. Work on the FX begins with us formulating the text, what should happen step by step, after which Igor and Andrei draw key frames for the future effect. This allows us to simplify the work of the FX animator as much as possible.
You know, for me it was amazing how differently the same effect is perceived when you see it along with the sound. Whenever we had added a sound to the next effect, it began to play with new colors, and the visible flaws were smoothed out. There are a number of complex and composite effects in the game, such as one of Blans’s blows, which we had created approxibately, without a storyboard:
The people we had given the game to – friends, a number of backers from Kickstarter, – they all said that the game really needs voiceover for the author’s text – when playing you have to remove your eyes from the picture to read, instead of looking at the picture. We were able to record Russian and English voiceovers for the author’s text – this is about 12 minutes of voice during the game. Also voiced the screens of switching characters and texts that are written on scrolls (as for example at the very end of the game): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l4W2-W_4-k Right now we are working on the voice acting for the characters themselves. Dmitry’s friend (Erokhin) kindly provided us with the opportunity to select samples from his ~ 10,000 recordings of groans, laughs, sneezes, coughs and other indecencies from a few dozen actors – I selected about eight hundred to simplify the life of our SFX artist Gennady. It was the most horrible 16 hours in the last six months – almost for two days all I heard only this: PLAY AUDIO TRACK There were also glimpses of light in this hell, for example on the 16th second. Initially, our plan with SFX battles was rather simple – screams of characters in combat scenes were supposed to be the only voice cues in the game. Everything went down the drain on the design of sounds for clerics and priests (Vai, Skur, Alus, Ramlin). It turned out to be very boring to conjure in silence. Sergey dug out his favorite desktop dictionary of the Enochian language and wrote simple spellings, like “Save and protect!”, “I’ll be your key” and “Forgive Your Son!”: PLAY AUDIO TRACK This is not yet a final version of the sound mix, but it gives the general idea of how awful it is to speak Enochian

[ 2018-02-19 19:06:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

That’s it, you have most likely the penultimate chance to tell us that we will fail, we are vile plagiarists and other similar things that Russian and Irish love to say. I hope I’ll write a post mortem with a smart look and a fat belly about how cool we all are and how we made it. And, of course, there is a chance that I will be lyrical poem “We done screwed up.” I’ll sum up some things here and I’ll tell what we are working now, what we are doing again for God knows what time and when will it all be over. I was recently told – “wait a couple more months, nothing further depends on you.” Hooray, if it is so!

MUSIC

Remember how I wrote in the last diaries that we are all done with the music? It was a lie! Brazen and shameless, as I can. Demons forced us to start working on the Lo Pheng’s storyline in November, and we recorded a few additional tracks. Unfortunately, this time, they are really the last.
Since the last diary, we have been asked several times on Facebook and our Discord on our process for creating the music and how we prepare the task for Adam. [quote]Full OST of the game is 24 tracks for 73 minutes and 19 seconds; and for every second of it I feel proud! Ah, golden piastres, it seems I had to sell a kidney to record all this music

[ 2018-02-15 15:31:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

So much has happened since the last installment of our diaries that I suggest we give the intro a pass and get right down to brass tacks. We’ve pretty much finished the main storyline, so now it’s possible to play the rough draft of the game from the beginning to the penultimate episode. Writing the finale without Lo Pheng was a tough nut to crack and our scriptwriter is twitching around like an angry eel on a hot frying pan, that’s how badly we want to hold onto the fever-pitch of emotion and the density of events that would have been unleashed if the protagonists had collided at the end of the game the way we planned them to. Above all, we wanted to avoid writing anything stupid and just bring things to…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Jrt8H_tZE Early in the month I streamed the first episodes of the game online and we received a lot of comments from our Russian readers about the “staleness” of some of the characters’ dialogs, so now we’re frantically trying to fix this without causing downtime for our translators.

WANNA PLAY?

I love walking. A part of the route from my house to the office passes along the Moskva River embankment at Maryino Park. Now I’ve got something to fill that time other than enjoying the silence and the scent of the water. Like any normal human zombie I can now stare at my phone while I’m walking.
That’s because we finally managed to compile our battle “sandbox” to run on Android this week. It contains 36 finished characters (we still need to animate and integrate seven more) and is indispensable for testing the AI and balancing the skills. It also provides me with the opportunity to watch how the AI plays itself and how deterministic its behavior is. A good AI should be able to lose in an interesting way, and that’s the main thing we’re trying to teach it at this stage.
That’s Thorn and company on their way to a get-together to find out what’s taking us so long. It’s tough to admit, but since the end of May we’ve practically had to rewrite the code for the combat system and the toolkit for creating combat characters. The first implementation required too much individual scripting by hand of the different skills. In its new incarnation it consists of a couple of simple YAML files, and now you can describe all the animation, commands, skills, special effects and audio files of the characters with a basic text editor. A small script file does all the remaining dirty work for you. I don’t know how true Unity disciples manage to pull it off, but to my modest taste creating 2D animation “the Unity way” is a bag of hurt and a cup of unadulterated, over-the-top agony. It’s as if you’ve fallen straight into the Sixth Circle of Hell, and a simple piece of work that should take around 5-10 minutes turns into hours of clicking on the editor’s “convenient” tools and inspectors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsTcIEJgGfk Battling the AI in one of the first game scenes. But right now Unity isn’t our main headache. The biggest pain of the combat system is the UI and controls. They’re terribly inconvenient. We’re going to have to redo the card panel. In all probability we’ll have to hide them under the clock so we can save some vertical space. If you saw any of the screenshots or videos from the previous version, you’ll notice that we also took away the side panels with the portraits. We did that for the same reason. They were taking up too much space.

