Soulblight

[abraksil]

well I'm not asking about ratio. I mean how many people voted

[abraksil]

Just few days after our Square Enix Collective campaigning is over a new competition Emerges! Well I guess it's this time of the year again . Starting today for next 10 days you can vote for us at Indie DB.

Check out our page and help us get to top 100!

Soulblight on IndieDB

Don’t forget to vote for us!

[hendrikk1]

Sorry for the late check, well, it's just 69

[abraksil]

Today I've decided to share with you some weapon designs. As you can see we're trying to marge tech witch medieval weaponry.

The fear of all that is technical is rooted deep in the hearts of the society. But you have to overcome it as those devices are much more potent than simple swords made by the blacksmiths of the present day.

[abraksil]

First glimpse at story behind Soulblight

What is Soulblight? When technology was still present in the world, the Sanctuary was a safe haven for those who sought knowledge. A place where greatest minds could practice science freely manufacturing many wonders of technology.

That is until something happened that science could not explain. A machinery that studied foundations of human nature imploded giving birth to a mystical tree. With it came along a power so great that it shattered a space-time around it, leaking anomaly from alternate dimension - Soulblight.

[abraksil]

Christmas is almost here. You can feel its spirit even in a basement where I have my office. Cozy isn't it

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

[abraksil]

Another piece of the story

No one knows where did the crystal covered beasts come from. But the fact remains, they did come. As conventional methods of warfare proved themselves useless against the aggressor mankind has no other choice but to turn to the Ancients and their secret of forgotten technology.

Holding it is the legendary Soulblight - tree growing in the center of the abandoned Sanctuary. The prophecy says that wisdom to create powerful machinery awaits those who will drink from the roots of the tree. But beware wisdom has a price. Will you dare to find Soulblight and bring peace to this broken world?

[abraksil]

New Year’s Resolution

Hello everybody! How’s 2017 so far? New year is always a good excuse to introduce some changes into our lives. My New Year’s Resolution is to get more in touch with all you people reading thous posts of mine.

Some of you recently complained that, in the information jungle out there, you often miss my updates. Well… We’re just few people working on a game and sharing our content. Sometimes we just can’t get through all the noise and commotion. But don’t worry - I’ve decided that the first step for us to know each other better would be to create a reliable way for you to fallow our adventures. And so I’ve set up a newsletter.

Every month I’ll be sending out a summary of all that happened recently in our project. If your interested - visit our page and sign up!

My Next Games Home Page

[abraksil]

The Idea behind Soulblight

So I've been sharing with you updates on my game for few months now. Today I've realized that I haven't told you what is the underlining reason for my making Soulblight. Some of you who may have browsed my game might already know what we're trying to achieve but For thous who haven't here we go

Video game RPGs are in the strange place right now In my opinion. These days every game with leveling mechanic calls itself ‪RPG‬. We play those games traveling through awesome worlds maxing out our stats and grinding XP on every opportunity. Over the years though it became more mundane than enchanting.

I look with nostalgia at my pen and paper RPGs memories. Back then gaining XP was only part of the fun, becoming our characters was the rest of it. Sometimes role playing stood in a way of solving the quest at hand, but we connected with our characters and they felt more alive that way. Video games are different. We cannot expect players to avoid fighting giant spiders just because their character has arachnophobia. That way they will lose precious loot and XP. They know the game will penalize them for that by becoming more difficult. If we want players to actually role-play the game need to encourage them to express this kind of things. Only Best RPG games menage do it with dialog options and branching story lines. To make it all believable the game need's to have tremendous amount of content. Every single outcome needs to be thought out and scripted. When  me and my friends started Soulblight we simple knew there was no way that we can pule it off. We ware simple too few to do it. We started to look for a different, new way to allow players to express they're characters. And this is how our Taint System came to be.

[abraksil]

The Taint System

So a week has passed and It’s time to shed more light on the enigmatic Taint System I wrote about in a previous post . Basically the main goal is to integrate actual role playing into character progression. Before entering each level of the Sanctuary you get to choose a taint that represent a certain personality trait. Each taint unlocks a new way of gaining power - a custom mechanic designed to encourage acting like a person with that attribute. Let’s look at few examples:

This method of character progression channels our will to survive into actions in alignment with hero’s personality. The deeper into the Sanctuary you get the more varied taints you’ll be able to acquire. Think of it as if the dungeon itself was a skill tree of a kind. While making a choice you’ll have to be careful as it will shape your personality and experience to come.

[AgingMinotaur]

Nifty. I like that taints give a bonus as well as a penaly. It made me think of the system in Vampire and other World of Darkness-games, where each character defines an archetype as their Nature. If you managed to "live out" the trait defined in your Nature, you gained a Willpower boost.

In tabletop rpgs, I always thought such rules were a bit construed, since we were just roleplaying away, anyway (the archetype system in Vampire was a great aid for that, though). OTOH, I think it makes more sense in computer games to give a tangible boost for acting in character. I've actually been thinking on something similar for my game LoSt, but as "codes of conduct" which give you skills/bonus/reputation if you follow them (vow of poverty, duelist honor, lawfulness, chivalry, whatever).

Anyway, keep up the good work. The project seems promising, and I must say the art looks mighty nice (though I found the Paranoid icons a bit vague, placeholder-ish).

As always,
Minotauros

[abraksil]

Yee I know what mechanics you're talking about AgingMinotaur. I'm a huge fan of World of Darknesss pen and paper RPGs Any way glad to hear you like Soulblight

[abraksil]

This week I've decided to share with you a gif so you can notice all these little ambient animations we're adding. Although players rarely notice them while enjoining the game they are very important. Without them environments seem dead artificial.

[abraksil]

In Soulblight we're going for tactical stamina based combat simular to that you might know form Dark Souls series. On that note here's one of the spear attack animations for you

Because our game's combat mechanics in inspired by Dark Souls I try to play it every day after work . I do so relax and learn a bit more about it's design. I've discovered it's much more fun to do it in the company and that's why I started streaming.

My Twitch Channel

So how about it? Want to join me in my gaming adventures?

[abraksil]

This weeks's update is a bit early then usually as In two days we'll be presenting Soulblight at White Nights Conference in Prague. Recently I've introduced some new solutions to our combat mechanic to add even more tactical depth to it. The festival is a perfect opportunity for play test. We will see how human specimens will handle the challenge I've prepared