Tea Party of the Damned announced!
Hello everyone!
First of all, apologies for the lack of Kickstarter updates. We've been hard at work on Witchmarsh, and we're definitely getting closer, but I don't think it's a secret to anyone that our approach simply wasn't working.
The main hurdles we've encountered are mostly down to being a team of two developers working on a highly ambitious project. That's why we've made a decision that we believe will allow us to deliver the game we promised, without compromising on the scope of the finished product.
Our plan is to release a short, stand-alone RPG first. We're calling it Witchmarsh: Tea Party of the Damned. We'll have a full announcement, FAQ and press release for it soon, but to summarise:
Tea Party of the Damned will be a short (6-10 hours) RPG adventure, set before the events of Witchmarsh. It's important to note that this will be developed alongside, not instead of, the full Witchmarsh game you've backed here. Although it will be released first.
In TotD, players explore a supernatural mega-dungeon, deep beneath Boston Harbor.
The campaign will feature co-op RPG gameplay, with the full roster of 12 playable characters which will feature in Witchmarsh.
Your characters and teams will carry over into the main game once it's released.
Most importantly, ToTD will be completely free to everyone who backed Witchmarsh (including late backers via Backerkit).
We'll be launching a Steam page for Tea Party of the Damned (ToTD) soon, and we'll need your help to spread the word about it! But we'll cover that more in a future update.
We’ve also posted a follow-up update on our Kickstarter, addressing some of the backer’s concerns about this move. Check it out here!
That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more TotD news.
Dev Update Roundup #4 - Item icons
Hello, hello. Here’s another dev update post from the witchmarsh discord.
Hey everyone! Just going to share in here what I've been talking about with the town-council. Development is still going steady, and we've been turning our attention to the item and loot systems.
Currently Joe's been busy overhauling the loot drop system and making it feel more exciting (rather than the same brown bag plopping on the floor). Part of that has involved giving the items (and their icons) a bit of a refresh, with many more being added to the mix.
One thing I've had to plan around is the placement of magical potions (healing, mana, etc) in the world. At the start of Witchmarsh, magic and the occult isn't widely spread throughout the populace; it's the domain of a few shady actors. This evolves as the game progresses, but at the start of the campaign it doesn't make sense for vendors in town to be selling magical potions.
At first, potion drops will be only located in areas inhabited by humans with arcane knowledge, or perhaps a shady potion seller will walk the streets at night peddling his wares. We're also planning a quest line at the town's chemistry lab, which involves the logistical and medicinal questions surrounding potions which can magically fuse broken bones or fix gunshot wounds. These are all things we wouldn't have to worry about with a traditional fantasy setting.
So there we have it! If you’d like to join the discord you can follow this handy link!
Dev Update Roundup #3 - Housekeeping
As not everyone who backed the game has Discord, we’re posting the collected dev-updates here on the website for all to see.
Dev update #1
Hello everyone! Just a small dev update to let you know what's going on. The melee re-work is finally done, but still needs another quick pass in order to polish it up. In the end Joe had to completely re-make the ‘node' system we devised for making the combat less cluttered, so the process took far longer than we’d anticipated. Here are the changes recently put into the game:
- AI will seek out and move to invisible grid-points around their melee target. This still needs a little tweaking but it’s workable for the time being.
- Player movement speed now ramps up as you move to escape a melee lock (see previous combat update). - UI: New visuals which indicate your progress in breaking free from a ‘melee lock', as well as who has an attack of opportunity.
- Melee locks now add a subtle flash to locked characters, making it easier to see who has been recently locked in combat.
- Auto-melee function added.
- New enemy type: Hermit Crab.
- Added some new weather/environmental effects for coastal areas.
- Beach Cave dungeon tiles are now animated.
- Beach Cave scrolling backdrop improved. - New exclamation mark system. Characters can be called to play a ! animation above their heads. Useful for cutscenes as well as combat.
- Interactive objects now light up slightly when mouse-overed.
- Story: Chapter 4 story structure is well underway*, with the introductory cutscenes now fully implemented.
- Story: Improved the dev controls for story content as well as jumping to certain ‘bookmarks' for rapid testing.
