Act 3 of Sacred Fire still needs some time:

Act 3 Testing Start and Roadmap Update

Sign Up For Act 3 Testing Now

Hello everyone,

As part of the Steam Summer Sale festivities, we’ve prepared the long awaited Act 3 Testing build for you.

While the testing build contains only a handful of scenes for now -- like another set of rewards and dynamically generated dreams as you rest after the big Act 2 battle -- it contains also the long awaited resolution to your and Etain’s childhood friendship backstory for both male and female protagonists.

Like last time, the testing build will be expanded gradually with more scenes, advancing your Sacred Fire journey towards its grand finale. Please note that the testing build does not contain voice-over, as we need to fix all the bugs in Act 3 first before recording with the voice talent.

As mentioned before the decision to cut no corners when writing Act 3 increased its scope considerably. And while we think the experience, without all the different resolutions and endings, would be crippled, unfortunately the game won’t be ready for a full release this summer.

The increased scope and the consequent production hurdles ended up pushing the full release into the next year. We’ll be narrowing the release down as soon as the testing of Act 3 is over.

I wish things would be easier and I could deliver the game to you faster. Yet, we’re making progress and sticking to making sure experiencing Sacred Fire’s 1.0 breadth and depth will be an exceptional experience for both new and long-term fans.

In the meanwhile, thank you for your understanding, patience and support. If you aren't part of the public test yet, you can easily join now! Here's how:

• Join the community on Discord
• Head over to the #tester-role channel and claim the Act 3 Tester role
• Follow the instructions in the newly revealed #test-act-3 channel that will become accessible

Thanks Couchpotato!

Couchpotato spotted the spring update for Sacred Fire:

Spring Update

Act 3 testing and its impact on 1.0 release

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the latest update from the trenches of solo development.

First things first - the testing of what’ll be available of Act 3 will start at the end of spring, meaning by the end of June. Those waiting for the full release, will then have to wait a little bit longer, as the feedback and amount of bugs in the testing build will determine the 1.0 release date.

While our last update was marked by the joy of writing out the story to its full potential, the increased scope meant spending more resources on localization and voice-over, putting increased pressure on the development. It’s thanks to my publishing partner’s flexibility and my determination that we tackled all the hurdles and can now bring you the good news of the game moving towards the finish line in an uncompromised state.

I understand the wait is long, both for players who’ve experienced the game recently, and for those who’ve been waiting for a conclusion to the story for a long time. That, however, is the road we went down ever since releasing the first public demo - of expanding the scenes with more player choice and NPC reactions based on your feedback. With Act 3, we wanted to avoid the common ailment of games in this genre - diminishing player choices, unanswered plot threads and patch-on endings.

Instead we tried to create many satisfying moments for many different playthroughs, addressing truly rare game states.

So, we want to thank you. Thank you for your feedback, your support, and your patience over the years! It's thanks to you that Sacred Fire could grow into what’ll hopefully end up being a satisfying choice-driven experience for all of you.

P.S.: Oh, and yes, for those kindhearted players out there, don’t worry, we’ve heard you: there will be an option for non-lethal attacks to stop the dogs in Act 1 as well.

Act 2 for the historical RPG Sacred Fire is now available:

Act 2 — Player Choices & Consequences Update

Hey everyone,

To boost role-playing even more, we’re adding a lot of new player choices and story beats to the game based on your feedback and suggestions. A big thank you to all of the testers on Discord for helping us make these new additions as immersive, tense, and fun as possible!

NOTE: there will be spoilers ahead for Act 2 — proceed at your own risk!

TLDR:

• Yes, you can kill your opponents in both Act 2 duels
• Yes, you can avoid all injury in Act 2 (both the back-stabbing and the spear)

Here are the changes and additions in detail:

[...]

Henriquejr spotted that the Early Access of Sacred Fire had just been released.

Sacred Fire Early Access -- OUT NOW!

Hello everyone!

It has been a long time coming, but we are thrilled to announce that Sacred Fire is now available in Early Access! The journey is of course far from over, but we are so happy to have reached this milestone.

We set out not just to create a game, but an immersive story that you truly play. This Early Access release, containing the first act of the story, should already give you the deep, immersive experience we aimed to build.

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Here is what you can expect from Sacred Fire in its current state:

• Act 1 of a highly branching, immersive narrative.
• Every choice counts, making the story highly replayable as you uncover all the different outcomes.
• Real role-playing reminiscent of TTRPGs. Consider your character's emotional state when making decisions.
• A cast of intriguing and living characters, each with their own wants, needs, and ambitions.
• A beautiful soundtrack that takes you on a journey to ancient Caledonia.

