Notorious Studios is giving everyone one more shot to participate in Legacy: Steel & Sorcery’s open alpha, announcing the fifth and final test starting next week. The team also continues its dev series, with the latest episode featuring Some of the developers talking about level design in the game.
The next open test will start on January 15th and run until January 22nd. Like other playtests, this one will last for a week. After this will be Early Access. Before that, playing in this test will let you experience some of the new content, Some of which comes after previous feedback, we can expect some level design updates. You can head over to the game's Steam page to click and request access.
Legacy: Steel & Sorcery is a fast-paced fantasy PvPvE extraction RPG. Given that all of those elements that need to work together to create a fun experience, particularly when you're dealing with aspects of competitive multiplayer, creating engaging environments in the world to set all of this against still matters.
In the latest dev video, Colin, Principal Level Designer, and Tessa, Senior Level Designer, discuss how environmental design is important to the overall experience, the risk versus reward question, how they encourage different players with different styles to engage, and they give a peek at some of the future content in the works.
They touch on a range of design questions, From the challenges of open world designs to make sure you have open space but also navigational landmarks that keep people moving in the right direction and maintain combat flow, along with risk and reward balance.
Tests have helped guide some of the design improvements, especially once they got real feedback from a range of player types in their tests.
For the future, they're working on some new maps, including forr different playstyles, There's one that they are referring to as farm at the moment, that is apparently easier in some ways. they're also considering how to add variable difficulties, including better rewards. They're also considering additional map events and zones, including the potential for class influence, “What does a paladin space look like compared to a rogue space?” they ask.
There’s a ton more in the full conversation, including Q&A time, and more details on what they’ve been working on. But first, the final open alpha before Early Access.