* Note: There are five main chapters to the game planned, with a smaller sixth chapter being largely ‘endgame' content with minimal story. I'm still hoping to get the entire narrative structure implemented by the end of 2022. Who ever thought one person writing and implementing an entire RPG storyline was a good idea?**
** Note: We did, apparently.
Dev Update #2
Hey everyone! Here’s what we’ve been working on since the last dev-update.
- Resting near beach bonfires will re-ignite them.
- New ‘what the heck is that?’ cutscene added for the first time the player encounters an enemy (in this case, murderous crabs the size of labradors.)
- More animations for the crab and hermit crab enemy types.
- Improved the death animation for giant crabs.
- Added some random variation to the giant crabs to keep them interesting.
- We heard you like crustacean-related content, so we added a small easter-egg to coastal maps.*
- Improved the character animation code.**
- Monster death animations now generate particles/effects.
- Story: Another major cutscene written and put in place. I’d been putting this one off as it’s a biggie and frankly I was rather intimidated, but it’s just about done!
* Note: Is it a crab? All signs point to yes.
** This turned out to be quite a large job, but consolidating all of the character animations to a simplified script in a central location should save time in the long run. It also makes it easier for Joe to add alternate animations to the investigators and monsters.
Dev Update #3
Hello everyone, and happy new year! In January we’ll be returning our focus to the game’s combat. While it’s much improved as of late (see previous dev updates!), the end-of-combat sequence is missing some polish. We’ll be improving the systems for reporting XP, skill-ups, and most exciting of all, injuries! This will ensure fights have consequences, and letting your investigators get knocked-out (reduced to 0 HP) too often will result in nasty injuries, ranging from a bump on the noggin (reduced craft and spellcasting), to severe maladies like broken bones.
Overall, things are still going a little slower than expected, but since most of the recent system work has cantered around combat; it needs to be right. Once the combat and core systems have been tied together, we'll continue adding content for [spooky voice, lightning flash for dramatic emphasis] Witchmarsh: Tea Party of the Damned, the first Witchmarsh mini-adventure and a huge stepping stone on the road to full release.
As for myself, I’ve been adding more details to the story, with the goal of making your adventures in Witchmarsh feel like they’re taking place in a living world. For example, in one scene, the supporting NPCs and players are sleep-deprived after taking part in some daring all-night escapades. After the cutscene, the NPCs are gathered in a room where the player can talk to them; and I’ve recently made it so that if you talk to them too often, they’ll make their excuses and leave to catch up on their sleep. I hope tiny details like this one will make all the difference, and I’m still hoping to get the main skeleton of the story fully implemented in the next few months. In addition to all this, we’ve also been tuning up the game’s other systems and content. Here’s what we've recently added:
- New dynamic rain (and for caves: water-droplets) system.
- Continued to future-proof the animation system to ensure it's compatible with future platforms and systems.
- Added new background tiles for coastal locations.
- Improved the cutscene system and gave it some new functionality.
- Added an improved ‘forced move' mechanic which can be used for dashes, rolls and charges.
- New ability: Reckless charge. A short-ranged charge which stuns both the target (2 seconds) and the caster (0.5 seconds) on impact.
- Improved the Hermit Crab enemy and gave it some extra abilities, in addition to the one mentioned above.
- Story: A series of major cutscenes has been written and implemented, with all of the branching dialogue and associated NPCs put in place.
Witchmarsh Dev-Update roundup #2: Combat
Here’s the second part of the dev-update roundup! This one was made in June 2022, and we talk about the problems we’ve been having with the combat, mostly caused by the unique challenge of creating a multi-character RPG on a 2D plane.
Hey everyone!
Just checking in to give you a small update re: the state of development. I was hoping our next post would be a big announcement (hence the delay), but it seems this might have to wait until later in the year. If you remember, we had major concerns about the game's combat - in particular, the way that investigators and enemies would meet in melee - forming a messy clump of sprites.
We've been working on a number of improvements, and although it's still not quite ready, it's already feeling noticeably less frantic.
Readability (aka, tackling the 'scrum'):
[In progress] AI will seek out and move to invisible grid-points around their melee target. This will keep the melee scrum spaced out a little.
Combatants in melee combat now lock together. Breaking this lock grants an 'attack of opportunity' against the fleeing target.
Certain movement and escape abilities (dashes, rolls, etc), will bypass the attack of opportunity, giving players (and some craftier enemies) a chance to re-position and reset safely.
