The developmentment of Northern Shadow has come to an end:

Farewell to Northern Shadow

First of all, a big thank you to everyone that supported the game. Seeing so many people interested in the game was an amazing experience. Thank you!

I’ve worked on the game as a solo developer until the start of 2016. At that point it became apparent that the game I was working had gradually ended up being a completely different game. I had hoped to maybe somehow preserve the original vision of Northern Shadow, but fortunately after a year of development that effort has failed. And it’s time to call it.

Development of Northern Shadow ended on January 2016. Huge thanks to everyone that followed the development over the years.

Thanks for reading!

Chariots touches base with supporters of Northern Shadow with their first dev blog.

Back in March when Unreal Engine 4 was announced, we decided to stick with Unity, at that time the development cost of switching was too high, and we were still at that development sweet-spot that the Unity is at its best. As the issues accumulated, the cost of these workarounds started highly outweighing the cost of an engine switch. Which is why, even though after such a large amount of development, we decided to switch to Unreal Engine 4.

Unity is a great engine. And in fact, both 64-bit editor and level streaming issues have been fixed with the Unity 5, which became available for pre-orders a few weeks ago. Its just that for our specific situation, it was a few months late :)

That was a bit long, but after such a long silence, I think a more detailed explanation was needed. We couldn't talk much these last few months, because we were switching to a different engine, and didn't wanted to show it until was ready. But now we can talk about some of the new and exciting stuff!

We've completely redid the world. Originally we had 3 overworld zones that was 15sqkm big. We now have a single 103.4sqkm overworld zone that you can seamlessly travel. We've added seasons to the game, AI acts accordingly to them and your cities' requirements change over time. Switch also gave us a free boost to eye-candy department with better Post-Processing, GPU particles, dynamic global illumination, and better Anti-Aliasing.

More information.

OnlySP interviewed the developers of Northern Shadow in a new article style interview to talk about their game, and other various topics.

Northern Shadow combines a number of closely affiliated but rarely intertwined genres into a huge RPG. An amalgam of first person RPG combat, city building, and large scale real time strategy battles, Northern Shadow’s immersive open world and sandbox approach aims to spin together complex mechanical combinations and create a unique game. We talked to Arda Güneş, a developer working on Northern Shadow, about just how all of these elements come together into a massive single player game, and why the team chose Steam Greenlight and Early Access as their path to release.

Northern Shadow begins with the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Its manner and reason for destruction is a mystery and you, as one of the few survivors of the destruction, take it upon yourself to discover answers. Since Northern Shadow is still heavily in development, Güneş could not reveal much more about the plot than that brief tease however.

While the team may not have a clear plot inscribed in stone just yet, they do have an idea of the size, scope, and scale of the game world. “Currently we are working on three big overworld zones and the underworld.” Güneş explained. “Overworld zones take about 20 minutes each to traverse between the farthest points. Underworld is harder to estimate a size, but it will be roughly the size of one overworld zone.” This four zone structure isn’t completely immutable, however, as Güneş and the team plan to alter and possibly add based on feedback received during their planned Early Access release.

The developers of Northern Shadow announced a few weeks back their game has been Greenlit on Steam. Congratulation guys I wish you success.

Greenlit!

Thank you all for your support. We could never have imagined such a positive response and support. Thank you!

Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Game Developer Arda Güneş to ask a few question about the just received Sandbox RPG game Northern Shadows.

RPS: Northern Shadow looks positively massive. How big will it be, though? How big of a world are you making? Both above and underground?

Güneş: The world is divided between continental zones. We haven’t made a real life scale comparison, but each zone takes around 10 minutes between the farthest point to traverse by flying at player speed, and up to 20 minutes by running on foot. We are planning to have around 3 overworld zones like this. There is also an Underworld, which is divided into smaller chunks, but its total size is comparable to an overworld zone.

RPS: It’s just you and one other person making the game, right? How do you do that? What is your work process like?

Güneş: I’m the programmer of our team. Taner is the level designer. Assets wise, we create some of the art assets ourselves, but try to handle most of it externally.

RPS: How long have you been at it? I guess for lack of a better way of phrasing it, how is this even possible, especially when there are only two people working on it? Have either of you ever done anything like this before?

Since our switch to Unity3D around Q4 of 2013, we’ve been prototyping with it. Full production started at the beginning of the year.

We’ve been working on different kinds of games for the past 3 years, but had to take breaks from time to time due to personal reasons. Some of the games were similar to this in scope, so we got experience as to what to expect, what would work and what would not.

Northern Shadow is the labor of love from a small team of Turkish developers. They describe the game as a first person perspective RPG.

Here is the usual video, and more information to see if your interested.

Release date: Summer 2014 for Early Access

Northern Shadow is a first person perspective RPG where you can build and manage your own kingdom. It has both sandbox elements, and a classical RPG story.

Game starts after the great defeat of the Northern Kingdom, at the hands of an unknown enemy. Some of the survivors have traveled to distant lands in hopes of rebuilding the now fallen kingdom.

Features

Your kingdom, your people

Build and improve your own city. Communicate with other kingdoms, negotiate trade agreements and build alliances. Defend your city and your lands.

RPG systems with a skill based focus

In combat, depend on your own skills, rather than statistics on your character sheet. Use spells or weapons, you can play the game your way. Craft weapons for your use, or for your troops.

Living World
Living economy allows you to see the ripples of your own actions all around the world. Your steward will take care of your city while you are gone.

Explore

Discover worlds both above, and beneath the earth. Find precious mineral veins and other treasures.

Gameplay

You can only control your own character. Build your city by talking to your steward, or workers and selecting an appropriate lot from a miniature map. Protect your surrounding lands by ordering patrols and giving special missions to your troops. Troop effectiveness is determined by their training and weapons/armor quality.

Your cities can produce different wares, which you can trade with other kingdoms if you wish, but you have to protect your roads and provide safe environment for traders first. Wage war or form alliances with other computer controlled kingdoms as you see fit. 

It is all text based (no voice overs), but has an expanding story with many arcs.

The game looks interesting to me, but what do you all think?