THE UI AND ART

Here are a couple of thoughts on the skills selection menu during combat. And below you can see the character profile interface. As we speak our awesome busy bee, Julia, has practically finished all the remaining UI elements for the single-mode game. All that’s left is the main menu and the interface that handles winning or losing in combat. After that we can roll up our sleeves and rework the combat UI and map navigation. Right now it’s really hard to select a specific road with your cursor.
The last couple of months I’ve earned myself a deserved spot in the “Additional Programming” spot of the credits. That spot is usually reserved for the young guys who can’t not be mentioned, but who spend all their time on all sorts of crap (and by that I really mean crap, not just all the loose ends). And that can be anything from assembling the texture atlases, preparing the automation toolkit, creating the builds or doing what I mentioned earlier in this instalment, namely putting together the Android version of the game. Some may think I’m already in the “acceptance” phase, but I prefer to think (probably unreasonably) that I’m still in denial.
We’ve also started working on the skills and upgrade icons for the game, and we’ve drawn the first set of objects and the first 62 portraits of our Kickstarter backers. While our art director was on vacation, we started applying some spit and polish. Andrei is working on the color correction to better convey the atmosphere of the game and make the picture sweeter on the eye. Below you can see the “before” (left) and “after” (right).
The scenes are getting a bit murkier, with more contrast, and there’s a slight coldness to some of the hues. All in all we’ve practically drawn everything that had to be drawn. There are just a couple of scenes left that we’ll leave for last, namely the intro and a couple of cinematic animation scenes at the beginning and end of the game. Now that we’re able to play the first build, it’s becoming apparent that we’re going to have to shorten a couple of the scenes, as well as add some fights linked to the plot, both new ones and ones we’d previously cut out. For instance, that includes an extra fight scene when Thorn and Gleda run home after their fight with the Reaper, and the game intro, where Hopper Rouley meets up with Amma.

A BIT ABOUT THE PLOT AND THE PHOTON SERVER

It just so happens that I began writing this installment of the developer’s diary in the beginning of May, and here I am, finishing it in August. Most of what I’d wanted to tell you about the plot has already happened. On the whole, we’ve finished the story. We’re still making a couple of changes to the two final episodes and writing the promised quests, so although there are still bugs and glitches, it’s already possible to play the game from start to finish. At the beginning of spring Nevigo (the developers of Articy Draft) announced Articy 3, and with it a native plugin for Unity. There was no time to try it out or experiment with it, so we just postponed this job for after the upgrade.
These cute little skeletons are showing their joy at the fact that we ported everything we’d already written on the Articy Access API to the new Unity plugin, while silent tears rolled down our bearded faces. This hurt, because we’d pretty much created our own equivalent of their plugin from scratch, meaning we’d wasted almost one and a half months. But I’m glad to say this time wasn’t entirely wasted, because we now know our new tool from the inside out and have a near perfect understanding of how to use it. [quote]We already started working on the online version of the combat section in mid-March. This was important, because we wanted to show live gameplay to Square Enux Collection (SEC) as well as record some scenes for our Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns.[/quote] Of course, SEC told us to go to hell, so to an extent the rush and change of priorities had been all for nothing. PhotonServer really helped us a lot to get a working build of the online game up and running. There isn’t much I can say about PUB and PhotonCloud, because we’re creating the multiplayer version with a bunch of server-side checks and balances. That’s why we’re using PhotonServer. That being said, we chucked out almost 90% of its loadbalancing. Data transporting in PhotonServer is really cool and convenient. Just a couple of lines of code and you’re already creating business logic. Searching for matches, scaling, expanding the list of network commands, organizing lobbies and rooms—all of this is first and foremost peer-to-peer stuff and a matter of how you configure it on the authorizing server, which does all the calculations for you. Both Loadbalancing and Hive make it very easy to change the relationships between a group of players, provided those relationships can be expressed with a simple dictionary of keys and values. But it’s really painful to implement your business rules on top of them. You can do this by means of plugins, but it’s not a very convenient process. I experimented with Netty and its port, DotNetty, and if I’d had just a bit of extra time I would have thrown Photon out and used it instead. The only thing Netty lacks out of the box is the ability to compile for HTML5 platforms with support for websockets.

