Dear friends!

First of all, I must apologize for being unable to go ahead with the planned Early Access release in December (or apparently even getting Steam to display the new release date correctly!..). In fact, the project came very close to being shut down, but due to some luck, a bit of perseverance and people's support, it has been reborn instead!

tl;dr - here's the new (approximate) timeline:

1. A new tester demo in May/June 2020 with a brand new dungeoncrawling format 2. A freely playable boss-fight demo in Summer 2020 3. A tester version of Map Adventure in Autumn 2020 4. Early Access in Winter 2020-2021 Yes, I hate the delays too. But there were two major reasons not to release in 2019 - the technical and the financial. Let me explain them to you before I go deeper into what's planned for Early Access. Technically, I was not happy with how the game worked on low-spec PCs and non-Windows systems. This made worse the issue of our Demo - a sort of tutorial fight with story mix-up - being hard to digest to some of the backers. In a word - I made haste at the cost of proper optimization. And as a friend of mine once said... - You fight like a younger man... with nothing held back. Admirable, but mistaken. Thus, I decided I had to refine the design in a way that will enable everybody to enjoy the game, no matter their graphics card (almost :)). And this I believe I did!
The raw look of our level grid - fresh from the editor! On the financial side, the crowdfunding campaign did not give me the means to finish the essential parts of the game before I was forced to focus on finding a job*. I decided not to push things and thus risk the project's long-term future, but instead solve the financial issues that threaten it first. I came very close to landing a job as Game Designer, but it seems that having been an indie for so long Ive grown too hot-headed and lost touch with how things are done in the corporate gamedev. In the end however, things went rather well and I found a full-time job as Java Developer in Moscow. This will allow me to continue Eidolons development at least until Early Access independently. After this, it has taken another month to figure out the feasible timelines - I had to restructure the project's high-level design (campaign flow mostly) and roadmap completely to fit the new realities.
But now I feel confident that everything is set - and I am super-excited about finally making this game a reality!

So what about the Early Access plans?

I am still working on how I should present it without spoiling or promising too much, but here are some details I can reveal:

• Early Access will be a complete Act I out of a 5-Act campaign telling the dark story of Anphis val Keserim.
• Each Act will explore a certain aspect of human psyche, take place in a separate region of Ersidria where you will solve a large-scale problem using a number of Eidolon Heroes that you can use as avatars, and finally enter a massive Boss Dungeon where you either win or die.
• By the end of it, our mercurial protagonist may become an Ascended, first among Eidolon Lords, and ready to confront the final question: what is the nature of Evil? Yes, I am a great admirer of Planescape: Torment :)

I will certainly have more to tell soon, my schedule is tight but consistent. Now, let me finish with another quote from the Dark Knight... "Why do we fall?"
If you're reading this, you know the answer :) Thank you for staying tuned, every person who cares is a reason to carry on with development!

[ 2020-03-13 20:43:43 CET ] [ Original post ]