Hello everyone,
One month has passed since our crowdfunding campaign on FIG campaign has ended and the atmosphere in our studio has been electric, thanks in no small part to the confidence that our amazing backers have placed in us!
To keep the momentum going, we’ve decided to give you a quick round of what we’ve done in our first post-crowdfunding month!
Early Access Options
Before we begin with the development progress, we want to bring to your attention the availability of our special bundles. These bundles were highly requested by the community, especially those that missed out on our crowdfunding campaign.
What makes these bundles special? Well apart from the many special in-game and digital items, all of these bundles will give you access to the Early Access (Closed Beta) stage of the game.
If you cannot wait and MUST play the game earlier, then look no further than the special Titan Bundle. On top of everything provided in the other two bundles, the Titan Bundle grants you access to our special Founders Alpha stage that starts on the 10th of July. This presents you the perfect opportunity to master the game before everyone else, potentially giving you a big advantage later in the game!
Tales from our Developers
With the bundles out of the way, it’s time to get into what you’re really here for, information on our game.
Proper management of player feedback is what makes or breaks a game, after all, though we put the game together, it is you - the players - who ultimately keep it alive. So it’s a good thing that for many of us this is not our first rodeo and we know the importance of managing feedback.
To briefly touch on the feedback, the main points that were brought to our attention were:
- Improving the game animation
- Making the UI more intuitive
- Polishing the rough edges around our game
- Fixing the mobs
- And working to improve the game map
New Features and Animations
A continual stream of new features is vital to any MMO, and naturally, we are no different. Based on the feedback that we received from our playtesters, we highlighted two important additions for us to work on, a new weapon and a new skill.
The Two-Handed Axe
This will be the weapon of choice for players that prefer to dish out massive amounts of damage in a single, powerful blow. That said, to balance it out the attack speed is rather low, so players will need to be skilled in the arts of timing and coordination to land a hit. But the reward will surely be well worth it!
Here you can see our new two-handed axe animation!
The Trap Spell
The second major addition is the trap spell. Core to our game is the use of strategies to overcome the monsters that roam our game. In keeping with that mindset, we’ve added a new support/debuff skill that locks a monster in place. Players who prefer a supporting role in large fights or players that regularly want to explore solo will want to make use of this as it has the ability to turn the tide of a fight, or give you the precious few seconds to make a daring escape!
And here we have the new animation for the traps
The Art of Polishing!
What do we mean by polishing the game? That’s quite an easy one, much like the animation improvements, we revisited some of our older models, textures, maps and gave them a much-needed touch up to bring the quality up to a standard that we are happy with!
(Top shows the original version, the bottom shows the new version)
Though the changes are very subtle, take a close look at the character model and also the weapon that he has, then look at the trees and even the grass. Hopefully, you’ll notice what we’ve worked on!
When it comes to the trees, we even went as far as to redesign them in Zbrush, giving the trunks and branches a new feel altogether.
Bonus - Looking at Our Unreal Screen
This is more of a fun bonus, just to share what our development environment ends up looking like when we're working on these additions!
So we guess that you can now see and understand what we mean when we say that we’ve been working on improving the game.
For those of you that are more interested in the actual tasks that we’re working on, did you know that you can track our development progress in our public roadmap? Check it out here.
That brings us to the end of this quick update! Of course, there are many more things that we have been working on that we mentioned earlier, so do keep checking back with us as we’ll be going over some more of them in a future article.
Be sure to check out our homepage where you can purchase our bundles, and follow us on our various Social Media Channels and join the official Frozen Flame subreddit!
