A hotfix for Kandria has been released with the following changes:

- Fix a crash when a toast is displayed while the map is being closed
Reported by aerphanas, delta_zzerty, desmondlulu
- Fix a crash due to race conditions with the OpenGL context on Windows while the game is shutting down
Reported by bryan, RJ, azale, vovin, JoyousCoconut, skymt, Mateusz, nat
- Fix a crash due to race conditions with windowing events while the game is shutting down
Reported by Chris
- Don't require fontconfig to be present on a target Linux system
Reported by julius
- Improve error reporting when the game crashes due to a corrupted or faulty install

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix a crash in the editor when trying to present a file open dialog for a directory that doesn't exist
Reported by Muppo
- Fix a crash caused by GLFW being unable to decode the clipboard contents
Reported by Sunny
- Possibly fix a rare problem with handling the login to the modio API through Steam
Reported by Witch
- Fix a crash caused by the OpenGL driver allocating a buffer object with a size that is different from what the engine expects
Reported by Bushek, Liam, RJ, mikio, mrguy, spicypants, A_Keick, Cloud, drque

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix general issue with remote requests causing several features to stop working on Windows, such as the mod browser, news listing, and automated crash reports
Reported by X-Calibar
- Fix steam achievements not triggering correctly anymore due to a change in the SteamWorks SDK
Reported by X-Calibar and Chimeran
- Fix the editor not interpreting mouse movements correctly anymore
- Fix the loading screen being stuck at 0%
- Note: A report has been made that Discord can make the game lag and even crash. This seems to be due to Discord interfering with the OpenGL driver. If you encounter this issue, make sure that Discord's game detection is disabled for Kandria
- Fix the game to work with upstream changes to Trial, making it possible to run from source again
Reported by Trannus Aran

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix issue with damage shields and other consumable items causing a crash
Reported by hide-
- Fix issue with libevdev not being found on the Steam Deck
Reported by ggnoredo

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Add option to explicitly set the display to use in the video options, and disambiguate monitor names in case the names are duplicated. This fixes the game starting up on the wrong display on Windows. Under linux the issue can persist due to issues in the underlying GLFW library
Reported by Gootch03, EnemyStarship
- Fix issue where leaving to explore early could leave you stranded due to the first fast travel option not being unlocked early enough
Reported by spiralll_
- Fix a crash occurring from a stray UI unit conversion issue
Reported by andrewbbaker

A hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix issue with vector type coercion
Reported by Colesl4w
- Fix wardrobe not displaying correctly due to a vertex binding point regression
Reported by Nulmas

A hot fix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix issue with feedback form leading to a crash
Reported by TannerGH
- Fix issue with exiting fullscreen leading to unpredictable and weird window sizes
Reported by TannerGH
- Fix fishing causing a crash due to an API incompatibility that wasn't noticed
Reported by davepdotorg
- Fix credits causing a crash due to a bad texture load
Reported by davepdotorg
- Fix failure of the Steam modio login flow leading to a hard crash
Reported by campbellr
- Fix rare crash when clicking on a title without a module entry
Reported by monkey
- Fix issue with lighting probe assuming a bad framebuffer binding state
Reported by TannerGH, davepdotorg, and Jab

Happy holidays, everyone!

A hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Upgrade to latest Trial version
- Upgrade to the latest GLFW
This should help with Wayland compatibility on Linux
- Fix bad input mapping for Wii U Pro controllers on Linux
Submitted by Calla
- Fix the modder achievement not being awarded when opening the editor
Reported by lonelygiraffe7
- Fix a typo in the item descriptions
Submitted by Ikko Eltociear Ashimine
- Fix default button maps not being correct for controllers that report triggers as buttons
Reported by Calla

A small hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix display of outfits overlapping oddly in the wardrobe
Reported by anonymous
- Fix Kandria to work with the latest version of Trial
Reported by monroth
- Fix petting of critters being able to clip you into walls
Reported by Zambito1

A hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fixed a regression that caused several collision volume issues
Reported by anonymous
- Fixed spurious crash due to race conditions during close
Reported by trollcyborg.2.0
- Improved rendering of several parts of the user interface

A hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fixed a few minor issues in the Japanese localisation
Reported by cxxxr
- Fixed a problem on some Windows setup with the Secur32.dll
Reported by TemprusofTime, kamiy, boum
- Fixed minor mod issues
- Fixed a glibc dependency issue on Linux
Reported by Bellman Cryde

A free update has been published which includes a localisation of the game into Japanese. You can pick the language from within the game's language options, or if you start the game for the first time on a Japanese system, the language will be set for you automatically.

Another month gone by. There's no major updates this month, since we just had thelevel editor releaselast month. However, there is a somewhat major update coming out next week!

You may have guessed from the title, but we're adding Japanese localisation to the game! It'll release onWednesday, 12th of April. As someone that's been trying to learn Japanese for a long time, this is another step in the development that I've been looking forward to very much.



I'm also really glad that we can release this already, so it'll be well out by the time I visit Tokyo Game Show in September!

[h2]Other news[/h2]
With the level editor and the beginning of the modding support already in place, I've taken a bit of a step back from Kandria development for a bit, and instead focused on working on a lot of other stuff that's been way overdue, like moving and upgrading our servers, taking care of my mental health, and starting work on pre-pre-production for the next game.

However, Kandria development is not yet done. The second and final major update with an official modding API is still coming. I don't have a release date for that yet, so I hope you remain patient!

In the meantime,my paperfor theEuropean Lisp Symposiumin Amsterdam was accepted, so I will be presenting Kandria there. The paper is quite technical, but if you're interested in Common Lisp, it might be worth a read. And if you're going to be in Amsterdam, let me know. I'd be happy to chat!

[h2]That's it for now[/h2]
A rather short update this month, but if you're interested in the details of the pre-pre-production process, come on hang out in theShirakumo channelwith the rest of us! We're discussing all the improvements to Trial there.

Fix issue with missing libevdev on Steam Deck and other Linux distributions
- Fix rare issue related to input stacking
Reported by Markasoftware
- Fix rare issue related to worlds listing
Reported by Noob
- Fix issue related to very old stale save files
Reported by Pro Helvetia

A minor hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix rare crash related to lack of file open dialog support on certain Linux systems
Reported by Docker
- Fix bad action configuration for dash
Reported by Cadspen

A new hotfix is live with the following changes:

- Fix issue in depot directory listing causing local mods to crash
Reported by Ghost_Hunter_2000
- Fix rare issue related to cursor switching
Reported by Charlie
- Fix rare save issue where catherine will lose her companion, leading to a crash
Reported by Ari
- Fix controller rumble stuck state
Reported by Ghost_Hunter_2000

A new hotfix is live with the following changes:

- Fix issue with interacting with fast travel while still in animation
Reported by Dudude Dude
- Fix rare crash resulting from in-progress workshop downloads for other games
Reported by HoloRaptor
- Fix resume saves being interpreted as "corrupted" when reloading a resume save in the same session
Reported by Pir

A new version is live with the following changes:

- Fix rare crash caused by entities going missing
Reported by Subsume
- Fix soft lock caused by inventory invariant mismatch after a crash
Reported by Subsume
- Fix issue with key button mapping configuration
Reported by Cirrusscales

The first major update for Kandria is now live on all platforms! It includes the level editor, a modding system, some new sample levels, and bugfixes!

[h2]Level Editor[/h2]
The level editor received a big overhaul and is now a lot more accessible. There's also official documentation now to help get you started and explain all the tools and shortcuts available. If you want to dig in, just update your game and navigate to Mod Manager > Create Mod, which should place you directly into the editor in a new world of your own!

[h2]Sharing Mods[/h2]
You can play levels made by others and download them directly from within the game. To browse existing levels, simply go to Mod Manager > Discover. From there you can select and install mods. Once installed, you can play their world under the Worlds tab.

We've provided a number of sample levels for you to play and edit. Open them up and see how they work, maybe you'll get inspired to make your own!



Join in on our Discord community event! We'll raffle out 20 Steam keys for Kandria to anyone that uploads a new level. You can freely give the key out to a friend so they can play the level you made!

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
Here's the detailed changelog for this version:

• Fix issues with multiple worlds corrupting save files
  Reported by Dieting Hippo
  
• Fix issue with animation editor crashing the game
  Reported by Jeremiah Fieldhaven
  
• Fix issue with history dialog crashing the game
  Reported by Dieting Hippo
  
• Fix issue with placing lava in an empty world crashing the game
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Fix issue with floating doors crashing the game on navmesh construction
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Fix issue with world field edits leading to a crash on editor exit
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Fix issue with text alignment on mixed fonts like Nicokaku
  Reported by Pir
  
• Add double-click tile selection
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Make Ctrl+Z work, not just Z
  Reported by Dieting Hippo
  
• Select entities on mouse down rather than up
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Fix rectangle tool being off by one at edges
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Fix roaming NPCs hard-setting their velocity, preventing bounce and other velocity based mechanics
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Hide the bsize field from edits as its duplicity with size is confusing
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Don't overwrite the keymap.lisp if the shipped one is never, merge them instead.
  Reported by Hempuli
  
• Fix multi-tile picking being screwed when not selecting tiles from bottom left to top right
  Reported by Hempuli, Dieting Hippo
  
• Fix moving platforms moving faster when climbing them
  
• Fix default mod preview image size
  Reported by Jeremiah Fieldhaven
  
• Fix various minor usability issues
  Reported by Jeremiah Fieldhaven
  
• Fix issue related to spawning of child entities in new worlds
  Reported by Tim White
  
• Fix input field for spawner types
  Reported by Dieting Hippo
  
• Fix mod dependency management
  Reported by Jeremiah Fieldhaven
  
• Fix issues with the history dialog
  Reported by Dieting Hippo
  
• Fix issues with the animation editor
  Reported by Jeremiah Fieldhaven
  
• Fix issue related to empty GI
  Reported by Goldberg
  

Let's get the important news out of the way: the next major update for Kandria will launch on Wednesday, March 8th, at 15:00 CET. The update will include a number of improvements, new features, more content, and a community event!

[h2]Level Editing[/h2]
The biggest part of the update is, no doubt, the polished level editor. The editor has always been a part of Kandria since release, but now it's nicely polished and much easier to use!



I've also included documentation to make it much easier for you to get a handle on how the editor works and how to get started with using it. I'm very excited to see what people can come up with!

And yes, the entire Kandria world was created in this editor, so it is fully capable of creating some very complex levels!

[h2]Partial Modding Support[/h2]
But, the editor itself is not all by far. Not only can you create levels, you can also browse levels others have made easily directly from within the game, and upload your own as well! We've integrated with the great mod.io service to make levels and mods available to everyone, regardless of how they purchased Kandria.



Worlds are distributed as just another kind of mod, so the UI for browsing and managing mods has also been developed already. And, if you're very adventurous you can even get started with code mods for Kandria, too.

[h2]More Content[/h2]
In order to give you some idea of what you can do with the editor, and to give more casual players something new to nibble on, too, I've also included a bunch small, new worlds as well.



You can simply download those through the mod manager's discovery tab when the update is out!

[h2]Community Event: Dare to Share[/h2]
Finally, we will be holding a community content event: we will raffle out 20 Steam keys for Kandria to anyone that uploads a new level. You can freely give the key out to a friend so they can play the level you made!



If you're interested in participating, please join our Discord. We'll be sharing more details on how exactly the raffle will work closer to the release of the modding support.

[h2]Speedruns[/h2]
Kandria will be the featured game for Speed Bump this month! A couple of speedrunners will be taking a closer look at the game and competing for time. Some runs have already started to appear on our leaderboard, as well! As a speedrunning fan and amateur runner myself, I'm really excited to see what kinds of tech they can figure out and how far they can optimise the run. The time has already come down quite considerably from my initial estimates, and I can definitely see things becoming quite competitive in the future.

[h2]Closing Thoughts[/h2]
I'll have more news about the future development of Kandria for you next month. Suffice to say, we're not done yet! For now, just remember that the update will launch on Wednesday, March 8th, at 15:00 CET along with a 15% discount on Steam. Please continue to share the page with your friends and communities!

Fixed an issue where saving over an old save file led to a crash on Windows
Reported by pir, tttt, Jaunus

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:
- Fix rare crash related to BVH degradation
Reported by daddysnatched2202
- Fix rare crash related to pausing as a sound effect finishes
Reported by jimbo8250
- Fix crash on new games
Reported by F

It's already been a month since Kandria released! Woah, time sure flies these days, huh?
[h2]Kandria Launch[/h2]
Well, in case you missed the launch, the game is now officially available on Steam, Itch, and directly on our Website.

The reviews we've gotten have been very positive, both from press, on Steam, and on the streams I've caught! I'm really happy that people have been enjoying the game, and am very thankful for all of the support and well wishes.

The first two weeks after launch were spent furiously fixing things, with a patch being released almost every day. Things have calmed down a lot since, and while there's a few polish things left over that we know about, overall the game is now very stable, and even got the official Steam Deck Verified rating!

But, the work isn't done yet.
[h2]Upcoming Attractions[/h2]
Back in the Kickstarter we reached three stretch goals. One of those was an extra questline, which is already in the released game. But, the two other goals I'm hammering out now:

• 
  Level Editor
  This is actually already in... sort of. If you open the game and press the section/tilde key below Escape, you'll toggle the editor during gameplay. If you want, you can mess about with it! But, it's still a bit rough around the edges and especially sharing levels with others is not easy enough for my tastes. So, that's what this update is about. Alongside the update we'll also organise a little contest with rewards, so look forward to that!
  
• 
  Modding Support
  And this one is quite exciting as well. Part of the modding support update is the source code release of Kandria, which has already happened. But, the more important and difficult parts are a stable API and mod loading mechanism, the integration with the mod.io API, and a convenient user interface to manage the mods. An extremely rudimentary API already exists now, but it will be quite a while before things become stable.
  

