There is currently a steep discount of 90% off for Legends of Eisenwald until October 12th on Steam.

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Legends of Eisenwald is an adventure game with tactical battles, RPG and strategy elements. Take the lead of a small feudal army and try to defend your right to survive in this ruthless medieval world.

The mysterious lands of old Germany are waiting for you - it's a land where the superstitions of the time have come to life. This isn’t a fantasy game. There are no elves or dragons here. There are only people - and their passions, sins and fears that often take a tangible form. Which path will you choose? Live according to your conscience? Or live by power and might? Or will you live by justice? And what is your justice, really?

Game features

• A unique and dynamic combat system - each move is also an attack
• The ability to individually equip *each* fighter in your army
• A large selection of weapons, spells and abilities, including the option to use mounted units
• Diverse upgrade trees, and each unit level up provides cosmetic changes
• An intriguing non-linear story
• A distinctive game world without common fantasy cliches
• Over 50 hours of gameplay within the game. A main campaign consisting of eight chapters plus two additional scenarios.
• A beautiful symphonic soundtrack in a medieval style
• An accompanying Scenario Editor with the full set of developer tools

A new standalone addon for Legends of Eisenwald will be released tomorrow: Bastard

Bastard Release Trailer

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The DLC Road to Iron Forest and a season pass for Legends of Eisenwald are now available:

Our story begins with the death of Gustav Platte, your father’s older brother. In this world, he was a strong and dour man, who had seen much of the world and partook in his fair share of sins. None will dare to guess what awaits him in the next world. Through the many festivities he participated in he never seemed to revel in them. His eyes held a heaviness only matched by the weight of his flail. Some joked that this heaviness suggested the man had passed through Iron Forest. And at times it was hard to say, whether they were jokes at all.

The tale begins with a death, but it will not be last before the story’s conclusion.

Gustav’s estate was divided in accordance with his will. Felsen Castle and the adjoining villages passed into your brother’s ownership. Other relatives partitioned the estate of Ludahof, the land and a fortune worth several thousand guldens. You, however, inherited just a sword and a small casket. You opened the latter to find two objects.

The one was a metal oak leaf similar in size to a real one. At first it seemed a decoration to you but you knew the difference between silver and steel. The edge pierced your hand and you wondered who would make a decoration that could wound? Curious, you scrutinized the leaf closer. The veins were were so thin, its folds and imperfections so true to life. The spots and the play of shading was unlike any engraving you had ever seen that there was no doubt in your mind that this was not made by a human hand…

The other object inside the casket was a map.

A while ago Forgottenlor offered to write a review about Legends of Eisenwald for RPGWatch, which we accepted gladly, given that he delivered very good work before. So here is his take on the game.

The quests in Legends of Eisenwald are thankfully quite varied, and many of the maps have a unique scenario, which helps keep the game interesting. The first map, which serves as a tutorial is fairly relaxed. Another map pushes you from one end to another at a frantic pace. Unfortunately, its not until one reaches the fourth map (about 9 hours into the game), that one arrives at the most interesting chapters of the game, which are larger, offer more possibilites, and more story choices. In some of these maps you are caught between warring factions, and eliminating one or more of these will not only be necessary for moving on, but will also result in subtle differences in late game scenarios. From finding „demons" in a mine for a mad nobleman, to deciding the fate of a witch, to digging up graves, to moving across a forest unseen, Legends of Eisenwald gives you a huge variety of tasks. Unfortunately a minority of these tasks can be quite annoying. Finding the enterance to a tower or the location of seven graves becomes a matter of patiently combing the map for the exact pixels which trigger the next part of the quest. And therein lies one of the logical problems of Legends of Eisenwald. Some quests seem to hold your hand more than you would like, while others are very vague about what they want you to do. Reading the quest log exactly and all of the tavern rumours is a great help most of time, but not all of the time.

Harrison Stewart (TechRaptor) has reviewed Legends of Eisenwald:

[...]

The medieval theme is done very well. Eisenwald is a country where there are political squabbles popping up between nobles, resulting in you being caught in the middle of conflict constantly. The game portrays nobles as selfish or greedy and often has them in competition with the Church, which is far from selfless. It does not shy away from trying to keep things accurate to the period, which greatly benefits the story by adding elements of backroom scheming to the quests the player finds themselves carrying out.

A great aesthetic choice the developers made was probably brought about due to having a smaller budget. When bringing up a screen to represent towns or side quests, the developers decided to have a drawn image represent the subject. Honestly I haven’t run into one I didn’t like.

[...]

Even though the game has plenty of flaws, Legends of Eisenwald isn’t bad. The not very compelling combat, which can be skipped with an auto-resolve button, is balanced by an intriguing story set in a well-made fantasy world. Simply put, Legends of Eisenwald focuses more on the world building aspect than the combat, and in an RPG, the world itself can be as important as the combat. If you plan on purchasing this game, make sure to keep that in mind.

Final Score: 65% Good

Summary : Legends of Eisenwald's main strength is in its story and world building. Though the combat is non-innovative and not very compelling, the low-fantasy theme, abundance of content, and well-built Machiavellian world make this game worth playing if you can get it on sale. Other languages the game is in: - French (though some things are missing according to the steam page) - Russian - German - Spanish - Belarusian (the company is from Belarus)

The first fan-made scenario for Legends of Eisenwald is available now in the workshop of Steam free of charge. The scenario is named Raubritters of Meerdrecht.

Your liege lord and suzerein Count Adelbrecht, son of Count Abel, has granted you the title of Baron of Meerdrecht. Unfortunately, the lands of the barony are plagued by a number of raubritters (robber knights) who have managed to settle in during the reign of the previous baron. Your predecessor Baron Jan was a sickly man, and bound to his deathbed. His inability to rule has allowed these raubritters to take several castles, from which they seek to suppress the local populace, and get fat and rich off of the land. The most troublesome of these raubritters holds a small fortified island in the middle of the Meer lake, which gives Meerdrecht its name.

Brett Todd (Gamespot) has reviewed Legends of Eisenwald - some snippets:

Legends of Eisenwald Review

Get out the beer and the lederhosen.

Legends of Eisenwald has just about everything except Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses on a church door. Developer Aterdux Entertainment has traded in the usual Dungeons & Dragons-influenced fantasy realm common to tactical role playing for a more realistic story and setting based on medieval Germany at around the time the Reformation was starting to annoy the popes. The concept brings a unique feel and an absorbing (if occasionally workmanlike) campaign to a been-there, done-that genre.

Nevertheless, the heart of Legends of Eisenwald is based on the same structure that has powered fantasy role-playing/tactical combat since the glory days of Heroes of Might and Magic. Differences between this game and traditional tactical fantasy role players seem rather superficial, at least at first. The three available Knight, Baroness, and Mystic character classes match up almost perfectly with the standard Warrior, Ranger, and Mage/Cleric found in standard swords-and-sorcery gaming. Both heroes and the mercenaries you employ level up and come with assorted skills, special upgrades, slots for a full range of gear and armor and weapons, and a range of stats for hit points, attack, willpower, and so forth. [...]

A few aspects of the design are somewhat problematic. Quests are not always spelled out clearly. At times this is good, as it promotes more exploration. At times this is bad, as you can get lost when a destination and/or the maps are too dark and cluttered with complicated terrain features. Some quest descriptions leave a lot to be desired, and locations are often given different names in quest dialogues from the maps. Also, be wary of bugs: I had the game crash to the desktop with exception errors on a few occasions, although generally the game was stable.

Visiting a virtual medieval Germany probably isn't at the top of the to-do list of any tactical RPGers, but maybe it should be. While Legends of Eisenwald is something of a grim, brutal experience much like the land in question back in the 15th century, the game is certainly a unique addition to a genre that has mostly settled into a high-fantasy comfort zone. Strong storytelling and sheer novelty make guiding Heinrich and his pals around the dark forests of old-time Deutschland enthralling...even if you do miss the magic missiles and elves every so often.

The Good:

• Atmosphere blends fantasy into real medieval Germany to create a unique game world
• Deep RPG elements and solid, if traditional, turn-based combat
• Absorbing storytelling
• Stylishly gloomy aesthetic

The Bad:

•  Quest instructions can be confusing
• Combat gets repetitive

Final Score: 7/10

James Storr (GENWire) talks about his first impressions playing Legends of Eisenwald:

Aterdux Entertainment were unknown to me upon sitting down to play Legends of Eisenwald, but after playing their new game for a few hours I decided to learn more about these promising Indie developers. 

They are based in Minsk, Belarus, and claim to have a team made up of fans of Old-School RPG and Strategy games, and this passion shows in their latest creation.

Legends of Eisenwald is at it core an RPG. Set in Old Germany, you take the lead of a small army and set out to defend your right to survive in this medieval setting. For my playthrough, I chose to play as Heinrich, a knight who returns to his homeland to find his family murdered and his kingdom plagued by evil mercenaries and betrayal of once loyal followers. 

I won't delve too much into the story, but it is safe to say that the narrative is rich and compelling. [...]

It is the exploration of your land, and the choices that you make, that really bring the strategy elements into focus. Alongside a compelling story, you must ensure that you are adequately equipped to take on the many enemies you will encounter on your journey. Upon entering a location, such as a village, you will be granted the opportunity to obtain new recruits for your army. You must select wisely when choosing these recruits, ensuring you have a fine balance of close-combat soldiers, ranged-attackers and support characters. Additionally, you can trade in these locations, ensuring that you buy the correct equipment for your army to maximise their effectiveness.       

Having a well equipped band of followers is all well and good. However, you must learn how to use them in order to succeed.  

Combat in Legends of Eisenwald is turn-based, with characters being placed on a grid. Each character gets a turn, in which they must initiate an attack or supportive action. Movement is restricted to attacking, so while you can't instruct your characters to move across the board independently, you can instruct them to move as part of an attacking action. The direction in which your player attacks can be chosen (when the distance to the nearby grid is the same), and so you must think carefully as to how your soldiers will approach their target in order to ensure a clear way through for your other soldiers' turn. [...]

The Codex has reviewed Legends of Eisenwald - some snippets:

Picking up a well-worn calling card, the protagonist of the story is on a vengeful warpath as he or she looks for those responsible in bringing down their dynasty. You can pick from three characters – a Knight (melee), Baroness (ranged), and Mystic (magic). Because your characters physically take part in the battles, who you choose can greatly shape how you end up playing the game. That is, after all, one of the subtler differences amongst these genre games: whether or not you, the play-character, physically take part in the battles. Unlike King’s Bounty, without actual spellcasters in your party, you will not be casting very many spells if you are not a spellcaster (read: very many is actually very none). Most of these characters have various ‘leveling paths’ that usually fall along the lines of empire management, army management, and character power-growth. For me, I chose the Knight as it was suggested to be the easiest and I’m a simpleton that likes to bash. Not only that, I also leveled him to be extra-bashy in the early game where he promptly served as a valuable extra-soldier instead of an anchor of ‘potential’ that the Mystic certainly is. With the character choice out of the way, you pretty much jump into the story which is structured by a series of scenarios.

[...]

