Legends of Amberland II platforms and date decided
The next instalment of the Amberland series comes to Steam, GOG and Nintendo Switch in 2023!
In the last month I was signing papers, negotiating, discussing schedules and planning stuff. So, here it is, the release plan of Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees.
– The game comes to Steam (PC). Store link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2110840/Legends_of_Amberland_II_The_Song_of_Trees/
– The game comes to GOG (PC). Store link: https://www.gog.com/game/legends_of_amberland_ii_the_song_of_trees
– The game is basically guaranteed to come to Nintendo Switch (console). I have signed the letter of intent with Pineapple Works, the guys behind the excellent port of the prequel, to port and publish the game on Nintendo Switch. So, based on my prior experience with them, I would say there will be no problems.
– The game might be ported to other consoles as well. It’s being examined if it’s feasible technically and financially, so maybe. In case the game were to be ported to additional consoles it would be done after the release.The planned date of the release is 2023. It’s not decided yet if this will be a simultaneous launch on all platforms or maybe PC version would be done first. Not sure yet. Similarly, it’s not decided yet to which languages the game will be localized yet (but English, German and French localizations are guaranteed) and if the localization will be ready upon release or as a patch later. Still, all of those (Steam, GOG, Nintendo Switch in at least 3 languages) are planned to be concluded by the end of 2023.
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees - All News
Monday - December 25, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Gameplay
Space Game Junkie checked out Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees:
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees - Ultimate Magic and Wizardry
Tuesday - December 05, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Release Day
The dungeon crawler Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees will be released today:
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees
Overview:
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is a classic western RPG inspired by the games from the 90s like Might & Magic, Wizardry, Ultima, the Gold Box series and others. Using the classic first-person perspective, over grid movement, turn-based system to travel in an open world with fast travel options and a quick combat.You lead a party of 7 adventurers, manually assembled or pre-made, on an epic adventure to fight the evil which lurks in Amberland. It's light, fairy tale, epic, heroic and slightly humorous. It does not take tons of hours to complete or require an endless grind to progress. Basically, it's a love letter from the 90s, the golden era of RPGs.
Notable features:
- First person perspective, 90 degree rotation, over grid movement (like in the 90s).
- Turn-based (both combat and exploration).
- Party-based (7 heroes, either predefined or manually assembled upon new game).
- Fast paced combat, especially blazing fast against much weaker enemies.
- Quick travel to reduce backtracking.
- Easy inventory management with separate personal equipment encumbrance system and an infinite magic bag of carrying for items not equipped at the moment.
- Open world with a big overworld to explore.
- Quests (including both main storyline quests and side quests).
- Rich world lore (spanning between all games of the series, but no knowledge of prior games required).
Technicalities:
The game was designed to look and feel like one of the old games while working flawlessly on modern machines, especially on very high resolutions. It has very low hardware requirements and should run on even very old machines.About the relation to the prequel:
The Legends of Amberland titles can be played in any order you wish. They share the same world and lore (historical events) but each has a separate and self-contained story. There might be some mild references to events in the previous titles of the series, but more like a flavor, so it does not hinder the ability to play those in any order.
Wednesday - November 08, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Release: December 5
The dungeon crawler Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees will be released on December 5:
Release date set to 5th December 2023!
Release date of Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees!
The day many of you were waiting for is near. I’m happy to inform that Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is going to be released on PC (Steam and GOG) on the 5th December 2023. The game will be also ported to consoles (Nintendo Switch and XBOX) somewhere in 2024. At the launch day the game is going to be localized to English, German, French and Polish. Further languages will be most likely added shortly after the PC launch.
[...]
Thanks Kordanor!
Tuesday - July 18, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - New Features
Some new features are planned for Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees:
New features planned for Legends of Amberland II
First, I wanted to stress out the design philosophy. There are no changes for the sake of changes. The game overall feels and plays the same. The changes are not revolutionary but evolutionary. Only features that actually improve the game, without destroying everything for the sake of novelty, were added.