A new hotfix is live with the following changes:

- Add a kiosk mode (no saves) to the debug options
- Fix rare problem with resume saves not being used if there was a crash in the interim
Reported by irgendnkerl, joram shrijver
- Report better error on corrupted world or save files
Reported by Goldberg
- Fix chest spawn in a particular room dropping rarely the item into the abyss
Reported by ikharios
- Fix a rare crash on game close on Linux
Reported by stacy
- Report better errors when crashing due to out of memory
Reported by Noob

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix race achievement checks not properly considering gold timing
Reported by Justice
- Show race times with hundredths of a second on race time stats panel
Reported by Minirop
- Fix the default pick for save states to consult the system's display name or Steam's username if available
- Show Steam keyboard overlay when opening cheat menu
- Internal changes to the world data layout have been made in anticipation of level sharing support
- Creating new worlds, saving, and loading them works properly again

A small hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix being able to move when at zero health and dying
Reported by Wobbly Python, Carrie Carrarium, Hempuli, Joram Shrijver
- Fix being able to get instant killed from above 1HP
Reported by Hempuli, Carrie Carrarium
- Add initial delay to Mech boss fights to avoid cheap hits
Reported by Hempuli
- Fix rare problem where death slowdown would persist after reloading
Reported by Joram Shrijver, Carrie Carrarium, Hempuli
- Fix rare issues in dialogue not advancing properly or skipping strangely
Reported by Hempuli, Ari
- Fix wraw trader position to avoid being in damage range
Reported by S Yoshiks
- Add workbenches to wraw and cerebat locations
- Clarify text when exiting to main menu

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix being able to move when at zero health and dying
Reported by Wobbly Python, Carrie Carrarium, Hempuli, Joram Shrijver
- Fix being able to get instant killed from above 1HP
Reported by Hempuli, Carrie Carrarium
- Add initial delay to Mech boss fights to avoid cheap hits
Reported by Hempuli
- Fix rare problem where death slowdown would persist after reloading
Reported by Joram Shrijver, Carrie Carrarium, Hempuli
- Fix rare issues in dialogue not advancing properly or skipping strangely
Reported by Hempuli, Ari

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix rare problem with invalid checkpoint respawns
Reported by DrSkipper and others
- Fix rare issue with incomplete quest tasks still showing up on the map even though the quest has been completed
Reported by ToxicFrog
- Fix rare crash due to invalid input spam from the operating system
Reported by AverageJez
- Fix issue with keyboard input events after focusing on a text input field such as in the shop
Reported by Hempuli

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix drones not exploding properly
- Fix focus loss on game over screen when exiting focus
Reported by Hempuli
- Fix buying items that are out of stock still reducing scrap count
Reported by Gwyn
- Fix switching language while in-game not switching out default interactions
Reported by elimik31
- Fix corrupted monitor names leading to a crash when opening the options
Reported by charlieb
- Fix a rare crash due to degenerate bvh leading to a stack overflow
Reported by pfox
- Fix a rare crash related to trigger volumes still being active for inactive quests
Reported by pfox
- Fix a minor mistake in the German translation leading to a crash
Reported by irgendnkerl
- Ensure the Zelah entourage also trigger Zelah when attacked
Reported by DwarfWoot
- Improve iframe grace timing, preventing you from being stun locked and insta-killed
- Improve visual feedback when executing a successful dodge
- Reduce damage dealt by drones
- Reduce stun-lockability of rogues and wraw
- Reduce lag time on attack moves

On Saturday the 21st, 20:00-22:00 CET / 14:00-16:00 EST there will be an official stream on Twitch where I'm going to give you a look at the level editor and you can give me feedback on what needs to be improved and changed about it. The official level editor release is going to be the first major post-launch update, and I want to make sure that people have a say in how it turns out.

Hope to see you there!

A new hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix upgrade menu not updating requirements after activating an upgrade
Reported by ShimShamSam
- Fix nanomachine salves not stacking correctly
Reported by Toxic Frog
- Fix sneaky tutorial inconsistency
Reported by ZTA
- Fix crash when clicking on separators in the editor
Reported by Heisenborg
- Fix rare crash related to switching from gamepad to keyboard during gameplay
Reported by Yoha Quiryn
- Fix crash when unable to save temporary screenshot file to disk due to lack of space or permissions
Reported by Batmanatee
- Fix rare crash when updating the sound location of an elevator
Reported by pfox
- Fix crash when creating a new region in the editor
Reported by Goldberg
- Fix rare crash due to background load order weirdness
Reported by Disappointment
- Fix crumbling platforms pushing you out sideways in some cases
- Fix empty textboxes appearing sometimes
- Fix achievements for races and game endings not triggering
Reported by Adoom Mear, Paragus Rants
- Disable heat wave effect under epilepsy safety mode
Suggested by Serth
- Add a race stats panel, accessible via the cheat ``how fast am i``
- Change the ending stats panel to "X / Y" secrets found
Suggested by HaltingState

A hotfix has been released with the following changes:

- Fix text scrolling speed at zero not showing text at all
Reported by Toxic Frog
- Fix fish names being cut off when scrolling via gamepad
Reported by Adoom Mear
- Fix opening the cheat menu while fishing leading to input confusion
Reported by Adoom Mear
- Fix opening a chest while crawling under a block being able to clip you
Reported by Mirarant
- Fix hitting an open chest with attacks cancelling the animation
Reported by Dwarf Woot

A minor hotfix is live with the following changes:

- Added a few savepoints in region 2 to reduce excessively long stretches without any saving opportunities.

A brief hotfix has been released:

- Fix crash related to saves done while an elevator is in recall mode
Reported by AOAB!, derp rock galactic

A new hotfix is live with a few crash fixes that were reported.

• - Fix a rare crash related to use-before-allocate in the background
  Reported by Polyethylene
  
• - Fix bad reference to task in German translation
  Reported by John McCloud, Hattnschattn
  
• - Fix reference to SteamUtils function crashing on older SteamWorks SDK versions
  Reported by Goldberg
  
• - Fix rare crash when using items from the inventory
  Reported by Hwi Noree
  
• - Fix bug in editor creation dialogue
  Reported by A_M4n
  
• - Fix rare crash with custom NPC
  Reported by twmiller
  
• - Fix rare crash due to bad deallocation order when shutting down
  Reported by spicypants
  
• - Fix crash when buoy goes out of bounds (due to editing the map)
  Reported by antenirulf
  
• - Fix crash related to a bad late-night fix around service elevators
  Reported by ModBot2000
  

A hotfix has been released with the following changes:

• Fixed the difficulty on the return path of a particularly egregious platforming puzzle
  
• Added DS2 support under Linux
  
• Fixed possible out of bounds clip in two elevator shafts
  

A hotfix has been released.

• Two crashes with the german localisation have been fixed
  
• Movement speed of service elevators has been restored
  
• Sound of wind and lanterns was improperly spatial
  
• Chunk stuffers in region 3 have been added to avoid showing backgrounds during certain transitions
  
• The price of duck toys has been corrected
  

Kandria is now finally available for purchase and play!

I recommend buying it on Steam, as the algorithm there will help us bring the game in front of more people, as well. However, if that isn't a possibility for you, there's also options on Itch.io and through Xsolla on our webpage:

• Steam
  
• Itch.io
  
• XSolla
  

Kandria launches tomorrow, on Wednesday the 11th, at 15:00 CET / 9:00 EST!

There'll be a launch stream for the occasion as well. It'll be live here on Steam, as well as on Twitch! I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have about the game, and hope to see you there!

In case you missed the yearly update last week: Kandria will release in one week from today, on January 11th, 15:00 CET / 09:00 EST. I hope you're as excited to play it as we are to finally get it into your hands!

To celebrate the launch of Kandria, I'll be streaming the game live on Steam and Twitch!

The launch and stream will happen on January 11th, 15:00 CET.

It's that time of the year again! The end of it. And what a year it's been for Kandria. We're now less than two weeks away from the release. Yikes! Or should I say, woah! Well, let's take a moment and look at some of all of the things that happened, before we look at what the future may possibly hold in store for us. At least, if I have anything to say about it.

Honestly, so many things happened that I barely remember most of them. I had to go back through the monthly reviews to remember all of it. But then again, I've always been rather terrible at remembering things that far back in any chronologically complete manner. I won't be going over stuff in chronological order, either, but instead will touch on a bunch of individual topics. Let's start out with

[h2]Conferences[/h2]
In 2022 we were present in person at quite a number of conferences:

• 
  European Lisp Symposium in Portugal
  
• 
  Digital Dragons in Poland
  
• 
  Develop: Brighton in England
  
• 
  Gamescom & Devcom in Germany
  
• 
  HEROFest in Switzerland
  

To celebrate the launch of Kandria, I'll be streaming the game live on Steam and Twitch!

The launch and stream will happen on January 11th, 15:00 CET.

• The settings menu should no longer crash when no specific language is chosen.
  
• The in-progress German translation has been added. Quests up to Q6 have been translated as a first draft.
  

This is a shorter update, as this month was primarily spent on translation and bugfixing, neither of which we can really tell you much about. If you missed last month's though, please be aware that the game will release onJanuary 11th!
[h2]Various Things[/h2]
The translation is going slow, as I'm doing it myself and am not used to a good workflow for that. I expect I'll get the hang of it yet though and I've already made pretty significant progress on it.

Other than that, the achievement icons are done, thanks to Blob! I'm really happy with how they turned out, and it's nice to have some of his high-res art associated with the game.

Finally, I took two days to develop a new webservice for key distribution, which will allow you to buy the game DRM-free directly on our website once it releases. This will also ensure that 95% of your money goes to us, rather than the 70% we get on Steam.

The Soundtrack is also now fully mastered and done, and is ready to be released at the same time as the game, which is 1500 CET, January 11th. Those that backed us via Kickstarter can expect to get their keys sometime early January, though the game won't unlock until the official release date.
[h2]Roadmap[/h2]
Sincelast monththings have not changed drastically, though the game is now "done" as far as the English version is concerned. Most of the remaining time until release in January will be spent on very niche bugfixes and the German translation.

• Spruce up some of the sound effects and music tracks
• Create achievement icons and integrate them into the game
• Translate into German
• Release the full game
• Backport re-usable components into Trial
• Separate out the assets from the main repository
• Publish the source code under a permissive license
• Fix a plethora of bugs and inconveniences in Alloy
• Polish the editor and make it more stable
• Release the editor
• Develop a modding system for Trial
• Finish the Forge build system at least to an extent where it's usable
• Integrate the mod.io API with the modding system
• Create a mod manager and browser UI
• Document more parts of Trial and Kandria
• Release an official modding kit

This update's an important one! The final release date, a new trailer, and some more announcements. Dang! Well, without further ado:

Release Date: 11th of January!

Alright, I'm happy to announce that we got a final release date for Kandria, which is as the title says, **Wednesday, 11th of January 2023**! To celebrate the release date announcement, and the large amounts of progress we've made polishing the game, please enjoy this brand new trailer as well:

[previewyoutube=usc0Znm-gbA;full][/previewyoutube]

The game will release on Steam, itch.io, and onto the website as a direct sale. All copies of the game will be DRM-free. I'm also excited to say that the game will release both in English and in German, translated by yours truly. We have enough time left over to do the localisation, so I really want to do it.

[h2]Shevalin Single[/h2]
The full soundtrack of the game (which is excellent, by the way!) will be released together with the game in January. However, you can enjoy a single from the soundtrack right now:

https://hypeddit.com/q89kb4

This is Shevalin, the ending credits song, composed by our very talented Mikel Dale, and sung by the incredible Julie Elven. I hope you enjoy it!

[h2]User Feedback[/h2]
Currently we're still polishing everything we can find and responding to user feedback. One of the most prominent things we noticed watching people play was that they were confused by the locked doors in the first region of the game. So hey, we finally added crashable doors:



If you're part of the beta programme, please give the game a try! We still have some time to include more changes if you have any suggestions.

[h2]Development[/h2]
Okey, last month we got a new roadmap, so let's look at that now:

• Add even more detail tiles, foliage, and animal spawners throughout the world
  
• Fine-tune the levelling, trade prices, and enemy difficulty
  
• Create new key art
  
• Create a new trailer
  
• Spruce up some of the sound effects and music tracks
  
• Create achievement icons and integrate them into the game
  
• Translate everything (over 50'000 words) into German
  
• Release the full game
  
• Backport re-usable components into Trial
  
• Separate out the assets from the main repository
  
• Publish the source code under a permissive license
  
• Fix a plethora of bugs and inconveniences in Alloy
  
• Polish the editor and make it more stable
  
• Release the editor
  
• Develop a modding system for Trial
  
• Finish the Forge build system at least to an extent where it's usable
  
• Integrate the mod.io API with the modding system
  
• Create a mod manager and browser UI
  
• Document more parts of Trial and Kandria
  
• Release an official modding kit
  

So, we've been in beta for over a month and gotten lots of useful feedback. Thanks a bunch! We'll continue to listen eagerly for feedback as we move towards the end of the development.

In case you missed the Kickstarter but would still like to support us ahead of the release in January, you can do so by preordering Kandria or its soundtrack through Backerkit. Unlike Kickstarter, this also accepts PayPal, if you don't have access to a credit card.

[h2]HeroFest[/h2]

Another convention!

We'll be at the HeroFest in Bern, October 14-16! You'll be able to play the latest Kandria release there and chat about whatever. If you're in the area, please stop on by and check out the rest of the Swiss indie games presenting there as well.

[h2]Soundtrack[/h2]
The release of the soundtrack has been delayed by a bit, as our composer got swamped with work, and we're still trying to hash out the complicated stuff behind royalties and all. However, a single of the soundtrack should be out soon. Please keep an ear out for that!

[h2]Steam Deck Support[/h2]
Gaben finally delivered a Steam Deck to me, and I've tested Kandria on it. There were a couple of minor fixes to make it more usable, but now it seems to run flawlessly on the deck! Nice!


The Deck is a wonderful piece of tech, and I've been enjoying playing other games on it as well. While I still would like for Kandria to run on the Switch as well, this is the next best thing for now.