THE LAST TIME I'M WRITING ABOUT THE MUSIC

You probably know by now that we were able to get a bit of extra money on Kickstarter. That allowed us to record a couple of extra music tracks, and Adam and his team are finishing the last of them. That makes me both happy and sad. On the one hand, that means one of the pages of our development history has almost been turned. On the other hand, it also means we’re finished and there won’t be any new compositions.
On the photograph above you can see Aleksander Grochocki (mandolin and drum), Michał Cielecki (keyboard) and Magdalena Przychodzka (vocals) busy recording the music for the outro video. Adam, guys… Thank you for your magical work and your incredible music. I’m very glad I had the opportunity to work with you. Adam is a really amazing composer and a great guy. If you’re looking for cool music, he’s your man!
The game has one very special piece of music called the “general mood”. We didn’t create it as a single six-minute composition, but as a set of fragments that can be assembled into different tracks or just one longer track. Ash of Gods - Sinister Mood (Draft) Here’s an example of it. It’s the working version of one of our final compositions, a track for “darker” scenes such as dialogs with blatantly evil characters or grisly situations.

KICKSTARTER?

I don’t want to spend too much time on our experience. Yes, the preparations took up a terrible amount of time and nerves. I think we’ll relive that experience all over again when the time comes to ship the physical prizes. I should probably write a separate post on the topic of everything we did 100% wrong, what we got right and what we got wrong. Right now I’d like to say a big thanks to everybody who helped us. Thank you very much, guys! And yes, if you want to launch your project on Kickstarter, you should think ten times whether you want to mess around with physical prizes.

WHAT'S NEXT

We need to put together the final UI, finish the character upgrade code and transfer all the workings of that part of the game from the design documents to the game itself. We need to fix the style of the text based on the results of the first play-tests and finish the AI. I really want us to finish the multiplayer version before the end of the month so we can share it with the backers and with their help conduct another round of balancing the classes and their skills.

[ 2018-02-09 15:59:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

We can characterize the past month as a month of difficult UI solutions. We began preparations for our Kickstarter campaign, worked very hard on different UX scenarios, made a flop of our first bash at the multiplayer option, and developed the first draft of the AI, a lot of story tools and other things related to the animation, FX and cinematics. Also, we finished the first draft of the balancing of one of the key mechanics of the game, namely the world map.

THE DIALOG UI

I think Julia Zhokhova (aka LeksoTiger) is quietly cursing me because she’s drawn a thousand UI options over the past month and a half. At the moment she’s hard at work on the combat interface, after which she’ll take on the main menu and worldmap. I’m planning to finish every single interface by the end of April.
This is the dialog window for displaying almost every in-game event. I’m not sure this is the final result, but it’s a good start.
In our Facebook and Vk pages we got cool advice—to use different umbilicals (the rounded handles of the scroll’s rod) depending on the type of event or active protagonist. It is a neat idea, and we’re totally doing it.

BALANCING

We began to make the skills trees for characters, together with the balance. The current vision means that the characters don’t have a free upgrade system, but stats, perks, skills or their upgrades are improved from the skills tree.
There is Krieger, a swordsman. I’ll use his example to explain how I see the different “builds” of this class working. Here we see a lot of health, low energy and a relatively weak attack, he can strike hard, there’s a counterattack, and ordinary attacks bring a small permanent increase in attack value. This class has two styles: [olist]

Regular hits improve the attack, gradually turning a swordsman into a damage dealer. Thus, if your enemy didn’t realize this in time, he’ll face a tough killer with a lot of HP.

Another option is to reduce costs and increase the damage of a special attack. For example, if a character has an attack equal to 2, he can sacrifice 2 HP (with 22 base) to deal 4 damage to the enemy. And if you then upgrade this ability for a fee of 1 HP you will be able to deal 6 damage.[/olist]

THE WORLD MAP AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL

Since the world map is a core-loop mechanic, a player will spend several hours using it. Time is a valuable thing for our story, therefore the map will help you to make timely decisions due to the fact you will see the Frisian army on the march on the world map, as well as roads and passages that have already been blocked.
You’ll also be able to understand what kind of terrain surrounds you and which path to choose—whether to go on the open path, expecting to meet a merchant and buy something useful from him (or to kill him and take it all by force), or to choose a mountain road where no one usually walks, and untangle one of the mysteries of Terminum.
During some of the quests, you can find clues about any interesting items or events that may occur. But to understand exactly where and how to get to them is one of the tasks the player has to solve.
A couple of people have asked me about the game’s difficulty and if there’s a mode for people ‘who’d like to follow the story only’. The truth is I don’t think such a mode would be possible for our game. Let me explain. We have 10 difficulty levels ‘under the hood’ where 1 is easy and 10 is ‘the absolute pits’ in full swing. The higher the current level, the more difficult every particular incident on the road you are facing. If you see a corpse on the road, instead of a purse of money on him, you might encounter a poisonous snake, and it might bite to death whoever examines the body. Some parts of the roads may become inaccessible or dangerous, the mountain pass could have collapsed, and instead of a road leading you through the swap, there might only be a deep quagmire. [quote]Everything depends on the actions of our protagonist Hopper Rouley and some of the actions of two of the other heroes, and this will constantly affect the nature of the difficulty level for better or worse.[/quote] The difficulty level affects the cost of the path, the complexity of the AI and the availability of options for the behavior of the characters Thorn and Lo Pheng when their parties run out of vital resources. For example, at maximum difficulty level you can no longer share strixes. Thus, you will need to choose which of your party members will lose them for the benefit of others.

