As promised, we have some development news! As the holidays are getting closer, our team is slowly getting bigger, with a few more people joining us to work on Lakeburg Legacies! After “Jeux Made in France”, we came up with a new internal roadmap, with very distinct objectives for 2022. Thanks to the demo that we made for the event, we have a clearer view on what we still need to do before we can release the game. (Spoiler: a LOT)
However, we have some great news!
At first, Lakeburg Legacies was just developed by 3 people. The team now has nearly 10 people working on the game, which will allow us to make it even better! 😉 Let me introduce you to the team:
– Manon, Art Director. She’s been working on the game since the very beginning. 😉
– Simon, Lead Programmer
– Matthieu, Creative Director
And now…
– Chloé: she worked on The Last Spell for a while last year, and she’s now working as a Game Designer on Lakeburg Legacies
– Ambrune: she previously worked on our serious games, and now she’s working (part time) with Chloé, as a narrative designer! Ambrune is also working on another secret project, but we can’t say anything about that yet …
– Frédéric, who was previously part of the serious games team as well, has joined Simon to help him with the programming!
– Myriam was working first with Benjamin as an intern producer, and has recently been hired as a full-time producer on Lakeburg Legacies!
– Justine was also working as an intern artist with Manon, and we were so happy with her work that she’s now a fully fledged 2D Artist on the game!
So yeah, we now have nearly 10 people working on Lakeburg Legacies, and the team should not change much until the end of the development. This means that we’ve entered full production mode on the game, and we are looking forward to 2022 because a lot of things will happen. 😉
Our goal for the end of the year has been to produce a version of the game which everybody at Ishtar Games can play in order to get some fresh feedback on what we have done so far. Most of our colleagues haven’t got the chance to give Lakeburg Legacies a try yet, and we can’t wait to see what they think about it!
So, now let’s go back to the game and what we’ve been doing this month!
We already told you last time about the Castle, a very important building since it is where the Sovereign and their spouse live and rule over the whole town!
Our Game Designer Chloé has spent quite some time specifying the rules behind the Sovereign’s succession in order to cover the (many) different possible cases: if the Sovereign has no direct descendants, if their successor is still a child, what happens to the royal family when a new Sovereign accedes to the throne…
Since the latest dev journal, the castle expanded quite a bit! Our Art Director Manon has completely revamped the UI in order to make room for some cool new features: a tax system, a special wing for the royal family, and a way for the Sovereign to monitor the satisfaction of their subjects…because if the people is unhappy, who knows what might happen?
The skills system has got a complete rework! Thanks to Chloé, instead of having one skill per building, villagers can now develop generic skills such as “Swordsmanship”, “Crafting” or “Leadership”. This new system will allow them to be more flexible and adapt themselves to work in different buildings.
Justine, our Game Artist intern, designed some great icons for them.
When a village becomes big enough, some strange things start coming out of the shadows… Illicit buildings will appear when the number of Villagers increases and have negative effects on the population.
If you follow us on Twitter, maybe you’ve already seen the Thieves Guild. Manon has been working on a background for a new building with a very different ambience, as well as a redesign of the entire UI for the illicit buildings, with 80% more sketchiness and 100% more mice!
Yes, we even included a cute mouse in the game.
Since we’re talking about skills, it is now way easier to identify who are the villagers best fitted for a job: Simon, our Lead Programmer, has made it so that they are sorted by ability whenever we enter a building.
(UI Rework in Progress!)
We got some help from our Narrative Designer Ambrune to design and write additional events in order to make the village more lively. After a long day at work, peasants will gather at the Inn to have a drink (or more!) and chat with other villagers. Yes, drama is bound to happen at some point x)
Finally, the UI of the production buildings has been updated in order to better show what a building needs and what it can produce, as well as what the primary and secondary skills associated with it are.
Justine and Manon have once again created gorgeous backgrounds for the production buildings! Here are the ones for the Bards, who will raise everyone’s mood with their music. Other buildings are coming, but we’ll show them another time!
This is all we can show you for this time! Frédéric has also worked in the Village Journal, but we’re still working on the UI, so that’s one thing to look forward to for next time!
We wish you all some very happy holidays, stay safe, and stay tuned for 2022!