Songs of Conquest - Development update #37

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Spaceman
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The latest development update for Songs of Conquest which some compare to Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

Hello, both old and new friends! These last few weeks have been a thrilling ride to say the least. As most of you will know by now: We released a gameplay reveal trailer at the PC Gaming Show during E3. The feedback has been beyond our wildest dreams. Rock Paper Shotgun called it "one of the prettiest games at E3" and one Kotaku writer admitted to "losing his shit" over the game. As if that wasn't enough, the organizers of E3 gave our humble indie game an award, naming it the most anticipated game from the PC Gaming Show! So yeah, pretty stoked about it all. The wishlists are growing daily and we hope that you will be as excited as we are when you finally get to play it! If you haven't wishlisted the game yet, please take the time to do it on Steam, GOG, or EGS. It doesn't pay our bills but it feeds our vanity.



Italian Spartacus is a streamer and Youtuber that was really impressed with our trailer. Not sure if we can live up to his high expectations, but we'll try!

And speaking of playing the game. Some of you know that we currently have a small closed Alpha going and we are getting some great feedback. There are still a lot of things to work on, but it is clear that we are on the right path. It feels great to finally be able to let one hundred lucky gamers try the game out, but we will also do more test rounds during the fall. So if you missed out this time, there will be more chances. In order to get notified, subscribe to our newsletter or join our Discord server.

The team has been busy with development and despite E3 the pace hasn't slowed down. As you might know, we have a few different teams that focus on different parts of the game. So let's start out with team tech, who pretty much does all the heavy feature coding. Our lead programmer, Niklas, has been adding a bunch of new features to the level editor. A lot of quality-of-life features, such as preview-images of map entities as well as tooltips with explanations before you place objects in the level editor. He also found Patrik's old island generator code that we used a couple of years ago. Niklas has now modified it to work with the current version of the game and added it as a way to generate a more interesting starting point for new levels in the level editor.



Checkboxes galore! Niklas loves to add functionality to the level editor whenever he needs some relaxed coding time.

[...]
Thanks Farflame!





More information.
 
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I've been following this since last year and this is top of my most-wanted list. The pixel art looks incredible and the game design seems to strike a great mix of an homage to earlier HoMMs while also having one foot in more modern ideas too. Can't wait!!
 
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Unlike SSIGuy, I know very little about this, yet I'm eager to know more. Mixing the classic formulas with some of the improvements that have happened since sounds like a stellar mixture that just might leave these folks with a true hit on their hands! I look forward to the release.
 
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Everything I've seen would suggest this could be a truly great game. The only real downside is that they are a very small team and so progress has been somewhat slow. I think they had been promoting the coming of an alpha for almost a year before it finally launched. So hopefully this will still launch in 2022.
 
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I don't like the pixel art, and wish they had just went with high-res sprites instead, but I do think it looks really good otherwise. I've been following it on Steam since the last newsbit here. I'm hoping they release a demo at some point.
 
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I tend to avoid demos for the most part, yet were one to pop up for this project, I'd likely check it out, just to be certain on a few key aspects.
 
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I don't like the pixel art, and wish they had just went with high-res sprites instead, but I do think it looks really good otherwise.

Well, one other thing I really appreciate is that they didn't do the UI in blocky pixels. I like seeing the nice, refined, thematic and easy-to-read UI in combination with the pixel art. I've seen too many games also do the UI in a pixel-style and aften it makes it too difficult to read and use.
 
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Well, one other thing I really appreciate is that they didn't do the UI in blocky pixels. I like seeing the nice, refined, thematic and easy-to-read UI in combination with the pixel art. I've seen too many games also do the UI in a pixel-style and aften it makes it too difficult to read and use.

Yeah, they didn't overdo it at least. Some games (Mechajammer comes to mind) are so pixelated that it's hard for me to even tell what I'm looking at sometimes. For me, that only adds to eye strain which makes the experience even worse.
 
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Looks very appetizing! Lots of attention to detail: excellently animated units, gorgeous spells and the surprisingly good looking Raise Undead spell.
Its hard to pick at something at this point.

That physically hex-tiled battlescape rendered "in 3D" looks very PROPER!!

Has excellent weapon-hit feedback - knocking units BACKWARDS physically: the critical user-satisfaction feature I was yip-yapping about here and on RPGCodex for years!

Gorgeous overworld map look. I quickly bookmarked this game!!
 
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