With Part 3 we conclude our first multi-part short story for Exile Saga! Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to catch the next short story, see upcoming screenshots and more for both Exile Saga and Pyrrhic Victory.
Check back here next week for our first multi-part short story for Pyrrhic Victory, Fire Dance!
Joni decided to rewrite her Lamenting Tree and we have added some great artwork by Savoula Tsoraklidis. Part 1 has been posted, and part 2 will arrive tomorrow with part 3 being posted on Tuesday.
Well, what a year! I can certainly see the appeal in working on games full time as many of our fellow indie devs do – between familial illnesses and injuries, moving houses and other life-happens events sometimes it can be hard for a 100% part time team to find the time to update our amazing fans and work on the game and all the overall administratum that flows along with it. Really, where did the last year disappear to – even the snow seems to have expected winter to be another month or two from now!
So, as the boss of Meraki Games – I am sincerely sorry for not posting anything for you all over the last year; we’ll be posting more this year since we’ve already finished up a backlog of items that we want to post. As always, feel free to send us a hello if you’re wondering how things are coming along!
Onto the news:
Our budget has about doubled which will allow us to hire on some additional help – especially for music and artwork. We’re looking forward to using the budget to make Exile Saga even better!
As for Exile Saga overall – we’ve actually backtracked. We decided a few months ago that the retro look just wasn’t working for us. After analyzing the costs, it is actually more expensive for us to create good 2d pixel art for our characters than it is to create 3d models. We were often fighting with our engine in order to get it to do exactly what we wanted. Mark had gained a lot of proficiency, but it still takes longer than we’d like to set up areas and battles and they just weren’t where we wanted them to be. Rather than continue to fight with it, we’ve decided to move to Unity 3d which already has many of the major pieces in place and will allow us to make a beautiful game which we can be proud of and players will love. So far we’ve had great success with it and we’ll be showing some of the shiny new system in 3 weeks.
We have some great new special effects
Exile Saga will continue to focus heavily on story with an Active Time Battle system – it’ll just look nicer, play better and be a lot more fun.
Now even more good news:
After long discussion and deliberation, we’ve decided to work on a second game at the same time. Primarily we’ve chosen to do this as it is often very difficult to maintain communication over large time zone differences when we’re working part time – often a couple team members are still at work while the others are working on the game. There is also the matter of length – Exile Saga is a massively long game which will take a long while to complete, our new game is shorter and will be completed significantly quicker. This will also give us more to show you, our amazing fans, as we’ll have two games worth of changes to show per month which means we should be able to maintain a weekly release schedule by alternating games – every Sunday that you come by, we should have something new and shiny, some lore tidbit, an epic tale from our writing team, or even just some tips on game design or writing to show you. Most importantly, since both games are 3d, we’ll be able to use knowledge and assets from one game in the other.
Thus it is with great pleasure that I present Pyrrhic Victory, a standalone 3d multiplayer medieval warfare simulator. Pyrrhic Victory is inspired by epic tales from throughout history – be it the legendary Battle of Troy, the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Scotland, or the battle at Heraclea during the Pyrrhic War where the game derives its namesake. There will be opportunities to play with friends and family in large scale battles – fight together or apart and conquer your enemies. Players will be able to take control of the army as the commander and oversee the strategy and tactics, or they can lead a handful of soldiers as they charge headlong into the enemy ranks (or flanks).
Of course, we have also developed a large world for Pyrrhic Victory to take place in – with six unique races and 20 odd mercenary factions every battle will be a struggle to the last. You can find more information on the Pyrrhic Victory page above. Next week we’ll be posting the new story: Fire Dance, a short story about what it means to be a Remedon Za’Abat in the Slahor society.
Check out Wajanderu and Rupani, two of our brand new nations below:
Flag of Rupani
Flag of Wajanderu
Well, that is all for this week – check back here on January 10th for Fire Dance, and Jan 18th for the final conclusion of Lamenting Tree!
-Kyle
