September 2020 Update - Chapter 1 Alpha roll out

Dear backers,

It's only August 29th! Why am I posting early?

Turns out I have been putting off business travel to Europe all summer, and I can't put it off any longer. On Monday, I will be attempting to leave the country and head overseas to Europe and the UK. I have been reading a lot of blogs and reddit posts on travelers who had legitimate purposes for travel, but have been denied, so I'm giving my self a 50/50 chance.

Regardless, if everything goes to plan, I will be in the air on the 1st, and unless WiFi is super consistent I wont have a chance to post at the normal time.

For this update, I'm actually doing a full play through as I write this. The engineers released a new build last night. So far Mission 1 has gone smoothly. But in Mission 2 (War Summit), something different happened. All of the enemy units on the dias decided to come down the right hand ramp and attack my main Mercenary unit (Rime) over there. I've played this mission a gazillion times, and run the same strategy, where Rime takes out 3 units on the left one at a time as they can reach him. This time, he got swarmed including one of 2 Automatanks, so I pulled back and accidentally discovered an amazing little choke point. All the enemy units got backed up behind a smaller microbot, so they couldn't attack, and then Sirena came over and area nuked the whole lot!

Join the Unsung Story Discord

Just another reminder that you can get on our Discord to chat about the game here: https://discord.gg/fhfvH4x.

As we continue to roll out builds to backers, we'll be online there chatting and listening to feedback. There is already an impressive unsung-feedback channel where some of our higher level backers posted their thoughts on the First Playable build they got in June.

I'm in Mission 3 now. I'm having flashbacks to my complete wipe out the last time I played. I got over confident and ran my go-to strategy of holding the center lane, while I had units sneak along the left. But without the Guardian unlocked, it horribly backfired as I got pinned down, ran out of potions, and lost all but one unit.

General Update on Progress

Development went very well this month, and we made our goal of completing work on the Chapter 1 Alpha. Internally, we define Alpha as feature complete, where every system can be demonstrated as working but missing content. So for this month's progress, when I say a feature is done, it is, but it might still be missing imagery, cinematics, or other items.

Here is the general update:

• The game feels more and more like a finished game now. The full game flow is in when you start including Character Customization for your main character, Rime, and each time you complete a mission, you are taken back to the world map. This now allows you to see all the missions you have completed and go back and replay them properly instead of through the placeholder screen we had in the Early Playable.
• Full progression is in and instead of the scripted units you had at the beginning of the Early Playable (1 Mercenary, 1 Physician, and 1 Guardian), you actually start with a fully generated set of units. Right from Mission 1, you now have to make a choice of what units to use, which will affect your strategy on leveling up jobs.
• All 7 missions have been in and playable for about a month now. But lots of cinematic updates, dialog, and flow polish. They each have such a unique feel depending on objectives, weather, and time of day. No one environment feels like any other.
• You can really feel the difficulty go up between missions. The units get much stronger now with more health and more abilities. Even the difference between Mission 1 and the enemies that show up in Mission 3 is palpable.

Whew! Did much better on Mission 3 this time. Definitely don't take this mission for granted. You really have to watch how the enemy units split and use choke points to hold off multiple enemies while tricking them into standing in front of the vents as much as possible for free damage. For an escape mission, I find it's not worth sticking around to fight the enemy Mercenaries because they have so much health compared to my ability to do damage. And if you're going to risk a unit, don't risk Rime or Sirena.

• The Harmony Skill System and UI is in on the battle screen. It's fun seeing musical notes show up as each unit does their action.
• The Crescendo System is in, so units charge up their special attacks during combat, and can unleash it once the bar is full. Rime's "Power Cleave" is a cone of damage.
• Access to the Hub is now unlocked properly during Chapter 1, which means you can level up all 6 playable jobs and their abilities as you gain experience. I'll show off one of the new jobs at the end of this update.
• Itemization just made it in along with our in-game merchant. We only have a new Short Sword available in-game right now, I think there is only the art for 1 weapon tier upgrade left to complete for all the Chapter 1 job items.
• Recruiting new units is in, so if you have the gold, then you can hire units that are closer in level to help you.
• Lots of polish on VFX and cinematics.

Visited the Hub after Mission 3. Did a full round of job upgrades for my primary 3 units - most of which are now Level 3 - and bought my first upgraded Short Sword and equipped it on Rime and my second Mercenary.