Legends of Eisenwald is a pretty game in the sense that it is the cutest German girl in a small village. She would become just another face in the engulfing nature of a city, but here in the tiny hamlet her little hair-twisting and skirt-spinning pirouettes make her stand out. I’ve clearly no idea how to talk about graphics or even appraise them, but by my estimations it’s a good looking game. Polygon-wise the characters are detailed enough, textures give them a sense of physical presence, and animations are serviceable. I think the real standout are the maps themselves. They’re intricately made and I can imagine took a great deal of time to get just right. Castles rest in the midst of lakes, murky ponds help mudify the otherwise viridscapes, lots of ruins and rubble strewn about, windmills dot hills and fortresses are oft found tucked between mountains. Oh, and forests. Lots of forests. And copses and pockets of trees where forests used to be. Most maps tend to have one big central city – or two – surrounded by temples, medieval favelas, and black markets. About all of this scurry various lords, lieges, leech-sellers, smellsmocks, witches and their corollary dick-swingin’ ne’er do wells, all manner of peasantry run amuck, bandits, brigands, and thieving graduates, some sickly and poison moistened, the cursed and rabid, the cured and vapid, sellswords and poets selling words and plenty of peddlers, tramps, shamans, pagans, pariahs, necromantic practitioners to dizzy you with lore.

[...]

The game’s overall content is … quite a damn lot. Based on just how much you wish to read and do, the game provides a big altar on which to sacrifice your hours. Its combat system is unique enough that I don’t think one can get a proper handle on whether or not they like it without first just jumping in. Ultimately, Legends of Eisenwald is what I’d call an overall solid experience. Nothing particularly spectacular about it, but it’s playable. It works. To quote many game reviews: it’s fun if you’re into that kind of thing.

The Russian site Gamer-Info has reviewed Legends of Eisenwald -> Google Translation

Positive:

• Interesting Eisenwald-stories
  
• The atmosphere of the feudal Middle Ages
• Classic gameplay
• Development and equipment for each character in the army

Negative:

• Technical flaws

Final Rating: 4.3/5

Gonçalo Tordo (Tech-Gaming) has reviewed Legends of Eisenwald. A snippet:

At times, cosmetic themes and backdrops become so ingrained in a genre that even small variations are enough to set new entries apart from competitors. High-fantasy is perhaps the most common example, being often associated with RPGs and strategy games with integrated role-playing mechanics. In this regard, Legends of Eisenwald follows the age-old mantra that less is more. While its competitors provide increasingly elaborate spells, fantastical army units and unit designs, Legends of Eisenwald is content with stepping back and providing a visually grounded approach. Ironically, this makes it arguably more original than its peers.

This isn’t to say Legends of Eisenwald aims for realism, quite the contrary as it instead provides a low-fantasy world for players to explore. Magic exists but it’s based around antiquated superstition and how it would have influenced the world had it been real. Gamers will not face off against elves, orcs or lizardmen, but might instead meet a witch apt in sorcery or seek a priests offering divine protection. These themes are tied via a believable, medieval world closely mirroring Central and Eastern European feudal societies.

Unlike many of its contemporaries, Legends of Eisenwald is an RPG first and a strategy game second. Focus is placed solely on the main player character with no additional armies or heroes to tab into. Moreover, there are no randomly generated maps to engage in as you would expect to find in titles like Age of Wonders 3. Rather, players are given a campaign and two additional scenarios to choose from and must follow their stories to completion. Granted, players are often given dialog prompts to choose from, but they provide little variation. Worse still, the main plotline is often static, offering few if any meaningful branching paths. [...]

Release Day for Legends of Eisenwald:

Trailer:

Live action video:

Aterdux announced yesterday:

We expressed already our gratitude to all players who made possible development of our game and bought it on Early Access. But we think (and there is even a character in the game like that) that actions are more important than words. Therefore, we thank you all one more time and we are happy to announce that all who got the game on Early Access will receive as a gift extra content – map Road to the Iron Forest which is a prequel to the main campaing. This map is done already but not tested and not translated to other languages. We plan to add it to the game as DLC within the next few months.

Aterdux Entertainment released a new video about combat in the upcoming game Legends of Eisenwald:

Aterdux's Alexander Dergay has been interviewed by Gaming Nexus about Legends of Eisenwald.

Why did you decide to do a kickstarter for the game? What additional things did the the funding allow you to do?
We went to Kickstarter when we ran out of our modest funds after two years developing the game. So, looking for funding in this fashion didn't really allow us to do many additional things, it was more a matter of being able to continue work and finish the game. However, the successful campaign and a few reached stretch goals lead us to a few additional things - the story got richer since we employed our writer then full time, plus we were able to create a few bosses and special characters. The funds from Kickstarter lasted us 10 months but still it was a great help from our backers that really saved us and our project.

Alexander Dergay, Head of Development for Legends of Eisenwald at Aterdux Games, is streaming the game on Twitch. It has a hex grid! Hex grids give me life!

Legends of Eisenwald will be releasing on July 2.

In their last update Aterdux talked about character personalization:
How should it be done?

One of the interesting features of the next patch will be personalization. Each peasant, cleric or mercenary that you can hire will have its own name and special attributes. And, if the change in attributes is really significant, this unusual character will have a corresponding nickname in addition. In case, if someone will not like this randomization, there will be an option to turn it off.

Please let us know, how would you like to see personalization of characters in Legends of Eisenwald? We can’t promise that we will implement all of your ideas but we are surely curious to hear what you think.

Naomi Brown (Gaming Excellence) has written a preview - a snippet:

Legends of Eisenwald is an upcoming medieval based RPG with a few unique features that set it apart from other RPG's. To start with, you choose a hero, or Legend that you play as your main character. This person changes the main story a little and how other characters interact with you. They also change what abilities you have as a main character, whether you're a fighter, mage or archer. Once you've selected them you begin the main story and get to progress through the game.

The game has you completing regular RPG type missions; get the quest, go complete it, get reward. What's different about Legends of Eisenwald is how you go about completing the quests. You have a mini army of followers and mercenaries you bring around with you to complete these missions. Followers are people that you've picked up along the way and mercenaries are as advertised; people you pay daily. You have to pay an initial cost to pick up both. Once you have them, you can use their talents, either as brute muscle or as healers and support.

The release date for Legends of Eisenwald has been set to the 2nd of July. They also have a new cinematic trailer to celebrate this announcement.

After 5.5 years of development we are very excited to announce the Legends of Eisenwald release date! It will be available July 2 2015 (a few friends told us a year is a must here given our history). 

We want to say thank you to all of you for making this possible! Without your support and without gamers who bought our game in Early Access this game might not have materialized.

The history of making this video dates all the way back to 2012 when we were in the middle of our Kickstarter campaign. Our technical director and main visionary Nikolay Armonik thought that making a cinematic video was bound to attract a lot of attention to our campaign. He started working a lot and created a draft of the video but the scope of it was too much for our small team to handle, especially since this is not our profession. Ressa, our composer, composed a beautiful track and recorded a song based on Nikolay’s poem. The draft remained and we kept hoping we would finish it. Last spring we found an animation studio in Spain, Digital Mind (dgmind.com) and they were really excited to help us out. All characters in this video and many of the models and animations are from in-game assets. Fortunately for us, the folks at Digital Mind were able to use our assets which significantly lowered production costs.

Thanks HHR and Kordanor.

Aterdux Entertainment's next update for Legends of Eisenwald is about patch 0.994.

We prepared for you patch 0.994. Closed beta test participants will receive the full version, other players shortened so there will be no spoilers regarding not released chapters.

PC Gamer has the latest preview of Legends of Eisenwald this week. Overall the writer call it not quite the old-school RPG it seems to be, but it's still oddly engaging.

But what really polishes my sword is the way Eisenwald so powerfully evokes Darklands, the "realistic" Microprose RPG from 1992. Both games take place in medieval Germanic lands as they were envisioned by the people of the time: filled with great heroes, powerful clerics, mythical creatures, and boundless adventure awaiting those bold enough to seize the day. It's a superficial likeness, and they really aren't anything alike in terms of gameplay, but there are enough presentational similarities to ring the bell—and until a proper Darklands sequel comes along, I'll take what I can get.

That puts Legends of Eisenwald in a place where I can (and do) enjoy it, while not feeling entirely comfortable about actually recommending it to anyone. Even when it's ready for release, I suspect it will be one of those oddball European games that attracts a fiercely dedicated but relatively tiny audience; the Euro Truck Simulator of fantasy RPGs, perhaps. And right now, it's most definitely not ready for release. But I think I'm going to play it some more anyway.

Infinitron posted an updated preview of Legends of Eisenwald on the RPG Codex.

In summary, Legends of Eisenwald promises to be an intriguing title. I have a few concerns with it, such as the lack of tactical maneuvering in melee, and the question of whether the designers can really balance economic and decision-making challenges over the course of a thirty hour game. However, there is a lot of good here as well, and I'd say there's a good chance Aterdux might have a real gem on their hands. We'll find out for sure when the game is released.

Chalgyr's Game Room has a new preview for Legends of Eisenwald based on the latest beta version , and the site says fans of the King's Bounty will enjoy playing the game.

For fans of King's Bounty, there are a lot of similarities to be had here. You can pick a variety of soldiers to join your army, and you travel a mostly top-down landscape while interacting with other units and locations. There is the promise of a solid story and the foundation is quite enjoyable, appealing to someone like me that considers the RPG/strategy genre to be among my favorites. The game needs more content at this point - you can get through most of what is here in a handful of hours, but Legends of Eisenwald looks like it loaded with potential that hopefully gets fully capitalized on.

A site called The Gamers Lounge published an Early Access review of Legends of Eisenwald. Don't forget to read our interview, and preview from last year also.

Overall, I think this game is excellent to play and fans of the genre will truly be happy with what Aterdux Entertainment have been able to produce. It's a beautiful, gripping and lengthy experience that really picks up the player and throws them into a world of chaos that is in need of a hero. Retailing at £15 in the UK at the time this goes to print, it's a game that you really shouldn't pass upon.

Entertainment Buddha published a new preview of Legends of Eisenwald based on a short demo they played at Pax East 2015 last week. Here is their impression of the game.

Legends of Eisenwald aims to be the next big strategy game and is well on its way to becoming a genre classic. Those longing for a challenge should look no further. The game is currently aiming for release sometime this year on PC.

Aterdux Entertainment's next update for Legends of Eisenwald talks about how the developer fixed animations in combat, and has talks about special effects.

So, in the nearest patch a full animation synchronization in combat will be done. In other words, one of the things will be fixed that many of our players pointed out to us in the early stages of development.

Realistically, the animation in combat is ready for the game in the framework of the current combat algorithm, and if new movements or actions will be added, syncing will have to be done again.

What were the issues with animation sync in combat? A partial answer you already heard and the rest comes from the way the combat system works. AI calculates ahead a turn and block of tracking the combat flow reconstructs the sequence of the events happened and forms asynchronous sequence of animations sets.

Health bars are text strings with numbers and text that fly up over the heads of characters whey they receive damage. They are red in the game directly from the AI so a turn in combat happens in the AI much earlier than its animation. As a result, players saw unexpected reduction of HP before it happened on the screen. With the next patch animation synchronization issues will be fixed. And health bars will change too and display changes of information better.

Aterdux Entertainment released a new update for Legends of Eisenwald about a new patch that adds the Belarusian language, and fixes some other bugs.

We are happy to tell that the patch 0.993 has been released. We are happy to tell that Belarusian language has been added to the game! Below is the list of changes:

• Fixed the bug with two meditations in the Prologue;
• Screams of characters in combat are added;
• Ghosts appear from under the earth and correctly disappear when they die;
• Fixed issues with “Conversation” buttons in buildings. Now invisible objects don’t block pressing it;
• Changels in balance of healing cost. Lower level characters now are less expensive to heal, but with each level of a character the cost will grow more significantly than earlier;
• Lowered the amount of gold loot when defeating “noble” characters and rogues. Loot from recruits and simple soldiers is increased a little.
• Cost of trophies is a bit lowered;
• Now Berthold’s army is respawned when accidentally killed in the Way Home scenario;
• All final bosses are made stronger.