[h2]Development[/h2]
We're still rounding out the last bits of polish and bugs, and focusing on playing through the game more to ensure the balance and progression also work well. Development of the core game will officially end at the end of November, after which focus will shift towards adding the stretch goals we promised during the Kickstarter, preparing promotional materials, and so on.

To that end, here's a new rough roadmap of all the stuff left to do including post-release updates:

• 
  Add even more detail tiles, foliage, and animal spawners throughout the world
  
• 
  Fine-tune the levelling, trade prices, and enemy difficulty
  
• 
  Spruce up some of the sound effects and music tracks
  
• 
  Create achievement icons and integrate them into the game
  
• 
  Release the full game
  
• 
  Backport re-usable components into Trial
  
• 
  Separate out the assets from the main repository
  
• 
  Publish the source code under a permissive license
  
• 
  Fix a plethora of bugs and inconveniences in Alloy
  
• 
  Polish the editor and make it more stable
  
• 
  Release the editor
  
• 
  Develop a modding system for Trial
  
• 
  Finish the Forge build system at least to an extent where it's usable
  
• 
  Integrate the mod.io API with the modding system
  
• 
  Create a mod manager and browser UI
  
• 
  Document more parts of Trial and Kandria
  
• 
  Release an official modding kit
  

Kandria has finally entered beta, and the keys have been rolled out to all the Kickstarter backers of the Hunter tier and above. We've already got some good feedback in from that, and are continuing to polish the remaining areas.

If you're a beta backer and haven't gotten your key, please check your emails and your Backerkit account here: https://kandria.backerkit.com/

In case you missed the Kickstarter but would still like to support us, you can also do so by preordering Kandria or its soundtrack through Backerkit. Unlike Kickstarter, this also accepts PayPal, if you don't have access to a credit card.

[h2]Gamescom & Devcom[/h2]
We were part of the Swiss Games delegation to Gamescom this year, and had a stand at their incredible booth:



A bunch of people stopped by to talk to us about the game and try it out for themselves, which is always fun to observe.



On Thursday we were even allowed to use the booth's big LED wall for a small event, where participants could race for the lowest time in one of our side quests!

[previewyoutube=Ig5THsivPaI;full][/previewyoutube]

It was all an extremely exhausting week, though. Having to stand at the booth all day, plus the almost two hours of travel time between the venue and where I was staying every morning and evening ended up being quite taxing.

Luckily I somehow managed to dodge Covid again, despite most people not wearing a mask again...

[h2]Development[/h2]
In the meantime, development continued and we finally got some full-game playthrough tests done! We asked a number of people to play through the game casually, and found that on average a playthrough will take about 6-8 hours, which is an excellent time for a game of this type. If you do all the side quests, I imagine it'll take about 10-12 hours. And if you go for all the secrets and everything, probably even longer than that, so there's definitely a lot of content stuffed into the game!

So compared to last month, we already got two of the major steps left to do finished out. The main questline is working well, and all of the side quests for the game, including the Kickstarter stretch goal "Synthesis" questline are done and playable. We're also almost done detailing in all the rooms with tiles. We also tuned the RPG levelling quite a bit already, though I imagine I'll want to tune that some more based on player feedback.



What's left to do now is mostly ironing out all of the bugs, testing everything front and back and whatever other ways we can think of, and marketing the game some more to make sure people actually know it exists, too. And here's where I unfortunately have to make another announcement: the release will be delayed to January. Releasing in November is not a good move, especially for a young studio like ours. January is much calmer and generally results in better marketing and better sales, which we'll really need.

The time spent between November and January won't be wasted, though. We'll keep responding to feedback from our testers, and we'll work on the stretch goals from the Kickstarter as well. With any luck, the game will be able to launch with the level editor already integrated and available!

But yes, we need a good launch if we're to make more games, and I really, really would like to. Again, I ask that if you know anyone at all, or any groups that may be interested in Kandria, please share the steam page with them. It would help us out a lot, as we're not doing so hot with our general outreach.

Well then, that's it for this month. See you next month, or next week if you're on the mailing list!

We're at Gamescom from Wednesday to Friday! You can find us at the Swiss Games booth in Hall 4.1. Come on by and chat for a bit, we even got chocolates!

The Kickstarter is finally well behind us, and we're back to working on the game full-time. Not that we ever really stopped working on it, mind you, but at least there's a bunch of distractions now well behind us. But, let's still quickly summarise all that went down, eh?

If you backed us, I once again wanted to extend my heartfelt thanks to you. It's always very moving and greatly motivating to see people support what you do! You should have received an email from Backerkit by now that lets you set the details of your backer rewards. Please fill that survey out as soon as you can! If you didn't get any such email, you can manually trigger it again on Backerkit: https://kandria.backerkit.com/

In case you missed the Kickstarter but would still like to support us, you can also do so by preordering Kandria or its soundtrack through Backerkit. Unlike Kickstarter, this also accepts PayPal, if you don't have access to a credit card.
[h2]Gamescom & Devcom[/h2]
Gamescom is coming up at the end of the month, and Kandria will be there, at the Swiss Games booth in the business area! We'll have the game ready to play, and some chocolates for you to enjoy as well, so if you're around, please stop on by! I'd love to have a chat!



We'll be there throughout the entire week (22nd-26th) so there's plenty of time to check out the booth as well.

[h2]Development[/h2]
There's roughly four months left until until our planned release, and lord, there's still a tonne left to do. The game is fully playable, but a lot of the areas are still unfinished and need a ton of polish. That's what we're going to focus on now.

We've also started playtesting of the full game. So far we haven't encountered any breaking bugs, just minor issues that we'll iron out in the coming days. This is, at least to me, a very good sign, and it seems we shouldn't hit any major roadblocks and things are still proceeding according to schedule.

So what exactly is left to do? We'll, here's an excerpt:

• 
  Playtest the main quest line
  This also requires playing the game in a variety of ways to make sure that if the player doesn't solve quests in exactly the order and way we had envisioned won't break things, and that NPC dialogue still makes sense even then.
  
• 
  Finish out the side quests
  Aside from the main quest line we have a bunch of side quests that take you through more of the world and give you a few more extravagant things to do, and we still need to finish implementing a couple of those.
  
• 
  Detail out all the rooms
  Right now many of the rooms in the lower regions are filled out using auto-tiling, meaning they lack a lot of the extra detail that we've added for the other rooms by hand. This'll be my main job for a while, as detailing everything takes a lot of time.
  
• 
  Tune the progression curve
  Almost anything you do in Kandria finding stuff, exploring, defeating enemies, completing quests, fishing awards you exp, which feeds back into the levelling system. We need to make sure that there's a good progression curve to your levels, and that the enemies scale at an appropriate rate as well to drive the difficulty.
  
• 
  Fixing all sorts of minor bugs
  There's a lot of teensy bugs to iron out, like minor display problems in the UI and so forth. I hope we can iron out all the ones we know about by the time the game comes out!
  

The Kickstarter for Kandria has been going well, we've reached three of our stretch goals already! If you'd still like to get in and benefit from some of the Kickstarter exclusive rewards, check out the campaign while you still can:



The campaign ends in 48 hours, so this is the last chance to back it!

A fix for surround sound devices has been pushed live. This should fix the nasty noise and artefacts some users have reported hearing on their systems.

A new update has been pushed that adds a few minor features and fixes a bunch of bugs. Most notably, it fixes an issue a recent update introduced that caused fresh installations to not support audio on Windows. If you encountered this problem, please try again with the latest update!

We've also received reports of low framerates. We're currently still investigating what could cause this. A possible workaround for now is to try either playing in windowed mode, or toggling fullscreen off and on again.

Our Kickstarter is now live! Check it out:

]https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shinmera/kandria

Please consider supporting us, your contribution would help us out a ton. Oh, and there's some exclusive early bird reward tiers that won't be available for long!

To celebrate the next fest I'll be live streaming some Kandria gameplay directly to Steam here! If you have any questions or would like to see some exclusive game content, hop on by!

The event goes live 20:00 CEST / 11:00 PT

To celebrate the next fest I'll be live streaming some Kandria gameplay directly to Steam here! If you have any questions or would like to see some exclusive game content, hop on by!

The event goes live 22:00 CEST / 13:00 PT

Okey, June is the month! The Steam Next Fest and the Kickstarter are both happening this month. Be sure you won't miss them!

Steam Next Fest
One week from now the Steam Next Fest is going to be live, and with it the new demo for Kandria! We've been working on this for quite a while now, and we're excited for people to try it out in the fest. Make sure to put it onto your wishlist:



Kickstarter
One day after the Next Fest is another important date, namely the launch of our Kickstarter. We've been preparing for this for a long time now, and we're almost ready. Just a few more small things to iron out, and we're trying our best to ramp up the pre-campaign marketing to get as many people as possible onto that waitlist.

The first two days of a Kickstarter are super important for its success, so we need to make sure to make as big of a splash with it as possible, and ideally reach the funding goal by then already. If you'd like to help that become a reality, the best thing to do is to, of course, sign up yourself! But also tell friends and other people you know about it.

Thanks again, and I'm looking forward to the launch! We have a few exciting announcements to make during the campaign as well, and combined with the next fest, it's going to be a heck of a time, I'm sure.

Development Progress
May was a month fraught with some issues! First I fell ill for pretty much an entire week, and then I had to spend another week on the Digital Dragons conference in Krakow. Finally I had to take a week off just to try and recover from everything that's been building up from the two looming big events.

So as you might guess, not too much has happened this month. However, we're still making good progress. Tim has been hard at work rounding up all the main quest content and polishing it up to a good state. The game should now be fully playable from start to finish!



We'll start full-game testing soon to make sure the flow and everything works well, and also get to fleshing things out with some more side quests and extras. There's a ton of detail work that needs doing still, and that's going to make a huge difference. But it's also going to take a lot of time. Fortunately, we still have quite a bit of time left over until our next deadline looms, so we're still clear of the frying pan for now.

The Bottom Line
Okey, finally let's look at the roadmap from may.

• Create a new trailer and Kickstarter video
  
• General improvements to UI and flow
  
• Marketiiiing
  
• Buuuuuugs
  
• Add detail to region 2 and 3
  
• Do lots of user testing on the full game content
  
• Add more side quests and areas
  
• Implement Steam achievements
  

Another month of polish, Kickstarter prep, more polish, and also some news on conferences! Plus, a small peek at the final boss fight. Exciting!

Kickstarter
Well heck. Next month is going to be the launch of the Kickstarter already! We're still working on the new trailer for that, and polishing things for the new demo, but things are looking pretty good. Most of the Things Left To Do now are in the marketing and outreach department.

I've started contacting other teams to see about cross-promotions and such. If you know anyone that has, had, or will have a Kickstarter for a somewhat similar game to Kandria, please ask them to contact me so we can see about arranging that!

In the meantime, if you haven't yet, subscribe to the Kickstarter and tell anyone you know that might be interested in it!



It may not seem like much, but it really does help us tremendously to have more people on that pre-launch signup.

Digital Dragons in Krakw
Kandria was selected to be part of the Indie Showcase, so I'll be at the Digital Dragons conference in Krakw, May 16/17. If you're coming to the conference, please stop on by, I'd love to have a chat!

Due to plane and other related reasons, I'll actually be in Krakw until the 20th. Probably just going to spend the time working in the hotel, but if you're nearby and would like to go grab a drink at some point, let me know!

Development
Another month of mostly bugfixes and small, incremental improvements to the tiling of the lower regions of the game. Some more playtesting as well, and further improvements to the later acts of the game's story.

We've also started on the boss fight AI, now that Fred has completed a first round of the animations for it. It's looking really nice!



This has also prompted some more adjustments to the overall combat behaviour. It's feeling a lot better now, but I'm still not quite happy with it. I'll have to make more improvements to the overall movement and animation timing of the player this month.

Another important improvement has been to the deployment of the game; the data files are now bundled in an archive, reducing both install size, and massively reducing initial load times.

All of the improvements we've been working on will be in the new demo that'll be available in the Steam Next Fest launching on June 13th. I hope you can wait until then!

In between this laborious incremental fixing and improving, I've also been writing some more in-depth looks at the kinds of things that make game development take so much time on our mailing list. If you're interested in reading about that, sign up here!

The Bottom Line
Okey, let's look at the roadmap from april.

• Implement new enemy types
  
• Finish designing the remaining main story NPCs
  
• Complete the Kickstarter page
  
• Create a new trailer and Kickstarter video
  
• Add detail to region 2 and 3
  
• Do lots of user testing on the full game content
  
• Add more side quests and areas
  
• Implement Steam achievements
  

The steam demo's now over, and we've started polishing up the next demo. A lot left to do, but we've solidly entered the overall polishing phase of the production. As you might know, the last 10% takes 90% of the time, or something like that anyway! We also have some more news about the Kickstarter...

Kickstarter
We now have a definitive date for the Kickstarter and the new demo: June 13th! The Kickstarter will launch on the same day as the Steam Next Fest, which will offer the new demo to play.

The new demo will feature new quests, areas, challenges, characters, music, and secrets to uncover! Make sure to subscribe to the Kickstarter to get notified when it goes live!

Steam Demo Feedback
The Steam demo is now no longer available, but quite a few people checked it out and sent us feedback about their experience. Thank you very much! A lot of that feedback, such as allowing you to bind multiple buttons to the same action, has now been addressed



We've also taken some of the broader feedback into account. A few told us that they'd gotten lost, so we added a little marker that points you in the direction of the next objective when a new task starts.



The marker is only on screen for a brief while, to avoid it being annoying. The map has also been improved a lot to help you out along the way. Aside from the movement trail that was already in, you can now also place pins on the map, and it'll show the associated quest when you hover over a target hint.

Development
We've added support for mixed font text display, which paves the road for localisation to languages such as Japanese.



Thanks to some local playtesting for the new demo, we've also implemented a bunch of small improvements to the dialogue, platforming, and UI. The next demo's already looking pretty good, and we should be done with it well in time for the Kickstarter.