New features in the sequel
The list below contains only features that are already implemented and tested. Those are not all the changes. But what is listed is guaranteed to be in the game.Item suffixes
The whole items system was redesigned. Now items can have suffixes (like "Shield {of Fire Resistance}") which greatly increases the diversity of items. In addition there are 3 quality tiers for items (so "Shield {of Fire Resistance} [II]" is better than "Shield {of Fire Resistance} [I]", even though those share the same set of abilities). Also, the random treasures generator was rebalanced to give more equal ratio of various items. And the last thing, because people will ask, yes, there will be magic staves to be found.Shops
There are 4 types of shops now. Regular shops which provide trivial items. Guild shops which provide random set of items, Pawn shop where you can sell and buy back unneeded items and Magic shop where they accept crystals only. Shops have separate stock on a per town basis and further towns have higher tier shops (better and more expensive items).Resistances system
Now resistances are not 0/1 but are value based. So, as the monsters become tougher you need to obtain higher resistance values (with extra options for temporary boosts). Next, Acid was replaced with Sorcery which makes it more thematic and some resistances were merged (for a total of 8 resistances).Towns as separate locations
Widely requested yet quite a simple thing, towns are now not as a menu but as full fledged maps you can explore.Skills
There are party skills and trainers scatted around the world which teach such skills. Those provide nice bonuses and an excuse to explore the world even further.New dungeon features
Extra features in dungeons like illusionary walls, doors locked by keys, etc.More complex connections between locations
It might be not instantly visible to you as a player, but it's very important for designing maps for me. Now there are two way exits from locations and inter locations portals. This allows me as a designer to make interesting topography like you enter a cave in one place and exit it in a completely different place on the overworld or you enter a portal in a tower and exit inside a dungeon on the other side of the map deep below ground.Fountains
Wells function the same as in the predecessor (healing), but fountains were redesigned and now grant temporary bonuses (resistances, attributes, etc).Griffin travel rules change
There are subtle, yet important changes to the way travel via griffins work. For example, now griffin travel takes time, which effectively means you can not use it to go and visit every single spot with free buffs (because first temporary buffs will expire after a several griffin runs). Also, griffins can no longer land on lava or desert, making traversing dangerous terrain much more tricky.Resting rules adjustment
You can no longer rest on lava, which combined with new griffin rules means that lava terrain becomes a real challenge. Oh yes, also now you can rest in inn without using food by paying the fee directly (which was requested like by everyone).Map shows a tiny minimap with overworld
Now you can see the whole shape of the overworld at a glance by looking at a tiny map which was added on the full map. Very handy, you will love. Trust me.Field of view extended (unfogging minimap)
Another small, yet highly requested feature. Now you don't need to physically enter every single tile, surrounding will auto mark as "seen". What's best, the information what you visited physically is not lost since a tile is displayed differently if you visited it or merely saw it.Magical barriers
Those were rebalanced and divided into three grades (with distinct graphics so you can clearly see the danger level of each barrier) now posing a much greater threat. Basically, those can wipe out an unprepared party and are used in locations to slow down your progress or even make you turn back. Lightning resistance is of high value now since it can greatly reduce the magical barriers damage. Overall, now magical barriers are a serious threat which will make you reconsider how you explore dungeons.Small adjustments that go well together
There are other small changes which bring synergy, for example drinking from fountains takes one hour which combined with the added time for griffin travel and the fact that temporary buffs expire at midnight let you use griffin to visit 2-3 fountains before an important fight but not to visit any number of those. At the same time drinking from wells (healing) takes mere minutes so it can be used as an effective local healing in a series of fights without the fear of expiring party bonuses.Many small improvements
There are many other small things not mentioned here. Additional art assets, animations for portals, etc.Possible other features
Since only things that are already implemented and tested were listed above it means there are decent odds those are not all the changes that will end up in the final game.
Wednesday - June 07, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Demo available
A demo for Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is now available on Steam.
Monday - March 27, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Progress Report
Silver Lemur Games is making progress with Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees:
Progress report – Legends of Amberland II – 2023, Q1
Overview
This is a very unusual project for me. It’s not the first sequel I made but the first sequel to an RPG. Which makes a tons of difference. Typically (read always) the bottleneck is coding. You track bugs, implement features, etc. But with a sequel to an RPG it is a totally different story. RPGs are content driven, so, once you have a solid code base not that much changes actually in the programming department. In short, this project is made quite differently to all my previous projects.
To take this specific situation into account, development was divided into two projects. Project “A” which is about technical improvements (coding) and project “B” which is about making the actual game (content). The first is made using a mix between evolutionary prototyping and a research project methodology, the second using the old classic waterfall model.
What is done
Again, the unusual thing is that a lot was done before the project officially started. I ordered art assets and music from contractors, so they were experimenting and producing some content without my direct involvement. So, quite a lot was ready before it even started. Which is super nice.