Jumping into Mission 4, which is a bit intimidating when you first get in. It's a an out of control, fiery protect mission with a larger map to manage, and the player gets to control 5 units with another 2 friendly units helping.

Rollout of Chapter 1 Alpha/Beta

We spent this last week heavily discussing how we want to roll out the Alpha and Beta for Chapter 1.

Right now there are two big blockers: Art and Bugs.

Even though we're aiming at Alpha which is focused on functionality, there is some art that I'm asking the team to complete before we release this build. That's mainly so I don't have to NDA anyone or worry about potentially awkward looking screenshots or streams getting posted to the Internet. It's going to take us 2 weeks to finish the art pieces.

For bugs, we started full Quality Assurance (QA) on the completed Chapter 1 build all last week. We have a little over 75 mechanical defects logged now without including any content that needs to be replaced or finished for Beta. Again, I need the build to be stable and playable before we start having backers jump in.

With that in mind, the plan is to do a continuous roll out as Chapter 1 gets finished. Here is the working plan right now:

• The week of September 14th is our target to release the Chapter 1 Alpha to the same 600 top tier backers for feedback. If you backed at $165 or higher and you still haven't redeemed the Steam key we sent, please send an email to support@gamersfirst.com.
• We will expand the Alpha down a couple tiers if everything is going well on the week of September 28th. These will be all new keys that we are sending out, so please make sure your BackerKit emails are up to date.
• And so on. The team will be working continuously on the Beta build as we go, so it's possible by the time the early $20 backers get their keys in October, it will be the full Beta version.

Easiest way to get help or check status this month will be on Discord. I'll try to post updates from Europe as new builds go up.

Finished Mission 4. Despite the difficult first impression, this one seems a bit easy. Back in the Hub - so close to my Level 5 unlocks. Switching both Rime and another unit to Guardian primary with Mercenary secondary.

The opening to Mission 5 is pretty epic featuring a named enemy unit. Another larger map, but this time it's a straight up fight with a variety of enemy types. I haven't played this one enough times to come up with a strategy, except that Guardians are ideal for crowd management. Shame I didn't think to switch primaries on my Mercenaries one mission earlier, because I don't have Provoke yet.

Art Sneak Peek

I'm always on the lookout for cool bits that I can show off without giving away any spoilers, and admittedly I spoiled some of these over Discord. But here those and more art sneak peeks.

The Elementalist

I thought I would start by showing the Elementalist in-game. This job's design has shifted around a bit. They are from the School of Mana, so they have a bit of an Asian feel to them. I like this shot from a rainy level where the ground is a bit more watery and shiny.

Finished Mission 5. The enemy damage gets crazy on some turns because there are so many of them - including an Archer. Didn't so so well on this one. Sirena died multiple times and had to be revived.

Back to the Hub. Swapped a unit to my first Elementalist.

Started Mission 6 and the intro setup is fun. More unique battle in a fun location, and I'm really having to make good choices on which units to bring into the battle.

Ooops. My Elementalist is super squishy. Nearly lost him in the first round.

Rock falling VFX

For those that saw the Early Playable, there is a sequence that happens in Mission 3 which was clearly missing a visual affect. Here is how that will look when rocks fall and open a hole in the ceiling.

Finished Mission 6. It's definitely a little buggy at the end, but the outro storyline and cinematic moment is one of my favorites so far.

Went back to the Hub to unlock my first Archer, and realized I needed to keep one of my initial units a Mercenary the entire time. I moved two of my units to Guardians too soon, and then started leveling a third Mercenary, but he's one level short.

Starting the last mission in Chapter 7.

A Mysterious unit

For the last set of sneak peeks, I'm going to show off a special type of unit in the game. I wont give the backstory on these guys, because, you know.

Spoilers.

But I think they came out super cool.

And that wraps up my play through.

Done with Mission 7. The story bits are fantastic. Gameplay had some pretty bad bugs, but this is the mission we finished most recently. We have two weeks to polish that up. I never got my Archer unlocked. Might go back and replay some missions just to play around.

Regardless, I am looking forward to getting this in your hands.

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Saturday.

As always, I'll be back next month for another update.

Sincerely, Matthew Scott