April Update!

Hey everyone!

We deeply and utterly apologize for the delay in another dev blog for progress on the game. Life presents many challenges (ed boy). We hit some nasty snags but figured them out! We've heard a lot of concerns over the weeks about what is going on, and generally just want to give an update on where we are, what we're doing, what we plan on doing, and to answer a lot of feedback we've had!

Current progress:
Due to a change in Patreon ToS a couple weeks ago, we had to do some clean up and changes on a few things. It blindsided us, and a number of other content creators that we know, something that we have to work on.

We will be reworking aspects of the Vanlen quest based on feedback, as well as to fit better with the new Patreon ToS. We also, at a later date, would like to add more content to the old Blacksmith's questline.

Kuja has been hard at work creating very flashy and lovely character dialogue art, so that everyone you talk to will have a personality on the screen, and feel more lively. A time consuming process that we hope will make talking to people feel less stale(These new dialogue only models will be showcased pretty soon).

There are also new finished locations:

On that same note, we have been writing a lot more dialogue for a lot of characters, so that they have more interesting things to say, talk about, and relay.

In animation, our animators are hard at work doing two things: - Making new idles for characters in the village, that can be reused in various places to make the village feel more alive, giving each character a bit of personality. - Working on a brand new Nesi CG animation featuring 3 lizard men!

Coding is hard at work fixing bugs, refining the game, and working on the gameplay loop.

Combat! Combat will be a turn based style RPG system, simple, but classic. The twist we are looking for is that it will be real-time turn based, which is similar to the systems used in Baldur's Gate 1/2, Pathfinder, Path of Exile, and KOTOR 1/2. Much of combat has already been planned out, and if you wish to discuss it in detail, we would invite you to do so in the discord! (https://discord.gg/ER6NpkAr) Simply @Vlad and he will talk your ear off on it.

Looking forward:
Combat in the near future will be added as a test bed via an 'Arena' on the main menu, which will transport you to a colosseum style arena (that will be used later!), which will be used for balancing and testing combat. We plan for a fight club style minigame where you will be able to pit NPCs against one another, and test builds (when we have added them, of course!) One of the big hurdles we are looking at conquering is the case of how we want combat to look.

Animations are going to be important, but we also, due to being a very small and underfunded team, don't have a ton of time to put into them. So we are looking at very simple animations, or even going with just flashy still-poses like you might see in games such as Darkest Dungeon. We will keep you updated on the progress of this dilemma, as we feel our way around the core gameplay loop.

Onto your feedback:
We listen to all complaints, all feedback that is given to us. The easiest method to get in contact with us is always the discord(https://discord.gg/ER6NpkAr), so we welcome you to join up and give us your best ideas and thoughts! In regards to your feedback, one of the things we want to do is make it easier to understand **where** and **what** content is available. The game can be confusing in what to do, at this early stage of development, as we have a lot of disjointed bits and pieces in the Razorclaw village. So ultimately we want to figure out a way to guide the player better towards the content, and make it simpler to achieve. Your ideas in this department would be most welcome. We have a minimap planned, but perhaps quest markers would be good? Exclamation marks above people's heads to indicate a quest, as typical MMO fashion? What do you guys think? Let us know what you believe would be best, even if it is just a simple list or guide of where to go and what to do.

"What to do?"
Creating quests and content has been a major problem for us, as it takes a significant time investment! Sometimes patience wears thin (even in our own team) in regards to how long it can take to work on something like the Tavern minigame. So ultimately we want to make much MUCH smaller quests, that are easier to implement, and gives players something to do. Any ideas people may have on this, are always welcome. What kinds of small scale quests would you like to see? Perhaps less so picking up sticks, and more so earning money by trading various items? As for feedback on how we manage information, that is something we lack on. As we are a team of creatives, we often get too involved in what we are doing and forget to keep you awesome people in the loop, and we are sorry for that. We are 100% open about development, and answer any questions we can. If you wish to contact us, you can do so here, but the EASIEST place by far is our discord(https://discord.gg/ER6NpkAr). For starters, we are going to work on a more detailed roadmap of the Razorclaw village so people know exactly where we are, we hope that this should better give an indicator on how things are going.

Stay tuned for new updates arriving by the end of the week—keep an eye out!

Lok:R lives, breathes, and continues to be worked on by your team, we deeply appreciate the support everyone has given us on this journey as we continue to push forward. Cheers! - Lok:R Team