The other nice thing is the source code, which is like 95% (probably) identical to the first Amberland. I was polishing the original source code for a few years, in extend beyond the simple support of an existing game, in order to keep the code as similar as possible for as long as possible. So, actually, art of the coding for the sequel was done before the project officially started. Note that 5% difference might sound like not a lot but it’s actually quite significant (to put it into a perspective bananas share 44.1% of genome with humans, yup). Basically, the game was extended and polished before it started (note for example the full gamepad support, dozens of tiny fixes, save system redesign, etc) and part of it was done in order to speed up future porting to other platforms.
So, what actually was done after the project was officially announced? Well, first all experimental assets were evaluated and it was decided what will be put into the game, analysis of the first game was made (part of it was listed in other posts) and the coding started. The aim, and the top priority, was to produce better tools for me, to speed up development. A big part of it was reimplementation of the map structure to abstract entities (now you don’t put “tile with a tree” but abstract “tree” shape of variant #3). Which might sound boring and unimportant but is a huge help, since it allows a lot flexibility and convenience for me as a designer. The second priority was the editor. It was redesigned and simplified (and even there was a budget to add some frills), now I have even a cutting edge feature called “Undo” which is super fun since it’s the first time even any of my editor has it!
All right, lets talk a bit about features that are visible to you as a player. The code of map navigation was extended and now it allows things like “alternative entries to locations”, “mixed indoor/outdoor locations”, “portals leading inside other locations”. Which allows some interesting topography and connections between locations to be made. New tile types were introduced (like farmlands), stationary NPCs, more huts and more other things. Some extra dungeon features like doors locked by keys, illusionary walls, etc.
The big thing which was redesigned was resistances system and items. Now resistances have values (for example: Ring of Fire Resistance +10, Ring of Fire Resistance +20) and items can have suffixes “Helmet {of something}”. In the first game all items were hand crafted, which was a noble effort which proven not so great. Now I switched to predefined hand crafted unique items and semi-randomised regular items. Basically it means higher variation of items you find. As a bonus, because now I had more time freed up I could spend it implementing extra item properties (like “Invisibility” or “Heroism”) which were put as item suffixes. The random loot table was redesigned as well to provide a fixed chance for a certain item type (for example now 30% of loot will be weapons, regardless of how many items were “defined”) which means now various item types will have more or less equal chance of dropping so there should not be overabundance of certain items. And yes, because some people will ask, this also means extra staves for mages, actually there are now three basic types of staves so you even will have a choice what kind of magical staff to equip.
In addition to all those features I half made the first (starting) continent to see and test all those new features, I have a rough shape of the overworld map and the core storyline was told to my son before going to bed several times (several variants and iterations). Oh yes, also a small alpha test is in progress, so I can get early feedback and reevaluate what works and what not.
And some other things which are not listed here.
Summary
The project “A” is coming to an end soon, I think. Editor is almost done (just a few features I wish to have before I start to churn regular content). All critical/major systems which were to be redesigned are implemented or almost implemented. So soon I should be ready to start project “B”, and in the meantime or afterwards I will probably spend some time to implement some extra stuff.
Overall, the progress is good. Actually, when the core development is not about coding it’s almost boring, because nothing breaks… Before this project I never realized how expensive and troublesome the coding part is. It turns out that if you have a solid code base and no major features to code it is actually kind of like a walk in the part… at last that’s how it feels right now (or maybe that’s just my impression because my previous project was super feature heavy Stellar Monarch 2, so it’s a striking contrast), we will see. So far, everything is going fine and I see no danger of exceeding the 2023 deadline (actually I would unofficially speculate it should be ready somewhere this summer).
Friday - February 03, 2023
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Design Philosophy
Silver Lemur Games published a blog post about what to expect from Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees:
The design philosophy of sequel to Legends of Amberland
This is an overview of the design direction for Legends of Amberland II. It does not list exact features, but more like design principles on a more abstract level. Probably this would be most interesting to game designers and developers than regular players, but who knows.
Overall, it’s a direct sequel, like 90% code will be reused. If you liked the first game there are extremely high odds you will like that one too, if you hated the predecessor you will hate that one as well. But if you liked the first one but found it lacking there are decent odds the parts you did not like would be improved. As a principle, it’s an evolution, not a revolution. It will be basically a very similar game with various improvements, adjustments, slight changes in the design principles and other changes, but the nature and premise will stay the same.
Lessons learned from the first Legends of Amberland
While I was reading various articles, reviews and forum posts about Amberland I noticed an interesting thing. The things I had fun to make were valued very high by the players, while things that I did not enjoyed making were valued as poor or mediocre. Take as an example the overworld map (which I had blast making) vs underground levels (which I did not enjoy making that much). Overworld was evaluated as super fun to travel while dungeons were frequently evaluated as merely passable. It applies to other aspects of the game as well. Which lead me to a decision to alter the development process by adding an additional criteria, which is “do I have fun making it?”. Of course this would not apply to to UI, bug fixing, technical stuff, which obviously has to be done and it’s always tiresome and boring. But for the gameplay related things I would add such step and I feel it should result in a better game.
