We are excited to announce the availability of the first officially licensed SotA comic from Tortoise & Hare Creations, Shroud of the Avatar: New Beginnings!
Created by W.O. Billman II (plot, script, and editing) and Indi Martin (pencils, inks, colors, and lettering), New Beginnings tells the story of a corrupt land, where a young farmer and his wife find themselves embroiled in a lethal powerplay with local constables, and seek a fabled escape to a legendary world.
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Steam Special Promotion: 25% Off Thru April 21
If you’ve been thinking about pledging to Shroud of the Avatar at the starting $45 Adventurer pledge tier (or buying one as a gift for someone), now’s a good time to do it over on Steam Early Access. Steam is running a 25% discount on the basic $45 package thru April 21st.
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Duke & LotM VIP Design Roundtable and Lady British’s Easter Event
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Happy Easter!
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Play Release 16 Now!
Release 16 screenshot courtesy of Soleidad. Check out more in the Release 16 Screenshot Gallery.
[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]
Greetings Avatars,
As we stated in previous posts, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically.
Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback, and use it to iterate improvements. This has already paid off, with additional game features like jumping and swimming, as well as improvements to systems like crafting, conversations, and combat. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.
It is worth noting that we develop in an iterative fashion. This means we will often get systems and content in the game as soon as we can, even if they are only partially functional. In general until you see me say something is “final” you can safely assume we will continue to improve on that feature. An example is our Pets which are in very early development and do not include a lot of their functionality like being able to hang out in your house.
As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers.
As you might notice many of the deliverables from Q1 are now in Q2. This is due to many factors including the Unity 5 conversion, conventions (we had not planned to attend GDC), bug fixes, and other completely normal game development challenges. This now obviously puts our launch by end of 2015 at risk. We are currently working on various strategies to keep launch within 2015 but as always our goal is to ship the product when it is ready, not before. We will do everything in our power however to complete Episode 1 in as timely a manner as possible without sacrificing scope or quality. It is worth noting that based on our current funding and fundraising data trends that we we will still be able to complete the game without any financial issues, even with slips like this. NOTE: With this schedule change we will be extending payment plans to November.
RELEASE 17, April 30, 2015:
[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]
Greetings Avatars,
Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 16 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, March 26 at 10:30 AM Central Time (16:30 UTC).
This access also includes anyone who signed up for free access to the first weekend via GDC and SXSW. Please note that everything you need to play is here (or linked from here). You will NOT receive a special code nor is a Steam key, your account activated via the email address that you signed up with.
Please read this entire message, as well as the linked instructions and known issues.
We are far from launch and in a constant state of change, and we do not yet have in-game systems to inform players of these changes, or to share ways to help them to explore new content and systems. This means we rely entirely on this message, and the linked instructions and known issues to convey the current game state. We regularly have to answer questions or filter bug reports, because players elect not to read this valuable information. By taking a few moments to read through this information, a great deal of our time and efforts can be redirected to focus on new “unanswered” questions, and addressing critical issues impacting each release. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to review this post, and for all the truly valuable feedback you continue to provide.
While I am proud of how much we accomplished with our last release, at the same time I am chagrined that the cost of that ambition was an overall decrease in the enjoyability of the game. We did move over to Unity 5 (which was a HUGE accomplishment) but we only got partially there and that transitional state caused bad performance and some less than stellar visual results. We also moved the players over to Novia for the first time, but we failed to balance the first region, Perennial Coast, for new players. For all of that we are very sorry and we will work to do better. We promise to pay closer attention to balancing forward progress with playability.
Release 16 (and 17) has had to be our repayment of the debt we incurred with Release 15 (tech debt is a term often used in our industry). That means that we were unable to deliver quite as much content as we had hoped, but we do feel the game will be in a stronger state because of our focus on playability. We still made time to include some cool new things for you to play with though, including shield bashing skeletons that just will not die and the sprawling narrative of the Necropolis!
I will be posting a Q2 Schedule by the end of this week so stay tuned for more information about what comes next.
Also, remember that while we are providing new content with each release, our community is working overtime to make new events for you to enjoy, so be sure to check out a couple of the Community Events Calendars run by our community members (via in game book or the player run websites Avatars Circle Community Events and Events of the Avatars calendar).
Without further ado, here are the R16 deliverables.
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
SotA Community App for iOS and Android
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Tracy Hickman’s first visit to Portalarium Studios in Austin for SXSW and R15 Postmortem
Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 15 Postmortem with Tracy Hickman
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
Community Sponsored Decoration Contest
Last month, community member Athanil sponsored a Release 14 Decoration Contest that 28 people participated in! Community member Lollie coordinated a tour of all the competing homes with the contestants hosting a walk-thru and describing their decorating efforts. The winners were determined by the participants voting on each other’s homes. Themo Lock was the runner up, and the following community members tied for 1st Place:
Doctor Shroud: Decorated a Druid Home in a Town Lot in Port Mirren, (Loc: -69.9, 185.0, -565.6)
