Hello Smithers!
Recently we have been working on the game’s progression as well as planning and building the introduction of the game. We want to introduce the game’s mechanics without overwhelming the player with information in a static and “game-y” way.
The Traveling Merchant will be an important part in this. Having a character in the actual game world showing you the ropes feels more intuitive and interesting than throwing a bunch of popups with text in your face. He will show up early and start by teaching you about woodworking. He needs a new handle for his cart. Not long after this, someone will tell you about a mine closeby. They are willing to supply you with copper if you help them out with some wooden tools. When this request is completed, you now have access to metals and the Merchant will tell you all about how to use it. More types of metals will be available throughout the game. You will even be able to combine different types of metals to make alloys! After a while, you will, in a similar manner, unlock leather wrapping, which you can use to bind your handles for some extra grip and flair! We have a lot of different wood, metal, wrapping as well as some cosmetic items in the making to add a large variety of options to choose from when a new quest ends up in your hands.
We have also made it so you have access to more than one quest at a time so you can freely choose which one, and in what order you want to complete them!
We have chosen to space out all the tutorials to let the player get familiar with one mechanic at a time. We want to avoid overwhelming the player with a bunch of new things before they get a grasp on what’s already available to them. There are a lot of features and mechanics that need to be introduced, which have shown to be a challenge to implement, balance and pace properly. So we have spent a lot of time with this. So many documents and spreadsheets, let me tell you..
As I mentioned in another post, we would love for some people to try out the most recent build and give us some feedback. As soon as we have a stable enough build with everything in place we will announce this on the discord server.
Until then, have a good one!
– Erik at Mana Brigade
May 11 – 2023