Aterdux Entertainment released two more updates this week for Legends of Eisenwald. The first update has news about a new patch that gets the game closer to release.

We are happy to report about new patch to Legends of Eisenwald. Traditionally we leave out a bigger part of the changes so we don’t give spoilers to those who are waiting for the release.

The second update talks the developers future plans.

Remember how we said we were looking for an additional budget for marketing and PR? We found it!  And that allows us to go GDC and PAX East, it wouldn’t be possible without these extra funds.

This news becomes even more interesting since Legends of Eisenwald was selected as one of 15 games to be shown in Indie Megabooth at GDC in San Francisco! We are very happy about it and looking forward to this expo. Last year’s GDC didn’t work for us but we are hoping that being a part of the great Indie Megabooth will change a few things.

Also, we will be showing Legends of Eisenwald at PAX East in Boston. There will be just two of us there and maybe someone will join us in exchange for tickets to the expo, and we already asked our Kickstarter backers.

Aslo don't forget  to read our intervew with CEO Alexander Dergay.

Aterdux Entertainment's next development update this week has information the English Beta for Legends of Eisenwald has now started. Here is the information.

Closed Beta Test in English

We are happy to tell you that closed beta test in English is starting! The entire game content was translated into English and now it’s the time to see if the game can be played to the end. We won’t repeat everything what was said earlier but we recommend to re-read our post BETA WITHIN A BETA to understand what help we are looking for in this test.

You still have the time to join the volunteers of the closed beta test. Follow this links and leave your request in the form it is suggested in this topic

How to get to closed beta test (CBT)

• Access to CBT is open to those participants who already have Legends of Eisenwald in their library and who have an open Steam profile.

• Access to CBT will get only those participants who will agree to our NDA that is located in a special group created for CBT – EisenwaldCBT where you will be invited to shortly. To agree to NDA you have send an email with the copied text of NDA and sign it with your legal name and mailing address to shagrost.pr@aterdux.com

Hello everyone and welcome to my next interview for the new year with the CEO of Aterdux Entertainment, Alexander Dergay. He shares his opinion on the games industry, lessons he has learned with crowd-funding, and the current state of his new game.

Couchpotato: Thank you for agreeing to answer a few of my questions for RPGWatch, and to get started let me ask if you can give a brief introduction of yourself.

Alexander Dergay: Thank you for your interest in our game. I am Alexander, head of Aterdux Entertainment, the studio responsible for Legends of Eisenwald for over five years now. When I discovered Discord Times, the first title of our studio, I was very impressed with how the game turned out and it became my favorite game for many years to come. I considered myself the biggest fan of the game and decided to find the funds and reassemble the team to start working on a spiritual successor.

Aterdux Entertainment's posted another development update this week for Legends of Eisenwald that has information how the developer balances their Tactical RPG.

Recently players asked us how many man-hours we spent working on the game balance. The question seemed interesting and we tried our best to work out an estimate. In the end, it’s pretty hard to even find a close approximate. All members of our small team work on multiple tasks and it’s pretty difficult to pinpoint the hours spent in any one thing. Problems are solved as they appear and at other times we work on our specific tasks. As an approximate we could say that, Dmitry Goncharov, who had to deal primarily with balancing, spent anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 hours working on it. Though it is wise to note that Dmitry didn’t think that was accurate at all! He didn’t even try to name a number and simply explained the way it works.

Aterdux Entertainment's next update for Legends of Eisenwald has information about a new patch for the game, and shares more details about the fixes & changes.

We are happy to tell you that only one large step remains until the game is released because Legends of Eisenwald receive a patch version 0.99. Below is the list of changes in the game. And like we did often recently, the bigger part of the changes concerns the closed beta test and we publish only things concerning the version available for everyone without spoilers:

• Added achievements. For now, only six related to the story, other ones will be added as they are ready;
• Fixed the bug with “Feline mirror” when it was impossible to find it if you give the merchant the stones he requested;
• The Hohenkiefer garrison is made stronger in the chapter Run Away;
• Added the map marker in the note about Swallow Tower in the chapter Run Away;
• Few landscape changes in the chapter Windfeld;
• Wine adds now +2 will power as an additional effect, and strong wine adds now +5 to will power instead of the attack;
• Garrisons of main fractions castles in Windfeld have been a bit reinforiced;
• Fixed the bug with disappearing parts of the text in events;
• Added notifications about captured own buildings;
• Added taking in account alchemy when drinking healing potions in the global map mode;
• Fixed spell “Magical illness” and “Transmutatio Rubigo”;
• Added correct recalculation of the mounted units characteristics after defeating the only enemy next to them. Without it, when trying to apply spell, along with the standard effect “change” of their attack was displayed;
• For baroness made correct result’s display of the talant “Aimed shot”;
• For a spell “Magical shield” and bonus “Demonical defense” it was done that a response strike would go not only in the front but also in the back;
• Fixed changing of HP for wounded characters when after taking off and equipping again the same thing the HP fell below 0;
• Fixed disappearance of the shield when removing dual hand weapons. Now shield falls into the inventory.

Aterdux Entertainment wants to know what hero for Legends of Eisenwald you prefer to play as, and why you find them the most interesting in a new poll.

Please take part in our survey: which hero do you like the best. In the comments you can write your answer in more details, thank you!

Aterdux Entertainment latest kickstarter update looks back at 2014, and goes into detail about whats next for their funded Strategy RPG game Legends of Eisenwald.

Remember we said a year ago: “This next year (2014) will be very important for us because that's the year when Legends of Eisenwald will be released”. Unfortunately, we were wrong once again with our estimations and we decided at about the middle of this year to not give any more exact dates or plans when we will release.

Having said all that, we have no other choice other than to release Legends of Eisenwald pretty soon. This time things look much better - the game is content ready, all eight chapters of the campaign are playable and there are currently over 20 people who finished the main story at least once in our closed beta (which is ongoing in Russian). Average playtime seems to be over 40 or even 50 hours, and everyone seemed to really like the story. The English beta will be starting in about two weeks, and the signup is here.

Aterdux Entertainment's next update for Legends of Eisenwald has information about a new patch for the game, and share some details about the fixes & changes.

Aterdux Team wishes you merry Christmas! We wish you to celebrate it in the company of your loved ones and friends and in the good mood.

This patch 0.987 is bringing in the full German version – all scenarios, hints and texts have been translated. The rest are bug fixes directly from the closed beta!

Changes:

• Mystic has now ability to evoke spiritsl

• The amulet feline mirror has been changed – now it adds to initiative and has another added bonus “Silver weapon”;

• Bottles have been introduced with characteristics modifiers to be used in combat;

• Fixed errors with selecting targets for melee fighters;

• Fixed crash in the markets

• Restored correct functioning of the author tag;

• Statistics collection has been updated;

• Fixed disappearance of items that must be in stores;

• Light hammers now have a different 3D model;

• Fixed an issue with undead armies appearing “out of nowhere”;

• Evoking spirits now takes the correct amount of spiritual power;

• Fixed the bug with game saves (where the last save was not available), the bug with quest journal (text in the air), and other smaller errors in the code related to saves;

• Many small fixes.

Aterdux Entertainment's next update for Legends of Eisenwald has information about a new patch for the game. and share some details about the fixes & changes.

Aterdux Entertainment posted another Developer Diary update this week for Legends of Eisenwald with information how you can help test the beta version.

Aterdux Entertainment posted the next Developer Diary update for Legends of Eisenwald with information on the game engine, and cost-effective development.

Differences about writing engines in ancient times & now

Volumes of processed content in games grew significantly unlike the principles of games architecture.

 

What is “Legends of Eisenwald”

• Indie Project

• Huge premise

• Small team, very little (or not at all) money

• Creative development (many changes along the way)

Why does a project need a new engine?

Why did we need our own engine:

• To do everything with a minimal amount of man hours

• Minimal requirements to hardware

• To get highly manageable visualization

• To reach specific technical requirements

• Not to depend from alien closed paid code

• To have flexibility for constant development and upgrade

Aterdux Entertainment posted the next Developer Diary update for Legends of Eisenwald with information on a new patch for the game, and included a new video.

Update 0.977 brings many fixes. The most interesting are listed here:

• Added dialog window for the new interface. Adding 3D-character portraits still in progress;
• Added sounds when you visit buildings;
• Fixed an issue when portraits and characters mismatch;
• The game no longer crashes, if you use Alt-tab;
• Removed debug mode from steam-version (less recording to a hard drive, less loading);
• Fixed head movement of characters;
• Custom scenarios are in “Custom” tab and  main scenarios are in “Basic” tab;
• Fixed inventory transfer from one scenario to another;
• Pop-up windows of tutorial appear in time now;
• Army no longer uses quest items;
• Fortifications have defense bonus;
• Added new weapons, armor and amulets;
• Changed visibility of enemy armies on the quest map.

In parallel, we tuned up special effects and shaders in a separate test project.

We would like to show you how the custom interface has changed in the game since the time of a first review, since the time of launching “Legends of Eisenwald” in Steam “Early Access”.

The old interface has come a long way, it has changed three designers and it was obvious that most users didn’t find it too good, originally. We’ve changed and redrawn it completely. Closer to release we will add some new features and, from our point of view, it is looking quite good. Maybe it is time to go back and compare how the game looks now?

Aterdux Entertainment is offering Legends of Eisenwald for 50% off until October 20. If your undecided you can always read our preview to help you.

Do you miss old school RPG/strategy games? If so, we invite you to Eisenwald where we carry on the proud tradition of games like Kings Bounty or Disciples 2! In Legends of Eisenwald you will encounter a unique turn-based combat system and story driven campaign set in a low fantasy medieval world.

Aterdux Entertainment posted a new update with information about their presentation at Igromir 2014 last week. Here are the details from the post.

Aterdux Entertainment posted a new update with information they will be at Igromir 2014 this week starting today, Here are the details from the post.

W are going to Igromir (Game World in Russian), this is the biggest Russian expo. We are finishing with the last preparations and leaving tomorrow. From October 2nd to October 5th you can find us in the Pavillion 1, hall 4, c7. If you are visiting this yearly expo, please stop by!

We will show our new cinematic trailer. You will be able to play on our biggest map – Windfeld. We didn’t show this map to anyone yet. You can personally meet a bigger part of our team and look at our stand (we think it will impress you). And what an expo is it without some cosplay? Alexander, Nikolay and Denis and other members of the team will be in medieval clothing. Come by, it will be fun.

Aterdux Entertainment next Developer Diary update for Legends of Eisenwald about the recent previews of the game, and they even metion the preview from Aubrielle.

Developers Diaries #17 – indie or not indie?

Hello everyone,

Lattely we have been talking to a few journalists, from IGN Russia and rpgwatch.com in particular. IGN Russia had a discussion what is an indie game which was presented in several developers answers to four questions: what is an indie game; do you think Journey for PS3 or Valiant Hearts are indie games; if Banner Saga went to a publisher, they would have gotten more money and have done a better game – what do you think of this statement; are you an indie developer yourself. Many answered that it’s a game where a process of its creation is not controlled by a publisher or an investor, we added that it’s a game that is doing something new and it’s also creative splash of the people making this game. Even some games of big studios could be considered indie, in our opinion. The whole article is here (in Russian).

rpgwatch.com wrote a preview. Alexander met with an editor from this site in Cologne during GamesCom and this preview is a result of this even though a preview is written by someone else.

