Development Status Update
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 01, 2020 at 10:46:57 PM

Hey everyone, we hope you are all doin well! As we are reaching the last few months of the year, we wanted to give you an update on the game's current status and release date.  2020 has been a strange and challenging year for everyone, so it's probably not much of a shock to hear that it's impacted the game's development. 

We went into this year with the hopes of releasing in late 2020 or early 2021. Development was going well and and we took the game to PAX East at the end of February. We had a great show, met a lot of existing and new fans and received tons of positive feedback, so we were feeling pretty good on our way back home. 

Of course it was around this time that the lockdowns began and development slowed down. Chris has 3 young kids, so when schools shut down he had to begin dividing his time between programming and helping to homeschool his kids. More recently his wife got a new job in Ohio, so figuring out their move from Florida further detracted from his ability to work as much. Progress had still been made during this time, but just not at the rate we had expected or hoped in order to release this year.  

For now, things are about as "normal" as they will be for the foreseeable future and we've settled back into a steady rhythm. His kids are doing virtual schooling at home so he still has to devote some time to looking after them during the day. All things considered, we're doing our best under the circumstances we're in now, and we've begun looking for a few additional programmers to help speed things up. 

Concerning the release date, it is still TBD. We don't want to rush out an incomplete product, so all we can say for now is that the game will be out when it's ready. As for some good news, the game is now what we consider "Alpha", meaning all the game's features are in place and all that remains is adding more polish and content. So we're excited about that at least, and it brings us one step closer to the closed Beta! We will also be putting out another updated demo on Steam in the future like we did a few months ago. So if you missed the previous event and don't have access to the Beta, you'll still have a chance to check out the game prior to release. As always, we'll continue to keep you apprised of our progress, and we hope you all can understand our need for some extra time to complete the game properly. 

On the art side we've continued to make good progress with our animator Rafael producing some awesome work with our designs. Here's a look at a design timelapse and final animation result of two recently completed enemy characters:

Outlaw Scout

Flayer Demon

We've also begun to work on the final art assets for the city hubs (we've had crappy placeholders in the meantime hah). I don't think we've talked too much about this yet, but cities are being done at the same scale as our characters and combat environments. We wanted each city to look unique and immersive rather than just a simple menu. Since we've done it this way we can also occasionally have combat engagements and missions take place within the city streets (as they use the same assets). We can't share the final look yet as we still need some more building variants and other assets (such as citizens standing and walking around), but here's a taste of the building styles for the 3 main cultures within the game:

Midden 

Nurren

Tyrosene

That about wraps it up, thanks for reading and for your continued support! As always, if you haven't yet please take a moment to wishlist the game on Steam (helps with visibility) and join our official Discord server. We'll see you next time!

Company Renown and Upgrades
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 05, 2020 at 12:12:23 AM

Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well! In today's update we're going to be talking about the specifics of how you go about upgrading your company, and what type of options are available.  

Renown and how to purchase Company Upgrades

Upgrades can be purchased via the management menu by spending Renown Points. Renown is a secondary resource that you primarily earn by completing missions. It can also be acquired during certain overworld encounters based on the outcome (like helping someone out). Renown is essentially XP for your company and is a measure of how well-known you are. After reaching certain thresholds of total Renown you will gain a Renown Point which can be spent in the upgrade screen.  There is no limit to how many renown points you can acquire, so given enough time you will be able to upgrade everything you possibly can. 

We decided to go with this type of resource/upgrade system because the game already had quite a few elements that put a drain on your coin, and we want to ensure that the player is always able to improve their company over time, regardless of how rich or poor they are.  Aside from upgrades, your total renown also plays a part in determining which type and difficulty of missions are available to you. Special organizations and Houses won't entrust their tasks to just anybody, and you will need to reach a certain amount of renown before you gain their attention. 