Finally, we've begun detailing things out in the lower two regions. It'll be a while before testing for that can properly begin, but we're well on schedule for everything so far!

The Bottom Line
Okey, let's look at the roadmap from march.

• Incorporate a battle music track
  
• Implement better map navigation
  
• Prepare the Kickstarter data
  
• Complete the new demo
  
• Fix various UI problems
  
• Improve usability features
  
• Implement new enemy types
  
• Create a new trailer and Kickstarter video
  
• Finish designing the remaining main story NPCs
  
• Add detail to region 2 and 3
  
• Do lots of user testing on the full game content
  
• Add more side quests and areas
  
• Implement Steam achievements
  

Another month, another update. Some important things to talk about this time. Namely, a new free demo on Steam, the Kickstarter pre-launch page being up, and our progress on the overall game!

[h2]Steam Demo[/h2]
A free demo of the game is now available for download on Steam! If you haven't tried the game out before, now's the next best time to do so. If you have tried it before, now is still the best time to try it out again, as the Steam demo includes a bunch of updates, changes, and fixes.

The demo will stay live until the end of the month. After that you'll have to wait for the...

[h2]Kickstarter[/h2]
The Kickstarter preview page is now live. Please hit that "notify me" button on the page! It would help us a lot to gauge overall interest in the campaign ahead of time.

The actual campaign will go live in June. There's still a lot for us to prepare and do until then, and I'll make sure to keep you up to date on what's happening with it. For now, the most important parts are to get the trailer and new demo done that'll launch together with the Kickstarter itself.

[h2]Other Progress[/h2]
We've already got a bunch of actionable feedback from the Steam demo, most of which has also already been fixed. Aside from that, though, we've been working on fleshing out the remaining game regions with new tiles, decorations, and so forth, polishing the lighting, animations, music, and sounds.



There's been a complete rewrite of the collision system. The old system had a number of really nasty glitches that I had already spent many hours on trying to fix. I finally gave up on that, and instead rewrote it all to use a different approach, which I hoped to be much more robust towards clipping and other precision issues. Turns out... it did! The new system works a lot better, and it only took me a day to implement the bulk of it. That was a really nice surprise for once!

We've also submitted Kandria for Pro Helvetia's production grant again. This is the last time we can do so, and I once again really hope we'll get it. It'll help a lot to offset much of my own investment and generally bolster our abilities to do marketing and so forth, which should dramatically improve our chances at making the game a success. The grant application once again required doing a bunch documentation and such, which eats some time as well. We won't know the results for quite a bit, at least not until June.

Finally we also have some good news regarding the Digital Dragons Accelerator. All of the contract work for that is now finally complete and I sent out that big stack (it was about 2cm thick) to Poland last friday. This means that we should soon enter the proper acceleration phase and get some funding! Hooray!



[h2]The bottom line[/h2]
Okey, let's look at the roadmap february.

• Complete the horizontal slice
  
• Polish up the lower part of region 1
  
• Prepare the Kickstarter data
  
• Implement missing sounds for new mechanics
  
• Implement new enemy types
  
• Complete the new demo
  
• Create a new trailer and Kickstarter video
  

• Finish designing the remaining main story NPCs
  
• Add detail to region 2 and 3
  
• Do lots of user testing on the full game content
  
• Add more side quests and areas
  
• Implement Steam achievements
  

There'll be a public, free demo available on Steam next Tuesday, 1st of March 2022! This is the first time the game will be available on Steam, so check it out!

January's already done with, and there's a lot of stuff brewing behind the scenes. One of those things I can already announce now, and I'm very excited to do so!

[h2]Kickstarter![/h2]
There will be a Kickstarter for Kandria in June! We're currently still preparing for it and working out all the details. We'll be sure to let you know once we have a "coming soon" page for it up and running.

The Kickstarter will come combined with a new demo on Steam Next Fest, as well as a brand new trailer. I hope you look forward to it, I know I sure am!

[h2]Horizontal Slice[/h2]
The Horizontal slice is moving along according to schedule. All the areas for the main game are now playable, and all of the story content is almost complete. That still leaves a ton of work to finish the game though, don't get me wrong. We need to playtest it all to make sure the traversal feels right, that the pacing of the game works well, and that the progression is satisfying and fun to engage with. Then we need to polish up all the areas' visuals and make them really pop. That, especially, takes a lot of time on its own already.



We also need to add some side quests and deck out the areas with secrets and things to discover and investigate, to feed into that nice loop of one distraction leading to another that open world games tend to do well. And finally there'll be a long stretch of smoothing out corners, playtesting, fixing bugs, adding small bits, and localising the game.



To be honest, thinking about all the things we still have to do is making my head spin, but so far we've, miraculously, been able to stick very close to our planned schedules, so it seems like we're moving ahead at a good pace.

[h2]The bottom line[/h2]
Okey, let's look at the roadmap from, uh, two months ago since I didn't include one in the yearly update.

• Implement RPG mechanics for levelling and upgrades
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Draft out region 2 main quest line levels and story
  
• Draft out region 3 main quest line levels and story
  
• Complete the horizontal slice
  
• Polish up the lower part of region 1
  
• Implement new enemy types
  
• Complete the new demo
  
• Create a new trailer and Kickstarter video
  

Wow, it's already been another year! When I was thinking about writing this year roundup for Kandria, I started getting the sweats, because I realised just how many things changed and happened during it. Even now writing this I'm not sure how well of a job I'll be able to do to summarise it all without forgetting about important details. However, since you can go read all the monthly updates, I'll just take this as a good sign that we made a lot of progress!

[h2]Vertical Slice[/h2]
The first thing we did in the year was start up the actual production phase of Kandria, and I'd like to remind you at this point that we had only drafted up the overall locations and plot of the game, but not made any content for it. All we had at this point was the pre-production demo.



It took us a little over three months to complete the slice, which contained about an hour of content, multiple NPCs, multiple tilesets, complex pathing AI, and several quests.



We then took a retreat to create a very small game very quickly.

[h2]Eternia: Pet Whisperer[/h2]


In just two weeks we built and released a visual novel game called Eternia: Pet Whisperer. You can find and get the game on Steam (currently half-off!)

The purpose of this exercise was both to give us a break from the rush of developing the vertical slice, and to give us the run-down on a full game production cycle including release on Steam and all that entailed.

It was quite an adventure, but I'm still pretty happy with the level of quality we managed to achieve in the final product!

[h2]Team Expansion[/h2]
After Tim and Fred joined the team last year, we had another expansion happen this year, with Mikel joining us as the composer, and Cai as the sound designer. With their help the game really started to expand its atmosphere.

There's still a lot more to do to improve Kandria's soundscape, but we're already so much further from where we started off when I was trying to make my own effects and we only had a royalty free sample track for the music.

Anyway, with the two on board as well we are now at maximum capacity. Unfortunately with my meagre funds I can't afford to hire any other people, no matter how useful to the project they might be. Heck, I can't even afford to hire the current team members full-time. Making games is ridiculously expensive, and since we currently aren't making any money, this is how it's going to be.

[h2]A New Trailer[/h2]
After Mikel joined the team we launched into a two week production on a new trailer, which required a lot of extra art, editing, custom music, and voice acting as well. I'm really glad we took those two weeks to do it though, as the trailer was invaluable for all the upcoming pitches I had to do to publishers.

[previewyoutube=nf9Z4MPBbfc;full][/previewyoutube]

By now I've seen the trailer so many times that it wore off a bit and I'd like to make a new one soon. Probably once the horizontal slice is complete, eh?

[h2]Events[/h2]
Thanks to the very generous support from the Swiss arts council Pro Helvetia, we were able to attend a number of events and conferences this year!

• Global Games Pitch
  
• Pocket Gamer Connects Digital
  
• Game Developer Conference
  
• Gamescom, Devcom, and Indie Arena Booth
  
• Game Industry Conference
  
• Nordic Games
  

I'm happy to say that Kandria was nominated for the Game Development World Championship 2021's fan favourite! It would help a lot if you voted for it here:

https://thegdwc.com/pages/game.php?game_guid=f9c7ff16-dd18-4624-8744-bd607f93eab7

November has been filled with horizontal slice development! Nearly all our time was spent working on new content, which is fantastic! The world is already four times as big as the demo, and there's still plenty more to go.

[h2]Horizontal Slice Development[/h2]
We've been busy working on the horizontal slice content, hammering out quests, art, music, levels, and new mechanics. We now have an overview of the complete game map, and it clocks in at about 1.2 x 2.2 km, divided up into 265 unique rooms.



This is pretty big already, but not quite the full map size yet. Once we're done with the horizontal slice, we'll be branching things out with sidequests and new side areas that are going to make the map even more dense and broad.

The map is split up into four distinct areas, which we call the Surface and Regions 1-3. Each of those areas have their own unique tileset, music tracks, NPCs, and platforming mechanics.

The demo already shows off the Surface as well as the upper part of Region 1:





We can also give you a peek at the visuals for Region 2:



I'm really excited to see everything come together, but there's still a lot more levels for me to design before that. I'm glad that I finally managed to get up to speed doing that, but it's still surprisingly hard. Coming up with fresh ideas for each room and making sure the challenges are properly balanced is very time consuming.

As such, progress has been a bit slower than I would have liked, and that's been eating at me. Still, I think we can get the horizontal slice done without too much of a delay, and we still have a lot of development time scheduled in our budget, so I think we'll be fine.

[h2]Tim[/h2]
Ive been working on the horizontal slice, and act 2s mainline quests are all but done to first draft quality, with a decent first pass on the dialogue. This contains several significant new quests, which send the player far and wide around the lower part of region 1, which Nick has greyboxed out. Its been fun getting into the headspaces and voices of the new characters youll meet here, and spinning up again on the scripting language. There was some tricky functionality to script, since we want some of the quests to be encountered naturally by the player, even if theyre not at that part of the story yet; it needed some extra thought to make sure these hang together based on the different ways the player might approach it. This should be good learning going into act 3, another meaty act. Though things should get faster to implement for the following acts 4 and 5, since the plot there is getting railroaded towards the climax.

[h2]The bottom line[/h2]
As always, let's look at the roadmap from last month.

• Fix reported crashes and bugs
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Draft out region 2 main quest line levels
  
• Revise some of the movement mechanics
  
• Animate more NPC characters and add an AI for them
  
• Implement RPG mechanics for levelling and upgrades (partially done)
  
• Draft out region 3 main quest line levels (partially done)
  
• Complete the horizontal slice
  

An event-ful month passed by for Kandria! Lots of developments in terms of conferences and networking. This, in addition to falling ill for a few days, left little time for actual dev again, though even despite everything we still have some news to share on that front as well!

[h2]Swiss-Polish Game Jam[/h2]
One of the major events this month was the Swiss-Polish game jam alongside GIC, which was organised largely by the Swiss embassy in Poland. Tim and I partnered up with three good fellows from Blindflug Studios, and made a small game called Eco Tower. The jam lasted only 48 hours, so it's nothing grand, but I'm still quite happy with how it turned out, and it was a blast working with the rest of the team!

You can find the game on itch.io.

[h2]Game Industry Conference[/h2]
The Game Industry Conference was pretty great! I had a fun time talking to the rest of Pro Helvetia and the other delegated teams, as well as the various attendees that checked out our booth. I wrote a lot more about it and the game jam in a previous weekly mailing list update, which, as an exception, you can .



[h2]Digital Dragons[/h2]
Over the course of our Poland visit we were also informed that we'd been accepted into the Digital Dragons Accelerator programme, which is very exciting! Digital Dragons is a Polish conference and organisation to support games, and with this new accelerator programme they're now also reaching out to non-polish developers to support their projects. Only 13 teams out of 97 from all over Europe were chosen, so we're really happy to have been accepted!

As part of the programme we'll be partnered with a Polish publishing company to settle on and then together achieve a set of milestones, over which the grant money of over 50k will be paid out. The partner will not be our publisher, just a partner, for the duration of this programme.

Now, you may be wondering what's in it for Poland, as just handing out a load of money to external studios sounds a bit too good to be true, and indeed there's a small catch. As part of the programme we have to first establish a company in Poland, to which the grant will be paid out, and with the hopes that you'll continue using this company after the accelerator ends. We're now in the process of establishing this company, and have already signed a contract with a law firm to help us out with everything involved.

In any case, this is all very exciting, and I'm sure we'll have more to share about all of this as time goes on.

[h2]Nordic Games[/h2]
Then this week was the Nordic Games Winter conference, with another MeetToMatch platform. We were also accepted into its "publisher market", which had us automatically paired up with 10 publishing firms for pitches on Tuesday. That, combined with law firm meetings, meant that on Tuesday I had 12 meetings almost back to back. Jeez!

I'm not hedging my bets on getting any publishing deals out of this yet, but it is still a great opportunity to grow our network and get our name and game out there into the collective mind of the industry. The response from the recruiters also generally seems favourable, which is really cool.

I do wish we had a new trailer though. While I still think our current VS trailer is good, I've now had to listen to it so many times during pitches and off that I really can't stand it anymore, ha ha! We'll hold off on that though, creating new content and hammering out that horizontal slice is far more important at this stage.

[h2]Hotfix Release[/h2]
There was a hotfix release along the line that clears out a bunch of critical bugs, and adds a few small features as well. You can get it from your usual link, or by signing up.



[h2]Horizontal Slice[/h2]
We're now well into the horizontal slice development, and I've started hammering out the level design for the lower part of region 1. I'm still very slow-going on that since I just lack the experience to do it easily, which in turn makes me loathe doing it, which in turn makes me do less of it, which in turn does not help my experience. Woe is me! Anyway, I'll just grit my teeth for now and get as much done as I can I'll get better over time I'm sure!

As part of the level design process I've also started implementing more platforming mechanics such as the slide move, lava and oil liquids, a dash-recharge element, and recallable elevators. I'll have to add a few more things still, such as crumbling platforms, springs and springboards, wind, exhaust pipes, and conveyor belts.