Thanks @henriquejr!

Sacred Fire currently has a demo available as part of Steam Next Fest and has announced its release window for Steam Early Access.

New Trailer, Demo At The Steam Next Fest, and Release Window!

Hello everyone!

We're excited to share a bunch of announcements with you. Starting with a brand new trailer! It shows you the enemy you fight: the merciless and seemingly endless Roman legions. Take a look below.

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Steam Next Fest

Of course, we wouldn't just make a new trailer for nothing. Starting June 16th, you will be able to get your hands on the first public demo of Sacred Fire during the Steam Next Fest! The demo will let you play through the first chapter of the story with updated visuals and in-game choices, as well as voice acting. Doug Cockle, best known as Geralt in the Witcher franchise, is cast as the voice of your older brother. Joining him are Michelle Gonzo as your childhood friend, and Ben Britton as a local bully.

We can't wait for you all to get your hands on the demo. Make sure you join us on the official Sacred Fire Discord to discuss and compare your playthrough of the demo with the rest of the community when it goes live!

Note: the demo will only be available for the duration of Steam Next Fest (June 16th-22nd), so make sure you try it out in time!

Release Window

We're not done with the announcements just yet. We're proud to announce that Sacred Fire will be coming to Early Access in Fall 2021!

The choice to launch in Early Access comes after careful consideration. We understand this makes the wait for the finished experience longer, but the key factor outweighing everything else, is that we believe, involving the community and listening to your feedback, is the way to create the best possible game. It feels like a natural step for us to take, as Sacred Fire, since it’s first inception as a purely text-based experience, was developed with community playtesting and community feedback.

The Early Access version will contain full character creation and customization, and the first of three acts, introducing many of the companion characters, tough dilemmas and turn-based boss fights. The first act is a contained story with a rewarding ending and offers thousands of choices, two completely separate story branches and plenty of nuanced differences when playing as a male or a female protagonist.

We hope you're as excited as we are! Make sure you join us on Discord to discuss the news, or leave a comment down below.

Thanks Farflame!

PC Gamer report on Sacred Fire and say emotions are key.

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Sacred Fire is an upcoming RPG set in ancient Scotland that uses a system based around psychological decisions and emotional development in gameplay. Players will manipulate their allies and enemies' motivations to succeed you're encouraged to "control your emotions and outsmart your opponents to turn the odds into your favor." 

And yes, that's the voice of Doug Cockle on the trailer. He's also known for playing Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher series.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

The preview for backers of Sacred Fire has almost been completed. The July update also answers a fan question about which RPG rulesets inspired Sacred Fire.

Hurls spotted Kickstarter update #21 for Sacred Fire - an interesting discussion about hiding success percentages is going on:

Update #21: Design Focus: Are probabilities ruining role-playing experience?

Hello everyone,

We’ve got a great question from Kamen42 in the comments section of our Kickstarter. He was rewatching Sacred Fire trailers and had an intriguing idea: wouldn’t it be more fun if we hide the success probabilities of choices in Sacred Fire? And the idea seemed so interesting, that Andrej wrote an insightful answer that deserves a full-blown Design Focus update.

If you’d like to refresh how probabilities work in Sacred Fire, you can watch our developers commentary here.

First, here’s the question from Kamen42. It’s a shortened version of his original comments. And below it is Andrej’s take on it.

Kamen42: With each action there are percentages of success. I was wondering if there will be a mode where these percentages are not visible. I think it would be really interesting to play without knowing what chance of success your actions have.

When players have several options how to act, they usually have one that they like the most. However, when they see the chances of success, they might be discouraged and end up doing something else.

I caught myself doing this several times when playing games like Torment. After that I sometimes had a feeling that I don't play the game, that I am merely doing what the game suggests I should do.

Sure, turning the percentages off would definitely lead to making some bad decisions, some that are doomed to fail, but that way the story is entirely in the player's hands. We would be the ones making the decisions. And if we fail, at least we fail doing something we believed.

[...]

Sacred Fire has funded and with two days still to go there is time for a stretch goal of further character customization.

100% Funded! Thank you! You did it!

Thank you! You did it! Sacred Fire is funded and it's all thanks to you.

Every single one of you made it possible.

It seems to me like it was yesterday, but we launched the campaign already 25 days ago. It's been 4 weeks filled with hard work, little triumphs, anticipation and not so much sleep. :)

And it was all worth it. There's over 1,100 people who want to see Sacred Fire becoming a reality. We're humbled and thankful.

What's amazing, there's still 3 days to go. So what's next?

It's not just about the stretch goals. The bigger success the campaign is, the easier it is for us to attract talent and partners. This will leave us with more time to make the core experience better, work on polish and balance and add choices and replay value.

