The tactical RPG Darktide is still in development:

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!

We’ve been working extremely hard preparing our next major build of Darktide for testing, and we’re hoping to have it ready quite soon, once the holidays are over. It has taken a lot longer than originally planned, as we fund development of the game by doing a lot of contract work, so our time has been split between projects. Our original plan was to move into full time development during the summer months, but we had much more work than anticipated, although it has built us a nice buffer for now. The good news is that over the last month we have ramped up our schedule, and development has been progressing at a much faster pace.

Porting our code over to the Unity engine went very smoothly, and the vast majority of bugs have now been worked out. Right now we’re cleaning a lot of the AI and campaign systems that were still duct taped together using legacy code. Once those tasks are complete we’ll be in an absolutely perfect spot on a technical level, and we’ll be able to start building in features that we’re currently missing.

While that was happening there has been a massive amount of work done on the game design and dynamic campaign, and the game has a much better overall feel. The story arcs are much more coherent, the world feels much more alive, and the entirety of the dialogue has been completely rewritten from scratch. We also tested to see what a shared co-op campaign mode would feel like, if it’s something that we can afford to do, and some really great ideas that came out of that work. We’ve even integrated some of them into single player mode already.

From everyone here at Creoterra, we hope that you have a wonderful holiday season, and we’ll see you shortly with a pretty massive update!

If you’d like to follow our development be sure to follow us on facebook and twitter to be updated when part two is posted!

Joe Creoterra annouced that a major milestone has been reached for the tactical RPG Empyrios: Prophecy of Flame:

Wow getting this major build ready has been much more work than I had originally anticipated, but we're finally rounding the corner and checking off the majority of tasks for this milestone. Over the last month it seemed like there were a billion and one changes happening at exactly the same time, and it's all over the place... art, UX, code, design, writing, you name it... so at times it was quite frustrating to say the least!

It's a pretty important build for us, as it not only brings everything together, but it's our first time showcasing our polished art and UX/design decisions. We've wanted to cut a trailer and gameplay videos for quite a long time, but we just couldn't afford to make such a major time investment until we were truly happy with the game and what we were showing. We're finally in a place where we've locked down our UX, aesthetics, and design and so we just recently started production on our trailer, turning storyboards into visuals, so I'm really excited about that. [...]

Overview of the game:

A tide of darkness has swept across the lands of Aeloria, sewing seeds of discord in it's wake. Clans are locked in a battle for power and supremacy as the kingdoms wage war over the precious resource auralite, rare crystals that have been infused with the power of the Mägi.

Empyrios is a tactical strategy RPG set in the fantasy world of Aeloria. Ally with a faction and recruit your clan from among the eight major races that inhabit the realm. Each one of your soldiers can be fully customized, and they have powerful abilities distinct to their class.

Battle through the dynamic campaign from the perspective of either faction, with the story being different every time depending on your choices. Or you can take your army online to clash with enemies, vying to become the true champion. War is here. Are you ready?