Spending your Renown Points

 To spend your points, you can head into the 'Company Upgrade' screen to purchase whatever is most relevant to your current situation. Each upgrade costs 1 Point, however some upgrades require you to have amassed a specific amount of Renown, or to research certain prerequisite upgrades beforehand. Some upgrades are broken up into 2 or 3 segments and can be purchased multiple times to increase the effectiveness of that upgrade.

Upgrades are split up into 4 different categories. The General tab covers things that have to do with your company and caravan as a whole, such as training faster horses and increasing roster capacity. 

Expeditions has upgrades related to dungeon exploration and combat. From here you can increase the amount of provisions you can take with into a dungeon (as well as providing a better selection of provisions), and other things like improving your scouting efficiency in the exploration phase.  

The Council tab is where you can hire a Battlemaster, Emissary and Spymaster and unlock their various unique actions and passive abilities (here is an older post on the council, we'll have a deeper dive into it at a later date once we feel ready to make a video about it).

The final tab is Alchemy, which is where you research magical incenses for you to burn when camping, providing you with various primary and secondary effects that aid you in combat and dungeon exploration. We'll go over this part more in our upcoming 'Camping' update which will likely be one of the next two.

On the art side of the game things are progressing steadily as we get closer to finishing all the enemies and characters that we plan to launch with. Here are two newer timelapses for those who like to see the process!

Lastly we'd like to give a shout-out to Fae Tactics, a turn-based tactical game very much in the style of FFT that just released this past Friday. They're part of the Humble publishing family and we'd like to congratulate them on the launch and encourage you to check the game out on Steam!

 See you next time!

New Teaser Trailer, Steam Game Festival and Dungeon Exploration!
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 11:18:21 AM

Hey everyone! This past Thursday we revealed a brand new teaser trailer during IGN's Summer of Gaming event. Here it is in case you missed it: 

We also had a short interview with IGN talking about the general idea of the game and a few of its features. The features discussed probably won't be anything new to the majority of you, but in case you wanted to check it out you can find it here:

We have one more exciting event starting right now: the Steam Game Festival. From June 16-22, our PAX East demo will be available to download on Steam. We're excited to give our entire audience a chance to try out the game and we look forward to seeing your thoughts and feedback! 

You can head to our Steam page to check it out, and on June 18 at 12PM EST we'll also be hosting a Q&A session on our Discord Server. 

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Moving on then, it's time for a deep dive into our new Exploration Mode! 

About a year ago we decided to make some changes to the way you navigate dungeons in the game. The old method saw your party physically walking through the environments, and while this was kind of cool to see at first, we ultimately decided on a simpler tile hopping style, kind of like a board game. There's a few reasons why we made this change:

• With the increased battlefield size(going from 5~ tiles high to 10~), exploring and interacting with objects became more time consuming and tedious
• The new mode allows for more creative storytelling and more varied events as we're not restricted by needing graphical assets for everything, and can instead describe the situation to the player (which is more in-line with the spirit of D&D)
• More strategic considerations with various actions available to you, and each one costing you 'Time' (more on this below)
• Streamlines exploration so you can get to events and combat (which remains unchanged) more quickly. 

Exploration

To navigate within a dungeon, you simply click on an adjacent tile to move your party.  Moving will cost you Time, which can have consequences down the road (we'll get to that below). From your current position, you are able to see the existence of any adjacent tiles, but you are not able to discern whether or not they contain any events. Moving blindly can sometimes pose risks such as triggering a trap, or giving an enemy the chance to ambush you. These risks can be mitigated by spending additional time to Scout ahead to reveal any events that may exist. 

