❄️Developer Diary - Winter 2024 - Old prototypes and progress made...❄️
3 months ago – Tue, Feb 06, 2024 at 07:54:44 AM

My Fellow Ravens!

On a previous update, I spoke a little about our early prototype demonstrating some of the elements we've been experimenting with. 

Today, I'd like to share a little more about some aspects of that, as well as some of the improvements (and overhauls in some instances) we've made thanks to some early feedback we've received.

I'll also be showing some early gifs and screenshots of what we've been creating, though please keep in mind that most of it is still extremely early and will (most definitely!) improve as we move forward in the dev cycle.

Now with all that said, let's begin!

Let's first start with the feedback...

As I mentioned in our Autumn 2023 update, we've managed to get some feedback from friends, family, and even some potential investors on our early build. From there, some quick (but relatively consistent) points emerged from that:

Takeaway 01: 

"The interactions and combat show promise, but it feels a little too...simple."

We have noticed that people found combat and narrative choices a little too...same-y (for the lack of a better word). We were initially a little puzzled by this - perhaps it was because you knew exactly how much damage you could inflict by looking through your stats? Was that too straightforward? Weren't they tried-and-true formulas of JRPGs? And what about the interactions? They felt..."okay", but weren't necessarily ground-breaking.

Takeaway 02: 

"It feels like we could be doing so much more in this world."

The original idea of (again, drawing from the old JRPGs formula) having characters traverse from point A - point B and experiencing stories, fighting enemies, while good (and certainly has worked for a very long time), felt a little...lacking in what we were trying to achieve. When faced with a world that fascinated them, the feedback we received was that "Hey! Give me more things to discover and interact with!" 

Those were the primary sources of our frustrations in the previous update - how should we approach this? What's the best way to move forward in this situation?

After going back to the drawing board with several smaller tweaks, we decided that a (slightly) more radical change was necessary...and thus we chose to take a chance (and potentially a page as well) out of the DnD formula.

Origin Stories have evolved

Initially, we had the idea of having "Origin Stories" define some early portion of your in-game persona, but we wanted to keep some other surprises hidden until...(insert climactic moment here), and thus, we kept the initial selection of those origin stories relatively obscure - all you would really have to go on would be a title, and a short description...

The initial feedback we received was...lukewarm. 

Players liked the idea of these Origin Stories playing some unknown role in the future, but they weren't quite sure what they provided in the moment within the early portion they played. So we went back to the drawing board, trying to reimagine what sort of role these origin stories could play, not only in the (semi) distant future, but also right now...

Finally, after days and nights of bleeding (theoretically[?]) in front of our screens trying to come up with something, an epiphany struck us.

Soul Portraits

Origin Stories have now evolved into Soul Portraits!

This fit our overarching thematic question of "What is the portrait of your soul?" wayyyyy more - let me expand upon it a little more.

Soul Portraits now grant you a couple of things when you select them:

• 2 Skill Proficiencies: We have "skills" now! It's a little complicated if you've never played DnD before (at least it was for me🥲), but they largely determine if you'll be able to spot something you otherwise wouldn't if you didn't have some level of proficiency, or the ability to deftly pick a lock (allowing you to have an easier time of it if you're good at it), have quick-twitch reflexes that enable you to move to a safe location in time, etc. 
  
  This enables us to present interesting scenarios that test your abilities / luck in one way or another - "will you be able to make that jump in order to strike a stealthy death-blow?" Situations like that present much more variation, and allow you to craft your own story! 
   
• A Soul Fragment: essentially "Soul-specific" dialogue choices you can make in conversation that reflect who you are, or perhaps trigger unique scenes that are otherwise inaccessible (perhaps due to you spotting something others could not, making a choice that others would not have thought possible to make, etc.)
   
• One Soul-specific trait or feat: The Soul Portrait you choose will also grant you a buff that is dependent on "who you are" - a little vague on this, but we'll be sharing more about this in later updates (after rounds of testing of course!)

4 Soul Portraits should be present within the early demo for your choosing, though we're planning on adding more soon! These should provide you with a starter kit to deal with the enhanced interactions we're implementing, and those changes are (almost) all governed by...