Enemies and friendly AI under the influence of certain status effects (fear, dazzle, confusion, etc), will be more likely to break their melee link and seek another target, becoming vulnerable. This should allow for some interesting synergy between your back-line support and front-line brawlers.
Feedback/visuals:
New critical strike graphics!
To complement this, we've enabled critical hits on ALL investigators and enemies, rather than just those with the critical hit skill.
Characters and monsters with the critical hit skill will unleash far deadlier crits!
Enemies will now stagger when hit, assuming they wouldn't perform any other action in the meantime.
For greater impact we've also added a 'super stagger'. This ocurrs when an enemy takes more than 20% of its current HP in damage and will override any other attack, action and even movement. Note: you can see the super-stagger in the GIF below. Just look out for the crit landing!
Quality of life updates:
[In progress] There's now a toggle for auto-attack target.
We've removed the 'combat boundary'. Instead, players can escape combat by leaving the current map, or running far enough away from an enemy's point of origin. We feel this is simpler and doesn't hinder the player with arbitrary barriers to movement.
When enemies/investigators are stacked up together, the AI will attempt to move slightly in order to create an off-set formation. Stacked sprites will also shift in brightness, making them easier to read.
As you can see from the list, we're almost there in terms of the combat re-work, it's mostly just a matter of making sure it all works correctly. The first item: the AI grid, is still giving us some teething problems. Elsewhere in development, I'm still working on the implementation of the cutscenes, branching dialogue, and NPCs.
I estimate that I've implemented around 70% of the basic skeleton of the game's narrative, and will be pushing for 100% completion this summer. This will free me up to spend the rest of the development time on side-missions, content, and even more story polish. As I often say, thanks for bearing with us. I'll be back with another dev-update shortly.
We've got another one in the pipeline and it's a bit easier to digest, I promise (although it is also crab-related).
Originally posted — 05/20/2022.
Witchmarsh Dev-Update roundup #1: Story
Hello everyone! I realise I’ve not been doing a brilliant job of keeping this website updated. Witchmarsh is still in development, and given our small team we’re doing our best. Most of the updates have been posted on the community Discord, but I thought I’d round them up here so that more people can check them out! So here we go.
Hello everyone! Lou here. I thought I'd talk about my role on Witchmarsh, which admittedly has changed a lot over the game's long development.
Initially, my position was 'writer and game designer', which meant a few things. For starters, I planned and wrote the game's story, largely in word processor documents, with lots of notes and sketches made in various notebooks. I also produced several hundred pages of dialogue scripts, and many pages of 'lore', pinning down and ironing out exactly how the game universe functions.
Building maintenance is clearly not a priority in this neck of the woods.
As a game designer I was also responsible for writing the project's Game Design Document, sometimes known as a 'design bible' or GDD. This is a common practice in game development, the goal being to set down all of the information a team would need to build the game's systems. It also highlights the game's concepts, goals, storylines, characters, control schemes, and so on. It's a bit like a rulebook, a blueprint, and a pitch document rolled into one. I think in the end the master document ran to about 100 pages, but I eventually split out some of the 'content' sections into separate databases to bring its size down to something slightly more reasonable.
These days, thanks to the tools made for me by Rob and Joe, around 90% of the work I do is in-engine, and is focused largely on implementation rather than writing. This intersection of code, story and content is often referred to as narrative design, and being more active in this role has allowed me to implement large swathes of the game since 2018.
At a rough count, there's around 170 NPCs and over 100* cutscenes in the game at the moment, along with around 850 story 'global variables' which record player actions, choices, their reputation in the game, and their progress throughout the story. For better or worse, we've started referring to these global variables as 'story globs'.
*Update: As of October 2022 this count is standing at 200!
Money-grubbing Necromancers are just one of the types of character you’ll meet in Witchmarsh.
Finally, for anyone interested in the narrative design workflow I use in Witchmarsh, I've created a brief rundown here:
1) Planning stage:
Although the overall story for Witchmarsh is fully planned out, I try to ask myself a few questions whenever I'm starting a new story arc: What is the player's goal as they move through this part of the story? Which characters will they meet? What is the mood, atmosphere? Is the area dangerous? What is its impact on the rest of the story?