ROTOSCOPING AND ANIMATION

Once again we went to the studio to finish shooting some of the characters and to try to record a few animals and monsters. Everyone says it’s very difficult to animate non-humanoids, and we decided to do a test shoot. Here’s the attack of ‘the scorpion’:
It was also important to reshoot the walking cycles from the previous footage. The walking cycles were too short (4 steps only) and because of this the gait looked as if the character got a kick in the kidneys and started to limp. So we recorded a full cycle of walking without start and finish to accommodate as many steps in the frame as possible.
This time we did the animations for a couple of the tough guys such as the tall ‘Viking’ Ruor, the lumberjack Dume and some evil guys like Gellians, Frisians and Reapers. Dmitry Krivoshchapov proved to be excellent at this, because after 5 minutes of training and showing him what we’d already done, we recorded the Gellian animation almost completely in the first take and in the space of only 20 minutes.
We still have 11 female characters to do. We can’t find an actress of average height to handle all of them. I guess we’ll have to spend some money to hold a casting. If you know someone who can help us please let me know.
This is the first FX draft of blood on the battlefield. We would like to create a couple of different samples for different types and directions of blows such as piercing, cutting and crushing, and whether it’s applied to the body or head of the enemy. We can then use different blood patterns, depending on who does what, where and to whom.

KICKSTARTER

Well, if you’re looking for the recipe for success, it’s unlikely I can say anything new. I’ll only be able to write condescending articles on the subject with a snobbish hipster-look (I already have glasses and a beard) once we’ve gotten the required amount of money and reached a few additional goals. But until that happens, my attitude needs to be all about kicking problems in the butt left, right and center and charging forward like a locomotive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74VcZhssniI And that’s a hell of a job. I know you’ll say “Thank you, Captain Obvious!” with an intelligent look, because everyone’s talking about it. But that’s the way things are—you don’t know how deep the pit really is until you start digging for yourself. [quote]We’re working hard on the physical prizes: we’re going to mold a six-inch figure of Dorpkhal, plus we plan to make cool bracelets (an important artifact in the game’s plot) and make a hard-cover A4 art book of at least 30 pages and a comic that’s worthy of a Comic Con.[/quote] It’s a pity there’s no magic place where you can just pay for everything you need. You need to look for a large number of helpers, individuals and companies that will work on the individual lots and all the trivia. [quote]Lo Pheng’s full storyline is one of the goals of our Kickstarter campaign— we won’t be able to pull it off with our current resources.[/quote] NOTE: Despite the fact we didn't gather enough funds on Kickstarter to create Lo Pheng's storyline, we managed to make it anyway. The process of searching is by itself a big, complicated and stressful job, especially if you don’t have money to waste. Here’s the result of one of such “triviality” – our animated studio logo for the teaser, game and videos:
Kickstarter is a new experience for me. Since September 2016, I’ve talked to a bunch of individual consultants and consultancies in the former Soviet Union and the United States. The know-it-all professionals will tell you all and do it for your money, right? I’m sure that the sooner you throw this idea out of your head, the better. I want to say that the advice of real studios is a lot more interesting and allows you to look at the issues from a completely different angle. [quote]Many thanks to you, Anatoly Hajduk (Insomnia) and Eric Neigher (Obsidian). Your answers to our sometimes stupid and naive questions have been invaluable.[/quote] Generally, we think that what should be done before the beginning of the campaign, is to try and get on the Square Enix Collection or a similar program from Nvidia or HumbleBundle. I believe this is important, because the hysteria around Steam’s cancellation of Greenlight is in my opinion gaining momentum, and the amount of crap that has appeared in Greenlight has grown significantly since the announcement of the news.

SO WHEN CAN WE PLAY IT?

We’ve integrated the first three characters—Ramlin, Ark and Krieger—into the combat system. By the end of the month we’ll add another seven. Overall, the plan is to have the combat pre-alpha ready by the end of March so that we can invite players to play with us not only in the web prototype, but also in the actual game build. [quote]Please, share your thoughts: several times a month somebody asks us to put the source of the web prototype on github. After reading the readme file it should usually only take about 5 minutes to start it up on your PC without any previous programming experience. The only thing that needs to be done is to translate all the instructions into English and somehow describe the internal structure. I’m not sure whether I should spend time on this? Will someone really use it?[/quote] We finished the first version of the close combat AI, wrote the abstractions and implementation for the management of the combat characters – both for the single-player campaign, the AI module and the multiplayer game, when all the data comes together and is calculated on the server. Right now we’re working on the UI for multiplayer team management:
This is a very rough draft (with a couple of placeholder icons) and we’ll find out what the end result is in April. We’re working hard on making the system of rounds, cards and statuses extremely clear and simple. [quote]If you work in a cool UI lab, we’ll gladly accept your criticism or help in working on the UI / UX to make it as convenient and simple as possible. And we’ll sing your praises on every street corner![/quote] A brief overview of our struggle with Photon Server looks like this—it’s very cool, and we’re dumb. We started from the wrong end, and began by writing stuff that wasn’t needed. But by the middle of March we’ll be able to complete the team authorization, registration and management. Next will be the start of the combat—the placement, synchronization of statuses, timers, and the actual combat itself. We’ve already written the combat section as a separate library. It will be used by the single player AI version of the game and the multiplayer option.

