Expo Build now available on BackerKit
over 5 years ago – Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 12:12:45 AM

Hey everyone, as promised we're distributing the expo build today to our beta tier backers. If you’re eligible, you can claim the build by doing the following:  

• Login to your BackerKit Account (https://www.backerkit.com)  
• Click the ‘Review Details’ button next to The Iron Oath  
• Click on the ‘Get your Digital Downloads’ button  
• Download the Build. 

As an aside, there are still many who have yet to claim their Private Discord Invite, and you can find it in the Digital Downloads section as well.  If you haven't completed the survey(it was sent out last year), you can do so here to create your BackerKit account. We hope you guys enjoy the build and we would be appreciative if you could leave your feedback in the Discord! 

We have a couple things we'd like to mention about the build itself before you begin playing. Since this is an expo build, we're usually standing next to the person playing and can easily answer any questions they have. This isn't a tutorial mission, so there's a lot to take in when you begin! 

The balance of the build isn't necessarily representative of the final game and was crafted to give a brand new player a challenge(but for an experienced player it is fairly easy). You'll notice that the Focus cost of abilities is very generous and you can basically use anything you wish without fear of depleting your Focus. We did that to let players have fun with each class and get to know their abilities without having to manage Focus costs. Obviously that will be a major factor in the final game, but for this build it's not something you need to worry about!  

There are 5 Health Potions you can pick up in the first chest that can be used both inside and outside of combat. If you find any bugs you can hit F12 to report it and describe(if possible) what you were doing when it occurred. 

Have a great weekend and we look forward to hearing your thoughts! :)

September Update: Concerning the release date and more
over 5 years ago – Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 12:15:56 AM

Hello backers! We have a number of things to share with you today, along with some good news and bad news, the latter of which we’ll address first as it’s most relevant to you.  

We’ve come to realize over the last few months that our initial timeline was too ambitious for the game’s scope, and even though we’ve made good progress overall, the game will unfortunately not see a release in 2019. This also means that the closed beta which we had initially planned for next month will be pushed back to a later date. We have an idea of the new release window, but an exact date won’t come for some time as we have many new factors to consider. We do sincerely apologize to all of you who have supported us and were looking forward to the beta/launch. We hope you can understand our position of wanting to deliver The Iron Oath in a state that we are proud of, without compromise to its various aspects of gameplay. We’d also like to reassure you that this is not a financial decision and the project is not in any danger; we’ll both continue to work full-time on the game until its completion.  

So what’s the good news? We have a lot of exciting announcements in store, but we can’t quite spill the beans on them yet. In short, we’re firmly in a position that will allow us to complete the game to its full extent and deliver it to a wider audience. We believe we’ve taken the best course of action to ensure the game’s success and we hope the coming announcements will soften the blow of the delay. I know the above is all very vague, but please bear with us :)  

In lieu of the beta next month, we’ll be making our current expo build available starting next weekend to our beta tier backers so we can collect their feedback. We'll post a separate update for that once it's ready for download. We’re also planning to make another pre-beta build available some time in the first half of 2019. For the rest of our backers, we'd like to share with you a gameplay video taken from the build:

Last month Chris took the build to the Orlando IX convention where hundreds of people had a chance to sit down and try out the game. Overall it was a little busier than our experience at DreamHack, and the game was once again well received which is always a good sign! Here’s some pictures from the event:  

As for what we’ve been doing the last month and a half: Chris has continued to work on the Overworld’s gameplay experience, working on tasks such as sea travel; visiting city hubs and interacting with the different buildings in each; and the flow for accepting, completing and turning in different types of quests. Last month I completed all the lore and world history, and have just recently finished a large task focusing on the logic for Rulers and the different decisions that are available to them during the course of the world’s simulation. We’re getting close to a point where we’ll be able to sit back and watch the game’s world progress through hundreds of in-game years. It’s pretty exciting to think about all the gameplay possibilities that will present themselves to the player!

The game’s soundtrack has been coming along nicely, and Alex has been continually creating some awesome music to accompany the game. Here’s a short clip of one of his recent tracks for the city hubs of Winter’s Reign:  

Finally I’ve uploaded an art timelapse that I completed earlier this summer. I haven’t been able to upload as many as I’ve wanted due to some unfortunate Aseprite crashes while recording. If it keeps happening I’ll have to start recording my entire process and editing down the video so it’s watchable! Either way there will be lots more coming in 2019 as we continue to fill out the game’s content. 

We’d like to once again apologize for the situation and ask for your patience and understanding. We do believe the extra wait will be worth it in the end!

July Update
over 5 years ago – Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 12:31:18 AM

Hey guys, here with our July update for The Iron Oath! This month's update is a little short as we're working on things that we can't easily show off quite yet such as finalizing the lore, main quest campaign, working on our "Narrative Design Tool", and more work on the overworld simulation aspects of the game.

