The Way Ahead + Play with the Devs
over 4 years ago – Thu, Apr 02, 2020 at 02:53:25 AM

Dear Backers,

Wherever you are, you’re most likely reading this against a background of troubling newsreels and unusual routines, of uncertain futures and surreal conversations with friends, family, co-workers, strangers... At Might & Delight we’re working from our homes trying to manage the new demands of isolation, stay-at-home kids and ambient instability. And while we push ahead with development schedules for Shelter 3 and Book of Travels we’re taking a new look at ways to connect with you in these new times. (If you have any thoughts or suggestions, we’d love to hear them.)

As backers, most of you will now own Meadow, our online multiplayer. (You may still need to redeem your Steam key by logging in to Backerkit with the same email as you kickstarter-account is registered to.) From time to time we host a 'Play with the Devs' session. With so many at people home and alone, and with spring showing its first signs, we thought that now would be a good time to host another. In this current context there's certainly a bittersweet flavour to the connections we make in virtual worlds, and it’s with extra special warmth that we invite you to join us in Meadow on Friday.

We will be there at 13.00 CEST wearing transparent dev skins, and to add a little extra fun we thought we’d play a game of Hide & Seek: you’ll know when you’ve succeeded in finding a dev by the way the skin will transform! And be sure to come and find your animal friends on the Steam forum or Discord after the session. (For those of you in the time zones this works less well for, we apologise and we'll be looking to redress the balance sometime soon!)

It's fair to say that most of us have heads full of grey clouds right now, so let’s find some sunshine in adventuring together! We are all looking forward to it very much and we hope to see you there.

In the meantime, please stay safe and look after one another.

Best Wishes,

Helen and the team at Might & Delight

Gameplay Update 2: Skills!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 02:42:27 AM

Hello Backers!

We are thrilled to share another big piece of the puzzle that makes the core of our game design in Book of Travels: skills! This has been one of our focal points as of late and now we’re ready to offer a deep dive into their function in the game, shedding some light on what makes them special compared to other RPGs and how they look and behave.

Firstly it’s important to keep in mind that we’re trying to build a roleplay experience that challenges many of the norms and structures that fans of the genre are taking for granted. It’s our hope that what you read here will shed light on our philosophy regarding skills and that you’ll be as excited about them as we are! 

 
The four types of skills and the four winds 

In order to start explaining something as complex an RPG skill system, we need to begin with the foundation. There are four types of skills that your character can learn. Knots, Teas, Abilities and Passives. They each have different tones, uses and gameplay orientation. What all skills share is that they are not all tailored to boost your stats or give you obvious advantages. Many skills are just ways for you to express your character and to use for roleplaying purposes in social situations. 

Knots

The tying of knots is a magical practice in the game world and allows for a variety of wondrous effects and functions. The time it takes to tie a knot depends on its complexity,  but after untying it, the effects of knotspells are often direct. 

Teas

If the knots are the “scrolls” then teas are the “magic potions” of our world. Deeply rooted in the culture of the world, the brewing of tea is a common practice both among ordinary folk and practising mystics. It requires preparation and patience but the results are often rewardingly strong and may last for long periods of time.  The only limitation is that just one tea effect can be enjoyed at a time. 

Abilities

These are skills that don’t work by magical principles. Hiding in bushes, fishing, tricks and perks will instead improve everything from social skills, world interactions to survival gameplay. Some can be used all the time, others require special conditions or even tools. 

Passives

Even if the term is common in RPGs we treat passive skills a bit differently in Book of Travels. Obviously they work on the principle of giving permanent bonuses to your character, but many of them can give you unusual and flat out weird bonuses if used correctly.  Our idea is that players can use the other categories in conjunction with their passives to create tricky chains of bonuses. An example is drinking a tea that makes you unaffected by the elements, using a knot to call for rain clouds and then having a passive skill that gives you bonuses when standing in rain. With the amount of skills we are prepping, we are quite convinced that you can come up with some pretty awesome combos. 

Winds

Besides the four types of skills there are four winds. These are a big part of the world lore and are considered divine or magical. Each skill, regardless of type, has a wind connected to it. The four winds all have their own “personalities” and they represent differences between skills. Skills of the Southern Wind are orientated towards physicality, interactions and trade. Skills of the Western Wind are often focused towards creativity, illusions, and strong magics. Northern Wind skills are cerebral and orientated towards science, protection and group aiding spells. Skills of the Eastern Wind are naturalistic, spiritual and often include animal skills and survival tricks. Each character has an affinity for one of the four winds, making skills of that wind easier to learn.