Time & Modifiers

Nearly everything you do within a dungeon will cost you Time. This includes moving, scouting, interacting with events, and every round that passes during combat. There are a number of time thresholds depending on the size of the dungeon, and hitting one of these thresholds will trigger a Time Modifier. A Time Modifier is usually a negative effect, though sometimes something beneficial may occur. There are over 30 modifiers that can be applied, some examples include:

• Enemies calling in reinforcements, increasing the number of enemies in future combat encounters
• Increased chance of being ambushed by enemies who are now well aware of your presence
• Your party can become hungry and request that you camp. Ignoring these requests can put a strain on your relationship and trigger Loyalty loss
• Your party can become careless and misplace supplies, causing you to lose a few provisions (such as bandages and potions. Gear and other important items are exempt from this, so newly found armor will be safe!)
• Your party can gain a "second wind", restoring some of their ability stamina. 

Time is an important strategic consideration, and spending too much time in a dungeon can make things increasingly difficult on you. Once you max out the time meter, your party will become disgruntled, weary and insistent on wrapping up the mission. You can still continue beyond this point, but eventually their Spirit and Loyalty to the company will begin to wane. With all of this to consider, it's important to be efficient on your missions and ensure you don't waste too much time backtracking, or becoming complacent in combat by letting too many rounds pass. 

Camping

While Time Modifiers can make things more difficult on you, Camping is one way to combat their effects. You can choose to camp on any empty tile, though some locations will be safer than others. Like other actions, Camping costs time, but that time can be spent on various bonuses that can be applied to your party going forward.  We don't want to get too far into the topic of camping right now as it's fairly involved and we'd like to dedicate a future update towards it. 

Exploration Events

On any given tile in a dungeon, there are a number of events that can potentially spawn on it. Interacting with most events will cost you time, though you will often have multiple choices of varying costs and risks. It is up to you to assess the situation and make the best strategic decision! Examples of events are:

• Combat: Obviously this will be the most common! If you scout an enemy location, you can spend time to set up on ambush on them
• Secrets: Secrets can be anything from hidden rooms with unique text scenarios, hidden caches of treasure, short puzzles or other findings that can lead to an entirely new mission to tackle at a later date. Without enough Perception however, you may not notice their existence. 
• Lootables: Various sources of loot such as satchels, chests and corpses. These may sometimes be locked and require a Dexterity check in order to successfully open. Of course, you can brute force your way in with strength, but it may damage the contents. There are risks as well: disturbing the dead may not be the smartest idea, and that shiny chest may just be bait planted by some would-be ambushers hiding in the shadows.
• Traps & Hazards: These events can sometimes cause damage to the party, depending on which actions you choose and whether or not you scouted it ahead of time. Perception plays a role in this, and a high enough perception will give you notice and a chance to disarm the trap(with enough dexterity) at the cost of time.
• Other Scripted Events: There are a number of other scenarios that can occur that may not necessarily be tied to the current mission you are on. This can range from finding a traveling merchant, encountering an adventurer who offers to tag along, a bounty hunter coming after one of your members, or finding a lost child. It will be up to you to decide what to do, but your party will have their own opinions on what is right. 
• Blocked and Locked Passages: Some paths between tiles can be locked by doors, or blocked for other reasons such as a cave-in or a magical barrier. In order to proceed you will need to spend time to deal with the issue. 

That about covers everything regarding exploration, minus the specifics of camping which we'll discuss in a future update! We had a pretty positive reception to these changes at PAX, so hopefully you like them and understand why we feel they're an improvement. Either way, you'll be able to check it out in the demo today! One quick thing to note about the the demo's intro dungeon is that it's fairly short and more linear due to it being a PAX build (needed to get people through it in 30m or less). On the average mission you can expect to find more more alternative routes!

As always, if you haven't yet please take a moment to wishlist the game on Steam and join our official Discord server. We'll see you next time!

March Update (Humble Partnership + PAX East Recap)
about 4 years ago – Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 12:11:48 AM

Hey everyone! We hope you're all doing well and staying safe during these uncertain times. We have a couple things on the menu for this month's update, and first up is a very special announcement that we can finally reveal: our partnership with Humble Bundle!

