Sorcerer King continues to get polished up. I suspect it’s the most polished game we’ve ever made as we’ve had so much extra time to work on it. So what’s been happening? Originally, we were going to release Sorcerer King in April. But we talked to our friends at other studios and realized that the Age of Wonders expansion and Pillars of Eternity were coming out during the same month. That’s a lot of fantasy in a short amount of time. With Galactic Civili...
–RELEASED 03/12/2015– Sorcerer King Beta 5 is now available! See below for details on Remnant Champions, the quest system overhaul, and more: Major Updates Remnant Factions overhaul Diplomacy UI available from World Report button More quest variety New Remnant Faction champions awarded when allied Korthox the Ice Lord Esperaza the Necromancer Silindros the Avenger Adam the Swamp Giant Ifris the Engulfed ...
This week Stardock will be releasing Beta 5 of Sorcerer King. The last major public beta for its upcoming fantasy strategy/RPG game. For those of you not familiar with Sorcerer King: You are the sovereign of a civilization in the fantasy world known as Elemental. Unfortunately, the world has been largely conquered by the malevolent Sorcerer King who is now attempting to gain godhood by destroying the magical shards in which all magic in the world id derived from. The Sorcere...
–RELEASED 02/05/2015– (Island Dog update) Sorcerer King Beta 4 is now available! See below for details on the enchantment system, Tinkerer sovereign, custom sovereigns, and more: ************* We’re putting the final touches on beta 4 of Sorcerer King. It is a massive change from beta 3 and we plan to have a beta 5 before release. NOTES: Beta 4 will be MAYHEM as we have not even attempted to balance the crafting enchantments yet. So feel free to g...
We’ve got questions for the beta team: Some people have said that Sorcerer King looks a lot like Legendary Heroes. What do you think people mean by this and what would be the most effective way to make sure the two games are visually distinct? We are debating a lot about camera rotation. The game supports it and we plan to have an option for it. The question is, what would you like to see as the default and why? We have the Magic slider in the game ...
Another Sunday with Sorcerer King. A lot of progress was made this week. So below are the good, the bad, and the ugly things I have to say about Sorcerer King this week. It’ll all be schmushed together. New Sovereign: Ashlira This weekend I mainly played with Ashlira, the Priest. Scott and I have been designing her for awhile and it’s amazing (but not surprising) how many ideas that look good on paper just don’t work out when implemented. That’s...
For Sunday I spent the day doing lots of various little things. I’m not sure where to even start. One thing I can say is that we still have a long way to go. Not just in terms of bugs but just balance and feel. The mid-game has a death-lull in it. That is, where you’re well into the game, you think you have a pretty good handle on things but there’s nothing exciting happening. In a traditional 4X game, this is where diplomacy/world council type...
Had a busy Saturday playing and adding new stuff. Here’s a sampling: Lots of tweaks to quests to give players more intangible traits. Lot of work on the Guardian sovereign in general Guardian gets a mass sleep spell Guardian gets a mass slow spell Guardian gets an obstruct map spell (rains rocks onto the tactical map causing those tiles to slow down enemies) Guardian gets a damage reflection spell where damage is 2X back at the enemy as long...
4K and 5K monitors are coming. And we think they’re going to become common much faster than most people think. That means gamers will be in a bit of a pickle. Either they’ll have to run their games at a lower resolutions (blurry, non-ideal) or face games with tiny tiny text and UIs. Sorcerer King will be the first Stardock game to explicitly support high DPI displays. The screenshots below come from my mere 2560x1440 display but as the last screenshot shows, the supe...
Greetings! We cannot wait for you to get Beta 2. I always hate the first beta. They’re so painful. They’re basically a “does this work on your machine”. Very boring. Beta 2 is where the actual game starts to matter a little. So where do things stand with Beta 2? Beta 2 is due out this month and it’s going to be big. It’s where the Minor factions start to matter. A lot. It also starts to really show off what makes Sorcerer King unique as a strategy game...
Greetings! For those of you who might be interested in seeing the sausage factory of game development in action, I’ll be streaming my antics at 1pm EST at http://www.twitch.tv/draginol today at 1pm EST. I’ll be playing Sorcerer King, debugging it, writing code, complaining and answering your questions, comments, criticisms. Update: Thanks everyone for coming by! That was a blast. I'll try to do a pre-beta 2 one soon with more lead time.
This Thursday (October 30th) we plant o have an opt-in beta which is basically a preview of Beta 2 (not quite done but getting there). This is what will be in there: All eight minor factions. The Guardian sovereign The Tyrant sovereign Lots and lots of gameplay enhancements across the board The Minor Factions Minor factions in Sorcerer King interact with you purely from conversations. It’s not a trade screen ala GalCiv, FE, Civilization, etc. I...
It’s almost over The world is on the brink of ruin. King Galor sits on the last piece of farmable land. The shadow has crept right to his door step. On this map, the shadow lands have crept right to your doorstep. The rest of the world is ruined. Hope through magic But not all is lost. For Galor has the ability to revive land. He must save up his mana, revive the land and build on it. You have a spell that will revive the...
Greetings! HOLY COW! Things are coming along great! And much of the reason for that is you. We’ve gotten a huge amount of really constructive feedback from the community. Anyone who doubts the usefulness of “Early Access” needs to be sent to the Sorcerer King and/or Stardock forums. Your wish is my command: UNREST! We got a lot of requests to bring Unrest back in some form. But we wanted to do it in a way that connected it tightly to the overall game. So here’s h...