How to acquire skills

Unlike many RPGs, your character won’t learn skills per automation upon levelling up. Instead we have made gathering skills into something a bit more contextual and roleplay like (you're likely to learn the fishing skill from a fisherman, and a master at a tea house might teach you a magical tea blend). Of course there are numerous ways to acquire skills, such as learning them from NPCs, receiving them as rewards in events, trading for them, or finding them randomly in loot. A skill you write in your skill book must be activated or learned before it can be used. This is done by allocating points in the skills you want to use. Skills vary in how many points are required to learn them, and it’s up to you to balance your array of skills. Will you collect many cheaper, simpler skills, or a few more potent and rare?

Using skills

Skills all have conditions on when and where they can be used. We're not very fond of “do whatever you like” type of RPGs and will prohibit players from assembling a fireplace on a wooden deck in a tea house. Besides the conditions of when and where, skills are used differently depending on type. Passives are always active. Abilities can be used freely without cost but work as cooldowns. Knots and teas both use the same fuel: reagents. These are things that you collect in the wind that you then use to craft knots and teas. A combination is often needed to complete a knot or a tea. “Dandelion” plus a “tuft of animal hair” to give one example. In our world the magical practises are somewhat alchemic and reagents are not always gathered from nature. Coagulated engine oil and driftwood dust are amongst the things you can expect to tie into your knots.

We hope you have enjoyed this summary of skills in the game. Please let us know your thoughts about them in the comments. As always we do actually read everything and will gladly use suggested skills in the future so feel free to brainstorm!

Much love from Jakob and the team

Creating Book of Travels: painting the world by hand
over 4 years ago – Sat, Mar 07, 2020 at 12:22:25 AM

Dear Backers, 

Much has been said about the art style, our pipeline and graphical process we use in making BoT. Today we're sharing a peek at some of our most recent assets - ones that we are now implementing in the game. It’s really important that everything you see in the game is carefully handcrafted and painted manually. This takes a team of four 2D artists working full time on the project. Some assets can be painted in a day, others take up to a week for one artist to paint. Below you can see two ancient trees that only appear in one place in the game world. Their names are Kesnan and Kham and they stand tall in one of the areas on the western side of Braided Shore.  You can also see a tipping lantern, which can be interacted with via an Endeavour event and has to be created in several parts to be able to animate. 

Nerdy Art Trivia 

(Or scroll to go directly to the images)

In order to make all the painted assets of the game coherent, we've created a meticulous 2D pipeline that ensures that the style is consistent and that all things visual are in sync. We use a specific brush for all assets and never stray from it or its size (15px). We also use a tricky hatching technique for the brushwork. It gives the art more of a textured feel and adds detail and variation to each piece. Besides that, we have also adapted a rather unusual way to underlight the objects, using brighter values low and darker ones high. This was inspired by A.J Casson who’s unique style is one of our major influences. The underlight helps to create an unpredictable and odd impression that we really love. 

Once finished, our game designers can start drafting and  implementing events that take place at or near these unique props. 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this first dive into our process. We’d love to hear any thoughts, feedback or ideas about this or suggestions for things you would like us to feature here. Let us know in the comments section! 

Thank you for your time!

Jakob, Marcus, Charlotte, Olle and the rest of the team

Ask the Devs video + Island Winner
over 4 years ago – Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 02:30:28 AM

Dear Backer,

Today we’re excited to be sending you this interview with Peter Stråhle, Technical Artist on Book of Travels. This is the first in our series of Ask the Devs, small movies in which a team member answers your questions, so thank you to all those who posted questions via Twitter and Discord. 

The Isle of Torn Voice

It’s been a long time in the choosing and there was a lot to love in every island entry we received during the Kickstarter campaign, but now we finally have our winner. Thank you to Collin Wilhelm for Torn Voice, in Collin’s words, "An island with a cave where music and song sound the most beautiful." Here’s what 2D Artist Charlotte had to say about it:

"This in itself is very lovely. However, we're going to add a bit of a twist. The ghastly feeling given by the figures in the cave made us think that the island could be a refuge for lost souls; shadows of beings, appearing at random times, singing their past lives. We loved the mood and the mysticism, and we could definitely picture it working in Book of Travels. Another important point was the visual concept of it: we had no plans on making a cave in the water, but of course we need one!"