In the beginning of the summer we applied with our game to IndieCade. We didn’t have many hopes to start with. Looking at the screenshots that are published on Facebook page of this festival one could think that indie games for them are almost exclusively pixel art, simple mechanics and other attributes of modern pop-culture. So, the response we were not selected for the final part did not surprise us. To the standard response there were attached a few sentences of a juror or a few of them:

"I kind of don’t get it… When the game is defined as a “classic old school RPG with tactical turn-based battles, simple economic model” why would you enter it in indiecade?"

" It seems weird to me, with no hook, no novelty and no tutorial, the game feels… Well, like a 90s game. It’s a “classic, yes, but “old school” doesn’t have to mean “old”."

"This game is an impressive technical achievement! Indiecade however looks for games that innovate in design or other categories, and Legends of Eisenwald is largely a worthy but loyal recreation of a well-trodden category.

We are grateful for a personal response and understand that everyone has different opinions. The only details that is not quite clear is a “no tutorial” part. Tutorial (while not the greatest) have been on Early Access since the very beginning and it seems that jurors simply didn’t have enough time to check for a tutorial option in the settings. We started playing games in 90s and even the end of 80s, so in most cases when some people say our game looks like from the 90s, it sounds rather surprising to us and brings us to the conclusion that most likely they didn’t play anything back then.

What do you think? Do we describe our game well? Maybe some moments are really unclear for the people who look at our game for the first time and has only 10 minutes to look at the game? We would really love to hear your opinions!

Aubrielle played the Beta version of Legends of Eisenwald, and added some information from Alexander Dergay, the head of Aterdux Studios in a new preview.

So lets give them both a big thank you.

Imagine an idealized Middle Ages - possibly not the one you learned about in History 203, but one that you can still easily recognize. This is the medieval world from the daydreams of your youth, where sunlight sparkled on the green leaves of summer forests and where you were serenaded on afternoon journeys to summer fairs by the enchanting music of harps. Somehow, with just the right combination of art, music, and charm, Eisenwald manages to capture the Middle Ages you used to imagine, long before you learned all the grisly truths.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary update for Legends of Eisenwald with information on a new patch for the game.

Patch Notes v0.973

Recently we drastically changed user interface and started to work on tutorial that would not allow to play advanced scenarios without tutorial. Because of this, some players experienced issues starting a new scenario and this should be finally resolved with update 0.973.

Game changes:

• Fixed deleting private saves instead of auto-saves;
• Fixed a game crash when trying to chose an ability for the hero at level 13;
• Added disabling of tutorual reactivation (according to the list of saves);
• Added feature of choice a scenario (two kinds of choice: 1) by the list of save games – if later saves are present, then the game understands, that you have already done a prologue 2) by checkbox “Tutorial is disabled” in game settings.);
• Added auto slowing weak enemy armies when you try to catch them;
• Disabled calculation of army speed depending on horses and wounded fighters.

Scenario editor changes:

• Disabled a cash generation of icons, that lead to slow loading and breaking icons for textures selection;
• Added an addition settings of scenarios regarding gaining experience;
• Some changes in files of editor localization;
• Developers build is substituted with the correct pre-release build.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald with information on a new patch that introduces a few Interface changes.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. The new update talks about the heroes in the game you can play as.

Three main characters of Legends of Eisenwald are invented by leading game developers Nikolai Armonik and Denis Lomako analogous to our first game Discord Times. We have once said that initially Legends of Eisenwald was planned to be much easier and more like a remake of Discord Times, but eventually we got many different ideas that found their way into the game. We eliminated everything that is impossible to do by a small team and got a hardcore simulator of a wandering knight. It was originally planned that we would have 6 heroes (one male and one female characer for each class), but in the process we decided to give make it a bit different, so we ended up with just three characters: Knight, Baroness and Mystic.

A little later, when Nikolai had already developed the game engine and we came up with game visualisation, its main features, narrative outline, and other elements. We decided not to go much into narrative individualization based on the hero class, and we made a bet on the players possibility to associate themselves with a character.

So today, you can choose one of three characters, not only in accordance with yours strategic and tactical preferences, but also to write your own history of relationships with the world of Eisenwald. This world has a twisted story and a large number of in-game legends, which can be touched. We believe that our characters perfectly embody everything that we do with the game world.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Development Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. The update this time is short and contains only a new image about combat.

We are working on the new interface and part of it is reworking the tutorial. Here is an example of how it will look, we hope you are going to like it.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Development Diary for Legends of Eisenwald with information the games Scenario editor is officially released.

Developers Diaries #15

Hello everybody! We are happy to tell you that new update will be released on Wednesday, which transfer scenario editor into stable branch, fix some essential bugs in game and its editor, and also add Steam Workshop to the game. This means, that a special surprise, a scenario that is based on the Cursed Lake scenario from our first game Discord Times, will be available for all participants of Early access.

Notice for modders.

During the semi-closed test in special dedicated developer’s branch for users, with community activity we could fix some essential bugs and bring integration of game’s editor and Steam Workshop to a stable state. The step with opening special beta came to be very successful, so we could repair errors with autosaving and saving maps in editor.

We fixed some serious flaws that we didn’t take into account during the editor development. The area of the map in the game where all action takes place is only limited by a special area with regular landscape, trees and even buildings. And this zone and all that is outside of it is not used in calculations. Having done a lot of changes and created a brand new version of the editor, we forgot that old version allow to place armies in that border area as well. As a result, a map would load just fine but if this scenario was started in the game, it gave an error when AI attempted to move the army in a place where it wasn’t allowed to be.

Despite that, we think that automatic generation of maps with a river’s delta is fixed but we would have to work on it some more. Generating the delta of the river toda you would need several attempts to receive a good result. We will have to play with formulas and dependencies to make it a bit better, but this is not a first priority task, neither it is very complex. It is postponed until the moment where we will work on the remaining loose ends before game’s release.

Among the others noticeable changes you will notice more comfortable to use cursors for landscape formation(there was a number of complains, hopefully, it would be much better now). Editor changes touched aesthetic aspects of the issue – we replaced skin to gray, so that icons would look more harmonious.

To talk about this next issue is too early but we understand that modders’ work would be much easier if editor allowed to undo. The implementation complexity of this task stems from the fact, that you don’t have to cancel one step exactly, there could be 5 or more, so if drawing mountain array you think you don’t like it, it is necessary to cancel a lot of actions at once.The Editor’s developer Denis Lomako has already experimented in this direction, but it’s too early to say, what will be the result of these experiments. But we try to move in this direction.

A new game interface.

Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to complete work on the new game interface to its logical conclusion to release it in this update. But we want to show you a couple of screenshots of this new interface, that soon will be available!

There are a few months before the official release only. We will announce the exact date later, when we are absolutely sure, that nothing will hinder us to release the game on the day of X exactly. There is no much to do (finalizing shaders, game optimization, translation of remaining chapters), as well as things you repeatedly point out, like battle log and graphic SFX. We are confident that nothing much remains before announcing the release date. We hope to announce it in August.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Development Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. This time we get an update on the developers health, and the games progress.

Hello everyone! The biggest news is that our AI and event system developer Denis Lomako is back to work. He feels good and he is eager to finish whatever is left for him. He is still under doctors observation after his surgery, and he started from home a week ago, but now we are happy to see him back in our office.

We would like to thank those of you who participated in beta test of our Scenario Edtior that was announced a bit earlier. We didn’t expect many new ideas and suggestions from you, but it is great to receive them. It’s a pity we won’t be able to implement them all because of lack of time and resources but still…

 We are very happy with this way of collaboration where anyone who wants to dig deeper can enter a password, download the latest developers’ build for Steam and see what changed – a sort of beta in beta. There are players thank to whom we learned about some new bugs in the game and in the editor and we fixed a few of them. Beta testing turned out to be a good opportunity for looking how new ideas work and we hope to repeat something like that in the future.

 If we talk about statistics, right away after the announcing beta test we uploaded to our official Youtube channel videos with brief overview of the Scenario Editor in English and Russian. 193 people watched the video in Russian, 640 in English. Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t provide information (or we didn’t find) how many people downloaded test build so we can only look for clues in the forum here and in these numbers. With a hope in our heard we look into the future where we the next large update comes out.

Next update is going to be huge. Many bugs are fixed, the Editor and new scenario will be released officially, our new section of Steam Workshop to be used for everyone. Also, there is a high chance we will finalize new interface that we redesigned according to your feedback. We still will need your feedback on this new interface and we hope you will like it. We use it already for a while internally and we think that with new interface the game will become easier to play and navigate not only in terms of usage but also it will change the way it looks and feels.

Aterdux Entertainment has a new video with an overview of the Scenario Editor.

In this video we give you a brief overview of Scenario Editor for Legends of Eisenwald. We will show you how to make maps manually, how to generate them automatically, how to place objects, setup armies and events.

Aterdux Entertainment is looking for a few Beta testers to help test the scenario editor for Legends of Eisenwald, and it includes a new scenario for the game also.

Invitation to test the scenario editor and new scenario

We decided to release a patch differently from the way we used to do. So, right now you can start testing the scenario editor and new scenario Cursed Castle. This new scenario is done based on Cursed Lake scenario from our first game Discord Times and we adapted it to our setting. The scenario is ready in English, Russian and French.

We have been testing the editor and its integration with Steam Workshop already for a long time but we still have quite a bit of issues. We are delivering this patch as a beta branch here on Steam. If you were waiting to make your own scenarios and mods, maybe now is the time!

Instructions and password are here. We would love to hear about your expectations and experience with editor or new scenario, so you can leave them in the same branches of this forum. The amount of activity will be also something to look at and see if we are doing the right things.

We already created a forum related to testing and this forum is visible only for those who have a copy of the game. Please write there about found bugs and ask questions about the scenario editor. We understand that despite our effort it could be rather hard to master so we will do our best to answer your questions fast. We created a short overview video on the editor, we will publish it shortly.

Later on we will invite some of you to closed beta test of the main campaign but it will have a few more limitations.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. The new update is a continuation of the last update about sound effects.

Developers Diaries #12: Sound effects #2

In the process of creative task  a sound designer considers the tools that were selected for the process. It’s not just programs and equipment that ara used but it’s more about classification and manyfold of used sounds, a structure of the game engine, and what is especially important, what does the game engine allows to do. Main difficulties could be expected on a treshold where two worlds – technical and creative – collide.

We never dealt with sound on the level we want to have at the release of Legends of Eisenwald, so we didn’t have experience of this serious work until the moment we started dealing with it. Before working on the sound, our technical director Nikolay Armonik started working on our engine that we called Aterdux Engine 9. He needed a year to create a flexible game engine that could easily be used to make either a shooter, sports game or an open world RPG. Big and ambitious for our small studio project included plans to make a game that could be played and replayed many times but in the end it required some compromises and limitations so development of the game would not be too long.

Programming tools that we used took away such possibilites as classification of equipment and weapons in a database. Now in the game there are 4 types of armor, and a few weapon types determined by the engine. We had to use some assumptions – for example a leather armor and a brigandine sound the  same even though we all understand that metal under a fabric is not leather, even a riveted one.

Another issue with programming tools was not a simplest method of combining sound with animation. For example, when a weapon hits a shield, there is a separate sound. To make it in the game, we can’t just enhance original sample with a sort of a “slide effect”, but we have to record it as a separate file.

We thought how we could combine sounds and resolve some other issues and maybe we found a way. There is a big chance that we will buy a separate sound engine FMOD that is uses in games like Diablo 3, World of Tanks, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This engine has very rich selection of possibilities and existing solutions that could simplify our life. If this happens, we will make a separate post in our diaries!