We are looking forward to making a great game for you.

We've made a big step in creating a strong and dedicated community. We are excited to see there are people who appreciate innovation and storytelling. Thank you for your feedback, we couldn't have wished for a better community.

Let's make Sacred Fire the best it can be!

To recap, here's the next stretch goal to further enhance Sacred Fire experience.

One of Sacred Fire's strengths is its unique visual style and focus on character creation. It's the deepest and most thought out design aspect of Sacred Fire, as it allows you to develop your own playstyle and create your own hero. So our first stretch goal expands this fundamental part of the game and gives you even more self-expression options with focus on variety of:

• colors, outfits and hairstyles,
• faces, scars and paint patterns,
• jewelry and more awesome beards.

So how far can we go?

The story is yours to tell. :)

Your very happy poetic team,
Andrej & Martin

Sacred Fire is close to be funded with 6 days to go:

84% and 1,000+ Backers! Design Focus: Characters and Romance

Thank you all for your trust and for spreading the word.

Sacred Fire got covered by Kotaku a couple of days back and I believe your support made this happen. We are over 1,000 strong.

In the last couple of days we were busy preparing the ending for the campaign, so in this design focus I will cover several themes to make it up to you. :)

In our mind, a good RPG is ultimately all about the characters. Character creation, combat and game mechanics may draw you in and engaging story choices keep you interested. But what creates the memorable moments, are the characters you've grown to love, hate or care about.   

This is why in Sacred Fire we’ve invested a lot into developing a strong and varied cast and a design that combines character driven storytelling with innovative mechanics. So let's start with the basics.

Relationships

In Sacred Fire, we do not look at relationships as good or bad progress bars. We measure them in strength: how many emotions and memories you experienced together, how meaningful this relationship is to you. There are many positive relationship states (Respect, Admiration, Gratitude, Friendship, Attraction and Romance) and negative states, we call Blocks. Blocks are either Fear based (Prejudice, Terror, Responsibility) or Anger based (Aversion, Betrayal, Envy).

[...]

Sacred Fire has reached 50% of its goal on Kickstarter with 16 days remaining. The latest update talks about the games attitude to choices and consequences.

...

So let's dive into what we do differently and let's start with the why: while we love many RPGs, from Fallout to Shadowrun Returns to The Witcher, we think RPGs usually have a pacing problem, where story and gameplay do not support each other, but fight each other.

Either the story is good and you want to flip to the next page, but you need to clear another level of monsters first. Or the combat is fun but you cannot wait to click through the dialogues.

What if the game worked differently?
What if gameplay and story supported each other?

Another issue narrative games have is that they present arbitrary challenges to compensate for the fact, that there is no challenge in clicking on dialogue options. So they use writing that misleads players, obscure the consequences and add time limits, or Quick Time Events.

What if the basic interaction with the story would be tactical? We could write better stories and our players could get satisfaction for succeeding in making a tough choice.

So I've just described 2 typical problems I see in RPGs: disconnect between the story and the combat and arbitrary challenges.

Sacred Fire is using a numeric personality model to connect story choices and combat actions and make them support each other:

In addition, we apply the following 4 principles in the design of choices and consequences to solve the two problems I identified above:

You have to earn the right to make a tough call

If a story choice you want to make is out-of-character for the personality you've developed, you need to pass a probability check. To boost your chances you can use willpower points.

As a reward, making a tough choice develops your personality and helps you level up.

Choices shape your character as much as actions

Story choices shape your character's personality and this way indirectly affect his ability to perform at the peak of his ability.

Furthermore inner monologue gives the player's character the ability to interpret and comment on what's happening in the story. What are your thoughts on failure, injustice, or brutality in a scene?

[...]

Sacred Fire - a psychological RPG about revenge and loyalty is now on Kickstarter:

What is Sacred Fire?

Sacred Fire is a role-playing game where your success and solutions to conflicts lie in the psychology of the characters, not in weapons, attacks, and damage types.

You do not start as a leader – your right to lead must be earned through self-control, willpower, and influence. Will you embrace revenge or fight for a better world? Will you be strong enough to face the consequences of your decisions?

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[...]

You can now vote for the psychological RPG, Sacred Fire, on Steam Greenlight. I am not sure what a psychological RPG is, but it is certainly not about psychologists.

Sacred Fire - A Psychological RPG

 

Poetic Studio's narrative RPG, featuring Doug Cockle (The Witcher 3), enters Steam Greenlight

Banská Bystrica, Slovakia - February 13, 2017/... Independent developer Poetic Studio has announced that its turn-based, psychological RPG Sacred Fire, featuring the vocal talents of Doug Cockle (Geralt from The Witcher 3), has entered Steam Greenlight.
 