[h2]Tim[/h2]
This month has been horizontal slice quest development, with the trip to Poland for GIC sandwiched in the middle. I'm sure Nick has covered this in depth above, but I wanted to add that it was an amazing experience for me: travelling to Poland and seeing a new country and culture (St. Martin's croissants / Rogals are AMAZING); the game jam where although as a writer I was somewhat limited (helped a bit with design, research and playtesting), it was nevertheless a great experience with the best result - and I got to shake hands with the Swiss ambassador!; the GIC conference itself, where it was a great feeling with Kandria live on the show floor, and watching players and devs get absorbed; the studio visit with Vile Monarch and 11 bit (Frostpunk is one of my favourite games). But the best thing was the people: getting to meet Nick in real life and see the man behind the magic, not to mention all the other devs, industry folk, and organisers from Switzerland and Poland. It was a real privilege to be part of the group.

I've also been continuing to help with the meet-to-match platform for both GIC, and Nordic Game this past week, filtering publishers to suit our needs and booking meetings. Aside from that, it's now full steam ahead on the horizontal slice! With the quest document updated with Nick's feedback, it's a strong roadmap for me to follow. I'm now back in-game getting my hands dirty with the scripting language - it feels good to be making new content, and pushing the story into the next act beyond the vertical slice.

[h2]Fred[/h2]
Fred's been very busy implementing the new moves for the Stranger, as well as doing all the animations for new NPC characters that we need in the extended storyline. One thing I'm very excited about is the generic villagers, as I want to add a little AI to them to make them walk about and really make the settlements feel more alive!







[h2]Mikel[/h2]
Similarly, Mikel's been hard at work finalising the tracks for the next regions and producing variants for the different levels of tension. I'm stoked to see how they'll work in-game! Here's a peek at one of the tracks:

• Magma Chamber
  

• Fix reported crashes and bugs
  
• Add a update notice to the main screen to avoid people running outdated versions
  
• Implement some more accessibility options
  
• Implement more combat and platforming moves
  
• Implement RPG mechanics for levelling and upgrades (partially done)
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics (partially done)
  
• Practise platforming level design (partially done)
  
• Draft out region 2 main quest line levels and story
  
• Draft out region 3 main quest line levels and story
  
• Complete the horizontal slice
  

A shorter monthly update for once, as this included two weeks of holidays, in which we were both morally, legally, and bound by higher powers unbeknown to us forbidden from working on Kandria. Regardless, progress was made, and news are here to be shared, so an update was written!

[h2]Kandria Patch Update[/h2]
A patch update is live that fixes the issues that were reported to us through the automated crash system. You can get the update from the usual link on the mailing list. I'm happy to say that there were not a lot of these to fix!

Of course, if you haven't yet had time to check out the new demo release, we hope you'll do so soon! We're always very excited to hear people's thoughts on what we have so far.

[h2]Holidays[/h2]
We don't have too much to show for this update, as we had a nice two weeks of holiday. I, for my part, spent some days down in Italy, which was really nice. Great weather for the most part, and it was great to have a proper change of scenery and schedule for once!



Because I'm me and can't help it, I did do some work as well during my holidays. I made some good progress on a project I've had in the slow cooker for years now, which will ultimately also be useful for Kandria, to support its modding system. But, more importantly to me, I finally got back into drawing more regularly again and made some pieces I'm actually quite happy with.

Wow! If what I wrote sounded any more confident, I'd have to mistake it for a toilet paper advertisement!

[h2]Game Industry Conference[/h2]
Later this month is the Game Industry Conference, in which we'll be taking part. Once again, sponsored thanks to Pro Helvetia! I submitted a talk for the conference and actually got accepted for it as well, so I'll be presenting there in person. I don't know the exact date of my talk yet, but I'll be sure to announce it ahead of time on Twitter as soon as I do know.

If you're in Poland or are attending the conference yourself, let me know! I'd be happy to meet up!

[h2]Tim[/h2]
This was a shorter month for me as I was on holiday for weeks. However, I've been researching key streamers and influencers that I'd previously highlighted for us, since they'd covered games similar to Kandria, and sending out emails to promote the new demo. Nick got some great feedback from Chris Zukowski on how to format these, which involved finding a hook in an influencer's content that I could latch onto, to show I'd actually engaged with their content. Nick also fed back on the horizontal slice quest designs I've been doing, which map out the rest of the narrative to the end of the game. This has been great to get some new eyes and steers on, and will help tighten up the content and manage the scope.

[h2]Fred & Mikel[/h2]
These two have already started into content for the new areas. We're currently hashing out the look and feel, for which the second region is already getting close to final. We don't have any screenshots or music to show you yet though, you'll have to be a bit more patient for that.

[h2]Roadmap[/h2]
As always, let's look at the roadmap from last month.

• Fix reported crashes and bugs
  
• Add telemetry to allow detecting problematic gameplay behaviour
  
• Add more stats tracking for later achievements and ranking
  
• Allow changing press actions to toggle actions in the input mapper
  
• Add unlockable items and a fishing encyclopedia
  
• Implement RPG mechanics for levelling and upgrades
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Draft out region 2 main quest line levels and story
  
• Draft out region 3 main quest line levels and story
  
• Complete the horizontal slice
  

Big news this month: there's a new free demo release (!!), news on the Pro Helvetia grant and on Gamescom, and a lot of stuff to look at that we worked on!

[h2]0.2.2 Demo Release[/h2]
There's a new demo release for Kandria that you can now get for free! If you're on our mailing list, you should have gotten a download link already. There's a lot of changes for this version since the last release in April, but let me highlight a few of the big ones:

• Major revisions to all the dialogue and quest logic to make it flow better
  
• A proper tutorial sequence to introduce the controls and the game's world
  
• UI for everything, including a map, main menu, quest log, etc
  
• A new fishing minigame to relax and take in the world
  
• Major changes to the combat to improve the flow and feel
  
• Lots and lots of bugfixes and tweaks based on user feedback. Thank you!
  
• Custom sound effects for everything
  
• Custom music, including horizontal mixing of music tracks!
  

• Camp theme
  
• Desert theme
  
• Region 1 theme
  
• Menu theme
  

• Implement a main menu, map, and other UI elements
  
• Implement a load screen and fix UI issues
  
• Create and integrate new sound effects for 90% of the interactions in the game
  
• Start work on the horizontal slice
  
• Complete and revise all the music tracks for the current regions
  
• Update marketing materials like the capsule image
  
• Start work on modding integration
  
• Implement RPG mechanics for levelling and upgrades
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Draft out region 2 main quest line levels and story
  
• Draft out region 3 main quest line levels and story
  
• Complete the horizontal slice
  

A big ole update for Kandria this month! We went to GDC, worked on combat and user testing, improved the UI and dialog, added new music and sound effects, and more!

[h2]GDC[/h2]
One of the main events this month was GDC. This was my first time attending, and I'm really glad that I was offered the chance to with the great support by Pro Helvetia and SwissNex. Thank you very much again for all of your support this year!

The highlight of the event for me were the daily video networking sessions, where you were led onto a virtual floor with a bunch of tables. Each table could seat up to six people and you'd chat over audio and video. It was really cool to hang out and chat with fellow attendees about... well, pretty much whatever!

What wasn't so cool about those sessions, was that they only lasted for an hour, at the end of which you were unceremoniously booted out, without even the ability to see who you were at the table with, nor the accompanying text chat. I do not understand at all why that platform was not just up throughout the entirety of the conference. It's not like there were ever that many people there to begin with, I never saw the total number rise above 120.

With regards to the booth that we had at the Swiss country pavilion, that unfortunately turned out to be almost pointless. Everyone I talked to at the virtual meet wasn't even aware that booths existed at all, let alone the ones in the country pavilions. Being buried under ten links almost guaranteed that we wouldn't be found except by the most vigilant. It isn't surprising then that we didn't get any contact requests through the booth's message box.

I'm really confused as to why they had practically zero visibility for the showfloors and booths. It seems to me that those are a rather large part of a usual conference, so advertising them so poorly is strange. I can't even imagine what SwissNex had to pay to get our booths set up, and I feel sorry for what they got for that.

I hope that next year the presentation is going to be better, as for the amount of money involved in the tickets and everything, I have to say I'm quite disappointed with the GDC organisers. We'll see how Gamescom goes next month, I suppose.

[h2]Combat developments[/h2]
This month was meant to be devoted to combat revisions. I did get a number of those done, so movement is now a lot more satisfying and you can actually juggle enemies in the air:

[previewyoutube=CdbjtPeNRjQ;full][/previewyoutube]

However, due to the mass of feedback amounted by the playtesting, GDC interruptions, and my general reluctance to work on it there hasn't been as much progress as I would like. I'll definitely have to revisit this again later down the road. In the very least though I feel like we have the features required in the engine now to make the system work well, it's "just" down to tweaking the parameters.

To give you some perspective on why tweaking of these parameters is a pain though, let me show you a screenshot of our in-house animation editor:



For each frame (the player has around 700 frames of animation at this point), you can set a mass of different properties that change combat behaviour and movement. Tweaking them one by one, performing the attack, going back to tweak it again, and repeating that is an extremely arduous process.

I tried my best to keep at it throughout the month, but the tedium of it made it quite difficult. I hope I can instead gradually improve it with time.

[h2]UI look and feel[/h2]
I've taken some time to change the look and feel of the UI in the game. Most notably the button prompts now look a lot better than they used to. The fishing minigame shows that best:

[previewyoutube=hd8n54fNlOE;full][/previewyoutube]

The textbox also got a revision and it's now capable of doing text effects:



Aside from those tweaks there were a myriad of changes from the further blind playtest sessions as well.

[h2]Eternia update[/h2]
A new update for Eternia: Pet Whisperer was rolled out. This update took two days to put together and includes important stability fixes for MacOS and Windows users. On MacOS the behaviour on Retina displays is improved and audio output on devices with samplerates above 44.1kHz has been fixed. General performance has also been improved. On Windows spurious crashes caused by antivirus software should now no longer occur.

Eternia will also likely be on sale during the upcoming Gamescom Steam sale, so keep an eye out for that!

[h2]Tim[/h2]
This month has been about press and polish. With GDC happening, I helped prioritise the press list and reach out to the most relevant people; we didn't get a huge response, which isn't unexpected (press are inundated at the best of times, never mind during GDC) - but it's been encouraging to get some replies; and most importantly, it's getting the game on peoples' radars.

I've also been working through tons of feedback Nick has gathered from blind playtests of the game, using it to make the quests easier to understand and more accessible: finessing spawn locations, clarifying objectives more in dialogue, etc. I ran a few tests myself, and it's amazing how things you thought were obvious sometimes don't translate to the player. A highlight was watching my brother return to the surface after the first quest: he didn't know the rest of the settlement was over to the right, and instead went left, all the way back to the tutorial area; since Catherine was following him at the time, it re-triggered all her tutorial dialogue! Noooooooooo! (But in a good way :) )

Nick also made some cool new features like random spawners that can add a myriad of world-building items to the levels (and which later you'll be able to sell to Sahil); I spent time organising and placing these. Also, text effects and colouring! I went a bit bananas with this at first, using the swirly rainbow effect right off the bat in the tutorial, when Catherine gets excited; to be fair it's probably the only point in the game I could've justified using it. But I've since toned things back, as although the game has quirk, we need to watch the tone and make sure we don't go too cartoony. I've also established a basic visual language for using these effects and colours (hint: sparingly).

[h2]Fred[/h2]
A nice variety of tasks this month. Got to go back and come up with a couple new moves for the Stranger: charge attacks. It's interesting to have both a light and heavy charge and having to make the pose different enough from each other while also staying different from the moves and poses the hero strikes with all the already existing combos.



I then had fun in the second half of the week designing one of the lower regions of the cave filled with magma that will be reached later in the game! I love fire levels ( and usually hate ice levels) so that was fun to come up with concepts that could lead to interesting platforming.

[h2]Mikel[/h2]
Mikel finished a couple more tracks, well on ... track to make the September release date with all the music for the current areas included! These tracks are for the camp area, and as such convey a more chill atmosphere:

• Medium Medium Vocal
  
• Ambient
  

I'm Cai, I'm a Sound Designer for video games. I've been in the industry for 2 years! I focus on making impactful, meaningful sounds that help to immerse the player in the world we create! Kandria is a really exciting project to be involved with! The story and atmosphere of the game are both compelling and exciting so I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to this through the sound!

• <-Polish the ProHelvetia submission material>
  
• <-Polish and revise the combat design>
  
• Finish the desert music tracks
  
• Further blind playtesting and bugfixing
  
• Revise the general UI look and feel
  
• Implement a main menu, map, and other UI elements (partially done)
  
• Create and integrate new sound effects for 90% of the interactions in the game
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Start work on the horizontal slice
  

Another month filled with a lot of different stuff! We have a lot of conferences coming up, there was a bunch to do for marketing, the game has seen a lot of visual and gameplay tweaks, and we've started doing a lot of direct playtesting. Finally, the music has also made a lot of progress and the first few tracks are now done!

[h2]GDC, Gamescom, and GIC[/h2]
Thanks to the very generous support from Prohelvetia we're part of the Swiss Games delegation to GDC, Gamescom, and GIC. GDC is coming up this month, and we have our own virtual booth set up for that. Given that both GDC and Gamescom are virtual this year, I honestly don't really know what to expect from them, it's going to be quite different. At least GIC is in person (Poznan, Poland) so I'm really looking forward to that!

So far we've invested quite a bit of time into looking at journalists to reach out to during GDC, and who knows, perhaps we'll also be contacted by publishers or something during the event. In any case, it's going to be an exciting week, for sure.

Gamescom/Devcom are coming up in August, right before the submission deadline for the Prohelvetia grant, so that's going to be a tight squeeze, too. September is gonna be a calmer month, as we've settled for a two weeks holiday for the team during that month. Then in October it's going to be GIC for a week.