A SHORT SUMMARY

A kind person on Facebook asked: “Why aren’t you inviting everybody to subscribe to your mailing list at every opportunity? Wrong, wrong, wrong!” So please subscribe and show us your support. We’re not sending anything out right now, but when the time comes for Kickstarter, expect a heartfelt letter from me and exclusive gifts in the multiplayer version to everyone who believed in us at this stage.
I think that the main fail of the month is the multiplayer part. We already figured where we screwed up and are actively working on fixing the mistakes. In March, we’ll hold some rudimentary matches so we can play a rough, but actual game in Unity. And that’s our main goal right now. Since the last diary we drew 4 characters and 5 combat miniatures, animated 8 personal characters, prepared key frames for the rotoscope of another 5 characters, including a very complex one—the Ense swordsman:
We finished the battle scene and the journey through the “Ash Wasteland”. Malitsky completed the novel and wrote a short story about Thorn and the beginning of his confrontation with Bran Vichti that happened 18 years before the game (we are working on a cool comic based on it). Sergei and Dmitry moved 5 chapters of the Thorn and Blance’s storyline to Articy, and now we plan to finish 6 more chapters in the next month.

[ 2018-02-06 17:30:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

During the first month of the new year we passed several important milestones in a row. We finished the first music track for the game and completed work on the rotoscope data of our first two characters—Ramlin and the archer Ark. We also began to work intensively on the network part of the game and a new game designer joined us—focusing on balance and the game mechanics. Also, we completed work on the animatics and the storyboard for the game’s intro video.

THE BUILD AND THE PLOT

We are slightly behind schedule creating the episodes for the game. As far as the art and script are concerned, there are 4 episodes ready (8 scenes and 3 cutscenes). We are still making several cinematics and backgrounds for dialogues, but the most complex part is over. The tools in Unity are still not fully ready and this is a big constraint for us. I think we’ll fix everything we need during the very first week of February. We can now already assemble episodes, but it’s not as convenient as it should be, and as we’ve realized from the unsquashed bugs, not entirely safe either.
On the screenshot above you can see the first working version of the UI where the phrases and possible answers are shown. We are very eager to make it comfortably readable and to make it clear who said what and who replies to whom. [quote]The key problem that has caused a lot of our “trials and tribulations” is to associate the data model and the arrangement of the scenes in Articy with how it should be reproduced on the episode sequencer in Unity.[/quote] Now, when we’re associating the Articy story episode and the graphic scene in Unity, the game engine automatically places onto the sequencer the dialogues, the author’s text, battles and special groups which are considered by the game as the place where you see the dialogue icons, the store, and other actions for the current location.
I’ve already mentioned that we are doing everything in parallel. Because of that, when the integration comes, we sometimes have to redo some of the earlier episodes, to make them comfortable for the import. I still suppose that this strategy is way better than to wait for the game engine to be fully ready for import. [quote]Dmitry (the game designer) and Sergey (the author of the script) have finally found a common literary language, so the process of editing the episodes now takes much less time. I wouldn’t risk to give any numbers now, but everything obviously goes easier now.[/quote] This game contains several defining and very complex episodes (from the point of view of implementation). These are parts 8, 10, 12 and 15, where the actions take place in one and the same city – Ursus – but with different protagonists and in different times. I write about this because it is our own version of hell, so to say. You have to track all the possibilities of each character to die. This means that we have to walk through all the episodes where these characters are featured and reset their storylines to make the story look logical when you consider every version of the episode’s ending. I suspect that this is just the first circle of Hell, because we are still not taking into account the behavior of protagonist (whether he is a good person or behaves like an asshole) in the dialogues.

MUSIC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3blT4gNiog The music for the game is being created by Adam Skorupa and his colleagues Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz and Michał Cielecki. We are planning to record over an hour of music before the end of summer—in general this is West European and Pagan folk music, with vocals and polyphony in a fictional language. Some tracks – the music of combat scenes, for instance – are set to fit the individual types of enemies. The “bad guys” in our game are Frisians (inhabitants of the Northern kingdoms), Gells (an equivalent of Celtic warriors) and Ensa (otherworldly intruders). We will try to record the individual tracks for each of these factions, the tracks which will reflect the nature of these foes. Some of tracks will just reflect the set of emotions or be intended for use in specific scenes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n_7gEp3Nhw In January we completed the first track for the game – the music for the main menu. Vocals by Magdalena Przychodzka, guitars by Aleksander Grochocki, the medieval fidule by Katarzyna Kamer. The fidule is quite an exotic instrument. At the same time, I think that it amazingly reflects the feeling of anxiety and desperation. We are planning to record some more exotic instruments – the gadulka and, probably, some unusual drums.
On the upper photo you can see Adam Skorupa and Katarzyna Kamer during the recording session for the music of the Ash of Gods main menu. In February we plan to finish the music for the intro and outro videos as well, and then we will begin to work on the first battle themes: four whole tracks lasting a total of 12 minutes. Maybe we will include male vocals—we are thinking about it now.