We've had to keep it under wraps for a while, but we've been working with them as our our publisher for a little over a year now and it's been a great relationship thus far. It's certainly made development easier and less stressful, and they've been super supportive every step of the way. 

I know some of you may be a bit wary of us getting a publisher, but we can assure you that the game's design has not and will not be compromised in any way due to this, and ultimately we still have 100% creative control. We'll also have more news to announce as the result of our partnership down the line!

To go along with this announcement, Humble has just launched a new video series for showcasing their upcoming games catalog called the Humble Brag. You can check it out here: (We're at the end! Be sure to drop them a like and subscribe too)

PAX East Recap

At the end of February we attended PAX East with a new build of The Iron Oath. This was our first time attending a PAX event in any capacity, and we were pretty overwhelmed by the size of it! We participated in DreamHack Austin back in 2018 with an early build of the game, which helped give us some booth experience, but PAX East is an entirely different animal and was quite a lot of work for just the two of us. That being said, we managed just fine aside from some sore feet ;)

Over the course of 4 full days we ended up handing out about 800-900 postcards, and our 3-station booth was fully occupied 95% of the time (probably had around 200 players). It was very encouraging for us to see so many enjoy the game, and be genuinely excited and interested in talking to us about the design and features it has to offer. We'd also like to give a special shout-out to the handful of Kickstarter backers who stopped by to say hi and check out the game; It was great to meet you all!

We were pretty nervous about the difficulty level of the demo, but it fortunately ended up being just right. Experienced tactical RPG players were able to clear it by utilizing familiar techniques, and those who were less experienced generally found success as well so long as they took their time to read and plan things out. We didn't keep exact statistics, but something like an 85% success rate seems likely. We were also very happy to see that the vast majority of players who sat down tended to play to completion (or their death haha) despite the demo being a somewhat lengthy 30 minutes. We also came away with a few nice suggestions which is always one benefit of an event like this, but for the most part it seemed like we had a lot of quality of life things covered already :)

As mentioned in the last update, we were fortunate enough to be selected by the Indie MEGABOOTH and we can't thank them enough for letting us take part with so many other great devs. It was a terrific experience and we met a lot of great people(shout out to our booth neighbors Warhammer Underworlds Online & Stronghold: Warlords - be sure to check them out!). Hopefully we'll be back for future events :)

We have a few things to tweak, but we do plan on making this build available to all Kickstarter backers for next months update, so watch out for that! In addition, we'll also go in-depth about an update to the Dungeon Exploration system which was first revealed at PAX. 

To stay up to date in the meantime, be sure to join our Discord server if you haven't yet. Everyone is welcome to join and we'd love to have you be a part of our community :)

February Update (PAX East, Community Discord)
about 4 years ago – Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 12:02:21 AM

Hi backers!

A few months ago we mentioned we had some exciting news to share but weren't able to do so at the time. We're now able to, and are extremely excited to announce that we will be taking The Iron Oath to PAX East in Boston later this month! We will be showcasing it in the Indie MegaBooth along with a bunch of other awesome developers from February 27-March 1. We hope that some of you can stop by to say hi and try out the game!

Below is s a cropped view of the floor plan so you can see where exactly we're situated! 

The Iron Oath Discord Server

We've opened up our Discord server to the public! Everyone is welcome to join and we encourage you to do so invite your friends too! A few channels will remain private to the higher tier backers, but now everyone will be able to join in on general discussion. You can find it here: https://discord.gg/HC4AKaA

With Steam's new events & announcements feature, we're going to start posting regular dev logs on there as well. You can head over to our Steam page to comment and give them a thumbs-up, in addition to adding the game to your Wishlist if you haven't yet (which helps with visibility). While there, you may also notice that we've updated our logo and key art in time for PAX, both of which we're very happy with!

We still have some things to do prior to PAX, so it's back to work for us now, but we'll be back next month to give you a recap and share some other news! Thanks for reading, and we hope you're enjoying the long weekend!