[h2]Marketing[/h2]
Also thanks to Prohelvetia we now have direct mentoring from Chris Zukowski with a monthly meeting for the next six months. His first advice was to focus a lot more on top of the funnel marketing (like imgur, reddit, festivals, influencers), and cut down on all the middle stuff we've been doing (like discord, mailing list, blogs, streams).

I actually quite like doing the weekly and monthly updates though, so I'm going to keep doing those. The Sunday streams have also proven quite productive for me, so I'll use them for that purpose too, rather than for any marketing intent. I am going to cut down drastically on Twitter though, as that does not seem to really bring us much of anything at all, and I'm going to stay away from Discord more in general (not just the Kandria one.).

After some brief experiments with imgur (and once even making it into most viral) I haven't returned to that yet though, as I've found it to be quite exhausting to figure out what to even post and how to post it.

We'll definitely have to try reaching out to influencers and journalists, but we're going to hold off on that until the september demo update is done, as a more polished demo should help a lot to make us look more presentable and respectable. We should also try out Reddit, but we haven't done the necessary research yet into how exactly to post on there without getting downvoted into oblivion.

The second advice Chris had for us was to do more....

[h2]Playtesting[/h2]
We've started inviting people to do blind playtesting. The blind here meaning that they never played the game before, which gives us quite valuable insight into parts of the game that are confusing or annoying. We've done four sessions so far, and even with them being carried out over Discord, the feedback has been very useful.

I've also been inviting people for local playtesting, as being able to observe people in person is a lot better than doing it over the net. We haven't done any of that yet, but there's several appointments scheduled already. If you're near Zrich and would be up for a playtest session, please book a date!

And if you, like most, aren't close to Zrich, but would still like to help us out with testing, anyway and we can arrange something over the net!

[h2]Tutorial[/h2]
We finally finished a tutorial area for the game, giving it a proper starting point, and introducing people to the controls. It doesn't explain all of them in detail though, as I think we should instead keep the more intricate controls to challenges throughout the game, rather than trying to teach everything at once.

Designing the levels to teach the various control parts is going to be challenging, but I think ultimately it is going to be worth it, especially as it allows us to keep the tutorial in the beginning very short.

The only actual tutorial part still missing is a combat primer, for which we haven't worked out a good way of teaching it yet. I'm sure we'll find a way, though.

[h2]Tim[/h2]
I took a holiday for part of this month, though otherwise it's been full steam ahead on the marketing research. I've added more reference games and potential contacts to our press & influencer document; while doing this I've taken into account the advice we got from Chris Zukowski, about not looking too closely at games with distinct differences to Kandria (e.g. Celeste has no combat; Dead Cells is a roguelike). I've also done more research on Steam short descriptions, and worked with Nick to redraft ours. It needs a few more edits, but it's nearly there.

I haven't totally forgotten the game though! With the new tutorial prologue in place, I added dialogue. This is now your first meeting with Catherine, after she reactivates you deep underground; but I've deliberately kept things short and sweet, as she guides you back up to the surface. The player has enough to think about at this stage without getting overwhelmed with dialogue; only once the tutorial segues into the settlement introduction from before, does the dialogue really begin.

[h2]Mikel[/h2]
Mikel's been very busy and completed 6 different versions of the region 1 track:

• Medium Medium Vocal
  
• Quiet Quiet Vocal
  
• Ambient Ambient Vocal
  

• Build and add the tutorial sequence to the beginning of the game
  
• Finish the region 1 music tracks
  
• Add a fishing minigame
  
• Improve the UI for the game and editor
  
• Implement several editor improvements
  
• Compile data on journalists, influencers, and communities
  
• Implement a UI animation system
  
• Implement a cutscene system
  
• Polish the ProHelvetia submission material (partially done)
  
• Polish and revise the combat design (partially done)
  
• Implement a main menu, map, and other UI elements
  
• Reach out to journalists, streamers, and other communities
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Start work on the horizontal slice
  

There's a lot of different news to talk about this month, so strap in!

[h2]The New Trailer[/h2]
The most important thing to come out of this month is the new trailer! Check it out if you haven't yet:

[previewyoutube=nf9Z4MPBbfc;full][/previewyoutube]

I'm overall really happy with how it came together, and we all had a part in the end result. I'd also like to give a special commendation to Elissa Park who did the amazing voice over for the trailer. It was a pleasure to work together!

It's also been great to finally get some custom music by Mikel into an official part of the game. He's also been working on the first music tracks that'll be in the game, and I've been working on a music system to support horizontal mixing with the tracks. I'm very excited to get all that together into the game and see how it all feels! I hope that by next month's update we'll have a short preview of that for you.

[h2]0.1.1 Release[/h2]
Meanwhile we also pushed out an update to the vertical slice release that makes use of the new linear quest system we put together. It should overall also be a lot more stable and includes many fixes for issues people reported to us. Thanks!

As always, if you want to have a look at the demo yourself, you can do so free of charge.

I think this will be the last patch we put out until September. I can't afford to backport fixes even if more bug reports come in, as the overhead of managing that is just too high. I can't just push out new versions that follow internal development either, as those are frequently in flight and have more regressions that we typically stamp out over time, but would in the meantime provide a more buggy experience.



[h2]Dev Streams[/h2]
I'm heavily considering doing regular weekly development streams, both to see if we can attract some more interest for the project, and to be more open about the process in general. I feel like we're already very open about everything with our weekly updates, but having an immediate insight into how the game is made is another thing entirely. I think it would be really cool to show that side of development off more often!

In order to coordinate what time would suit the most people, please fill out this Doodle form. The exact dates don't matter, just watch for the day of the week and the time. Don't worry about the name it asks for either, it won't be public!

I'll probably close the poll in a weeks, so make sure to submit an answer soon if you're interested. Streams will happen both on https://twitch.tv/shinmera and [url]https://youtube.com/shinmera, with both being reachable through the official stream page at https://stream.shinmera.com . See you there!

[h2]Palestinian Aid Bundle[/h2]
Some good folks have put together a bundle on itch.io gathering money for Palestinian aid. I'm very happy to say that our game, Eternia: Pet Whisperer is a part of this bundle!

If you want to support this cause and get a huge collection of amazing games in the process, head on over to itch.io!

[h2]Tim[/h2]
This month I had a varied mix of tasks: working on the script for the new trailer; updating the quests in the vertical slice demo to work closer to our original vision; researching press and influencer contacts as we plan more of Kandria's marketing.

The trailer came out great, and I'm really happy with the voice acting that Nick produced with Elissa Park. It was a great idea Nick had to use the character of Fi as the narrator here (originally we were going to use Catherine) - her serious outlook, and reflection on the events of the story, was just what we needed to fit the epic music from Mikel, and the epic gameplay and exploration that Nick captured on screen. The whole thing just screams epic.

The quests were vastly improved too. The first quest now uses Nick's new sequencing system, so that triggers fire automatically (and more robustly) when the player arrives at the correct location, and when combat encounters are completed. The logic is also much quicker to write, so linear quests will be much faster to produce in the future. The mushroom quest also had a big refactor; now you can organically collect mushrooms out in the world, rather than going to specific enabled points. You can even sell what you find to the trader, including those poisonous black knights. It really makes the world feel more interactive. There's been general tweaks to the other quests from playtesting, and I'll continue to refine them from my own playing and players' feedback up until the Pro Helvetia submission later in the year. I'm also planning to add a couple more sidequest diversions based on the new fishing (!) minigame being added at the moment; we think a combat-focused sidequest will work well too.

Finally on the marketing side, it's been rewarding to collect tons of potential press and influencer contacts we could approach in the future. I've basically been taking games that are strong influences and have similarities to Kandria - from hugely popular games like Celeste and Dead Cells, to lesser known ones like Kunai and Armed with Wings - then cataloguing key journalists and influencers who've streamed, made videos, or written about them. This will hopefully highlight some of the right people we can contact to help spread the word about the game.

[h2]Roadmap[/h2]
Let's look at the roadmap from last month with the updates from this month:

• Make the combat more flashy
  
• Finish a new trailer
  
• Revise the quest system's handling of linear quest lines
  
• Design and outline the factions for the rest of the game
  
• Develop the soundscape for Kandria and start working on the tracks for region 1
  
• Add a music system that can do layering and timed transitions
  
• Build and add the tutorial sequence to the beginning of the game
  
• Finish the region 1 music tracks
  
• Reach out to journalists, streamers, and other communities
  
• Polish the ProHelvetia submission material
  
• Polish and revise the combat design
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Start work on the horizontal slice
  

Another hectic month gone by. Getting Eternia: Pet Whisperer done and published on Steam in such a short time was no small feat. There were a few hurdles along the way as well, especially when it came to getting it ready for Steam, but overall I'm really glad we managed to get it out. Having a bona fide released title is amazing!

Most of the trouble with getting it put on Steam was the manual review process they have. It turns out, real people actually check your builds before you're allowed to sell the game. And not only do they check whether it launches, they also do other tests like whether gamepad support works, whether captions are included, etc. It's a lot more extensive than I had expected, which is really nice!

Unfortunately I was also confused by a couple of options, and misunderstood others, so I had to go through the review a bunch of times, which caused a bunch of stress for me and ultimately delayed the release of Eternia by two days. Welp! At least now I know for the future that I'll have to start with the Steam review process well in advance of the actual release. With Eternia everything was so back to back that there really wasn't any more time for that than we had.

The days since the release haven't been much less hectic either. There were a few bugs that had to be ironed out that prevented people from playing the game. Most notably:

• People with surround headphones could not play as those headphones announce themselves as 7.1 surround systems, which I didn't expect anyone would have.
  
• Some bad versions of shared libraries snuck themselves into the release builds on Linux.
  
• The save menu was bugged due to a regression in the UI library
  
• Avast antivirus causes random Windows exceptions in the game (this is not fixed and I don't know how to fix it).
  

• Jacob Lincke: track
  
• Joo Lus: track
  
• Mikel Dale: track
  

• Make the combat more flashy
  
• Finish a new trailer
  
• Design and outline the factions for the rest of the game
  
• Develop the soundscape for Kandria and start working on the tracks for region 1
  
• Add a music system that can do layering and timed transitions
  
• Build and add the tutorial sequence to the beginning of the game
  
• Polish the ProHelvetia submission material
  
• Polish and revise the combat design
  
• Explore platforming items and mechanics
  
• Practise platforming level design
  
• Start work on the horizontal slice
  

Just a short announcement to let you know the our other game, Eternia: Pet Whisperer now fully available for purchase on Steam! Sorry for the bumpy ride leading up to the release, but I hope you check Eternia out!

If you do play it, it would be fantastic if you could write a short review on Steam! Reviews help out a lot, especially for smaller titles like this.

Thanks a lot for your patience and continuous support from me and the rest of the Kandria and Eternia team, and we hope you enjoy a relaxing experience with Eternia!

What a hell of a month! We got a lot done, all of it culminating in the release of the new vertical slice demo! This demo is now live, and you can check it out for free!. This slice includes an hour or more of content for you to explore, so we hope you enjoy it!

[h2]Visuals and Level Design[/h2]
Like last month, a good chunk of this month was spent designing the remaining areas we needed for the slice. However, this is also the part that got the most shafted compared to how much time I should be investing in it. I'm going to have to dedicate a month or two at some point to just doing rough levels and figuring out what works, both for platforming challenges and for combat. So far I've never actually taken the time to do this, so I still feel very uncertain when it comes to designing stuff.

Still, I'm fairly happy with at least the visual look of things. Fred has done some excellent work with the additional tile work I've requested from him, and I'm starting to learn how to mash different tiles together to create new environments without having to create new assets all the time.



I've also spent some time on the side making new palettes for the stranger. This was mostly for fun, but I think allowing this kind of customisation for the player is also genuinely valuable. At least I always enjoy changing the looks of the characters I play to my liking. There's 32 palettes already, but I'm still open for more ideas if you have any, by the way!



We're not quite sure yet how we want to present the palettes in-game. Probably allowing you to pick between a few in the settings, and having some others as items you have to discover first.

[h2]Gameplay changes[/h2]
We've gone over the combat some more and tweaked it further. It's still a good shot away from what I'd like it to be, and I'll probably have to spend a full month at some point to improve it. Whatever the case, what we have now is already miles ahead of how things started out.

The player movement has also been slightly tweaked to fit better for the exploration and kinds of levels we've built, and to overall feel a bit smoother. The exact changes are very subtle, though I hope you'll still notice them, even if just subconsciously!



I've also added elevators back into the game. That lead to a bunch of days of frustrated collision problem fixes again, but still, elevators are an important part of the game, so I'm glad I've gotten around to adding them back in.

There's also been a bunch of improvements and fixes to the movement AI so NPCs can find their way better through the complicated mess of underground tunnels and caved in complexes.

[h2]Optimisation[/h2]
Due to a number of people reporting problems with stutter, and generally the game showing slowdown even on my beefy machine, I put a bit of time into various optimisations. Chief among those is the reduction of produced garbage, which means the garbage collector will be invoked far less often, leading to fever GC pauses stuttering up the framerate. There's still a lot left to be done for that, but I'll do that another time.

I also finally got around to implementing a spatial query data structure -- this is extremely useful as it massively reduces the time needed to do collision testing and so forth. What I've gone with is a much simplified bounding volume hierarchy tree (BVH), mostly because the concept is very simple to understand: every object in the scene you put into a box that encompasses it. You then group two such boxes at a time into another box that encompasses both. You keep doing that until you get one last box that encompasses everything.



If you now want to know which objects are contained in a region, you start testing the biggest box, and descend into the smaller boxes as long as that region is still a part of the box. If this tree of boxes is well balanced (meaning the closest objects are grouped together), it should reduce the number of tests you need to make drastically.

Implementing this was a surprisingly painless task that only took me a bout a day. Even if the BVH I have is most definitely not ideally balanced at every point in time, it's still good enough for now.

[h2]Editor[/h2]
As you may or may not know, Kandria is built with a custom engine, and includes a fully featured editor of its own. This editor is shipped along with every version of the game, and you can open it up at any time by pressing the section key (below Escape).

