Dear Aspirants!
It's finally time to start revealing some info about the next Major Update - here's the long awaited Preview #1 on The Spectacles Update!
It has been so hard to keep quiet about what we've been cooking up day and night for months now. This has turned out to be a vast update - much bigger than the previous one.
Our core goal was to take the game and start making new content with all the existing tools and mechanics - the priority was to break up the overall game-loop with special scenarios and events.
That said, the update has turned out to revamp pretty much every area of the game including making some very fundamental changes. In short - hold on to your Daka's and Chaka's, it's gonna be a big one.
Rare Fights!
Introducing a totally new mechanic: Rare Fights! Sometimes brand new special events will pop up. These rare events have a very special reward which I will get into in a later Preview.
For this preview I wanted to showcase 2 of the possible rare events:
Rare Fight - Tournaments! (And Grand Tournaments)
At certain times of the year, Terantia transforms for its festivities - and with those come Tournaments and Grand Tournaments. Some die-hards out there will know tournaments are actually making a comeback from the pre-release playtest. That said, we've added multiple bespoke tournament map variations and the mechanics have also changed.
In short, in tournaments you will fight multiple rounds with a break in between, until there is one man standing. They are large challenging fights of endurance you should prepare carefully for.
Rare Fight -Draft
The imperial Hanian army will sometimes recruit and draft soldiers including even Terantian Aspirants. When fighting for the military you take a step out of the arena and fight the enemies of the Empire for some Hanian coin.
Draft will take you to the battlefield. We inspired this mode heavily on classic PS2 games, where you are fighting in a limited area (the rest of the Legion is fighting outside the play area) and you and your squad fight many enemies until the day is won!
Audio Overhaul
The update will feature a complete audio overhaul -- from bespoke footstep sounds for different floor surfaces to all new combat sounds.
To go with this is a new material system under the hood, so wood clashing on metal sounds different to metal on cloth, and so on. Armor for example now also makes a sound when you just move around, depending on the armor type. Many things that had no sound or custom sound before now do.
This is just a footnote here, but the overhaul involves literally hundreds of new high quality assets (much higher than before), the vast majority handmade!
There is so much more, stay tuned for the next previews as we continue polishing the update. In the meantime, we'd love to read your thoughts and even your speculations about what else might be in the update - plenty of hints have been dropped here and there!
Note everything you see in this post is still under construction! Here's some more screenshots to wrap it up:
Final note - tomorrow the Spring Sale starts and the game will be 30% off!
Want to stay up to date on the game and studio's development?
- Join our Discord: http://discord.gg/8PEutcdwf5
- Sign up to our long-term newsletter: https://subscribe.jordylakiere.net/Newsletter
- Subscribe on Youtube (video previews coming later): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNMvD_XLJ3unATX8O7aWJg
As always,
We who are about to die salute you!
Jordy Lakiere
PS. I will be at GDC next week in San Francisco! Any lurking developers and game industry folks who might want to meet up -- reach out to me in a Discord DM!