Another observation, all design goals I wanted to achieve were actually achieved, but… Sometimes, the cure was worse than the disease. For example “make shop items useful and make them decently priced so there is a decision to be made what should be bought” was achieved, everyone wants to buy the additional Girdle of Carrying and its price is far from trivial even in the late game. So, yes, I was able to “fix” the long lasting problems of basically any other RPG… but it resulted in side effects that negated the whole gain. Basically, a non trivial amount of players was simply sad they can not afford everything (which was the goal mind you, perfectly executed). Therefore, I decided to more carefully examine my design goals, especially if those were contrary to classic RPG design choices in other games. It made me realize that many, very stupid at a glance, limitations and cliches of RPGs are there for a reason, usually an important one and not visible at the surface. Definitely more care needs to be taken when it comes to innovation and wild ideas on this field.
Story of the first Amberland had two strong pillars (world lore and characters) and one weak pillar (plot). Lore was evaluated as super consistent, logical and with an excellent mood, not a single complain, a lot of praise, no alteration here needed at all. Characters (NPCs) were frequently valued highly for their lines and personality, no complains, can carry on with the same style. Plot was the part that many people evaluated as mediocre, some even as poor. While there were no terrible ratings of the plot there definitely is a problem with that aspect of the story. I was thinking about the reasons for a longer while, so I could made whole separate post about it, but the short analysis is this. The plot was too complex and too subtle (most people did not understood it, especially the relation between the spell of forgetfulness and the crown) and therefore it was classified as cliche (yes, not something one could guess is even possible). Next problem was related to lack of the final boss, which was confusing (yep, there was no final boss in first Amberland, the one you meet at the end is not the final boss), also environmental storytelling was lacking. The interesting thing is that when I inquired players and asked “what you think was the real story behind all those events” they did guess it right, despite at first claiming something else, so it’s not that it was too subtle or confusing… Anyway, definitely a different approach to plot is needed.
Many other small things. The list could go on much longer, there are other smaller observations like the Great Desert perceived unbalance, lack of magical staves, etc. These all were taken into consideration and many (maybe most?) of those are planned to be addressed in some form or another.
[...]
Thanks Kordanor!
Thursday - November 24, 2022
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Platforms and Date Decided
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees have announced that the game is intended for 2023 and will be releasing on Steam, GOG, and Nintendo Switch.
Monday - November 07, 2022
LoA II: The Song of Trees - Announced
The dungeon crawler Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees has been announced:
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees
Overview:
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is a classic western RPG inspired by the games from the 90s like Might & Magic, Wizardry, Ultima, the Gold Box series and others. Using the classic first-person perspective, over grid movement, turn-based system to travel in an open world with fast travel options and a quick combat.You lead a party of 7 adventurers, manually assembled or pre-made, on an epic adventure to fight the evil which lurks in Amberland. It's light, fairy tale, epic, heroic and slightly humorous. It does not take tons of hours to complete or require an endless grind to progress. Basically, it's a love letter from the 90s, the golden era of RPGs.
Notable features:
- First person perspective, 90 degree rotation, over grid movement (like in the 90s).
- Turn-based (both combat and exploration).
- Party-based (7 heroes, either predefined or manually assembled upon new game).
- Fast paced combat, especially blazing fast against much weaker enemies.
- Quick travel to reduce backtracking.
- Easy inventory management with separate personal equipment encumbrance system and an infinite magic bag of carrying for items not equipped at the moment.
- Open world with a big overworld to explore.
- Quests (including both main storyline quests and side quests).
- Rich world lore (spanning between all games of the series, but no knowledge of prior games required).
Technicalities:
The game was designed to look and feel like one of the old games while working flawlessly on modern machines, especially on very high resolutions. It has very low hardware requirements and should run on even very old machines.About the relation to the prequel:
The Legends of Amberland titles can be played in any order you wish. They share the same world and lore (historical events) but each has a separate and self-contained story. There might be some mild references to events in the previous titles of the series, but more like a flavor, so it does not hinder the ability to play those in any order.
Information about
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of TreesDeveloper: Silver Lemur Games
SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: Dungeon Crawler
Combat: Turn-based
Play-time: Unknown
Voice-acting: Unknown
Regions & platforms
Internet
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Released: 2023-12-05
· Publisher: Silver Lemur Games