It seems that yet again we find ourselves in another year and, much like birthdays, are made all the more aware of our mortality. Despite this mild existentialism, we here at Castle PixelCount hope you've been enjoying all manner of wintry celebrations with either your loved ones or your video games (which, to us, are the same thing). The snow gracing our towers this week has been a most lovely sight indeed. Though after the new year, we've begun hearing an eerie echo of jingling slowly approaching from the east forest. But we're sure it's nothing to be concerned about.
While you're here, we'd like to offer you a seat and regale you with tales of Kynseed's development. We imagine it's become a bit trite for developers to pop into these sorts of things bandying around phrases like "we've been hard at work" or "we're excited to show what we've been making." Not that these things aren't true for the PixelCount team, but we figured we'd spare you all the same. So instead, let's warm ourselves by The Great Fireplace and get right to it.
Development Updates
We're fast approaching that magical moment in a game's development where all the disparate pieces start coming together to form a more cohesive gameplay experience. World Builder Charlie has been polishing and connecting the game's regions and is now able to run from one end of The Vale to the other. Master Linguist Neal has been helping The Vale's residents more accurately navigate the world and has also overhauled portions of the code using a 'visual language'. Meanwhile, High Oracle Matt has been busy with all manner of community logistics such as preparing the castle's Steam engines as well as writing self-referential Kickstarter updates.
In addition, all other castle staff ranging from our musicians to our artists have been helping Kynseed prepare for its impending Early Access release. For some recent highlights of the progress we've been making, we present to you this list - everyone likes lists!
- Almost a third of all characters have animations
- Players can now choose between two starting characters
- Tons of prettying, polishing, and collision testing of The Vale's regions
- Save / Load systems
- Lots of new art and polish of existing art
- Remasters of old prototype music tracks using our new sound library
- User Interface (UI) progress
- NPC navigation improvements
- Overhauling the 'gameflow' to use a basic visual scripting language
Postcards from The Vale
We've heard that people like moving images. Perhaps you are one of these people. If so, please enjoy a look at how the game has been progressing along.
Town & Forest Music
Think of your favorite songs from an RPG. Go ahead, we'll wait.
Did you think of a few? (We swear this isn't a magic trick.) While we're sure this isn't true for
everyone, we bet a few fair of you thought of an iconic song from an RPG's town or forest. As such, composer Matthijs has taken the task of making Kynseed's forest and town music very seriously. While we wouldn't presume to put our music in the same camp as classics like 'Lost Woods' or 'Forest Maze', we're still very fond of the musical delights that have been made thus far.
Below are two samples for you to wet your aural appetites on, the first of which was originally revealed to our Dev Pub backers over a month ago! If getting early looks at game content is the sort of thing you're into then feel free to check out
our late backer program. There, you can upgrade your pledge or back for the first time to help support this crazy little game of ours (and get lovely rewards).
Early Access: The Prologue
Every now and then we'll receive a few carrier pigs with messages of inquiry about what the initial Early Access version of the game will contain. So we figured we'd take a quick minute (or two!) and give you lovely people some details on what to expect.
What initially enamored us the most about the prospect of Early Access was giving players a chance to have actual meaningful impact on the game's development. We've always felt there's a right way and a wrong way to do Early Access - a sentiment anyone whose played Early Access titles can likely relate to. So to do this the right way, we're developing core parts of the game in stages so that the game's development doesn't outpace the community's feedback.
For Early Access, we'll be releasing the first chunk of the game's narrative - referred to as The Prologue. Did we mention that people like lists? Here's another one, full of what you can expect to find in the very earliest version of the game:
- 14 regions
- 30+ NPC's from different families
- Blacksmithing job
- New collectibles and ways to collect them
- Two starting characters to choose from
- Events to see and take part in
- 90 minutes of beautiful soundtrack
- Extended summer season
- Early mechanics to foster relationships with NPC's
- New sandbox game mechanics
After we see how people are getting on with The Prologue, we'll begin adding in other core tenants of the Kynseed experience such as aging, NPC generations, new locations, combat, and a heaping pile of more story.
The Starting Characters
To end this latest update, we wanted to show you something we've been particularly happy to add into the game. For the first time, we'd like to reveal both characters you can choose to play as at the start of Kynseed.
Remember at the very beginning of this update how we said we weren't going to blather on about working hard and being excited about the game? Yeah, well. Egg's on our face, we suppose. Because we are really excited to show what we've been building for you and we have been working most hard indeed to make Kynseed the sort of game we all want it to become.
Also, if you find yourself still hungry even after all these delicious updates, then check out our Discord as well as our forums where we share daily and weekly updates with everyone. Perhaps you'd also find The PixelCount Post of interest, which is our weekly dev blog that we post for the entire community. In fact, the most recent edition seems to have experienced something rather...concerning.
As always, we here at PixelCount Studios thank all you Seedlings for your continued support, compliments, and puns. Work at Castle PixelCount continues along stronger than ever. It won't be long until we've gathered enough coal for our Steam engines to whir to life. Now if only we could figure out where that strange sound in the forest is coming from...
Love,
PixelCount