THE INTRO VIDEO

To be honest, I write about this video just because I’m very excited about it. I cannot show it now (otherwise it will no longer be “terribly secret”), but I want to write a couple of words about it all the same. The intro plays a crucial role from the point of view of the plot—in fact, during 2/3 of the game you will search for the answer of question “what and why has happened here?” We want to make a player ask many questions to himself and to us. We want to bring a fog-like feeling of uncertainty and, partly, to give an answer about the game’s title. The upper picture is the tonal scheme for the first seconds of intro video.
This is the clean line (in its quality) for one of the crucial characters of this video – Hopper Rouley. As with all the other animation in the game, this video will be hand-drawn frame by frame. It has required a lot of complex montage. For some scenes we had to do the reconstruction in 3d to set the camera and the motion of a large amount of people. It is almost two minutes long and has a very tense plot with a lot of action. We came to the final of the first part of this work – the 19th version of animatic is complete and the first scenes are ready to be drawn in a rough line. The very first of them is even ready for the insertion of the intermediate frames.
These pictures show the concept of location where the action of the intro video takes place. Adam Skorupa composes the music for the first 38 seconds, while our new-found sound engineer and sound designer provides the post-scoring. I’ve crossed my fingers in the hope that we will not fail with this intro; because we want to impress and fascinate all of you with this.
This is the stuff that showcases how we chose the contour lighting tech. In the working version we paint the middle and the long-range distance in brown, while the frontal perspective will use the contour adapted for the color of the substrate. Also, we have already started to work on the outro video too. In the working version of it we have 3 different endings, but, independently of them, we have also a little second ending – which will be a bridge between the first part of game and the next chapter of the story.

WE DRAW AND ANIMATE

The most huge and complex part of our work (i. e. “the biggest headache”) is the creation of the combat animations for the characters. On average each unit requires 16 animation sequences of approximately 80 frames for each of them. The creation of a full sequence takes about a month of work for one animator.
The rotoscoping technique makes the animation creation simpler, but only in part. There are some very complex animations – getting damage, the death of the character, or simply walking – you can’t do it well if you lack the skills of an experienced animator. It’s very difficult to properly record the damage sequence, while the walking animation suffers due to the cycle length. All the animations where the actor moves suffer due to perspective distortion. We record them on a 35mm camera (though we have to turn it on its side), because with the 50mm, where distortions are barely seen, it’s impossible to find a studio where you can record something in isometric perspective. The 50mm cam should stand at a distance of not less than 9 meters from the recording subject, and has to be lifted at least 7 meters higher than the floor.
Sadly, we didn’t record those auditions when I tried to actually hit the actors with a stick to get the necessary level of lifelike damage reactions. Now this point is a complex thing because it requires a huge volume of the animator’s work – to make it obvious for the player that the character has really been hurt. The second problem is the gait. In the studio where we are recording videos, there’s not enough space for a full walk-cycle, so if you only use the rotoscope, the characters literally look lame. We are thinking what to do with that. From the beginning of current year we decided to stop using TVPaint in preference of Toonboom (the software for frame-by-frame animation). If you are still in doubt which of these two you should use—pick ToonBoom. It will allow you to work faster, while the tools of line control allow you to receive similar pictures even when different animators are working on the same animation or its frames – the key ones or during the insertion of intermediate frames.
This is the crowd from the combat scenes of Ursus city. We had a long argument among the team: whether it was good to place the static images (for example, the city inhabitants) on the battlefield. It may look strange that during the battle on the city street the citizens are standing still instead of running for their lives. But if we wouldn’t use the people and animals for the scenes arrangement, the levels would seem empty and not lifelike. It’s long and expensive to create full complex animations for such objects. So, we finally decided that we will draw the animations with a low frame frequency – about 10 frames per second (for 2 or 3 key frames and automatic insertion of intermediate frames in ToonBoom). It can be a drunk holding up the wall, or a woman with buckets, who drops them in the beginning of the fight and presses herself against the wall. Maybe some scared people will look out of the windows and close the shutters. Just some simple activity which would allow you to feel the life and vibrant emotions of the environment.
Another complex moment is shown on the upper picture. We had a lot of work on the color correction in the scenes which were already created (the upper one is “before”, the lower is “after”). The difference between earlier and later scenes was very significant, so Andrey Zherdev has revisited the old scenes to make them equal by tone and atmosphere to the newer ones. With some of them we significantly missed with the emotional tone (there are corpses around but you cannot feel it from the picture). I hope that the current view is the final.

