Backer Beta release postponed to June
about 4 years ago – Sat, Mar 21, 2020 at 07:49:53 PM

Ho there adventurers,

As you all know, the Backer Beta was set to come out in a few days. But as many of you are personally experiencing now, the international crisis is having damaging effects everywhere, and our studio has been no exception. We are projecting a delay of two to three months on the Beta, to somewhere between the 17th and 30th of June. But don’t worry! The game is coming along as quickly as we can make it, and the full release is on track.

This comes with one advantage though: while content for the beta is all in place, the delay will give us more time for refinement. We intend for the beta to be bug-free, and we have been going through a series of artistic upgrades to make our maps more beautiful. While we hadn’t planned on this delay, it does present an opportunity to iron out the wrinkles and release a better experience for our backers.

As an example of what we have been doing with visual upgrades, we wanted to show a house that our artists placed on one of the outdoor maps in the beta. We believe that small details are important to make the world of Yerengal come alive, right down to the roof tiles and windows of our buildings. Not to mention... there might be something worth investigating down in that cellar..? 

 A feature in the final game: Purify

We have another thing we would like to outline here: a game mechanic that we haven’t discussed before.

Deep in the wilds of Isilmerald, in hidden places, are items of great power. But not all of those items are safe to use. As Otto so unfortunately found out in our gameplay video, curses can affect otherwise useful items and cause great harm to those attempting to use them. But some NPCs may be able to Purify these objects, making them safe and beneficial to you and your party. In some special cases, there may even be quests to remove particularly vile magic from an item. Below is an image of a cursed lantern (used with the Brewing and Drying skill) before and after Purification.

 Until next time, adventurers, stay safe. The Beta is on the way!

Backer Beta internals: Deron-Guld
over 4 years ago – Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 01:24:16 AM

We have extended the Late Pledge Campaign of Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness! It will end on the 23rd of January, 2020. We decided to extend the initial deadline (26th of December) after receiving numerous requests from players who are keen on getting the Backer Beta / Early Access but aren’t  able to pledge until January. Before we proceed with presenting some Backer Beta internals, here is some information on the ways you can pledge.

The playable Backer Beta will be delivered on March 24th, 2020 to backers who

• pledge (or have already pledged) for the Early Access reward tier (or any upper tiers), or
• pre-order the “Early Access to Backer Beta” add-on.

Click here to pre-order the Backer Beta access for 22 euros ($25) as a standalone add-on. (Note: if you are not an existing  backer or haven't pledged for any reward tier that includes a Digital Copy of the game, then this add-on will give you only the Backer Beta but not the full game. For the latter, a Digital Download or Early Bird Digital Download pledge – or any upper reward tier – is required as well. Other rewards of the original $99 Early Access tier are not included either.)

If you want to get all Early Access rewards instead of just the standalone Backer Beta add-on, then you need to pre-order (or upgrade to) the original, complete Early Access reward tier ($99):

• If you are not yet a backer, you can use our PayPal-based backer portal to pre-order it.
• If you are an existing backer with a BackerKit account, please contact us so that we can re-open your locked order in BackerKit before you can upgrade to the full Early Access tier.

If you need help or have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us on Kickstarter or through our Facebook page.

Deron-Guld: a desperate city on the brink of collapse

With the backer beta quickly approaching, we wanted to show off a location that will feature heavily in the portion of the game the beta will explore: Deron-Guld. Deron-Guld is the second largest city in Isilmerald, an important mining town and economic powerhouse in the region, and the capital for the rebellion against the kingdom. By the time the player first arrives in Deron-Guld, things are going very poorly for the residents. Can you intervene to save Deron-Guld? Can you even discover the poison eating at its heart before it’s too late?

Following is some concept art for areas of Deron-Guld so you can get a better feel for how we designed it behind the scenes. The city itself has always been centered on mining and trade rather than decoration, and the recent troubles have done nothing to improve it, so solemn stone and wood comprise many of the buildings. Nonetheless, Deron-Guld has no shortage of areas to discover and stories to engage in.

Below you can see the market. Like everything else in Deron-Guld it has come on hard times; a blacksmith’s shop and a general store are all that remain open amid the desperation. People need to eat, after all, and no war machine can function without steel…

The following picture shows the concept art for the Curious Cat, the one inn and tavern in Deron-Guld. While the outside may be as simple and unadorned as any other building in the city, the inside is the one place where locals can get a flash of color and music to forget their troubles.

And, of course, no war-torn city would be complete without a well-populated graveyard. But can war alone account for the bodies strewn haphazardly on the ground? What eats at the mining capital of Isilmerald? We hope you’re ready to face the desperation festering in the rebel city of Deron-Guld. 

In the meantime, stay warm and stay out of abandoned mines. Have a joyous Böoreste!

Updated schedule and more content
over 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 02:17:05 AM

Ho there, adventurers!

While the development of the main storyline quests is progressing according to our plans, some side quests crucial for the Backer Beta as well are taking way more time to implement than we expected in our high-level plans. Therefore, a four-month delay became inevitable in the Backer Beta. We have learnt a lot from this process, allowing us to make much more precise quest development estimations in the future. The good news is that the Backer Beta will have more content (especially spells) than originally planned, as our spell and item implementations have simultaneously progressed without any delays.

Our late pledging (crowdfunding) campaign will soon come to an end as well, allowing us to finalize the pre-orders and start collecting information for the digital rewards from our backers.

