Guest Update: An APP-etizer with Tim Burrell-Saward (and Live Playthrough Next Week!)
over 3 years ago
– Sat, May 22, 2021 at 03:28:53 AM
One critical part of the game we haven't shown much of is the companion app. In fact, our app developer, Porcelain Fortress, headed by the inimitable Björn Elíeser Jónsson, has been working non-stop for more than two years on it. And we're finally ready for you all to have an early look. I tapped Tim Burrell-Saward, our project manager and lead engineer, to do a deep dive on the app's heroic journey to date. As with all of these updates, keep in mind that we are still refining and will continue to refine until the game gets into your hands and beyond. Everything here is still "in progress". Specifically, a lot of the text has not even had an editing pass. Let me make this extra-clear:
THESE APP SCREENS ARE NOT FINAL.
Before we jump in, I want to mention that I will be doing a full, live playthrough of the game on the Dice Tower on Thursday, May 27, at 1:00 PM ET. The video will be available after the live stream for those who can't make it. So be sure and drop by the Dice Tower YouTube channel and check it out.
With the preliminaries out of the way, take it away, Tim:
I’m writing this not from my usual desk in the filthy engine rooms deep within the bowels of the Tower, but rather from the bright and airy flexible working spaces on its upper floors, where the app development happens. It’s much nicer up here. They have a froyo bar, and the air doesn’t burn my lungs. I thought I’d make the long trip up to talk about how the software side of things is shaping up, and to give you a look at some of the work that goes into making a game like this.
The Development Process
Careful integration between the physical board, Tower, and app has always been a crucial thing for us to nail, as there’s a huge amount of opportunity to make truly unique features, but also equal opportunity for things to go wrong. Our chief concerns were as follows:
- To be mindful of where we’re asking players to put their attention, and to carefully manage their focus between the physical board, the Tower, the app and the other players. This isn’t a videogame, so we don’t want you staring at a screen the entire time.
- To minimise (or indeed design out entirely) opportunities for the app and the physical game to fall out of sync, by being very select about what game state information the app needs to know. We want you to focus on the game, not on troubleshooting the tech.
- To do some really interesting stuff with immersion via the ways things like narrative, sound, mechanics and game flow are metered out.
- To remove some of the administrative busy work from players, allowing them to get to the fun bits quicker. This last one has been a huge focus for us.
We’re still deep in the development process, but we’re pretty darn confident that we’ve nailed all of the above (and more), and are wholly convinced that we’re making something that’s going to push forward the state-of-the-art for games with digital components. This game is a lot of fun.
Let’s start at the beginning of the app development process, way back in April 2019. Our extremely accomplished, always accommodating and ever patient software developer Bjorn started work on a digital proxy for the physical tower (which was nothing more than a few sketches at the time), so that the game design team could run paper playtests.
Straight after this Bjorn began work on a “greybox” version of the app, meaning something that would be playable from start to finish but with no time spent on aesthetics. We’ve been running this project under the Agile method of software development, meaning we work in quick, iterative bursts of activity (each “sprint” lasting two weeks), before testing out what we’ve made and then making changes. The aim of the game is to work fast, test lots and iterate constantly.
Once the game design team were confident that the basic foundations of the game were solid, in October 2019 we brought in Sam Ballard, an exceptionally talented game artist and UX designer with a penchant for humorous placeholder text (remember "A Literal Box"?).
Since the initial concepting, Sam’s been working with us to develop look and feel, and to help ensure the UI was as user friendly as possible, a task primarily done using a piece of prototyping software called Figma. Here's a zoomed-out tour of our Figma doc. Each coloured square represents a screen in the game, and each tab shows an entirely new iteration of the design. We’re now on iteration number eight.
Fast forward a few months and we reach the Kickstarter, where you would have seen this little snippet of the app in the campaign video. Here’s a secret: none of it was real. It was lifted directly from Figma with some light After Effects wizardry, as at the time we were still very much in the design phase.
Progress on the app has continued at full speed since the Kickstarter finished, with each and every system undergoing constant change and development as the game design and Tower progressed. So let’s talk about how things are looking today.
Game Setup
Here is the current version of the home screen.
Here is the current version of the Adversary select screen. (Reminder: early drafts of the text.)
The game select system is one of the first unique things you’ll notice about how Return to Dark Tower plays. Upon starting a new game you’ll be prompted to pick from one of nine Main Objectives, which determine the overarching narrative of the game as well as the types of quests you’ll be going on. Choose Miras the Horse Lord and you’ll be fighting to stop a trio of caravans from delivering evil relics to the tower. Aid Yana the Assassin in eliminating some tricky targets in exchange for the map to a secret path into the Tower. Or search out sacred treasures for Zaida the Efreet in order to expel the great evil from the Tower.