WHAT'S NEXT

We’ve began to code the network part of the game. I think that by the middle of March we will have the basic possibility of holding matches, and it will allow us to play a rough but real game not in the html prototype but in Unity. Now we try to use PhotonServer as the lobby and game server. It’s too early to talk about anything else now. We are planning to take part in the DevGamm exhibition in March, to show off our combat system as close as possible to the final expected result. Also, we’ve completely finalized our combat animation schedule (about 5 characters per month) and decided how we should correct the overall work on the game accordingly – everything that concerns recording sessions, actors, references and integration. Since the previous issue of our devblog we drew 5 characters, animated 6 dialogue portraits of heroes and completed the rotoscope of 2 ones. Also we drew 2 combat scenes (both from the city of Ursus). One of them is the constructor that will simplify the composing of multiplayer scenes and other city battles for us. Sergey Malitsky has completed 27th chapter of the novel (there are 30 of them totally) and we already know in detail how the story will end. And, at the end of the day, I’ll give you a little spoiler: as it turns out, Frisia has an undercover agent among your allies and if the player does not realize who it is, he will shout: “Le Roi est mort“.

[ 2018-02-03 16:14:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

INTRO

I guess it is time to make some updates here. We already managed to gather a quite big community here so we would like to tell you the story of Ash of Godsэ development from the very first chapter. This developer diary was published more than year ago, when we just started to work on the game. Thus, you can learn how it was.

DEVELOPER'S DIARY #1

I’m eager to complete the game in the space of a year. It’s damn hard, even when you know exactly what to do. It was obvious from the very beginning that we’d have to do everything simultaneously: write a novel, turn it into a script, work on its technical adaptation so we could launch it in Unity, draw backgrounds and characters, and create visual effects and animation for the combat system. All in the best traditions of indie agile: fast, steady movement forward, even when you have no idea which exact route will take you to your goal. But on the other hand, after four months of intensive work on this game we still don’t have a build in which everything we did can be shown off as an integral product. Right now we are moving towards this goal with giant strides.

IN SEARCH OF A STYLE

Most part of August and all of September we spent on searching for the right style and technique for scene drawing. At this stage I failed a bit as a newborn “I-know-everything’ guy. I hoped that concept artist Vladimir Malakhovsky, my mate and a close friend of our art director, Igor, would help with the adaptation of the scenes’ style. I’ve worked with Vladimir before, on a game called Cradle of Magic – he did cool graphics in the old-school manner, which, as I supposed, would fit into our new project too. [quote]I really wanted it to look like Disney’s Fire and Ice and LoTR, and The Snow Queen (1957) and Twelve Months (1956) by the Soviet studio Soyuzmultfilm – thin lines, simple forms and fills, a warm palette. At the same time, it would have to be quite close to comic books in its aesthetics.[/quote] However, Vladimir’s current style turned out to be closer to classic oil paintings and it wasn’t the manner that we wanted to see.
The effort of bringing more realism and clarity has required too much time for drawing the scenes. And the style turned out to be too complex for other artists to work in without making the difference stand out. We’ve lost almost a month with these experiments and it was exhausting and demotivating. It seemed to be a total failure given the fact that with the characters we did everything right from the first attempt. Fortunately, Igor (our art director) remembered about Andrey Zherdev—and the very first sketches he did already had the feeling we were looking for.
At the end of August (thanks to social networks) we found Julia Jokhova — a great artist who had experience in making illustrations according to the technique that we need. We started to search for references and also the stylistics which would manage to express the atmosphere of the story accurately. It took almost one and a half months to create the city of Albus and its vicinity and the yard of Thorn Brenin’s mansion. Despite all its seeming simplicity, this elaborate technique of drawing (the brushes, coloring and light) still demanded a lot of time. We had to design the greenery separately: individual trees, groves and bushes. We had to understand how to correctly draw the building materials. So, in its first version our city of Albus looked like it had been created by genie a minute ago, out of materials freshly arrived from the factory. [quote]Parallax (That’s when different layers on the screen are moving at different velocities) is “our everything”, but during the work on the first scene we just had no tools to test the stuff that the guys drew in Photoshop. We did it “quick-and-dirty”, creating the animatics directly in Photoshop.[/quote] The first attempt to build animatic scenes in Unity was made at the end of September: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eGhjj_prSg We had to find a solution that wouldn’t only satisfy each one of us, but would also allow us to create the content quickly. I’m not sure, however, that we really managed to do it: with each new scene there appears something new and interesting that was missed in the stuff which was already created. You want to go back and redo everything—or, at least, redraw it. By the middle of December we’ve learned how to draw one scene one-and-a-half to two screens in width. We did it in 2-3 weeks—from idea to Unity build. This scene—“the village at Arch” near the town of Ursus—was one of our first victories.
In this scene Julia used some of the methods that were previously used by Andrey Zherdev in the third game’s episode (we didn’t show these scene anywhere): elements of work with color, mountains on the background, greenery, the stylistics of drawing the Menhirs (those huge stones which form the arch). Such things helped us to finish the illustration faster.

HELLO, UNITY!

