Venerable Knights,
Version 0.5 is about to be released and was just presented at Gamescom. This was the largest live audience for the game yet, and it was great speaking to many new folks interested in playing it and connecting with content creators.
We had already seen it at the Comics & Games event in Lucca earlier this year, but it was confirmed again: young players really enjoy Knights of Frontier Valley, although they were not the original target group.
I was able to chat with German content creator Steinwallen at Gamescom, who has a very interesting channel about history, strategy games, and RPGs. Here's his take on Knights of Frontier Valley.
Dr Proof and I were also able to meet again and catch up, and another great talk was with Filipe from the Portuguese digital mag Cafe Mais Geek.
Back to the upcoming release, which is packed with new features and content.
The Playtest earlier this year produced a ton of great feedback and player requests including distinct saves, inventory stacking, and many balancing improvements which have all been implemented.
The last update listed half of what's new - in addition to mentioned requests, there are now two complete new cities to explore, new item characteristics, an additional chapter to play and new quests.
That's already a lot for one release, but it is only half of it. The time has come to share the other half.
But before we get into this, I'd like to announce a change to the schedule. Nothing changes for you if you have been waiting to play this game. September 15 remains the day you will be able to download and play the latest, unrestricted version of Knights of Frontier Valley for free.
What has changed is the labeling. It was originally planned to have this version be the official Demo, but the time is not right. If you are familiar with the Steam release process, you might know that a Demo release is a critical one-shot event in the lifecycle of a game that must be timed well around Steam events like NextFest and other major releases around the same time. The latter is currently not in our favor. A demo should also appeal to the largest group of players possible, and for this, translating the UI into more languages will be needed.
Therefore, I decided with MicroProse to make this version be a second Playtest, which will give me time to work on those translations and also get feedback on this major update before it goes to an even larger crowd.
Now on to the changes. Compared to the first Playtest, what is new that wasn't already announced?
1) Companions
You are playing a single-character in Knights of Frontier Valley, but there are good reasons to team up with others sometimes. Maybe you play a character who's strong side isn't combat, but you need to descend into a dangerous dungeon. To give you an edge over those pesky dungeon dwellers, you can now hire mercenaries who will do the dirty work for you. Making others risk their lives for you doesn't come cheap though, and you will need good coin to hire them.
There are also quest characters who might join you for a while in order to help with a specific task. You can have several companions at a time and even lead a whole party.
Companions also stand watch, so your enemies won't be able to surprise you in your sleep anymore. Your followers will also need some rest though, which means you will take turns watching each other's backs.
Companions give you more tactical choices in combat, as your party members can attack enemies from different sides and support each other.
2) Celestial navigation
Knights of Frontier Valley is also a survival game. As such, it was always intended that you might get lost in the wilderness and have a little trouble finding your way back to safety. The valley is quite large though, and it should not be a frustrating experience trying to find your way back to a place you have already discovered previously. In this version, you are able to get your hands on a special item which will make navigating to places you found earlier much, much easier.
3) New player activities
You can now mine ore or gems in caves and throw certain items in combat. Plus, you are now also able to play a musical instrument... based on your "musical performance" skill, this might either earn you a few coins on the town square or make you become a major public nuisance.
4) Announcement board
You can talk to every person in the game, but sometimes it is not obvious who to talk to in order to get a quest or obtain other interesting pieces of information. Enter the new "Announcement Board" on the Thyle market square, showing hints towards quests and providing you with other valuable (or entertaining) notes.
A litttle red flag at the board will tell you from afar when there's a new posting you haven't seen yet.
5) Crafting extensions
New crafting schemas can be learned now, including those for some very powerful items. A high crafting and/or smithing skill will be needed for this, but if you do not have those, don't fret: you can now also hire skilled craftsmen to do the job for you!
6) Force open containers
Not everyone is a master lock picker, and you shouldn't have to rely on a specific role in an RPG. If you find a locked container, you are now able to force open the lock, but beware - this comes with the risk of damaging some of the more fragile contents inside!
7) Additional difficulty choice
In the last update I mentioned that the penalty for dying has been removed in games that were not started in ironman mode. This still holds true, but removing that penalty also created a large gap between non-ironman and ironman games - it was now either very easy (no penalty) or very hard (maximum penalty, game over). So I added the previous "slight penalty for dying" mode back in as a third difficulty option.
8) Major technical improvements
Countless changes were made under the hood, including a new sound engine (no more music stuttering while maps are being loaded), an alternative rendering engine (Vulkan) and an increase in the max FPS, resulting in much smoother scrolling. You can now also have the FPS be displayed.
Many memory optimizations were done, too, doing away with the out-of-memory error some Playtesters ran into.
There are even more new features, another new dungeon type, tons of new content, and improvements in all areas including combat, NPC behavior, and the UI, but I think we covered plenty for now.
The button to register for the Playtest is now live on the Steam page, so it is a good time for a click.
I am looking forward to hearing what you think about the game in the Steam forums or on the Discord server. I read every comment and routinely add feature suggestions to the game if they fit to the vision. Many testers have already helped shaping the direction this game is going.
Until next time,
Martin
