Hello everyone! We will use the fog of war mechanic that you are probably familiar with from other games, both on the global map and within isometric instances. Hiding not only points of interest on the map but also the topography itself, in our opinion, is a great solution to encourage exploration. In a game where you are immediately shown all the options available to visit, most often there is less desire to explore every nook and cranny of the game world. Curiosity motivates most players to unveil every hidden piece of the map. What if there's a new adventure awaiting around the corner or maybe it will be a dangerous monster guarding a hidden treasure? Write what you think about this mechanic and in which games, in your opinion, this is implemented most successfully.
Also, you can explore this map on your own in our upcoming and free demo on Steam.

Welcome! Today we would like to show you the actual character equipment window. Please note an important change. In earlier concept art and screenshots, the character was hand-drawn ( 2D ) . But we came to the conclusion that manually drawing each equipment item in different poses would be an overkill in terms of the amount of additional work, since this will generate thousands of possible combinations of gear. Therefore, we came to the conclusion that the character will be completely three-dimensional, just like in isometric scenes where the main gameplay takes place. At the same time, we try to preserve the style as much as possible so that the 2D and 3D assets visually intertwine with each other in harmony. And if you have been following our updates for a long time, do you know which character this is?
Massive changes are being made to speed up the development process many times over. You will be the first one to find out. See you soon!

Hello everyone! Today we'd like to tell you more about giant swamp toads and how nobody should not underestimate them. The usual giant toad in its average size weighs up to a pood (that's why the peasants call it "pood toad".), is omnivorous, can crush chickens / jocks, especially during the mating period, to attract females with the smell of blood and rot. In view of its size, it is a valuable prey for hunters in itself, it is very much appreciated for its tender meat and healing mucus (toad mucus can easily stop gangrene. Rich governors carry a couple of giant toads with them on campaigns, they feed much better than ordinary warriors, because in case of critical wounds rare healer is able to cope at the level of giant toad mucus) A much more severe and rare species is the golden giant toad, or "bull toad". The weight of this creature exceeds two pounds. Most of this mass is concentrated in a powerful bone skull, which is not typical of ordinary toads. What is even more surprising - the claws on the paws are small enough but allow bull toads to successfully jump over stones / ledges / beaver platinum. Due to the presence of a huge mass and the monstrous strength of the hind legs, the bull toad jumps from the ledge and drowns the victim with his forehead, after which it is not difficult to finish off.
The swamp dwellers told a story when a bull toad attacked warriors fleeing from the battlefield, who, out of battle, for evil fate, were without helmets. Due to fatigue and banal failure, travelers wandered into the hunting grounds of a bull toad. They had little chance of surviving. With a powerful jump, the toad pierced the skull of the first traveler, the second, fleeing in fear, drowned himself in the quagmire. The third - a survivor who managed to escape now looks at the ledges in the swamps more than at what he is stepping on and, according to rumors, even sleeps in a helmet.

Hello! Wed like to show you concept art with some elements of the flora and fauna of the swamp biome. Itll be the first location players get to see and begin their acquaintance with the world of Rodinia during the release of our game. As you can see, our bestiary practically coincides with the real world, perhaps except for the exaggerated sizes of some creatures. These are mosquitoes, leeches, snakes and toads. But this does not mean that were completely abandoning Slavic mythology. Mythical creatures will be a novelty for the inhabitants of Rodinia and you as a player will not meet leshy or goblins around every corner. Movement of your squad will be more limited than in any other location. If you get off paths or bridges, you will fall into the bog. And, for the love of all the gods, beware of beavers - these creatures only seem to be small, harmless fluffies, but in fact they are the danger of the swamps.

Greetings to our dear followers <3 Today we would like to share new content from our demo. In previous publications, we have already introduced you to some squad members that you will control. Now it is time to blow the lid off by revealing some of the opponents. Events of the demo plot will take place in the so-called "Wastelands" - a region located literally outside the boundaries of the civilized world. These lands are not controlled by any of the principalities due to their considerable remoteness, and therefore deserters, fugitive convicts and other marginals tend to hide there. Gathering in groups, they can form armed gangs and pose a very serious danger to travelers who dare to go in search of adventure. Some of these bandits can have no sign of subordination, while others can form a squad with a distinct hierarchy and strict combat training. In the image below you can see the concept of well-armed and organized bandits from the "Wastelands".