This month I've made a number of improvements to the editor to add extra tools and fix a lot of issues to its stability. This was necessary to make my own life designing levels not completely miserable, but I think the editor is now also approaching a level of usability that should make it approachable by people not in the dev team, like you!

[previewyoutube=G-4OUobpc-k;full][/previewyoutube]

There's a bit of public documentation on the editor, so if you're interested in messing around with the existing levels, or even building your own, check it out! We're still intending on organising a level design contest as well, though for that I want to take some time to polish the editor even more, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for that. If that sounds exciting to you though, be sure to join our Discord, as we'll be organising the event through there whenever it comes to be.

[h2]UI[/h2]
There's been a number of improvements to the game's user interface. Chief among them being that dialogue choices are now displayed in a less confusing manner, but there's also been some additions to the main menu to allow you to save & quit the game, check your quest log and inventory, and check the button mappings.

We've also included some more accessibility options so that you can change the UI scaling to your liking, pick between different fonts if the default is hard to read, and to disable or tweak things like the gamepad rumble strength or the camera shake intensity.



Unfortunately we haven't had time to build a button remapping UI yet, though the game is already capable of doing the remapping for you. We'll definitely build such a UI in time for the full first act demo, though.

If you have other suggestions for accessibility improvements, please do . Accessibility is very important to me, and I'd like to make Kandria a good example in that domain.

[h2]Composers[/h2]
Last month we put out a listing for a composer for Kandria. The response to that was frankly astounding. Within two days we had gotten over a hundred applications, and within the week I had to close the listing down again as we were getting close to three hundred in total!

I knew there were going to be lots of applications, but still, I didn't expect this big of a response. Processing everything and evaluating all the applications took a fair amount of time out of the month, and it was really, really hard, too. So many of the pieces I listened to over the course of doing this were really fantastic!

We're still not quite done with the evaluation, though. We managed to whittle the list down to 10 for interviews, and from there to 3 for a third round. This third round is still going on now; the three were paid to produce a one minute track of music for a specific section of Kandria. The production process, communication, and how well the piece ultimately fits to our vision are going to help us decide who to pick.

The three finalists, Jacob Lincke, Joo Lus, and Mikel Dale, have all agreed to be named publicly, and to have their pieces published once they're done. The deadline for that is 18th of April, so you'll get to hear what they made in the next monthly update! After the deadline we hope to also finalise a contract with our pick until the end of the month, so that they can start with us in May, or shortly after.

I've heard some drafts from each of them already, and what they've produced is really good stuff. It has made me so excited to finally be able to not only see, but also properly hear Kandria!

[h2]Events[/h2]
Gamedev isn't all about just developing though, as you also have to worry about organisation, management, planning, marketing, and funding. The last is another thing that ate some days' worth of time this month. We were chosen by ProHelvetia to participate in the Global Games Pitch and Pocket Gamer Connects Digital. We're of course very grateful for these opportunities, and it's fantastic to be able to present Kandria at some events despite Corona!

Still, pitching is a very stressful affair for me, so preparing for GGP and actually executing it took a good bite out of me. On the flipside, we now have some good quality pitching material that we can much more easily adapt and re-use in the future as well. I haven't heard back from anyone about the pitch I did, so I don't have any feedback on what was good or bad about it, which is a shame. I didn't really expect to get any feedback from it though, so I can't say I'm upset about it either.

In any case, PG Connects Digital is happening in a little less than two weeks from now, so I'll have to make sure to be ready for that whenever it comes about.

[h2]Tim's recount[/h2]
We've reached the vertical slice deadline - the quests are done now and feeling pretty good I think. The dialogue and structures have been refined with feedback from Nick; there's also been a fair amount of self-testing, and a couple of week's testing from our Discord, which has all helped tighten things up. I feel like there's a good balance between plot, character development, player expression, and non-linearity, while also teasing aspects of the wider setting and story. I'm still not totally sure how much playtime the quests constitute right now; I think it largely depends on how fast a player is at the gameplay, and how much they want to engage with the dialogue - but they do take them to the four corners of the current map, and there's some replayability in there too. It feels like a good chunk of content and a major part of the first act. I'm looking forward to seeing how people get on with them, and to learn from their feedback to tweak things further.

I've learnt lots of new scripting tricks in the dialogue engine to bring this together, which will be useful going forwards, and should make generating this amount of content much quicker in the future. Nick and I also have some ideas to improve the current quests, which we should be able to do alongside the next milestone's work.

This month I also helped Nick prepare for the Global Games Pitch event; it was great to watch the stream, and see how other developers pitched their projects. Hopefully this leads to some new opportunities for Kandria too!

[h2]Fred's recount[/h2]
Added a lot of little things this month. Happy with the new content we got, though I wish I had been able to finish polishing the animations and attack moves on the Stranger for the vertical slice. I had kinda left those anims behind for a while, but I feel it's pretty helpful to gauge the combat feel better.

Otherwise, I am really stoked to get started with the game jam coming up. I love those, last one I did was for my birthday in 2019 and it was the best birthday present ever. :D

[h2]Going forward[/h2]
As Fred mentioned, the next two weeks we'll be working on a new, secret project! But don't worry, it won't stay secret for very long, and we won't be putting Kandria off for long either. It's going to be a short two-week jam-type project, which we'll release at the end of the month, so you'll know what it is and get to play it by the next monthly update! If you're really curious though, you should sign up to our mailing list where we'll talk about the project next week already!

If you want to try out the new demo release, you'll get a download link when you subscribe, as well. I hope you enjoy it!

I can't believe it's been two months already since the year started. Time moves extremely quickly these days. Anyway, we have some solid progress to show, and some important announcements to make this month, so strap in!

[h2]Overall progress[/h2]
Last month was a big update with a lot of new content, particularly all the custom buildings Fred and I had put together to build the surface camp. This month involved a lot more of that, but for the first underground region. This region is still very close to the surface, so it'll be composed out of a mix of ruins of modern corporate architecture, and natural caves.






As before, figuring out a fitting style was very challenging, even disregarding the fact that it has to be in ruins, as well. Still, I think what we put together, especially combined with Kandria's lighting system, creates a great amount atmosphere and evokes that feeling of eerie wonder that I've always wanted to hit.

Mushrooms are a big part of the ecosystem in Kandria, being the primary food source for the underground dwellers, so I couldn't resist adding giant mushrooms to the caves.



On the coding side there's been a bunch of bugfixing and general improvement going on. The movement AI can now traverse the deep underground regions seemingly without problem. Game startup speed is massively improved thanks to some caching of the movement data, and NPCs can now climb ropes and use teleporters when navigating.

We've also spent some time working on the combat again, adding some extra bits that, while seemingly small, change the feel quite a lot. Attacks now have a cooldown that forces you to consider the timing, and inputs are no longer buffered for the entire duration of an animation, which eliminates the feeling of lag that was prevalent before. Fred also tuned some of the player's attack animations some more and while I couldn't tell you what exactly changed, when I first tried it out I immediately noticed that it felt a lot better!

All of this just further reaffirms my belief that making a good combat system involves a ton of extremely subtle changes that you wouldn't notice at all unless you did a frame-by-frame analysis. It all lies in the intuition the system builds up within you, which makes it hard to tune. I'm sure we'll need to do more rounds of tuning like that as we progress.



Then I've also reinstated the wolf enemy that I first worked on close to a year ago. The AI is a lot simpler now, but it also actually works a lot better. It's still a bit weird though, especially when interacting with slopes and obstacles, but it does make for a nice change of pace compared to the zombie enemy. We'll have to see how things turn out when they're placed in the context of actual exploration and quests, though.

[previewyoutube=TU-xy5Y07So;full][/previewyoutube]

Another feature I resurrected and finally got to work right is the ability to save and load regions from zip files. This makes it easy to exchange custom levels. The editor used for the game is shipped with the game and always available at the press of a button, so we're hoping to use that in combination with the zip capability to organise a small level design contest within the community. We'll probably launch that in April, once the new demo hits. If you like building or playing levels, keep an eye out!

The biggest chunk of work this month went into doing level design. I've been putting that off for ages and ages, because it's one of those things that I'm not very familiar with myself, so it seems very daunting. I don't really know where to start or how to effectively break down all the constraints and requirements and actually start building a level around them, let alone a level that's also fun to traverse and interesting to look at! It was so daunting to me in fact, that I couldn't work on anything at all for one day because I was just stuck in a sort of stupor.

Whatever the case though, the only way to break this mould and get experience, and thus some confidence and ability in making levels, is to actually do it. I've put together the first part of the first region now, though it's all still very rough and needs a ton more detail and playtesting.



The part above is the surface settlement, with the city ruins to the right. Below the camp lies the central hub of the first region, which links up to a variety of different rooms -- an office, a market, an apartment complex, and several natural caves that formed during the calamity. The sections below the city ruins don't belong to the slice, but will be part of the full "first act demo" that we plan to release some months after the slice.

Even with all the tooling I built that allows you to easily drag out geometry and automatically tile a large chunk of it, it still takes a ton of time to place all the little details like chairs, doors, railings, machines, plants, broken rubble, background elements, to vary the elements and break up repetition, etc. It also takes a lot of extra effort to ensure that the tiles work correctly in this pseudo-isometric view we have going on for the rooms. Still, the rooms do look a lot better like this than they did with my initial heads-on view, so I think we'll stick with it even if it costs us more time to build.

[h2]Speechless[/h2]
I've finally gotten around to documenting the dialogue system I've developed for Kandria. I've given it the name Speechless, since it's based on Markless. It's designed to be engine-independent, so if you have your own game in Lisp and need a capable dialogue logic system, you should be able to make use of it. If you do, please , I'd be all ears!

I'd also be interested to hear from other narrative designers on what they think of it. I can't say I'm familiar with the tools that are used in other engines -- a lot of it seems to be in-house, and frequently based around flow-charts from what I can tell. Having things completely in text does remove some of the visual clarity, but I think it also makes it a lot quicker to put things together.

Now, I know that the Lisp scene is very small, and the games scene within it even smaller, so I don't think Speechless will gain much traction, but even if it itself won't, I hope that seeing something like it will at least inspire some to build similar systems, as I think this text based workflow can be extremely effective.

[h2]Hiring a musician[/h2]
I'm hiring again! Now that Kandria's world is properly coming together it's time to look at a composer to start with a soundtrack to really bring the world to life. Music is extremely important to me, so I wanted to wait until we had enough of the visuals together to properly inform the mood and atmosphere. I'm still having a lot of trouble imagining what the world should actually sound like, and there's a broad range of music I like, so I hope that I can find someone that can not only produce a quality score, but also help figure out the exact sound aesthetics to go for.

If you are a musician, or know musicians that are looking for work, have a look at the listing!

[h2]Tim's recount[/h2]
Quests quests and quests! Ive got the core gameplay scripting done for most of the vertical slice quests now. The last couple are still using placeholder dialogue, but for the others Ive done several drafts in the voice of the characters, sprinkling in player choices here and there and yeah - it feels like its coming together. Hopefully its familiarising the player with the characters, their unique voices, and their motivations, whilst keeping the gameplay and plot momentum moving forwards. Ive now written in anger for all of the main hub characters, and feel like Im getting into their headspace.

Some of the scripting functionality has been more complex than I anticipated - but with help from Nick creating new convenience functions, and showing me the best way to structure things, I feel like Ive gotten most of the design patterns down now that Im going to need going forwards.

The rest of the month will involve rounding out these quests, iterating on feedback, and transposing the triggers (which are still using debug locations) into the main region layout

[h2]Fred's recount[/h2]
Quite a lot of character anims in! It'll be exciting to see the camp characters come to life in the game and not just in my animation software.

This feels like this month was an important milestone at making Kandria's world more immersive. There's still more work to do on the buildings and getting convincing yet fun to explore ruins but overall it feels like a lot of stuff is coming together.

[h2]The future[/h2]
This is the last month we had in our plan for the vertical slice. Unfortunately it turns out that we had way underestimated the amount of time it would take to create the required tilesets and design the levels. Still, it seems much more important to avoid crunch, and to deliver a quality slice, so we're looking to extend the deadline.

We'll still try to release an early slice for our testers by the end of this month, but then we'll take two additional weeks for bugfixing and polish, so the updated public demo should be out mid-April. We'll be sure to make an announcement when it comes out or if there's other problems that'll further delay it. Please bear with us!

The remainder of April though we're planning to completely switch gears away from Kandria and catch a mental breather. We'll instead work on a new, very small jam project, that we hope to build and release within the two weeks. We're not entirely certain yet what exactly we'll do, but it should be a lot of fun to do a jam again one of these days.

As always, thank you very much for reading and in general for your interest in Kandria! Starting from scratch like we are (in multiple ways at that!) isn't easy, and it's been really nice to see people respond and support the project.

If you'd like to support us, it would help a lot to wishlist Kandria on Steam, and to join the Discord! There's also a lot of additional information on the development and our current thoughts in the weekly mailing list updates and my Twitter.

I hope you've all started well into the new year! We're well into production now, with the vertical slice slowly taking shape. Much of the work in January has been on concept and background work, which is now done, so we are moving forward on the implementation of the new features, assets, and writing. This entry will have a lot of pictures and videos to gander at, so be warned!

The vertical slice will include three areas the central camp, or hub location, the first underground area, and the desert ruins. We're now mostly done implementing the central camp. Doing so was a lot of work, since it requires a lot of unique assets. It still requires a good amount of polish before it can be called well done, but for the vertical slice I think we're good at the point we are now.




The camp is where all the main cast are (Fi, Jack, Catherine, and Alex), and where you'll return to after most missions. As such, it's important that it looks nice, since this is where you'll spend a lot of your time. It also has to look believable and reasonable for the cast to try and live here, so we spent a good amount of time thinking about what buildings there would be, what purpose they should fulfil, and so forth.

We also spent a good deal of time figuring out the visual look. Since Kandria is set quite far into the future, with that future also having undergone a calamity, the buildings both have to look suitably modern for a future society to have built, but at the same time ruined and destroyed, to fit the calamity event.