This image showcases what the basic episode direction looks like: managing the camera and the points where the dialogues begin. This is the part that we’re intensively coding right now. The first urge—to pick Fungus (the only distinct solution for visual novels in Unity)—didn’t work for us. The storytelling in the episodes is tightly bound to the camera work and the author’s text. Fungus doesn’t contain anything like this while its tools for work with story trees aren’t as convenient as in Articy (I will talk about this thing some later). We began with something else, however—we moved the main rules from the prototype into the game’s code, we built our own animation controller—to play the animations on the battle field—and we wrote a little tool for importing the individual clips of battle animations:
We had to solve several problems simultaneously. So, the current sequence of the “Rush” hit contains 53 frames and the character in this animation moves quite a lot – he crouches, turns his body from side to side, steps back. The battle field is presented in isometric perspective and if you want the animations to flow smoothly from one into another, each of these frames needs an accurately set point of binding. In other words, this is how you center one set of frames in relation to others. Being a naive man, I thought that Unity would include this operation, which is so easy and regular for any 2D game (and I have a pretty extensive amount of experience working with stuff like that in Flash). But, as it turned out, Unity doesn’t have this functionality (just as it lacks many other things which you expect from a platform intended for making 2D games). Moreover, almost everything you can find in open source or in the Unity store for 2D games is intended for platformers. So we had to code the import and alignment of the battle animations by ourselves. Then we focused on the part that plays the animations – to make sure that our clips with walking, strikes and the master poses are done right and look good.
When we began coding in Unity, we already had a combat system prototype that was written by me in JavaScript. Currently we are still adding and testing new classes in it, following the next rule: code fast and don’t think about the consequences. I think that the main hurdle about implementation in Unity was our attempt to port our prototype proof-of-concept combat system into it without any changes, keeping all the features which were in the Web version. And this was long before the work on AI begins. Either we’ll decide to incorporate the completed animations, or do something serious with this part of the game in general. It was important for me to do this as soon as possible – so we could understand how difficult it would turn out to be and on what general principles to base development as a whole. It was also very important to let all the mathematics and mechanics be ready for quick incorporation into the final version of the game: the skills and parameters of the different battle classes, the rules of motion and all the rest.
Each skill is a little text file in YAML format that describes, in declarative form, how this skill works. You can quickly change the parameters, add or remove effects, or simply change individual classes’ behavior mechanics. This allows us to quickly try out the ideas we get from the people playing our prototype. For instance, the idea of the Hammerman class was suggested by Voice of Reason. This is a class that can move across the entire battlefield and has only one goal – to deprive your enemy’s characters who haven’t moved yet of the opportunity to move. A few minutes are all you need to create a new class and begin to watch how it plays and affects the game process.

THE PLOT?

During all this time Sergey Malitsky (the author of the script) and Dmitry Erokhin (the game designer) worked with Articy. Articy is the gizmo that allows us to write and check the script independently from the creation of the game’s code. You can’t play the novel in its entirety yet, but we’re already able to play the first 5 episodes in Articy—to check how the decision trees and choices work. For almost a month, since the middle of November, we’ve been engaged concurrently in the directing of the dialogs – how to place characters correctly in dialogs, how to do the switch-over of backgrounds in 2D scenes. Such dialogs in the game have up to a maximum of seven characters. This is how we arrived at the “three scenes” model: two general and one additional. Game designers sets the place where each of characters is standing, while Articy controls who’s speaking at the current moment.
Any course in film photography will give you the essential theory – where to place the camera correctly when filming the conversation of several people, how to do the switch-over of backgrounds, and which rules you shouldn’t break. But when you try to emulate these rules in 2D, you encounter some difficulties: you can’t turn the camera in different directions, so you have to somehow simulate motion which is natural for a 3D scene. When you’re making a movie, it’s enough for the director to give a command, and the cameraman will shoot the episode from another point of view. But when your making a game, we very badly wanted to avoid having to place the camera manually, because that looks a lot like suicide : even now the game already contains about 2000 of speech lines (if I calculated correctly). We’ve spent almost a week to understand when and how we should change the views to make everything look nice.
And yes, articy:access api is a big headache. In practice working in it turned out not to be as simple as the ads promised. This wasn’t a story of “start it up and everything just works out of the box”. I’m also thinking with some trepidation about the localization process – the internationalization tools which were promised in 2014 still haven’t appeared in Articy. Not that it’s that big a deal, but it makes us nervous anyway.

WHAT'S NEXT

There are 37 characters, 21 scenes and 12 battlefields to be done. We’ve drawn seven scenes and three battlefields so far. Since the beginning of September we’ve drawn 22 dialogue portraits of characters and six individual miniatures of the enemies. This is a bit more than two thirds of all the characters in the game. It looks like we’ll manage to draw all the characters we need in time. We’ve also done tons of concept art for the intro video. By the end of December the first animation packs for the battle miniatures will be ready: Fisk, Rumlin, Krieger, Ark and Sopp. By the middle of February—another ten characters and by the beginning of summer there will be around 30 of them. Unfortunately, we are four or five calendar weeks behind schedule with the scenes, and two to three weeks late with the script plan. Right now we’re still deciding what to do with all of this. Should we reduce the amount of content or speed up? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s harder to finish something than to start. So, here is the brief list of things that fucked us up. Aaaargh, we don’t have time! The winter is torturing us. It already gets dark by 16:30 and it seems daylight doesn’t exist anymore – you wake up when it’s still dark and you finish up when it’s already dark. The neighbor with his electric hammer drill is making it really hard to write the storyline. And for some reason, there is such a small number of hours in a day.

[ 2018-02-01 16:59:09 CET ] [ Original post ]