The new schedule is as follows:

• End of late pledging campaign: 26th December 2019
• Backer Beta (Early Access) delivery: 24th March 2020

Locus the Wizard Stronghold

For this update we wanted to show you something we’ve been working on. Our Stronghold system will allow players to have a base of operations. Strongholds are specific to each party role and class, with each of the four roles (Warrior, Wizard, Priest and Outlaw) getting their own unique area, and aesthetic changes to the Stronghold based on the player’s class within each role. While we’re not ready to show off the final in-game map yet for the Strongholds, we wanted to give players a sneak-peek into how our concept artist has worked to design our Stronghold maps.

The image above depicts Locus, the Wizard stronghold. Clever players will find a way to summon a portal to Locus, deep in the woods south of Isilbright. Each area within Locus contains a puzzle, allowing you to further access the remaining areas (those walkways don’t start out as straightforward as they look here!). Once the puzzles are completed, Wizards will be able to utilize each of the buildings for a variety of purposes, and recruitable NPCs who are not currently in the party will make themselves at home so that it’s easier for players to enlist their services later without having to travel all over the world map.

As mentioned earlier, specific classes will see aesthetic changes to portions of their role’s Stronghold. Wintermages will find the Sanctum appropriate to their frosty pursuits after claiming Locus as their own.

Warriors and Priests will have more combat-oriented challenges to unlocking their Strongholds, while Outlaws will find themselves meddling in intrigue that affects the whole nation! Additionally, players who are not of the correct role for a given Stronghold will still be able to play through the quest related to each, so never fear about missing any content! As the game continues to develop, we will be showing you more information about the Strongholds you can call home.

A second look at the Backer Beta
almost 5 years ago – Tue, Jul 16, 2019 at 12:02:33 AM

Ho there adventurers,

After our last update, many of you complimented us on the music that played when the party first came outdoors into Vintner’s Grove. We thought you might enjoy if we shared it as a standalone track in this update. The following is from our official soundtrack.

Today we are also sharing a follow-up video to our last one. Its focus, as with our May update, is on dialogue and story elements, while demonstrating more of our UI and how areas of the game can change due to certain factors (in this case, time and interdimensional travel!).

Our party is on the hunt for an antidote that will save Stephan and his men from the terrible poison inflicted by a magical trap. Finding it requires using a dangerous cursed stone to travel to the past. Will we be able to locate the antidote in time? What dangers lurk in the Cult of Zoria’s hideout? Watch the video below for the exciting conclusion to our side quest: Trapped Under the Surface.

New gameplay video: an early preview of the Backer Beta
almost 5 years ago – Fri, May 17, 2019 at 02:38:52 AM

New gameplay video is live!

For this update, we want to address more specific dates relating to our delays, while at the same time giving our backers a much better idea of what to expect. For this gameplay video, we will be focusing on the dialogue and story aspects of Black Geyser, and the systems throughout the game by which players will be able to influence their surroundings while interacting with NPCs. All of the footage you will see in this video is part of the Black Geyser Backer Beta; backers who have pledged for a tier that includes this reward will be able to play through the same sequence of events that we choose in the video, as well as a lot of content before and after what you will see here. The options that go unselected are things our beta backers can choose in the Beta, as they are possible routes in the conversation and may lead to very different results than those you see in this quest. 

The Cult of Zoria quest presented here ties in directly to the main story quest of the game. Your character has been hired by a mysterious figure in Isilbright (the capital city of the kingdom of Isilmerald) to flush out the cult dedicated to the worship of Zoria, Demigoddess of Night. Strange things have been happening in the countryside west of Isilbright, along with the disappearances of important political and religious figures. It’s up to you to root out the truth and discover what the demigoddess’ recent resurgence of followers might mean. But in the course of your investigation you find other adventurers, sent before you to investigate the same happenings. Will you help them, or claim the glory for yourself alone? Can you discover what the cultists are up to before it’s too late?

Just as a reminder, for a short while longer our late backing is still available. If you are interested in what you see in this update and want to be a first-time backer, visit our Backer portal here. If you are an existing backer who has not yet pledged for a tier including the rewards which grant you access to our Backer Beta, you still have a chance to upgrade your pledge on BackerKit; follow the link in your email that we sent you after you first pledged to access our pledge manager, and update it to a higher tier if you want to join the beta!

Current status

As discussed in our previous Kickstarter update, delays were expected due to the combination of external and internal causes. To be brief, we faced more unpredictable bugs than we assumed we would in our initial project plan. After fixing them, we decided to rewrite a part of our Unity-based game engine to make it more robust in order to reduce the risk of similar bugs in the future. This refactor is now complete. Other bugs were completely out of our control (for example, the Unity core engine and editor have their own issues as well, and we have very little influence on those). 

Additionally, for several months it looked like our negotiations with the investor who proposed a change in funding milestones might have finished at any moment, but talks only ended a few days ago – with success. The good news is that the game will have all the features that we originally planned for (as well as those promised due to successfully-reached Kickstarter stretch goals), but there will be a delay of 8-9 months in the release of the Backer Beta as well as in the launch of the finished game from the dates we originally planned. Therefore, the Backer Beta is expected to be accessible in November 2019, while the release of the game is expected to be ready by April 2020.

Our next Kickstarter update is planned at the end of June. Stay tuned!