Hello! This week well continue introducing you to the characters of the demo. Next in line is the volhv Mirodar. As you can see, this is the oldest member of the squad and nobody can tell exactly what his real age is, as he hides it behind the folds of his thick and long snow-white beard. Mirodar has devoted his life to serving the pantheon of the Svarogi gods as a volhv-priest and renounced any material values a long time ago. He literally had to be persuaded to wear a new robe and a cloak for this campaign. Otherwise we would venture to the end of the world wearing old clothing filled with holes. While being exceptionally wise and religious, Mirodar also knows a lot about magic and wicked and evil creatures. With this knowledge he successfully saved the life of the campaign leader Berislav many years ago. Since then they always helped each other and became very close friends and this is how Mirodar got into this campaign. In battles he usually uses prayers of support, commanding the forces of nature by invoking the will of the Svarogi gods.
Soon we will show how this character will look within the game engine, don't miss it! And dont forget to wishlist and follow our game on Steam! Bye.

Welcome! As weve mentioned in the past, were working within a fantasy setting, and by no means are we trying to make a historical recreation of any real-world location. While we do largely rely on Slavic culture to give our world depth and a feeling of authenticity, were leaving any notion of realism to other projects like Kingdom Come: Deliverance as well as Mount & Blade. So, with realism being thrown out the window, we have room to play with something very exciting. Magic. In order to create a magic system that fits within our game world, we decided that a mixture of traditional fantasy magic along with elements of religion would suit us perfectly. Within the world of Tribal, the fabric of the universe is permeated with magical currents. They exist and work according to the same principles as a real-world electromagnetic field does. People and creatures who are sensitive to magic can learn to weave streams of magical energy from the environment into spells. Within areas where that energy is highly concentrated, cast spells are significantly more powerful. The opposite applies to lower energy places. Supernatural forces dont belong to sorcerers alone. While they cant use magic in any traditional way, Volhvy can still be extraordinarily powerful. Theyre servants of The Divine Pantheon of the Svarogi Gods, and by using special prayers they ask the Gods for aid. Sorcerers are only limited by the ebbs and flows of the magical currents and their own understanding of magic, which rightfully frightens many people. In some lands, those who practice using magic are frowned upon, openly condemned, or even persecuted. With the level of suspicion and fear surrounding Sorcerers form of magic, its usually practiced in secret, and rarely discussed in the open. When ordinary people talk about magic, more often than not theyre referring to the prayers of the Volhvy. Most of Volhvys petitions to the Gods arent heard, so most become little more than preachers. However, those that have earned the Gods favor can be a force to be reckoned with. In the animation below, the volhv prays to Perun and calls for lightning. [previewyoutube=sbFRhPCXS_g;full][/previewyoutube] Unable to find support in most Slavin states, sorcerers unite in cults. The most powerful of these communities is known as the Order. Members of the Order devote much of their time to studying ancient knowledge and do everything within their power to avoid interfering in any conflicts. However not all sorcerers are peaceful. Black Wizards and witches believe magic and witchcraft are powers that must be wielded against any and all who oppose them, which they do with extreme prejudice. Fortunately, theyre very few in number due to near-constant fighting with vigilantes. Many witches and Black Wizards find themselves burned at the stake on a long enough timeline. Humans arent the only beings capable of wielding magic either. Intelligent creatures can use magic as well or even better than humans, for example imps. Oftentimes sorcerers exchange experience and teachings with friendly representatives of the Demon race. Within the world of Tribal, theres another force, skulking around in the darkness. The Shadow Warriors, backed by the incredible power of the Dark Goddess Mara. This goddess was expelled from the surface long ago and now holds dominion over the underworld. Shadow Warriors use of magic resembles Volhvys prayers, with a few key differences. Unlike the Volhvy, who may call upon any God they see fit, Shadow Warriors swear allegiance to the Goddess. They must carry out her will and give up their humanity in exchange for eternal life and dark power. Once joined to the Shadow Warriors, theyre caught between life and death, and forced to serve Mara for eternity. Within the timeframe of the game, there are very few Shadow Warriors left, practically just fairytales to keep unruly children in line. Those who talk about seeing one while out adventuring are surely doing little more than drunkenly boasting, as its next to impossible to walk away from an encounter with one alive. Thats all for today! Soon we plan on going into detail on how Tribals world is structured. Were also actively working on a demo, where youll be able to use the powers of a volhv to see their power firsthand! Subscribe to our newsletter so you dont miss out on any details regarding the release of the demo. Also, come visit our Discord channel, we make some important announcements there and chat with the community! Goodbye for now!

