Playability Approaches!

I am drawing very close to releasing the Beta of Chapter One, although my dream of releasing the final before the new year might be wishful thinking depending on how much needs fixing once the beta has been playtested fully.

I have about 95% of the areas complete, and have completed a cutscene where the player manages to escape from a room in an unconventional manner, making use of an item that they own from the beginning of the game that appears to be little more than a character embelishment, so I'm quite pleased that a more useful function for it is now implemented. The event takes place in the castle that is to host the final stages of the game. Followers of this blog may recall I re-designed the castle to take advantage of the new tileset that came in the last patch. It's been a bit of a nightmare linking all the doors, but now a majority of the placeables are in place it's really feeling like a castle.

I noticed the recent poll requested more info about the player character. I guess this is because due to concern of being forced to play a pre-generated character, but i wouldn't regard this as a weakness to the module. On the contrary, it's allowed me to concentrate on the story and better tailor the module. I don't want to upset my voters though, so for their benefit here's a little backround on the player character...

He's a male Dwarf by the name of Gerbilaf Bandiwide, who is a miner based in the heavily Dwarven populated coastal city of Kerral where rumours of plague have started to surface. He starts the game as a 1st level Fighter, owning a few unique items not usually associatted with a starting character, being a silk handkerchief, a mining pick, and a smoking pipe. He starts the game in his favourite local tavern after a hard days work at the mines, where there's a brief discussion of the strange black winged creatures recently rumoured to frequent the mine.

Gerbilaf is Neutral Good. Although he can't stray from this alignment during the game, there are plenty of alternative routes through conversations that have different outcomes and still fit within the scope of his alignment, including opportunities to use skills such as intimidation. At one point, it's even possible to intimidate a foe before combat so that he drops his sword.

I'd love to talk more, but this will simply delay the beta, so I'll end my discussion there. If you'd like to be involved with playtesting, keep an eye on this blog for notification of when the beta is available.

Happy gaming all!