After this you’ll be asked to pick from eight unique Adversaries. These ancient evils reside within the tower and, as the game progresses, will do their best to thwart your attempts at completing the Main Objective. Should you complete this quest they will be drawn out of the Tower to be fought in a final, epic showdown. Choose the Empress of Shades and have plagues unleashed across your kingdoms. Or Utuk-Ku the Ice Herald, who lowers the number of advantages players can use by bringing early winter. Or maybe decide to face the Gaze Eternal, an otherworldly terror who can manipulate the Tower itself.
Whatever your decision, the important thing to note is that the choices you make work together to create unique play experiences, So whilst you may know what each of the main quests entails, the adversary you choose will mean that the path to achieving your goals can look very different.
And the really great thing: the app handles all the data crunching for you, so you can focus on playing.
Game Play
Battling is a major part of the game. Here's a look at the current battle flow. (Looking pretty slick, but still a work in progress.)
The Battle system has gone through the largest number of changes of all the digital components in the game. Each Foe or Adversary you fight has a virtual deck of cards, which you draw from to determine the losses your forces are about to take, unless you mitigate them by applying Advantages. You won’t know what these losses will be until you commit to the fight, and crucially these cards can be modified as the game progresses. This is one of the great advantages of having a digital component as, unlike a physical deck of cards, we can make changes depending on other game conditions, meaning you’ll never have perfect knowledge of what’s about to happen.
Quests are also delivered through the app - the Main Objective at the beginning of the game and optional timed Ally and Adversary quests that players have a single in-game month to complete. Completing these quests might gain you new companions and treasures, and may stop the Adversary from making your life harder, but equally failing them can leave you with more fires to put out as the game continues (in the case of the Ashstrider, these fires are literal).
The feeling of inhabiting a living, breathing world populated by evils set on stopping you from completing your goals is something we’ve tried really hard to capture in the way the game flows. Each month starts with two new quests being revealed (one concerned with the Adversary, another for the Ally). New Foes might spawn onto the map, or may level up in power if you’ve not been keeping them under control. Then at the end of each player’s turn (signified by dropping a skull into the tower), more events may trigger. Perhaps the tower will rotate, spilling skulls into your kingdom. Or maybe a new Seal will be removed, revealing behind it a glowing glyph that’ll hamper the actions you can take. Or perhaps you’ll be lucky and Gleb the Mercenary will donate some warriors to bolster your ranks. We’re not bombarding you with so many changing variables that you’re unable to strategise, more creating the feeling of a living, changing world not entirely within your control.
The dungeon system is currently being worked on, so there aren’t any pretty visuals to show just yet. But just so you know, dungeons are great. Seriously, they’re one of my most favourite parts of the game. Each one is it’s own little maze to navigate, full of traps and surprises (some good, most bad). The aim is to eek out your resources in order to find the exit/treasure/mcguffin, but as with all other aspects of the game, if you find you don’t have enough of a currency (warriors, spirit, items, etc) to fulfil an event in the dungeon, you gain a corruption. Three corruptions and its game over for everyone. So tread carefully, but remember that you can always escape the dungeon and, because they’re persistent, another player can always pick up where you left off.
This post is once again super long, so the last thing I wanted to mention is that we’re planning out a list of accessibility settings (eg larger text options, individual control of sound and music volume, ensuring color signifiers are coupled with visual cues to aid with color blindness). If there’s anything we can add to the app to make your experience with the game more comfortable, please drop a note in the comments and we’ll do our best to address them.
To sign-off, I’ll leave you with a teaser for a future update on sound and music. Introducing the Empress of Shades….
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12CoQzxkJHGFH5rjEOSoPYSwhkqDD5MHx/view
Fulfillment Timeline Status
We have a lot more updates coming up, including really fun ones about sound, dungeons, and the Alliances expansion. I know you all most want to know how things are going with regard to production. So I'm going close out this and all future updates with a specific update on that.
As some of you recently might have seen on twitter or in the comments, we did run into another bump in the road. There is a worldwide shortage of technical materials, e.g., things like circuit board "wafers". This shortage is owing to a variety of factors, ranging from increased demand from cryptocurrency miners to pandemic-related production disruptions. Just yesterday, Ford announced they were shutting down production due to these shortages. When we first got wind of these disruptions, we immediately looked to finalize procurement of the materials for production. At the outset of the project, we retained Andrew Sung, as our local liaison with Capable. In addition to his work on numerous other aspects of the project, he was able to act quickly to help locate alternate sources. I am happy to report that we have secured all of the necessary materials. We are still looking to confirm any impact to the unit cost and timeline. There is likely to be some, but we believe we've avoided the worst case scenario and the impact should be modest. As soon as we have this information, we will let everyone know. (And, to be perfectly clear, the impact to the unit cost will not affect your orders but is likely to increase the final MSRP.) We should have a timeline specific update in the next couple of weeks.