Legends of Eisenwald will include also such interesting possibilities like panorama sounds on the map and in the battle depending on the location of camera, sound with reverberation and sound combinations. If we decide to buy FMOD, this will be a great influence for these possibilities.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. In the update they talk about the sound effects they used in-game.

Developers Diaries #11: Sound effects

In today’s diaries using Legends of Eisenwald as an example we will try to show you the interconnection of the elements of game development, and also about the sound effects – how we record them and what should be expected as result.

First steps

Somewhere between our Kickstarter campaign and getting to Early Access it was a wonderful time for working on our game. One of the exciting tasks of that time was making sound effects. Our entire team was involved in sound sessions and besides a lot of interesting discoveries it was really fun: we put a helmet on a cabbage and tried to kill it with an axe. We made Victor (our writer) fall down in a buff coat, we recorded rasping sound of claws with help of darts, and had lots more creative ideas. All the armor and weapons we provided ourselves since our team used a bunch of LARPers in the past.

What changed with Early Access?

The situation changed after we released on Early Access. We decided to make the sound more professional and we had to involve more people. Our composer and sound designer Ressa hired another person for help and he started totake care of the game sound SFX. While Early Access gave us quite a bit of funds to continue development, we still couldn’t afford to get professional equipment and record sounds of historical objects, we took the sounds from the available libraries and adopted them for our animations.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. In the update they talk about a new patch, and share an afterword  for GDC 2014.

Developers Diaries #10: Patch 0.91 & GDC

Hello everyone! We again are here to tell you what changes were made in the game between patches 0.908 and 0.91.

•     Faster rendering by 30%! This is because a new multi-threaded mechanism was introduced and significant optimization;
•     Now your saves can be saved in Steam Cloud, so they won’t be lost!
•     Animation for potions drinking is added;
•     Two new bosses were added (but you won’t see them for now);
•     New story pictures have been added to the events (also, you won’t see them for now);
•     New interface is 60% done (and as we said before, we won’t include it in an update until it is fully done);
•     A bug with archers low damage has been fixed;
•     Over 20 smaller bugs have been fixed.

GDC

Last week we showed our game at GDC Play. We had a little stand, with two banners (picture) and in particular a banner with a dead knight was quite an attraction, many people took a picture of it.

A few of our Kickstarter backers came by, and it was fun to talk to them. We prepared a special map just with combat because the format of the expo is not really well suited to show the gameplay at great length. Overall, everyone who played really enjoyed the game, and it was really good to see how well the game was received.

One of our goals however was to attract media. That goal we didn’t reach – GDC Play doesn’t seem to be a good place for this. Neither our PR agency was able to convince some journalists to come by our stand nor the journalists themselves stopped, there are lots of other things happening there at the conference and on the expo floor. GDC still remains the best conference around but GDC Play might not be the best option for indies, especially for a hardcore game like Legends of Eisenwald where it’s hard to show the gameplay in a short amount of time.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. In the update they talk about the new site, GDC, and a new patch.

Developers Diaries #9

Hello everyone! We want to share some good news with you – our web site aterdux.com changed its design. It’s now more aligned with our ideas about quality and being up-to-date. The site now has two important areas: a places to buy our game and blog structure where you can find the most recent news about the game. Instead of the old comments system we decided to use the popular platform Disqus, write us and don’t hold anything back. Later we will take care of the design of our forums.

Soon we also plan to change all the content structure of the site (descriptions, new parts), the closer we are to the release the more we have to do. We hope you will have more fun reading what we write on our new site.

0.908

As before, our priority is to create new video effects and new interface. These tasks are big and connected to many other game aspects that we can’t really show them without it being done fully.

In parallel we work on game sounds and translation to other languages (German, French). Thank you for sending bug reports and writing in the forums, we use it to fix the bugs in small patches.

In the last hotfix we had a lot of changes that’s why there is a new version 0.908 and so it means we are one step close to the release. In this patch we fixed the following things according to your reports:

• Bugs connected with start of new game through the main menu in situation were extra objects or data were left;
• Memory leaks in the engine;
• Saving bugs.

Game Developers Conference

You probably heard that in few days Game Developers Conference will start in San Francisco. Alexander is going to present our game at GDC Play, booth PL 203. If you plan to attend, stop by to take a look at the latest game version on our table! This version will include our biggest map in the game – Windfeld and some other surprises might await you!

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the eight Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. In the update we get a look at horses, and how Sieges work.

It’s no place for horsemen!

We introduced to the game process additional conditions that will make a siege significantly more difficult than a battle on an open field. Like in a tower arenas, when attacking a castle a knight won’t be able to use a horse since the cavalry doesn’t have enough space to move. Be ready for the fact that when you hero who you trained for victorious battles on a horse will have to dismount before entering through the broken gates.

Developing a character is a two edged sword. You can create a wonderful infantryman who will have great combat characteristics and who won’t suffer big losses during a siege but this way you will lose a great horseman. A horse which is an additional item for your main character significantly influences his attributes. In Legends of Eisenwald there are many different horses to everyone’s taste and each on of them influences uniquely character’s attributes. +15 HP and +10 to the initiative is already good, isn’t it?

A lance as a special weapon type also allows to increase damage to enemy when attacking from distance. With a talent “Ramming Attack” if your enemy fell from one strike, your horseman can attack again. Besides, recently we added a few items that can be used only when sitting on a horse (like a saddle for balance, for example). All these factors make a knight who can use ride a horse a dangerous and deadly opponent that everyone will be scared of.

What do you suffer losses from?

The first stage of a siege is an attack against the gates. When you make a decision to attack a castle, you see a window with damage that your army will suffer. AI already calculated what happened based on many different game factors. Infantrymen try to break the gates, your archers with big penalty because of the walls that enemies use to cover, are trying to shoot archers on the defending side. And defending archers shoot your army without any penalties. Durability of the gates and sum of the attack of all infantry calculate time that is required to break the gates. During all this time your army will be under fire and it means your troops will suffer losses.

Two-stage sieges?

Combat mechanics in Legends of Eisenwald are practically done. Last minor changes we did last week. Everything that needs to be worried about will be resolved with a new graphics interface. To the screen of losses on the first stage of a siege will be added a nice picture with combat and also a small description of what is going on, so you don’t have to guess where all these wounds are from.

After the game is released we have a few interesting ideas that we don’t have the time to do now. For example, we want to do the full fledged first part of a siege, with breaking the gates so you can rely on your power on both stages and not on calculations of the AI. There is an interesting idea with sieges where a long siege will cause defending troops to lower their characteristics, or a building of a ram that increases a speed of breaking the gates. We want to add an opportunity for defending units to get out from a castle, so you can be attacked from rearward by other knights who want to help inhabitants of a castle. Troops under siege will join a battle and your knight won’t have it easy fighting on two fronts.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the seventh Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald. In the update we get a look at how combat works in Legends of Eisenwald.

Developers Diaries #7: Combat

Sometimes we hear questions from players why a hero doesn’t lead huge armies but rather separate units. Well, usually a medieval knight-errant didn’t have under his command armies of hundreds or thousands of people. In historical novels we see descriptions where a rich and pompous knight leaves his castle with: four beautiful and strong war horses that are led by two stablemen, three knights with fourteen horses, a chaplain, forager, smith, armourer, baggage animals, and a string of carts with gifts. Usually everything was a bit humbler and almost all the time it depended on well-being of knight-errant.

“Legends of Eisenwald” is role playing game above all; it is a simulator of knight-errant who pursued adventures that are later reflected in stories and epic poems. His troops is not just faceless army headed by a general, it’s team of mercenaries and adventurers who like to be in the company of a man of high principle (and with some gold). Taking this into consideration, it’s best to provide more details on the role playing aspect and highlight it.

You can equip any soldier in your army, give to him or her good weapon and opportunity to upgrade: a hunter who became crossbowman sergeant, herbalist who soared to the heights of an  enchantress. Individual traits of a hero allow you to carefully use choice ability because this or that skill affect not only combat behaviour but also global map behavior. For enhancing individualization effect, we decided to customize all possible knight’s comrades-in-arms: give names to them, a bit different traits and even nicknames for special characters. We hope that we will be able to implement these algorithms up to release.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the sixth Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald.

Developers diares #6: Game Editor

Our next patch will add map editor support and today we’ll tell you about it.

Event programming

The hardest part about editor which one would have to study is programming of gaming events. But don’t despair! For event programming you never will need to study programming languages because editor won’t force you to code. You just need some patience.

Editor uses event list where every event has its own condition list. For event to occure a condition should be met. You have to add event result selection options and fill event impact list for every possible result. Sounds hard?

But it’s not, you just have not to get lost in event list and you just have to know what do you want from scenario — it will help. Event programming is put into single window which you can find here: “Quest-Customizing events”. On the one hand in event settings you’ll find treelike event structures and on the other hand event content where you can add different features describing it (in pop-up menus). We’ve added useful editor feature which helps to distinguish one scenario tree from another — now you can mark events by specific color and icon.

Mods system

There will be Mods directory in the game home folder; all modification created by users will be stored in specific folder: characters and items settings files, user-created scenarios, additional objects for gaming map, characters models and animation.

You also will be able to use third-party objects in the game. For it’s using in editor you should add necessary objects into your mod resource folders (Eisenwald\Mods\ModName\Landscape), software will find it and provide you with opportunity to use it for your creative ideas.

Player will have a choice option after starting a launcher — he/she can use modification or original campaign. Then player can launch a game. Files from selected mod folder will be loaded at the first and if they won’t be here, campaign files will be loaded. You can’t corrupt main game files or another mod editing your mod in it’s own folder. The only problem can appear when you want to merge some mods together — you’ll have to manually unite characters and items files.

Softpedia takes a look at Legends of Eisenwald with a video, and a short preview.

The best thing about Legends of Eisenwald is that it feels unique, like its own game and not just a rip-off of a better title, its world is interesting enough to warrant exploration and the gameplay is enjoyable from the get-go. It feels fresh and it offers a different perspective on the strategy role playing game genre, showing the potential to grow into a solid piece of entertainment.

Aterdux Entertainment has a new post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald with information on the games editor, and a patch for the beta version.

New patch, Map Editor is Soon to Follow

Hello everyone,

Patch 0.907 has been released today, for the details please look here. It fixes quite a bit of bugs and provides support for modding and the editor that will be out soon. Right now we are working on the overview video for the editor. 

Development diaries

For those of you who might have missed, we started posting weekly development diaries which you can find on our web site or Steam. Here is a link to our latest one, entitled: What happens to those who refuse to sleep?

New game page

We also decided to put up a game page on Facebook after a few people told us they couldn't find our game there. And we though it makes sense since the name of our company is not very well known to keep it all there, so a game's page would be definitely beneficial there. Please come by our new page and like us! 

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the fifth Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald.

Developers diaries #5: What happens to those who refuse to sleep?

Patch 0.906 will be released tomorrow. We are trying to not let anything slip between fingers and that’s why we attempt to check and fix everything. We have to admit that splitting one patch to two small brought a handful of chaos into our balanced work process. But as we told you earlier we’ll release this patch, so players won’t face new errors and if it’ll be necessary we’ll make adjustments and start preparations to patch supporting the map editor. As you can see there is a lot of work to do.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the fourth Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald.

The developers diary #4: What happens next?

We are still busy fixing bugs and debugging. Nicolay is carrying out tasks scheduled on the last week and he is spending all of his free time on visual animation effects.  Dmitry is polishing the map “Trever”. Denis is dealing with inventory. In the next patch players will finally be able to automate sorting of items by it’s usability for each character. And the next patch won’t be limited by only these features.