The Dice

Here's a little bit of how our interactions were before the new changes were implemented:

It was...alright. Not bad. Not great.
(We're overhauling this area and it's associated quests too btw) 

We decided to push for more outlandish (and sometimes chaotic) choices...that you'd have to pass a skill/ability check to successfully accomplish (inspired by little old games like Disco Elysium and Baldur's Gate 3) - but don't worry even if you fail a check! We've tried our best to make them as entertaining as we could regardless (we'll try our best to improve even more as time goes by too).

Some checks happen instantly in the overworld too - if you pass them, you might discover some secrets laying about...

This is just one part of our overall efforts to address the early feedback we've gotten up to this point - working like maniacs (sorry team) to provide an entertaining experience for all of you to enjoy! 

We may travel down the wrong path at times (and thus take a little longer to get to our end location), but it's only because we're constantly fixating on how to provide the best experience possible. Hopefully with a mindset like that, we'll get there all the same. 

Speaking of which, I hope we'll hear a lot more once all of you fine backers get your hands on the early demo! We should have a good estimate for that in the next update...

Quick Note on Combat...

Combat is something we're currently hard at work overhauling at the moment - we're also implementing dice rules into it in order to make it a little more unpredictable (in a good way), and a little more spontaneous (in a good way) - we've taken some heavy inspirations from the DnD series on this front too, so it'll function pretty close to games that are inspired by the long-running series as well (thankfully the math will be done behind the scenes, so you can concentrate on the fun!)

I'll share a little more about that in the next update! Combat will be a major undertaking, and I'm sure that we'll be tweaking / overhauling things all over based on your feedback - therefore I seek your understanding on this! And we're grateful to have all of you on this long journey we've embarked on🙇🏻

On an ending note

I'll say it each and every single time: We would've never gotten this far without all of your support. Y'all are the the fire that lights up our hearthstone. It's up to us now to try and regale you with a tale you won't be forgetting soon. We'll continue trying our best!

Nothing but love for all of you.

August from GatherRound Studios

📆 Developer Diary - Autumn 2023 - Our journey so far, and our path moving forward 📆
8 months ago – Fri, Oct 06, 2023 at 02:58:09 AM

My fellow Ravens,

I've been hearing some concerns ever since we switched to a quarterly update format - allow me to address some of that today, and assure you that production is progressing along.

First up, I think it'd be informative to start from the very beginning - we're peeling back the curtains, so you can have a look at some of the inner workings behind our process. Well now...

(*August from the future here: get ready for a long one today)

Before Kickstarter...

When we first started thinking about The White Raven, I was most concerned with coming up with an experience that promoted freedom of choice and most importantly, the ability to affect change in the stories around you.

I started thinking about the RPGs I grew up playing and loved - the Fire Emblem series that saw you commanding a whole army of characters you could end up in romance with, the Persona series that went into an even deeper layer and really made you fall in love with the compelling cast of characters (ditto for the Mass Effect / Dragon Age series as well by the way - absolutely loved them).

At the very core of it, I started pondering about a central question:

"How do we let players truly play their own Jin?"   

Having said all that, we knew we didn't have the resources to be able to pull a massive grand adventure off from the get-go (or did we? [spoiler: we do not...yet.]), and were thinking of just maybe creating a simplified, encapsulated adventure - and started showing off some quick (and, to be honest) messy, isolated pieces that we thought could work.

But...something was nagging at me. 

In the back of my mind.

"Would these systems really all gel together?"

"There's something...missing. What is it...?"

And then, Kickstarter happened. 

Joined by almost 3000(!) of you (and to this day...thank you.), we managed to raise more than I ever thought we'd be able to to make this happen, and around the end of the campaign, a thought worm (BG3 fans this is for you) started burrowing its way into my mind:

"Wait at this rate, we... might be able to do this."

"We might actually be able to build it out to our initial vision..."