2) Writing stage:
Using a set template, I write out an overview or list the plot-beats. Dialogue is then scripted in rough.
3) Global Variables:
I try to plan out all of the 'Story Globs' I'll need for the segment of the story. It's easy to add in more later, but having them listed and defined in the engine helps me keep organised and speeds things up. Each global variable must be given a name and a starting value.
4) Create environments:
Inside Game Maker, I then create the blank 'levels' in which the story takes place. These are usually based on a mockup created by myself or Joe, but functionally-wise this isn't hugely important. Story events can be easily transplanted into different levels and layouts if needed; what's important is there's a playable space in which the story can be tested.
5) Create events:
Cutscene events and NPCs use the same basic code structure, so whether the player is triggering an 'event' like a ceiling collapsing, or speaking to a 9-foot tall transdimensional ghost, it's the same basic workflow. I create the event, name it, set its location, then import all of the 'Globs' it needs to function. Any 'Globs' the event outputs also need to be stated.
6) Implement dialogue:
I then take any dialogue scripted and chop each line into a 'page' inside the dialogue script. These pages can be linear in progression, like reading a novel, or in the case of branching conversations; they can be hugely complicated (like a choose-your-own adventure book).
7) Other event actions:
Other event actions, such as teleporting the player, setting NPCs to 'hostile', or even triggering another cutscene are then set. Often completing a cutscene or triggering a Globs parameter will unlock another cutscene or event, also.
8) Test, re-write:
I've found that the biggest benefit to doing my own story implementation has to be seeing my writing in-game, rather than on the pages of a script. When playtesting cutscenes I also use the opportunity to re-write and copy-edit the dialogue heavily, with the goal of neatening it up and polishing. Only very rarely does something need to be re-written from scratch.
I think that covers most of my basic workflow. Thanks for bearing with us and stay tuned for something a little more entertaining than a wall of text!
(Written 16th April, 2022)
2019 Progress + New Teaser
View this update with comments on Kickstarter.
Hey everyone!
I know a lot of you are concerned about development, so I thought I'd bring you up to speed. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, however, we do have an announcement to make.
Witchmarsh's composer, Francisco, was awarded a grant with which to record some of the soundtrack with a live studio band. We love what we've heard so far, and have put together a teaser video featuring the game's combat theme, some new gameplay, and clips from the recording sessions.
Enjoy!
It's not quite a new trailer or release date, but we'll hopefully get there before long. We hope you enjoyed it! :)
Why it's (still) taking so long:
In spite of some obstacles, made all the more serious by the small nature of our team; 2018 was still a good year for progress.
Looking at the screenshots, it's easy to forget that Witchmarsh is an RPG, and not a platformer with RPG bits tacked on. All of these databases (items, skill, spells, attributes, enemies/npcs, equipment) require heaps of dev-hours to put together.
On such a long project, burnout can creep in, too. There are times when it feels like something of a Sisyphean task. Lately however, we've tried to be more conscious of this, structuring our work and lives in a way which avoids over-stretching - like taking plenty of time off over the holidays, for example!
It also hasn't helped that we've remade elements of the game that were finished - like the smaller characters seen in the Kickstarter trailer.
As we've touched on before, we understand the frustration going around, because we feel it too. We want the game out there, but we also want it to be right, while remaining loyal to the original concept.
Because of this, we've decided to wait a little longer before setting a release date. We hope to bring you more news on this soon! As always, thanks for your support and patience. We couldn't have come this far without the help of our backers and community.
We hope you'll stick with us. We think 2019 will be an exciting year for the project. :)
Regards,
Inglenook Games
New website launched!
Hello everyone, and welcome to the new home of Inglenook Games.
We've been working really hard over the last couple of months to keep you in the loop. If you've been absent, or are just joining us, allow us to fill you in:
- No new release date has been set, but we're hoping to commence beta testing in Summer 2017. This will be available to all Kickstarter and BackerKit pre-orders of £45 or higher.
- We've launched a new fortnightly update feature called Marsh Frog Mondays! We've already posted 7 of them.
- Our Twitter and Facebook accounts are still posting news as it emerges.
- We also have a Newsletter.
Once again we'd like to apologise for the lack of concrete news, but progress is being made. We hope you'll stick with us in the months ahead, as there's a few exciting developments we can't wait to share with you.
- Inglenook