Shroud of the Avatar backers at "First Responder" and above are invited to attend the game's latest build, Release 22. The event has already kicked off and is packed with all sorts of new things for players to experience and test.
Release 22 feels like a turning point for us. We are starting to gain real momentum on being able to tell the story through new scenes added each release. This release in particular is important for the story because one of those new scenes is the Isle of Storms—our homage to the beloved starting experiences of Ultimas, where questions answered determine your starting path.
Release 22 also brings us to the culmination of this entire quarter’s creature work. Many of you may remember that we first began with the Troll in Release 20, trying to see how big we could make creatures and how different we could make the experience of fighting large-scale enemies. This led us to solve technical challenges, like them turning around properly and their head tracking their current target, which in-turn led us to solve turning and head tracking. It also brought us cool features like trajectory-based knockback, allowing these big creatures to knock us off tall things (to better soften us up before eating). In Release 21, we started solving problems around combat with flying creatures with the Phoenix. Now we come to Release 22, where all that learning combines into our largest and most complex creature yet… the Dragon! We still have more polish on these large creatures to get them to the quality standard we all want, but they are already inspiring to see and fight.
There is so much more to read, so be sure to head over to the Shroud of the Avatar KickStarter page to check out the full list of things players can expect in Release 22.