Our narrative design tool has been fleshed out to accommodate everything we'll need to make hundreds of quests for The Iron Oath. The tool is used to make everything involving dialogue, cut scenes, world events, and quests with as few lines of scripting as possible. The goal has been to make it as easy for us to make lots of quests but still have access to loads of variables and functions in game. The tool exposes functionality for us to play animations for characters, branching dialogue trees, branching quests, play sound effects, alter the state of the game in a variety of ways, and loads more.

As for the world simulation elements of the game we have made some great progress. Previously those elements were prototyped in some external programs but they have been integrated into the main game now and it's really exciting to see the simulation play out. Factions will trade or fight over the limited resources in the world. Alternatively they might form new alliances and overthrow a ruler not providing for their people. We'll share more progress of that in the future once we get the art more finalized. Right now it's still using programmer art which as you can imagine looks incredible! ;)

BackerKit and Surveys

At the end of this month we'll be closing the BackerKit store so it will be the last chance for anyone to get the game at the $15 price tag. Additionally there are still over 100 people who have not yet completed their BackerKit surveys. We sent out a reminder email last week and will continue doing so until we lock down the surveys(exact date TBA). If you haven't received an email and have not completed your survey, you can request it to be resent here: theironoath.backerkit.com

Lastly if you haven't already done so, please take a moment to wishlist us on Steam as it helps with the game's visibility. Thanks and have a great weekend!

June Update
almost 6 years ago – Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 01:16:00 AM

Hey guys we're back with our June update! We've spent some time lately getting a build polished enough to show at trade shows and a few weeks ago we went to DreamHack Austin to show off The Iron Oath to the public!

This was our first major expo and it was an overall awesome experience. Most importantly for us, the game was very well received by those who played it, and we gathered some useful feedback as well. It was great meeting other developers, and we even had a few backers stop by which was nice to see!

All in all, we were able to show the game off to a few hundred people over the 3-day event. Even though manning the booth for 8 hours a day was a lot of work, it was worth it to see everyone’s reactions and reaffirm that we are on the right path.

After DreamHack we've spent some time implementing a few of the most common requests we heard, like outlining targets in combat, clicking to move during the exploration phase, warning players if they are about to hit a friendly unit with AoE damage, and the ability to undo your movement in combat (as long as you don't incur an attack of opportunity from moving or trigger other hazards).

I also recently updated our cut scenes to have more intricate animations and interactions with fewer lines of scripting. The following gif was created with just 6 lines in a script which plays the animations and spawns the skeletons into the scene.

We’re Hiring!

We're looking to hire an additional pixel artist to work on our overworld map. It's a fairly big task, and one that we decided would be better to outsource. Here is a full-sized version of the map(which would normally be viewed at 200% scale in-game): https://i.imgur.com/sy2BXI4.png

I started work on one of the regions a long time ago, but it could certainly do with some improvements, as it's a little too barren and the pixeling could be much better: https://i.imgur.com/96xCJbp.png

A better example of what we would be looking for is from this overworld preview from the game Stoneshard

Of course we'd be open to any style as long as we feel it fits the game's tone. If you're interested in applying for the position please send us an email at:

[email protected]

Please include any relevant works from your portfolio or feel free to whip up a small mock. It will also be helpful to mention your standard rate(as we have a budget to keep in mind! lol), but we can discuss that in more detail once we come closer to a decision. Thanks! :)

What’s Next?

With our expo build finalized(the plan is to take it to PAX West in a few months, hopefully that pans out!), we're now turning our attention towards the beta build, and mapping out everything that will be included in it. We'll share more details about that when the plan is more final.

May Update (+DreamHack!)
almost 6 years ago – Mon, May 21, 2018 at 02:13:31 AM

Hello backers, hope you're all doing well! Late last month we got some pretty amazing news as we were selected to showcase our game at DreamHack Austin(June 1-3). The last few weeks have been pretty hectic getting everything ready with the demo build and promotional materials, but we're super excited to show off the game at such a big venue! Both Chris and myself will be in attendance so if any of you were planning on going we'd be happy to have you stop by our booth and give the game a test-run :)

To go along with the demo build we have some new additions to the roster of enemies; we figured the poor skeletons have been beaten on enough ;)

Like the undead, they'll be a fairly common enemy that you'll encounter in the game, specifically during overworld travel where bandits tend to prey on weary travelers.

Here are some other things we've worked on this past month:

• Full implementation of the Line of Sight mechanic
• Combat UI improvements for targeting and letting the user know why and when abilities cannot be used
• Added a new resource pool called "Focus" which is used for casting spells. We've tweaked the function of our Spirit resource and we'll talk further about it in a future update
  
• New ability icons
  
• Fancy new environment introduction(totally not inspired by Dark Souls!)

Hope we'll see a few of you at DreamHack and we'll be back next month with more news and a recap of how the expo went :)

Shout-outs

Lastly we have 2 games we'd like to give a quick shout-out too. First up is Fort Triumph, a great tactical RPG funded here on Kickstarter that has recently entered early access.  Check out their game on Steam here.

Next is Stoneshard, a roguelike RPG that recently launched on Kickstarter. They have some gorgeous pixel art and a demo of their prologue available. They're nearly funded with plenty of time to go, so they'll be aiming for some stretch goals next. Check it out here.