Dear subscribers, it has been a long time since we posted anything and the reason for that is the invasion of Ukraine by the military forces of the Russian Federation. Half of our team consists of Russian Federation citizens and more than a third of Ukrainian citizens. This is an extremely difficult situation for us and since the invasion we barely did any work. The existence of this project was in question. In addition, we had to part ways with one of the team members responsible for conceptualizing the universe and political intrigues within Slavene Kingdoms. We want to express our deepest condolences to the citizens of Ukraine and condemn this war and all those who support it. From now on, any politically motivated talk will be severely moderated, and we will stop anyone who engages in militaristic rhetoric or symbolism in support of this war. We really hope that it will be over as soon as possible, and that we will never have to post anything like this again.
Thats enough sadness, lets talk about good stuff - our upcoming demo. Wed like to talk about one of the squad members from the Slavene Kingdoms demo that were preparing right now. We are ready to introduce the most brutal and controversial member of the squad - Dobran. Though he's rough, straightforward, and not the sharpest of minds, he makes up for it with his strong constitution and fighting skills. While he can act as a tank, armed with a round shield and one-handed axe, hes also quite agile and skillful to effectively dual wield axes and swords. In spite of his notoriety in certain circles as a hit-and-run mercenary, he is the only member of this squad who was chosen for the job by coincidence. Dobran is as simple as a nickel. Almost like an animal, he is guided only by the basic needs. And for the gods' sake, don't piss off this huge killing machine, or you'll get your head bashed in with a shield.

Greetings, travelers! We have some news regarding the development. First weve updated the description of the game on our website. Ideas and plans change during the creative process and it also happened to our game design and priorities. In order to speed up the development, we decided to focus on the single-player component and expand it with online elements later. You can read the new, detailed description of the game on our website. Second - our team capacity has increased from 1.5 FTE's to 6.5! steamhappy Also, we would like to emphasize that Tribal was never meant to be distributed as free-to-play. When we created our Steam page, we made a mistake and the game was added to the free-to-play category. The game will be released as a single-player party-based RPG, and not as a free-to-play online game. Another Steam-related update: the games name was changed to Tribal: Slavene Kingdoms because Tribal is too generic and we'll have to make multiple games to tell the story about this world and its characters. We also want to make another little announcement: our Kickstarter page is now live! Dont forget to follow, so you wont miss the start of our fundraising campaign, as well as the release of the free demo on Steam. See you soon!

This time wed like to talk about ceremonial weapons. Today we will talk about an important iconic artifact of Slavia - the Sword of Kings. This sword was wielded by Svyatoslav himself - the commander-in-chief of the Slavene army during the liberation war against the Veyronians many centuries ago. Since this weapon is a symbol of power and was lost centuries ago, many myths were born around its origin. They say that the blade was forged by Svarog himself, and therefore it has an incredible strength and some kind of magical properties. But no one knows exactly, so common folks come up with all sorts of fables about it. The last owner of the sword was the leader of the Slavenes. He organized a military campaign against imps, marched into the Wild Lands and died in battle. Since then, not much information has been preserved about the sword. No one alive today knows how this sword looks like. This spawned a lot of fakes, cunning blacksmiths and merchants tried to pass off ordinary Veyron weapons as a legendary long-lost blade.
And what would you say? Do we have a real one here, or all of them are fake?

Any transition time is special and in its own way mystical, whether it be a change in the phase of the moon or a change from the season of thunderstorms to the harvest season. But now we are witnessing the brightest of all - when the firmament has made its full revolution and the last number on our calendar will change. Some people believe that evil spirits are raging at this time, some burn pieces of paper with written desires and others drown it in a glass of champagne. It is at such moments that one remembers how fleeting our life is and how important it is to appreciate every positive moment. Call your relatives, please them and remember that the family is the most valuable thing we have. Do not carry old grievances and worries in the New Year, let only good things remain in it. Happy New Year everyone! Best regards, Tribal development team.

Hi everyone! Developing an RPG, especially as indie developers, is something that takes a lot of time and because were in the midst of a technological bottleneck, we decided to start a side-project and try ourselves in another, simpler direction. We'll develop a visual novel and its story will take place within the Tribal universe. Also, this way we can make better use of our writers and illustrators. This game will slightly expand our story and also introduce you to the characters of the Tribal demo and essentially make it a prequel. The visual novel genre was invented and popularized in Japan and is mostly used for anime. But dont worry, well keep our Slavic entourage :) In case you are not familiar with this genre, it is a text story with dialogs, illustrations and usually enriched with soundtracks and voice-overs to improve ambience. It has a certain degree of freedom and interactivity. We decided that this would be a great way to hone our skills in storytelling and expand the Tribal universe even further. Heres an example of a background illustration at the concept stage and its final version:

P.S. Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year! :)

Hello! Were here today because wed like to give out some information regarding the demo version of Tribal, which will be released at the same time as our crowdfunding campaign. Within our demo were going to tell you a story revolving around a crew of 5 characters venturing deep into the Wild Lands, and we want to show off some lovely concept art from our new concept artist!
This is Ratibor, hes not only an intellectual and an aristocrat, hes also the leading expert on anything involving ancient Veyron ruins. His father always dreamed of his son becoming a great warrior and envisioned a long and successful military career when he came of age. However, despite excelling in his studies and partaking in a few short martial campaigns, Ratibor quickly realized killing people at someones behest was no life for him. Much to his fathers displeasure, he left the army and quickly took up the thrilling job of treasure hunting. Ratibor quickly became enthralled by his new profession, often disregarding both his family and his own wellbeing, going months at a time without seeing his children. While most would be interested in the more lucrative aspects of the job, Ratibor was far more interested in quenching his ever-growing thirst for knowledge and his desire to shed light on the history of Rodinias people. Acting as a guide for his small squad, he leads them deep within the Wild Lands in search of anything noteworthy.