Future patches

In the following couple of weeks we are going to add some new gaming innovations. Initially we wanted to release one big patch including the map editor but considered all pros and cons and decided to split this update in two parts. We did this to play safe and provide Denis and other testers with ability to ensure that there are no critical errors in the interaction of the game and the map editor or bugs left unfixed.

And it was decided that the next patch, which will be released the next week, should bring a lot of changes and fixes and also new interesting features. The number of awkward gaming moments should be significantly decreased. The second patch will be almost completely related to the map editor and its integration within the game. We had to do a lot to be sure that the editor would interact with the game without any confilcts and offer the ability to use all possible functionality.

What’s going to happen next?

We thought that it would be important to notice here that the following two patches can be one of the few last ones (before game release). After release of editor we’ll make sure that everything works fine for everyone, and then we’ll concentrate on GUI (it’s Dmitry’s responsibility). You can count on that GUI will be re-built from scratch so we have to do a lot of stuff by integration of the interface with existing functionality. Because of such a big change we decided that we won’t release patches with half-new/half-old interface so you can create your own scenarios without any troubles.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the third Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald.

Developers diary # 3: Thousand little things and a few bosses

The closer we are approaching the end of development the more we have llittle things which we have to add or fix on the time. This week team priority slightly shifted to fixing numerous fixes. Anyway, game development is a funny thing you can say quite a lot about.

Thousand of little things.

Nicolay and Dmitry have been adding scenario-related pictures. Dmitry had to fix bugs on Windfeld map and synchronize additions and edits made by or script-writer Victor.

You can congratulate Dmitry because he did a great job — he finished all bosses models in the game.

The necessity to divide joint “Legends of Eisenwald” project file to 25 thematic formed parts for correct job allocation between team members who finished their tasks became top priority for Nicolay.

Denis who is pretty busy with editor deveopment also had to spend some time on thousand things. So we are going to add to the game’s events system additional control of character presense in the squad because existing control was not enough. And of course we had to clean-up editor interface from useless for user elements, add neccessary functionality and hints. So, do you guess what we are talking about? :)

Aterdux Entertainment has posted the next Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald.

What do we know about AI?

Creating AI as a worthy opponent for players was a great challenge for us. We did a great job of balancing difficulty and pleasure to form a challenging computer enemy. But AI still needs a bit of polishing so we are working on it more. Denis is spending some time fixing the combat AI, which went crazy and used special abilities in a way they were not designed; for example, powerful strike and aimed shot had issues. Also, the AI misplaces the units of characters with two blades and pikes. The new build version is being tested and we continue our job (while we don’t have too many new bug reports).

Everybody loves special effects.

Preparation to improve game effects is one of Nicolay’s longest and labour-consuming projects. Almost everything he’s been busy with during last 1,5 years is related to this task. His special effects work includes rewriting all shaders to provide DOF, SSAO and HDR support, volumetric fog, multiple light sources and ghosts transparency level. So we are also talking about giving our game even more rich visual component.

When will the new patch come?

Patch 0.906 will be huge, because we are planning to add a scenario editor. Of course editor won’t work without some other supporting features, so it’s necessary to do a lot of work again for letting game fully use the editor resourses (for example, mod catalog support). And of course, what we need is more and more testing.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted a new Developer Diary for Legends of Eisenwald.

Developers diary #1: Windfeld can Astonish You

New year’s fuss did not interfere with the development of our game. We took a week’s vacation and it served as a good respite for us and gave us a chance to rethink some decisions.

On Monday we run into an obstacle and weren’t able to get into the office so we shifted working time to Saturday.

Don’t worry, we are fine and nothing wrong is going to happen. We all work as usual.

This week we thought that you could be interested in reading about the final stage of development of our game, because technical details aren’t so important now and we just have a lot of to talk about! And because of it today the team is going to talk about our progress in the weekly report.

Everyone go modding!

Despite that fact that we are mostly focused on key game elements, we also put a greater emphasis on the game editor. Today Nikolai is finishing the game build version 0.906 with final touches on some essential features for preparing the system for modding resource game files (graphic and models). Next week Denis will try to finish the alpha-version of modding system to integrate it with the editor and gameplay.

At this point Denis is fixing known registered bugs. We would like to thank our gaming community and staff testers for all the good finds. Don’t forget that you can point out found bugs and issues to us by using  the official forum, the Steam forum or the automatic bugreport system (appears when game crashes).

Strategy Informer interviews Alexander Dergay to see what it is that makes his game Legends of Eisenwald a unique offering.

Strategy Informer: Can you tell us in your own words what Legends of Eisenwald is all about?

Alexander Dergay: It’s a mix of RPG and strategy, with a focus on the RPG side of things. The game centres on a rich story and features tactical turn-based combat, exploration, and some simple economic elements. We drew inspiration from games like Disciples 2 – how the units level up, how the world map is explored and the well-designed story-driven campaigns.

We wanted to create a medieval setting which was a grittier and a more real fantasy world; a place where superstitions of historic ages come to life. We don’t have the typical overblown fantastical things like fireballs, elves and orcs. Instead of that, the game is based on real-world folklore; things which people believed in medieval times like werewolves, vampires, witches, herbal healing, and so on.

Strategy Informer: What has been the biggest challenge design-wise?

Alexander Dergay: Well one thing is that we don’t have a single game designer; pretty much everyone in our company participates in the game design. We have two major schools of thought in our company which have conflicted with each other. One is a group of very serious gamers, and then there are people like me who like things not to be quite so hardcore and fun to play. So a big challenge has been reconciling and bringing together those two ways of thinking and finding a compromise between them. In the end I think that everyone is happy with how things are turning out.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted a new post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald with news of a contest on The Indie Showcase.

Our game at Steam Indie Showcase

Hello everyone,

We are happy to tell you that an exciting Steam Indie Showcase event is waiting for you this week and it was prepared by the guys from Greenlit Gaming. A 24-hour gaming marathon based on games picked by Steam Greenlight — it's indeed something quite fun, don’t you think? Every game will be given half an hour. This time the organizers should present each game to viewers in all of their glory. And we heard something about giveaways and gifts during the presentations! 

We'd like to tell you why Greenlit Gaming is really awesome. Almost from the birth of Steam Greenlight they showed and supported the best and most interesting projects and kept everyone informed about all changes. We are really proud that Greenlit Gaming picked Legends of Eisenwald for this event along with many other great games. We hope that you find our presentation interesting, Alexander is going to be around too.

Of course the Steam Indie Showcase shows the presentation schedule, so that you can know which other Steam Greenlight games will be participating in the marathon. Steam Indie Showcase will start on the 10th of January, and our game will be shown at 03:30 AM (EST) or 12:30 Moscow Time at Greenlit Gaming TwitchTv Channel.

Well, this is a nice thing to have in the beginning of the year and we hope more great things are awaiting all of us!

Aterdux Entertainment has posted a New Years Update for Legends of Eisenwald.

New Year update

This next year will be very important for us because that’s the year when Legends of Eisenwald will be released.We really hope that you will like the game when it’s done and that you will be getting a lot of quality playing time out of it.

This last year was very challenging and intense for our team. We were busy with the Greenlight campaign in the beginning of the year, then we ran out of funds a few months later but were lucky to find an investor. In May we got greenlit, and then kept working to release the game on Steam Early Access which was in our opinion rather successful, thanks to all of you. More importantly, it gave us enough funding to finish the development and do a few other things, improving user interface is one example. Early Access showed us that the game is not as ready as we thought it was and it gave us a lot to work with. We keep working on the issues along with finishing the remaining things. Here is a picture that will be used in the new interface in some buildings.

All in all, 2013 made us learn a lot and brought us much more closer to the finishing line. The game is becoming better, we experimented with a few things that were suggested by the community, a lot of bugs were fixed, and overall the game is much more stable and playable.

Next steps

Next large update will be centered around the Map Editor. All the other chapters will be included at the release time, we want everyone who already played to receive the full impact of the experience. Closer to the release at some point we will raise the game price. We think this way it will be fair to all of our early supporters (for the same reason we didn’t participate in Steam winter sale).

With the Map Editor on the horizon and continual other improvements, we will be working also on some promotional assets, which we hope you will enjoy as well.

We wish you a wonderful and successful 2014!

Gameranx has a new preview for Legends of Eisenwald were they find a few faults, but in the end say the game has some good ideas.

Legends of Eisenwald is by no means a bad game but it can be a frustrating one and with future updates many of the gripes listed here may well be resolved. Still, playing the game leaves you with the distinct impression that it needs is a follow up to truly bring to reality Aterdux's impressive vision.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted a new post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald with news the third campaign is ready for download.

New chapter Run Away is out! And other news

We are happy to report that the chapter 3 of the main campaign called Run Away is out! On Steam now but soon we will put it on Desura and make a DRM-free version as well. The detailed list of what has been done in this patch you can find here. 

Plans

We will spend some time fixing possible bugs that will arise now but then we are planning to work more on finishing the programming part of the game. Special effects are being done, interface is being redesigned and we are working on testing and balancing the remaining scenarios.

Next big patch that is going to come out soon is the Editor, many players were asking us if they can create scenarios, and with this great tool it will be possible to do that. We think first there will be quite a few scenarios in a sand box style. And maybe then someone brave will take on a story. It would be fun to see, for sure!

As for other news, we moved to a new office and finally settled in here and even celebrated this move with making a patch :) New office is bigger, Internet here is faster and that's more fun overall. We will post soon a few pictures what it looks like now.

Aterdux Entertainment has posted a new post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald with a followup to the previous update.

Our Early Access Experience

Usually we don't post updates usually so soon after one another, but we really wanted to share with you how the first day on Early Access went. 

The launch has been really wonderful and successful. To put it in perspective, we sold twice as many copies on Steam in ten hours than we sold via pre-order in the whole time after Kickstarter (and that's almost year and a half). The money we've made on Steam so far is already enough to ensure we have the budget we need to finish the game.

We keep on working and fixing bugs, there are in particular some issues with Windows 8 but they will be resolved shortly. 

Thank you,

All of us at Aterdux

PCGMedia has posted a new preview of Legends of Eisenwald for everyone to read especially if you're interested in buying early acces to the game.

Legends of Eisenwald isn’t a terribly complex game, but it delivers on its promise to enter players into ”the world of Eisenwald in this RPG with turn-based battles and experience medieval romanticism and adventure.” Gameplay centers primarily around classical text based quests, seeking out information from locals, cherry picking information to find what you need to complete quests. The dialogue has a few typos here and there but it’s generally well translated, and nothing seems too lost in translation. It would have been nice if the quest log didn’t tell you when you had been told pertinent quest information, because once indicated you feel no need to continue talking to people at inn’s or in the town. I could see that annoying a lot of people, but if you’re going old-school you might as well go the whole hog.

Aterdux Entertainment has a new post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald with news that the game is now available on Steam Early Access.

We are very happy to announce that today at 9AM PST (8PM Moscow) we start Early Access on Steam! We teamed up with the Humble Store (these are the nice people who run Humble Bundle) to distribute Steam keys and also DRM-free version of the game (DRM-free will be available a bit later but very soon). By the way, all of you who backed us or pre-ordered the game will receive BOTH Steam key and DRM-free! 