I also finished the character redesign for Fi. Her previous design no longer really fit with her current character, so I really wanted to get that done.




On the gameplay side the movement AI has been revised to be able to deal with far more complicated scenarios. Characters can now follow you along, move to various points on the map independently, or lead the player to a destination.

[previewyoutube=h0ZiZnS_2WQ;full][/previewyoutube]

Quests now also automatically track your time to completion, which allows us both to do some nice tracking for score and speedrun purposes, but also to implement a race quest. We have a few ideas on those, and it should serve as a nice challenge to try and traverse the various areas as quickly as possible.

[previewyoutube=THJF6OifDSo;full][/previewyoutube]

We're also thinking of setting up leaderboards or replays for this, but that's gonna have to wait until after the vertical slice.

For look and feel there's also been a bunch of changes. First, there's now a dedicated particle system for effects like explosions, sparks, and so forth. Adding such details really enhances the feel of the combat, and gives a nice, crunchy, oomph to your actions. I still have a few more ideas for additional effects to pile on top, and I'll see that I can get to those in due time.



Also on the combat side, there's now a quick-use menu so you can access your healing items and so forth easily during combat. It even has a nice slow-mo effect!

[previewyoutube=F4EUe8V_QAk;full][/previewyoutube]

Since we're not making a procedural game, we do have to have a way of gating off far areas in a way that feels at least somewhat natural. To do this I've implemented a shader effect that renders a sandstorm on top of everything. The strength of the effect can be fine-tuned, so we could also use it for certain setpieces or events.

[previewyoutube=hIwZM7A4eVk;full][/previewyoutube]

The effect looks a lot better in-game. Video compression does not take kindly to very noisy and detailed effects like this. Having the sand howl around really adds a lot to the feel of the game. In a similar vein, there's also grass and other foliage that can be placed now, which reacts to the wind and characters stepping on it. You can see that in action in this quick run-down of the camp area:

[previewyoutube=_PQ_5eaVIXw;full][/previewyoutube]

There's a bunch of other things we can't show off quite yet, especially a bunch of excellent animations by Fred. I haven't had the time to integrate all of those yet!

We've also been thinking more about how to handle the marketing side of things. I'm now doing a weekly screenshotsaturday thing on Twitter, and semi-regularly post quick progress gifs and images as well. Give me a follow if you haven't yet!

Then I took advantage of Rami Ismail's excellent consulting service and had a talk with him about what we should do to improve the first impressions for Kandria and how to handle the general strategy. He gave some really excellent advice, though I wish I had had more time to ask other questions, too! I'll probably schedule a consultancy hour with him later this year to catch up with all of that.

Anyway, I think a lot of the advice he gave us isn't necessarily specific to Kandria, so I thought it would be good to share it here, in case you're a fellow developer, or just interested in marketing in general:

• Make sure to keep a consistent tone throughout your paragraph or trailer. This means that you want to avoid going back and forth between advertising game features or narrative elements, for instance. In Kandria's case we had a lot of back and forth in our press kit and steam page texts, which we've now gone over and revised to be more consistent.
  
• Marketing is as much about attracting as many people as possible as it is about pushing people away. You want to be as efficient as possible at advertising to your target group. This also means being as up-front as possible about what your game is and who it is for, so you immediately pull in the people that would care about it, and push away the people that would not.
  
• You need to figure out which part of your game best appeals to your core audience, and how you need to put it to make it attractive. Having an advertisement platform that gives you plenty of statistics and targeting features is tremendously helpful for this. Rami specifically suggested using short Facebook ads, since those can be targeted towards very specific groups. Do many small ads using different copy texts and trailers to see which work the best at attracting people to your Steam page.
  Always use a call to action at the end of your top of the funnel (exposure) marketing. In fact, don't just use one link, use one for every way people have to interact with your game, if you have several. For us in specific this means I'll now include a link to our mailing list, our discord, and our steam page in our material.
  
• Only use community/marketing platforms that you're actually comfortable with engaging with yourself. This means don't force yourself to make a Discord or whatever if you're not going to really engage with it. I'm fairly comfortable with where we are now, though I'm considering also branching out to imgur for more top of the funnel marketing. We'll see.
  
• Two years is plenty of time to get marketing going. Generally you want to really up the hype train about three months before release. The wishlist peak about one month before release should give you a rough idea of whether the game is going to be successful or not 5-10k is good, 15-20k should be very good.
  
• Three weeks before release is when you want to start contacting press write emails to people that have reviewed the games that inspired yours and seem to generally fit the niche you're targeting. Let them know you'll send a final build a week before release.
  
• Actually do that exactly a week before release. Ideally your game will be done and you won't fudge with it until after release.
  
• On the day before release, log onto gamespress.com and submit your game. Actual journalists don't tend to look there it seems, since they already get way more than enough mail, but third parties and independent people might!
  

Well, 2020 has certainly been a year. Given the amount of stuff that's happened, and especially the big changes in my life around Kandria, I thought it would be interesting to write up a review on the entire year. I'm not going to go month by month, but rather just give an overview on the many things that happened and how I feel about it all, so don't be surprised if I jump between things a little bit.

With that said, I want to start this out by thanking everyone for their support throughout the year. It's been really nice to see people interested in the project! I really hope that we can deliver on a good game, though it is going to take a long time still to get there. I hope you can wait for a couple more years!

A year ago Kandria still had its prototype name Leaf, and I had just gotten done with a redesign of the main character, The Stranger. Much of the visual style of the game had already been defined by then, though, including the shadows. Most of the UI toolkit, Alloy, was also standing at that point. I think it was also then that I decided to do public monthly updates on the project.

I'm glad that I started on that pretty early, as I got a few eyes on the project pretty soon after I had posted things on Gamedev.net. There's a lot more that needs to be done in terms of outreach and marketing, though. Since the Steam launch we've been thinking a lot about how to get a bigger community together and foster active discussion surrounding the project. For now I'll keep doing the monthly summaries and weekly updates on the mailing list. I'll also try to be more active on Twitter and the Discord, but other than that we don't have a solid strategy yet.

The Steam launch and everything with Pro Helvetia leading up to that was a pretty stressful time all in all, when I was already running on fumes from everything else that had been going on. I'm really glad that I decided to afford myself these two weeks of holidays just to get away from it all. I didn't succeed entirely I've been thinking about Kandria every day in at least some fashion but I have been working on other projects at least, and been spending a lot of time just playing games, too, so I think I'm at least getting my mind cleared up enough to start fresh into the year next week.

On the topic of Pro Helvetia, the story there began in February, when the Swiss Game Hub had a little presentation on the organisation and its grant programme. With a little push from fellow local devs I decided to take the step and try to apply. This in turn forced a lot of changes as I decided to finally properly go public. This meant finding a real name, creating a website and trailer, as well as a publicly playable demo, and mailing list to manage the marketing. And of course, polishing everything to actually run on other systems. I also got the Steam app at that point, with the idea of using it for testing distribution, but I only really got that sorted out after the grant submission deadline.

When I applied at Pro Helvetia I didn't expect to get the grant and as expected, I didn't get it either. However, when we applied for the Swiss Games showcase in November, I did think we had a pretty good shot at it. Getting the message that we were, once again, rejected just two weeks before Christmas was pretty crushing, especially after all the work and rush that went into squeezing out a new trailer, new demo, Steam page, and press kit in time for it. Worst of all though, we weren't given any reason as to why others were selected over Kandria. I've tried contacting them the day after to ask for feedback, but have not heard back from them.

I've never been a confident person, so getting these rejections has been wearing down my already feeble remaining amounts of confidence, which hasn't been great for morale. While I'm not a confident person, I am however a very stubborn person, so despite everything I'm still determined to see this through to the end. Worst comes to worst I'll have to finish it on my own, but even if that came to pass I'd still do it. This is the best shot I've ever had at getting a real game made, and I'm not going to give up on it.

Moving on from these more rough sides of development, there has been a lot of progress this year, though a lot of it was in the innards of the game, and not necessarily on the visible side. That pains me a bit, since the screenshots from a year ago look very similar to the ones from today. I have to keep in mind that even without this, the progress made is necessary and valuable. Anyway, on to what I did do.

I reworked the SteamWorks library to work properly again. I rewrote the sound system stack almost entirely from scratch to allow for more complex effects and to work properly on all platforms. Large parts of the engine had to be rewritten to fix some big issues in how resources and rendering used to be organised. Not directly part of the game, but still important, I made custom mailing list and feedback systems. Hopefully there will be less things like that that I need to do next year, so there's more time for the actual game.

On the side of visible progress, most of it has been surrounding the combat system, and starting on upping the pizzazz by introducing fancy effects and post processing. There's still a lot more to do in that department though. Especially combat needs to have a lot more flare to it explosions should kick and spray particles around, slashes need to connect visibly, getting hit has to really impact. I've looked at some other games and how they handle combat, and it really does seem like a much larger part than one might think of how the combat feels depends entirely on how many effects there are piled on. Sparks, flashes, particles, and especially crunchy sound effects make an enormous difference.

Don't get me wrong though, the animations of the characters themselves are also very important. They have to be fluid and have visible weight that is being thrown around. I struggled tremendously with that when I started out with the combat in Spring and had to do the first animations myself. I'm very glad that I've recruited Fred to take care of that part, as he's done an amazing job at it. The new animations feel a lot more fun, fluid, and real.

Speaking of Fred, one of the biggest changes this year was that I finally decided to put not only my time, but also my money on the line and actually hire some people to expand the team. This is something that was a long time coming. I always knew when I started out that I'd have to eventually expand the team, simply because the scale would require it to get it done in a reasonable amount of time, and because I simply don't trust my own skills well enough to get a great product out of them. That's where the confidence thing comes in again.

The hiring process took an entire month of my time, mostly because there were way more applications than I ever thought there would be, and I wanted to do my due diligence and investigate everyone to a good degree. Ultimately finalising the selection was also difficult for me, and took me over a week of deliberation. I'm happy with the choices I made, but I still wish I had the funds to just hire more people.

Since the game is almost entirely built on a custom stack of software, engine and all, there's a lot of rough edges and corner case bugs that hinder development and cost us a lot of time. I really wish I had the funds to hire another skilled programmer to take care of those so I can focus more on directing the story, art, and general features and level design. Still, we're already on a tight budget that isn't going to last for the entire duration of development unless we can procure additional funding somehow. We've been talking about that a fair bit, too, but there's no clear decision yet.

So far the plan is still to complete a vertical slice in the coming months and then do another planning session to see how things hash out once we have a better idea of the development costs involved and how the overall plot and world will pan out. Then comes another application for the Pro Helvetia grant in September. If we get that, we'll have extended funds for another year, which should hopefully bridge the gap well enough to pull through to the end. If not well, there's other possibilities that I don't want to really discuss yet as it's all still too uncertain.

As you may know, during most of the development of Kandria so far I was a Master's student at ETH. I've been a student for a long time, since my Bachelor's took me a long time to complete, largely in part to not being able to take the stress of taking on too many subjects at once. Most of the classes I either didn't care for, or outright loathed having to work on, so it was not a very merry time. Still, I managed to persevere. Now, in the Master's programme for Computer Science at ETH there's a requirement to complete two of three interdisciplinary laboratories. You have to complete these regardless of the focus you take, and so regardless of your interests or target skillset. I tried all three, and failed all three, the last two of which I failed this Summer. All three were very hard courses that required a ton of time investment. I did not expect to fail them all. Whatever the case, this, in addition with the strict term limits at ETH, meant that it was not guaranteed I'd be able to complete my Master's even if I did decide to try them again in a year. It would mean spending at least one and a half more years to complete my Master's, if I managed to pass these classes the second time.

I decided that these odds were no longer worth it. University made me miserable, and I was not sure how big of a benefit the degree would be anyway. So I made the big decision to work full time on Kandria, which I have now been doing since September.

Doing this also shifted the project quite a bit though, as now it is no longer a game project I just want to complete on the side, it's now something that has to prove not only possible, but also financially viable, in order to be able to keep doing this. Naturally this places a huge burden on me, and even if I don't want to think about it much, my subconscious still does anyway. This has lead to a somewhat unhealthy work/life balance, where I couldn't justify working on other side projects like I used to all this time before, as the thought of but shouldn't you be working on the game, instead? always came creeping around the corner.

This has especially been a problem in November and the beginning of December, and is why I've run so badly out of steam. These two weeks of holidays have really been great to get away from that. Still, I'm going to have to figure out some better balance to make this sustainable in the long run. I can't be going on holidays every two months or so after all. At this point I don't yet know how exactly to do this, except that I know I need to weave different projects into my schedule somehow. That's something to figure out in the new year.

Tim and I have already been making some good progress discussing the characters, setting, world, and overall story in December, and I'm really eager to dive back into that and get started on planning out the first section of Kandria for the vertical slice. I also have a bunch of cool ideas for new features and effects to implement. I'm looking forward to diving back into all of that next week, but I'm also cautious about all the challenges we already know about. I really don't want to rush it and end up with something we have to throw away in the end.

This entry has gone on for long enough already, even if there's a lot of details and smaller developments I skipped, so I'll try to bring this to a close. As always, if you want to be kept up to date on the development, sign up for the mailing list!

Tim also wanted to write a little bit about his experience working on Kandria the past two months, so here goes:

[quote=tim]Its been a whirlwind two months working on Kandria! Ive already gotten heavily involved in writing marketing text, developing the lore, and making a demo quest to learn the dev tools. Im looking forward to coming back after Christmas and keeping the momentum going for the vertical slice. I expect Ill be getting more hands on with the tools in particular, to write multiple quests for a hub-like area; now Ive learned the basics and will have more time, Ill be looking to structure it better as well, using the quest system to its fullest, rather than brute-forcing it with task interactions alone. :)[/quote]

With that, I think I'll call the yearly round-up done. I hope next year will be better than this one, and am currently being cautiously optimistic about that. I wish everyone out there, and especially you reading this, all the best in 2021!