Sacred Fire is a game about survival, power and hope, where players lead a band of resistance fighters in ancient Caledonia, taking on the invading forces of the Roman Empire. Sacred Fire is not just about the outer, physical struggle for survival, but also about gaining political influence and the pursuit of inner balance.

Poetic Studio's ambitious debut, which deliberately avoided a fantasy setting, has already garnered industry interest through its first gameplay teaser, 'Something More', which featured voice actor Doug Cockle. Sacred Fire requires tactical thinking in a story full of risk-based choices and combat. Using Poetic Studio's bespoke Emotions & Motivations storytelling platform, players can resolve conflicts by using a combination of smarts, skill, looks or empathy. To do so, they must build inner balance by coping with fear and anger. Only a stable and strong personality can win respect with bravery in combat and see through the traps set by cunning opponents.
 
Poetic Studio is preparing a Kickstarter campaign for March of this year. Currently, it is collecting votes on Steam Greenlight.

Here's the development roadmap for Sacred Fire:

Sacred Fire Roadmap

We understand that you all want to play the game and every other news seems like a distraction, but your voice is critical to move us forward to the final release. Let’s look at why and what’s in front of us.

Creating a unique RPG experience at this visual level takes time and this is the ground we need to cover to make Sacred Fire amazing:

Stage	Goal	Time frame
Steam Greenlight Concepts	Get feedback on pitch, build a presence on Steam	December 2016
Steam Greenlight	Get feedback on game, get the attention of Valve	January 2017
Kickstarter	Finishing funds, amazing rewards for fans, get alpha and beta players	March 2017
Preview release	First playable version for Firestarters Guild members and ALL Kickstarter backers	Summer 2017
Alpha release	Debugging, hands on feedback	Late 2017
Beta release	Balancing, polish
Gold	The sweet polished version of Sacred Fire	Spring 2018

And you, our fan, are at the center of this plan. Without you getting involved, Sacred Fire won’t be possible.

Our roadmap is a chain of events, one leading into the other and building its results. It’s possible that Valve notices we have a strong Greenlight campaign and gives us an extra push to build a bigger community before Kickstarter. We can then get into appealing rewards to make Kickstarter more attractive. So then Kickstarter has a better chance to hit the goal in the first days. What next? A swiftly funded project can get more coverage and raise even more funds. The game is able to get more content and polish.  We can even bring in more star talent, as voice over legend Troy Baker, Joel from The Last of Us, has shown interest and is watching our development.

So to get to the Gold experience, your help is essential and we invite you to co-create Sacred Fire.

We’ve already started with Steam Greenlight Concepts. You can read more in our blog post titled Sacred Fire is on Steam Greenlight Concepts or you can visit our Steam Greenlight Concept page to vote for us now.

Sacred Fire has a pre-alpha gameplay video for your perusal titled "Something More". Check out the blog here which goes into detail about how Sacred Fire ended up with the voice of the Witcher.

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Sacred Fire is a turn-based psychological RPG about survival, power and hope, inspired by ancient Caledonia.

Sign up for updates at http://www.SacredFireGame.com/join/

Build your will to show courage in battle and cunning in the throne room. Rise through renown, blackmail, or loyalty and inspire others to crush Rome or to build a nation.

Create a hero reflecting your beliefs and express your motives in inner dialogues. Use force, smarts, skills, looks and empathy to compete for power and to survive deadly duels.

You start on the run, with nothing but your wits and will. Can you avoid traps, spot lies and rise to lead a resistance? Can you hold on to your humanity?

The game will be available on Steam (PC, Mac & Linux).

Voice Actor: Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher

I just found out about this following RPG game today, and I have to say the developer has my interest. The game is called Sacred Fire , and made by a studio called Poetic.

Poetic is a one man independent game studio formed in 2014 by Andrej Vojtas, bringing meaningful and innovative narrative games to life.

The game is described as the following.

Sacred Fire is a narrative RPG, integrating story and gameplay by using emotions in both combat and dialogue. Inspired by ancient Caledonia, the story follows a band of survivors caught up in a century long conflict.

Launching in 2015 for Win, OSX, Linux, iOS and Android.

Story affects gameplay

All choices shape your personality, building your ability to control your emotions. Emotions affect all performance.

Gameplay affects story

All actions affect your renown and relations, building your influence. You need influence to change story events.

All characters evolve

Each turn, all characters’ influence evolves. Find allies and a way to stay ahead of your opponents.

They also have a new one minute teaer trailer to share.