What's new in the game

We could have written lots of stuff here, but we will just say two things: there is a new scenario Way Home, which is the second scenario of the big campaign, plus there are mounted units! Get your copy and have fun :)

Instructions

• The email that you provided in the survey (the email for your first or the only copy of the game) will be the email used to redeem the game through the Humble Store. For those of you who have not filled out the survey, you will have to use the email that we have on file from Kickstarter (or Paypal.)
• As we make new builds, you can use the Humble Store to download the latest versions, up to the final Release version and beyond.  
• The other digital rewards (PDF artbook, the OST) will all eventually be available for direct download DRM-free via the Humble Store when they are released. 

We chose the Humble Store because it really makes the distribution process for you and us much easier (we actually don't know how we could have handled it ourselves). We looked at many other Kickstarter projects that used Humble Store for distribution and saw that it worked really well. And folks at Humble store were extremely helpful and friendly, we hope you like their distribution service and their store as we came to like it.

When will the game be released in full?

The best answer we can give right now is - as soon as we can. As soon as we see the game as ready and when you and our community will consider it ready. There are ways to speed up our development process but they usually require extra resources which we don't have. 

One example here is our translation process. Our game is really story driven and there are a several story lines, so the amount of translation is really significant. In our current version there is no German or French translation of the new, Way Home scenario. We are very grateful to Michael and Philippe who have been taking care of the German and French translation so far, but they have their other jobs and were unable to finish it in time for Early Access launch and we, on the other hand, didn't want to delay this launch because of that. So, we will add these scenarios in German and French later, hopefully soon and we will look for other ways to get future translations done.

Another example is testing. Despite our efforts to create something systematic, it's still a bit irregular. We talked to other teams, for example some of the guys, who did Eador: Master of the Broken World and they highly recommended using companies who do stream lined testing. And again, lack of resources doesn't let us do it, at least yet but we really hope Early Access will help us out in his respect.

Aterdux Entertainment has a new post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald. The update talks about a new patch, and a new scenario.

Dear backers,

Those of you who have Desura version installed, can download already our new patch that mostly includes bug fixes and changes to the appearance of the interface. Settings window is now also there, music volume is adjustable, just to name a few things. DRM-free version should be available tomorrow. More news will come in the next update very soon.

More importanly, our second scenario of the campaign called Way Home will be released next in beta, right now it's being translated into German and French by our two wonderful translators Michael Fuegemann and Philippe Sainton. 

And here is the map of Eisenwald! It will be in the game, and in its physical form it is a part of the $175 reward, its design is almost done and we want to show it to you.

Next comes the information about the new scenario.

Like before, here is a short story by Joel Martin to introduce this scenario. This does not contain any spoilers, it provides just a little of background information related to this scenario:

A Better Man

Winter had drenched the land in a thick layer of snow. Hooves crunched into the white blanket. Upon these horses rode grim men clad in dark livery. Shoots of air escaped the holes punctured in their helms, resembling the snort of a dragon.

"Is the cover of darkness your honor, Konrad?"

The man called Konrad was dressed in heavy furs and a leather brigandine. His shoulders and arms were covered in segmented plate. He rode with deadly grace, his body moved with fluidity to adjust to the horse's movement. Konrad shifted the position of the broadsword that hung on his back. Konrad lifted the helm off his head barring his face to the snow. "Honor does not win battles, Eckhart. And why should you care? This is a job for you, nothing more."

Aterdux Entertainment has released another post-funding update for Legends of Eisenwald. The topic of the update is to basically tell us they released a patch and tutorial.

We have been working very hard last several weeks but now finally we are somewhat happy with the state of our first scenario of the campaign that includes tutorial. Other scenarios are being tested, we will add some of them later to the beta. This tutorial is not the final option and we will probably change a thing or two based on your feedback. A quick warning: playing as a Mystic could be tough in the first battle, so be careful. The patch is uploaded to Desura and hopefully will be approved soon. The DRM-free version will be done early next week. 

Here is what was added along with a new scenario/tutorial:

• New talents for all heroes;
• Autosave every two hours of the game time;
• In combat in addition to the health bar, mana bar is displayed as well;
• There are active alternative actions for many characters;
• You can now use potions in combat;
• Relationships in buildings implemented fully.

Things that were fixed:

• Enormous amount of bugs;
• Objects appear on the mini-map as you explore the map;
• AI was updated a lot, in particular computer armies can heal themselves and hire troops;
• Interface was improved, new things you will be able to see. Also, now there are versions for different resolutions.

Things that were done fully or almost fully but cannot be seen yet:

• Detailed shader settings of the characters and weapons through a global file of a combat arena;
• Animation blending (not turned on yet, still working on it);
• Manager of combat animations and special effects (completed, in the process of integration);
• System of replay and recording sessions of the game;
• System of event cut scenes;

We would love to hear your feedback on the tutorial. Those of you who played, try to imagine you are playing the game for the first time. And those of you who didn't try beta yet, this is the time for you to tell us if the tutorial explains things well enough.

Last week update #38 for Legends of Eisenwald went live with a short story on the campaign background and a promise of more to come and another promise for a new scenario that will come out one of these days.

Winter’s Secrets

The fireplace cackled evilly in the corner of the hall. A man stood by a table, his fingers tapping a nervous tattoo. 

The doors to the hall opened blowing a sudden gust of snow into the hall. An armoured form entered the hall.

The thin man looked at the newcomer. “Lord Kuestenkatz, your arrival was not announced.”

“Doctor, I come on urgent business.”

The thin man folded his hands, one over the other. “Well, no rush. It is a cold day. Warm yourself by the fire.”

“No fire is warm enough to wash me clean of Seidlitz’ ambition.”
“Men could say the same for you, my lord.”

Kuestenkatz approached the warmer section of the room, unclipping the heavy furs from his shoulder, the particles of snow now simply water in the deep warmth of the room. He pulled the gloves from his hands and held his frozen digits to the fire. “I come for your advice, Doctor.”

“I know there are many men that consider my actions, how shall we say? Unorthodox, perhaps? But I have never been accused for not providing results. You have always been a loyal friend.”
“The feeling is mutual. The time is drawing near when will need to act.”

The Doctor looked at Kuestenkatz. “Then perhaps drastic times call for drastic measures.”
“I cannot kill him. The repercussions of such an action will go far beyond the borders then.”

The Doctor placed a hand on the lord’s shoulder. “Oh not at all my friend, why kill him when you can remove his threat.”
“And how would one do such a thing?

The Doctor went to a drawer and placed a hand to an object hidden from Kuestenkatz’ view. “Deception is a powerful ingredient. Better to act through the face of another,” he said.

“Who do you suggest?”
“Red.”
“Why would I work with such a criminal?” Kuestenkatz responded.

“We are all branded criminals or villains by someone. Who’s to say that he has not done any more than we have in our time? Would your enemies have spoken well of you, my lord, when you brought death to them?”

“Such is war.”

The Doctor grabbed Kuestenkatz by his wide shoulders and starred into his craggy face. “We are at war. We are at war against a greedy and selfish world. We are always at war. Do not think any different. You and I, my lord, see the bigger picture here. We don’t live by petty morals. We make a better place in the long run, but live with our actions here and now.”

Kuestenkatz shook his head, “He will call on his allies.”

“Then, my lord, we should assemble some of our own. This war will not be on your head alone, I promise you that.”

The Doctor stretched out a hand and after a moment’s hesitation Kuestenkatz gripped it firmly. 

The Doctor knew Lord Kuestenkatz was correct that the fire did not hold any warmth. For his heart was empty and cold as a winter’s storm.

Last week the Kockstarter page for Legends of Eisenwald was updated with information on the plans for the coming period.

Today is exactly one year since the end of our Kickstarter campaign and we think it is an appropriate time to talk a little about the progress of our game and about our plans. While we have been working very hard on adding features to the game and fixing bugs, we also have been working on updating our plans and making sure we can finish everything to release our game in September. The new plans are already in place and we follow them pretty well which makes us cautiously optimistic that things work out this time with no further delays.

The finished game is going to have one scenario that is available now – the Masquerade, plus the large campaign consisting of 7 scenarios and a scenario for you, our Kickstarter backers. We are doing relatively well now in terms of programming effort but scripting scenarios is a bit harder due to their complexity and non-linearity. Still, we hope to accomplish it all. But just as a heads up – should we face any delays, we think it might be possible we postpone a bit this special scenario for you – because cutting or not making the whole campaign is not an option. Some of you said that our recent decision to postpone the release until September was relatively sudden and yes, you are right. We want to learn from this mistake and be even more transparent in our communication.

In a post-funding update the team of Legends of Eisenwald lets us now that they are now greenlit on Steam.

Thanks to your many players and to your ongoing support, we have been greenlit today!

We planned quite a bit of activity to support our campaign on Greenlight and now we would have to change a few of our plans, but this time around this is a much nicer change compared to postponing the release. 

We didn't expect to be greenlit this round but regardless, we really appreciate it and Greenlight is a great service for indie developers. Alexander talked about it a few days ago in this article. If you want to hear his (well, actually our) thoughts about it, check it out.

Last week an update came available for Legends of Eisenwald that informed us that patch 0.85 is out and tha the first stage of beta has been concluded, with these being the highlights of that patch:

• French translation added; 
• Quest journal significantly expanded - quests are marked on the mini map and tabs for all, completed and not completed quests are shown correctly;

• Personal items are displayed in the info window of a character; 
• Added calculations of payment for mercenaries and units without castle support; 
• The cost of hiring depends on the relationship to buildings owners; 
• Skills are displayed in the info window of a character; 
• Added icons of a character’s hiring status (mercenary units, followers, regular units with castle support have no icons).

They also could use more votes to get greenlighted on Steam.

In a lengthy post on the Kickstarter page for Legends of Eisenwald it is explained that the game is being delayed until September and the reasons behind this decision.

Delay and reasons 

Those of you who have access to beta probably already know that delay is inevitable judging by the state of the game now. We could have taken a “quick and dirty” approach and released our game in somewhat workable state, but we don’t think anyone would appreciate that. Also, this approach can pretty much ruin everything we worked for. Therefore, after looking at our schedule, at things that remain to be done, we think a realistic date to release our game will be sometime in September. 

How did we end up in this situation 

When last year we came out to Kickstarter, we really thought that having brought our game to alpha means that not many things were left to do. Core mechanics were in place and we thought all the “niceties” such as hints and tooltips would take much less time to implement. The only experience we had was based on development of our first title, Discord Times. However, that game was much simpler in terms of gameplay and user interface (UI), so our estimate was wrong. As you know, we only managed to get out early beta in November and that early beta could have been called by some the late alpha. 

In November we got optimistic again and thought that now we can finish things until April and that’s why when we came to Greenlight, we set April as our target month. But again, it’s April now and our game is still not finished, even though much closer now. But this time reasons are a bit different than just a bad estimate. What took too much time was testing gameplay and making sure that certain things work, especially in combat, because it’s brand new combat system. Also, we experimented with hits system and ended up with something completely different. You saw already version 1 where hits were not restored, there was version 2 where hits restored but characters received wounds and that was not the last version it seems, the final one will contain both approaches since each system on their own proved to have some disadvantages.

Thanks Memling.

The Legends of Eisenwald beta has been patched and is also available in German now.

What has been fixed:

• All known crashes (thanks for all those bug reports!)
• AI behavior for casting spells
• A lot of problematic things in the AI

What has been added:

• A window of the first stage siege result before the actual siege, with a possibility to cancel the siege.

In case you missed it before, on Gamasutra a post mortem can be found on the Kickstarter experience of the Legends of Eisenwald devs, with 6 recommendations of which, out of laziness, I only quote 3.

 

We knew PR was important. We still managed to underestimate how important it was.