You can see more of Collin's illustration here

Runners-up

One of the unexpected treats of the campaign was gathering together your creations - thanks to those of you you who supplied us with a treasure trove of art and stories too varied and rich to do justice to in this little paragraph. And as with everything you send to us, please know that it’s all part of the listening and creating project that is Book of Travels. Our team isn’t big enough to respond to everything, but the entire project is a river whose course and current is determined by listening to you so please do keep adding your ideas to the flow right here. 

But wait! I was about to give a special mention to our three runners-up: Jordan Moller, Lorne Colt and Clémence Koren - congratulations!

 Jordan’s Bridge Islands sketched out a “marshy island with cacophonous frogs", while Lorne’s fog and broken statues offers a slightly creepy island experience, Book of Travels style. Clémence’s beautifully handmade Island of Tidal Pools is only revealed every month at a low tide. You can see more here from Jordan Moller, Lorne Colt and Clémence Koren. A Book of Travels Steam key will go to each winner.

Help us celebrate

Might and Delight will be ten years old in April! We're planning our celebrations. If you have any ideas for things we can do to commemorate, send us a Tweet or let us know on Discord!

Before we check out, a few recurring requests prompt us to pass these tips and links on:

• If you are a backer with a Dev Party invite our first party opportunity will be next month - watch this space for more info.
• Some of you are still looking for this Discord link. Even if you aren't, jump in and say hi!
• If you missed out on our campaign or a friend wants to get involved, many of our rewards are still available right here where you can also buy the game at a special pr-order price.

That's all for now – we look forward to reconnecting for 2020 and reading your comments  below or on Steam, where you'll find more behind-the-scenes updates in the months to come. 

Best Wishes,

Helen and the team at Might & Delight

Gameplay Update #1 - What are Endeavours?
over 4 years ago – Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 01:24:20 AM

Dear Backers,

We're happy to share the first of a series of mini posts that will take you behind the curtains of Book of Travels production. In the coming months we'll be sharing small insights into the production journey, leading up to early access release later this year, and towards full release!

What are Endeavours?

Today we want to share some progress on the game design systems. As many of you have read before, Book of Travels balances a lot of contrasting gameplay elements and it’s very much up to the player to pick and choose which parts to engage in. One of the pillars of the experience that we’re currently working on is a multiplayer feature we call Endeavours.

Endeavours are special events that require players to help each other and cooperate to solve situations (players of Meadow will recognise traces of obelisks). The amount of players needed, the context, the goal and the rewards all vary greatly from event to event. Starting out, your character represents one “slot” in any endeavour, but as your character develops it might gain the ability to cover two. Some Endeavours can be solved alone, but others will require you to gather a large band of travellers before engaging. Some will reward you with small magical boosts or items, and other, rare Endeavours can be the starting point of larger adventures! Endeavours are divided into four categories; physical, mystical, mechanical and social.

Physical Endeavours

These situations challenge your group with feats that require strength, such as operating a draisine cart, pulling objects out of a well, or clearing heavy rubble to uncover items.

Mystical Endeavours

These can be anything from praying by a shrine or singing at a graveyard to interacting with magical beings and invoking visions of the past. 

Mechanical Endeavours

Braided Shore is a land that inherited an ancient industrial infrastructure, some of it is still noticeable in today's society. Through mechanical endeavours your group can use ancient steam boats and train engines, unpick mechanical locks and use various mechanical devices in the world.

Social Endeavours

Examples of these are a merchant who doesn't give access to her wares unless a group convinces her to, or a scholar who can give lectures to larger parties earning them valuable skills and knowledge in the process. Social endeavours are about interacting with folk in the world and affecting their response to you depending on your numbers.

Current status - your input!

We’re currently developing these systems and plan to try some out in the upcoming beta. We truly hope that you like the idea of Endeavours, and we’d love to hear your thoughts regarding them in the comments right here. If you have ideas for other types of Endeavours we can add, please comment below and we might implement them! (And credit you for it in the final game of course!)

Thank you for your time!
Jakob and the team

PS Very soon we'll be sending another update with the first of our Ask the Devs videos. We have lots to share at the moment but we're also trying to work out how to keep everyone happy over three platforms (Mailing list, Steam and right here) so we decided to risk double postings rather than risk your missing out. Thank you for your patience!