With that in mind, we went off spelunking in the depths of the game-design caverns, trying anything...and everything - looking for a unifying theory that could tie in all of our old (and proven) systems that appeared in RPGs of yore while allowing players to view them in a fresh light - in essence:

"How do we combine the best qualities of western-styled RPGs (effectively CRPGs), and the best qualities of eastern-styled RPGs (effectively JRPGs)?"  

(*completely subjective of course - your mileage may vary)

Fast forward a couple months later, and we're tired. Exhausted.

We'd been endlessly searching. Endlessly failing. 

Were we wrong to have tried? should we have just been like the others - on the safe, oft-traveled path? We were in the abyss - blindly walking, with no end in sight...

...

...

then, we found it.

Our Golden Formula.

this. This. THIS, is our golden formula.

We finally found the specifics of how to tie everything (our systems, story, art) together - what to include, what to exclude (for now at least), and what is special about our title. 

It's not perfect yet. Even though we have the blueprints, how we implement it in every single quest you come across will have to be tested (by you!), refined, tested again, and polished. But, with this completed vision in-hand, we're much more confident in delivering a compelling experience - a story worth telling.

As a result of that however, we've since expended quite a bit of the initial funds we've raised via Kickstarter...

So We're Betting The Farm On This. 

Along with all of my personal funds, we've managed to raise a little bit of funds via friends & family to allow us to fully deliver on this vision. 

We already have an early working prototype of this, and have gotten some initial feedback on it from potential investors and partners - they love the potential, but would like to see a little bit more before fully committing. 

We're currently working towards this, and it'll serve as a prologue of the project itself - for the awesome people offering to help test our title out early, we have your contacts no worries, we'll be in touch soon! (as for the others, if you're interested, please check our spring update to gain access to it when it's ready!)

Back into the submarine we go~

For now at least. 

I apologize that it's taken this long for us to get here, but we believe in our hearts, our minds, our souls, that this is the correct path to take - we believe that if executed correctly, we might have something truly special on our hands. 

This was something that we never thought we could do, but with your help, your support -

We dared to dream. 

Thank you. From the bottom of my (and the rest of team's) heart, thank you.  You started this story with us. We will do everything in our power to make The White Raven a special experience. This is our vow.

We will not give up. The White Raven will live on.

If I may humbly ask - Stay with us, just a little while longer on this journey, and (dare I say), please look forward to what we have in store for all of you.

Till next time,

August from GatherRound Studios

Quick Summer 2023 Update⛱️
10 months ago – Sun, Jul 16, 2023 at 03:31:42 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

🌱 Developer Diary - Spring 2023 update! 🌱
about 1 year ago – Fri, May 12, 2023 at 06:28:54 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Developer Diary - January 2023 - Progress update + New update timeline 🕒🕒🕒
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 05:15:48 AM

The New Year dawns upon us my Ravens!

We've just recently wrapped up our Lunar New Year celebrations (Happy Lunar New Year btw everyone!) and are back at work on The White Raven 💪🏻

So far, we've been working hard at creating the levels that you'll be experiencing in the demo (gray-boxing layouts, adding to our asset library, testing quest structures, etc.), as well as producing some sizzling animations ⚔️⚔️⚔️

Speaking of which, here's our lineup (excluding a few others...) for the demo!

We're currently knee deep in producing tons of accompanying animations and everything else in-between but as is the case with development...these things take a ton of effort and time (reviews and reworks can be tough on the mind and soul🥲)

To that end, we've decided to restructure our KS update schedules:

We'll be shifting to a quarterly-update schedule (think Dec-Jan, March-April, June-July, Sept-Oct) when showcasing what we've been up to moving forward - there will be some events that give us the HOLY-MOLY-I-CAN'T-SLEEP jitters though, so we might jump on then and share those exciting new updates with everyone! 

This allows us to condense all the juicy info into focused updates, over presenting monthly updates that may be sparse in details at times - for more instant updates, you can always catch us on our twitter and discord channels (a little barren recently, but we have some ideas in the pipeline, and they'll be coming soon😉)

We hope you can understand where we're coming from, and thank you all for your continued support🙇🏻 we'll be back with more soon!

Till next time,

August from GatherRound Studios