Hi! We were silent and did not release any updates for a while and were sorry for that. Most of our team members were on vacation in September and very little progress was made. But we have some good news! Our team has a new member, who has already started developing concept art. Currently hes trying to adjust to the visual style of the project and, in our opinion, he is very good at it.
These are the W.I.P. concept art style variants for one of the plot characters within our demo - Berislav. What do you think, which style seems to you the most preferable - with or without a hard line?

Hey! We recently released our first video, introducing the game's lore. If you have not seen it, here is it: [previewyoutube=3083R5JlaVM;full][/previewyoutube] We recommend you to watch it first, because we will describe its production process It was our first experience in video production of this kind, in which we failed frequently and learned a lot of new things. It will sound clich but our biggest lesson was to stick to the original plan and not to overload existing material with new ideas through over iteration. From the very beginning this video was planned to be quite simple: images moving along with a parallax effect with some animated elements, subtitles and a voice over. We really liked World of Warcraft plot promo videos from Warlords of Draenor expansion and used them a lot as a reference and that worked pretty well. But of course were really good at overcomplicating things.so eventually it happened and luckily we abandoned most of these decisions and ideas, because they would slow down the production process many times over and nobody knows when this video would be released in this case. One of these amazing ideas was to combine our slides with some real life video footage and it emerged when the video was about 50% complete.
One of the slides The amazing idea: there would be a bard sitting by the campfire and playing music on a real music instrument and next to him, an old man in a hooded cowl, also warming up by the fire. Suddenly, the old man would pull out a book from his knapsack, open it and start telling an old story of the past years, accompanied by bards music. From time to time the camera would zoom into the open book and the hand drawn slides would appear in full screen and start moving. Such a scenario would probably look a bit clich to a lot of people, but it turned out to be incredibly difficult to implement this even at the stage of preparing the props. We had costumes and performers, an enthusiast with a long beard was found for the role of an old man and the bard would be played by Dryante, our composer and sound designer. We also had a perfect campfire filming location under a large tree. One of the most important things that were missing was the very book that needed to be worked out in as much detail as possible, since it would have flashed in the video quite a large number of times, with a lot of close-ups. This was our first pitfall. We had ordered a nice leather cover with metal buckle but somehow it totally bypassed our designer's approval. When he saw the result, he immediately rejected it and began to work out a new detailed layout. His design:
And this is what we ordered before the design and eventually discarded:
The next problem was about Gusli - Its a Slavic musical instrument, very similar to a harp. The bard had to play it, because its the most recognizable Slavic musical instrument, at least for most Slavic people and because Dmitry Dryante is a big fan of live music and plays on a lot of different instruments and it would also be used to write and play game soundtracks. But the maker turned out to be terribly unscrupulous. By the time we had to start filming, he had not even begun to fulfill our order. [previewyoutube=XVnXdR1ZQFI;full][/previewyoutube] Music video with Tribal OST played by Dryante, with (eventually) crafted gusli The third and the last issue, that forced us to postpone this whole idea of creating a story trailer with real life footage and eventually completely abandon it, - the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic last year. Now we understand that such a complex project would most likely reduce the overall quality of the video, even with a huge amount of effort invested into it. We are glad that circumstances did not allow us to bring this into reality and waste a huge amount of time. In addition, we had disagreements about how to end the video. There were proposals to make the characters ( the bard and the old man ) disappear. Viewers would simply see how their clothes fall on the ground, and the people themselves disappear, just like the Jedi becoming one with the force. But there was an argument that some people might interpret this as if both characters removed their clothes and began to perform inappropriate acts, naked, off camera, lol. Also, in the process of searching for an English voice actor that was also supposed to proofread our translation from Russian into English, a rather amusing incident occurred. A native speaker looked at our narrative and told us not to do overload the story by inventing gods with stupid and unpronounceable names, after which he hinted that the Western audience prefers Scandinavian or ancient Greek gods. We were surprised and tried to explain that Svarog and Perun were not invented by us. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that it was the first experience for everyone in the team involved in the production of this video. The artist had never done animations before, the composer had never done sound design and the screenwriter had never written any text for such videos. But in the process, we gained a lot of valuable experience, and in the next similar work we will rely on it to optimize our workflow and make everything faster and better!

Hello everyone! Today we are proud to present our first video that brings more clarity to the lore of the game. [previewyoutube=3083R5JlaVM;full][/previewyoutube] or you can watch it on our Steam page :-) Enjoy!