Mistake #1 There was no information anywhere in the media that we were going to start our campaign on Kickstarter. Our game wasn’t even announced.

Recommendation #1 Send out press release (press packs) about an upcoming campaign some time ahead. Announce your project.

If we had to do it again, we would announce our game a month or two before, then announce our plans for Kickstarter and then start the campaign itself.

Mistake #2 We started our campaign on Saturday. Weekends are slower than weekdays on Kickstarter because the biggest percentage of Kickstarter backers are from the US and it seems to be a national US tradition to leave somewhere for the weekend )(good tradition, I would say).

When we started our campaign we got to learn it very fast. Also, sending our press releases on the weekends proved to be very inefficient. As later some more experienced people told us, on the weekends editors get a lot of spam so often they don’t look at any of the messages received. For two first days we were pretty much without any press coverage.

Recommendation #2 Start your campaign on a week day.
Personally, we think Monday or Tuesday could be a good day to launch a project.

Mistake #3 We didn’t have enough promotional materials and we had to make a lot of them during our campaign. Also, we had to explain many things how our game worked.

Recommendation #3 Create a lot of promotional materials. Videos seem to be the best for this.

Update number 32 for Legends of Eisenwald is about the combat mechanics of the game. It explains the combat is based on the Discord Times system, including some Disciples 2 and evolving from that. One of them being that moves in a battle always have a result and another that the speed of the battle depend on the skill of a palyer and not something random.

Battles can be lost quickly if your tactics aren’t sound. It’s very important to choose which units to attack, and how to place your units initially, since it is impossible to move ranged or casting units later.

Choices are not only important in battle, but also when preparing for action. It is very important to have a balanced army that is ready to deal with any kind of challenge. That is why unit management is essential for any successful battle. Recruiting a wide range of units such as bowman, mages, knights and dual wielding units, and understanding their strengths and weaknesses, provide a tactical depth that is fulfilling and challenging.

Players can enter battle with a maximum of 12 units, all of which have unique attributes. These are made up of initiative, attack, willpower, melee defense and ranged defense. Certain units are locked to certain weapons; a knight cannot use a bow while a mage cannot use a sword. Setting the formation of your units before entering battle, and protecting your support units, is crucial. While recruiting units is important, players need to pay special attention when equipping and upgrading their units. Certain weapons will have unique properties, and equipping healing potions could be the difference between success or failure

Craig Stern reviews Legends of Eisenwald over at IndieRPGs in a video preview, based on the beta of the game.

Basically: there is a lot of good stuff here, but I also have some gripes. The balancing of many early game battles seems off. Further, as things currently stand, the game does an exceptionally poor job of explaining itself to the player, both in terms of its rules and in terms of providing visual feedback to the player during combat. (Dergay tells me that there was some sort of documentation about how to play that they forgot to send me, but alas, games are no longer in the age of RTFM.)

Luckily, all of this is stuff that can be easily fixed. Less likely to change is the fact that I can’t independently move my units during combat, a design choice that I am still far from sold on. Hopefully I will grow to appreciate it when I sit down to try LoE out at greater length in the future.

IndieStatik got a beta build of Legends of Eisenwald and like to share their thoughts on the game.

The combat engine feels and looks like a blend of HoMM (back when it was hex-based) and Disciples. An initiative bar at the side shows what order you and your enemies are going to be taking their turns in, and most of the time you’ll just be giving simple ‘move to this hex, attack this guy’ orders. There are some support units such as clerics and herbalists, but nothing too taxing at this point. I’d imagine that there’ll be more interesting abilities layered onto the formula as the campaign advances, though. As you can see from the screenshots, this is a pretty game. Production values are great all round, and animations are smooth. There’s quite a lot of detail to the authentically medieval gear worn, and even the long-haired Baroness character wears a convincing looking ensemble of plate, chain and leather.

Update #30 of Legends of Eisenwald brings news on the beta patch that is avaialble for those who are actually in the beta of the game.

We uploaded a patch to Desura and we hope it will be approved soon. Those of you who use Desura, will get automatic update. Others, please mail us here and we will give you DRM-free version some time soon, we have to create a list to notify you. 

This patch has a lot of new things:

• You can play as a Mystic now;
• The life hits system has changed, we call it vitality now, see how it works for yourselves and let us know what you think;
• The limit on units in army has been introduced - castles provide support slots for units and each castle provides support for a certain number of units;
• Draft version of hints have been introduced: there are hints in battle, hints on spells, and hints on skills;
• Some new spells are added for witches and heretics;
• Save/load functionality has been improved - in addition to auto saves, quick saves now with F5 will not overwrite anything; also, game can be loaded from the main menu, but no progress bar yet there;
• Dual wielders now have a response attack.

Some smaller things and fixes:

• Crash entering a tent has been fixed;
• Bug with loading saved game before battle has been fixed;
• Upgrade for named characters changed;
• And some other minor things.

Legend of Eisenwald saw 2 updates on Kickstarter in the last couple of days. The first is for a video preview of the game done at Pixabyte.

The second update is about the beta invitations that have been sent out and a promo for the Skyjacker Starship Constructor.

We sent out now invites to the beta to everyone in the $15 reward tier. We are still working on the patch with many different improvements and bug fixes and it will be probably ready tomorrow. But it will be the weekend and then Christmas time, and admins at Desura might not approve the patch right away. We don't want to leave you without promised access to the beta and the possibility to play over the holidays, so we sent invitations to all of you now. If any of you didn't receive it, please write us here via Kickstarter mail and we will sort it out. If you have the patience and the possibility to wait until the patch is out (likely Wednesday next week), please do so, we would like to have a handful of impressions that will be fresh if that's possible.

RPGCodex has received a beta copy of Legend of Eisenwald resulting in an article on the game.

You're not developing towns and you're not controlling several individual armies, as you do in strategy/RPG hybrids such as Heroes of Might & Magic or Age of Wonders. Instead, you focus on controlling a single band of adventurers led by your hero. Perhaps a likeness could be drawn to Mount & Blade in this regard. As you come across villages, churches and other locations, you will be able to recruit low tier units such as peasants or priests. Your followers, like in Mount & Blade, will gain experience in battle. With sufficient experience points, you will then be able to upgrade them. Peasants will become armored and blonde women will turn brunette. Your hero on the other hand, will instead be able to upgrade via skills chosen in a talent tree.
Another way to improve your hero and your hero's followers is to equip items. These items, such as weapons, armors, potions and trinkets, can be bought from merchants found in locations scattered all over the scenario map. You may also see some items drop from defeated enemies if you're lucky, or get them as quest rewards.

Thanks GhanBuriGhan.

The Kickstarter for Legends of Eisenwald finished yesterday with a total of $83,577 - just shy of one of the stretch goals, but a good effort against their $50k goal. From the update:

It’s official – Legends of Eisenwald will be made!

Thank you all, our great and amazing 2729 backers! Thank you who just backed our project, thank you for all our active backers who spread the word about us and thank you who didn’t get upset with 4 letters sent to them :) Thank you Kickstarter that it exists and helps bring to life many different projects.

This month brought us a lot of new experiences. We answered to the questions of journalists, wrote press releases and compiled press packs, argued a lot about new ideas how to attract new backers. We followed how our project was becoming more popular and read on forums what is written about us and participated in some of the forums ourselves. We got used to that and we have to admit we are going to miss Kickstarter!

Also, while we didn’t reach our stretch goal at 85k, the hope is not lost! Maybe we will get the missing amount through Paypal and Yandex money. And since castle assault was more popular, maybe we can even get to that goal there.

Darklord reminds us to keep an eye on the Legends of Eisenwald Kickstarter, which is currently at $64k with three days to go. An improved storyline has already been unlocked and other goals are on the horizon - the next is a backer's choice based on a poll:

Based on the voting results, this will most likely be a possibility of upgrading castles or a pack of storyline characters. You decide! If you have not voted, you can select any three items. A link to the poll can be found in update #8.

To reach the goal, we need to collect at least $15 000 within four days. As shown by some other projects, there is nothing impossible about this! Only you can help us make the game better — simply click on FB like under our video if you have not done so yet. We have almost 2 000 backers and just 800 likes, so 1 000 more likes would help nicely. And certainly, share the news of our campaign at message boards and blogs: there is not much time left until funding, and this very fact may persuade many to support us.

Legends of Eisenwald has just inched past their funding target of $50k (currently $50.3k, 9 days to go). There's a new music sample on offer and presumably they'll start looking at stretch goals soon.

A new combat video has been posted for Legends of Eisenwald at Kickstarter. Being Alpha, they note a number of things are missing such as visual effects but it does demonstrate some tactical elements.

Thanks, jhwisner.

RPG Codex has an interview about Legends of Eisenwald, which you may remember from Kickstarter newsbit a few days back. Here's a bit on their previous work, Discord Times:

At first glance, Legends of Eisenwald looks quite similar to Discord Times (2004), Aterdux' previous title. What kind of game were you aiming for with Discord Times, and in what ways will this game be different from its predecessor?

AD: Since Discord Times was created way before King’s Bounty: The Legend our motivation back then was a desire to revive forgotten gameplay of the original King’s Bounty. And our enthusiasm for Disciples 2 was reflected in the combat system.

Unfortunately, Discord Times lacked good graphics. And it was also quite, no, TERRIBLY difficult to play even though some fans think that it's a plus! And yes, we have to admit, in some areas it lacked balance. But we learned from our mistakes. The main problem of Discord Times – constant lack of gold – is solved: now only a special category of units will require pay – mercenaries. As for difficulty, in Legends of Eisenwald the player will have a choice on what level of difficulty to play at. (For the record, “Impossible” is a level that a player needs to choose to reflect the difficulty of Discord Times).

Aterdux Entertainment sent in the press release below, announcing a Kickstarter campaign for Legends of Eisenwald. The presser references King's Bounty, Mount & Blade and Disciples II and it appears they have completed a substantial part of the development. Interestingly, the Kickstarter page says the project is based in Belarus, which I thought Kickstarter didn't allow.

Aterdux Entertainment: Legends of Eisenwald

Independent game studio «Aterdux Entertainment» announced its new project Legends of Eisenwald – a role playing game with elements of strategy and turn based tactical battles.

The game can be described as Knight Errant simulator. A hero travels on a global map, conquers castles, receives tribute from villages and gather troops for his or her army. Main focus of the game is not on the economy but on battles and adventures. Fans of King’s Bounty and Mount-n-Blade will understand well what it is about.  

As for battles, creators of the game decided to solve what they perceive to be the main problem of turn based battles: lack of dynamics and slowness. For that reason they discarded “empty” movements without strikes. As a result, a player faces a choice whom to attacks at every move. According to developers, it makes a battle intense from beginning to end since a battle outcome can depend on one strike. Those who played Disciples 2 remember similar battles.

Despite the knightly romanticism and presence of magic the world of Eisenwald is not a fantasy but alternate Middle Ages. There is a place for adventures and heroic deeds but there are no arrogant elves or stupid orcs, no ancient gods or other fantasy clichés. Heroes of Legends of Eisenwald are not saving the world and are not participating in the wars between gods. Rather, they are directed by human motivations: by a desire to find glory (and wealth), by blood feud, revenge and even by unrequited love.

Right now developers have an alpha version of the game. Following an example of many independent studios Aterdux Entertainment addressed their future players through a popular in recent months Kickstarter with a rather original presentation video. Release of the game is planned for the autumn of this year.

http://www.aterdux.com  company site

http://kck.st/JWdHEH Kickstarter

http://www.facebook.com/groups/aterdux/