Ahoy pirates, scoundrels, swashbucklers, smugglers, and all of you who have supported our efforts since the beginning. We apologize for being a bit quiet lately, but it was great to connect with so many of you at AwSHUX 2021. Since then, the Guildhall Studios team has been hard at work. While this update is extensive, we wanted to share all that we have been working on and our plans for the future. Thank you for taking a few minutes to catch up with us!
First things first, we feel that as a company, we can be better when it comes to keeping you, our dedicated backer community, informed. We want to be as transparent as possible and make sure that we are engaging all of you throughout the game development process. To that end, we will be posting here in our blog where you will be able to see regular and frequent updates on the status of our projects and what our staff is currently working on without us spamming your inboxes.
We also realize that in the past, we have had a bad habit of announcing dates and timelines that don’t happen when we thought they would. We are a young, small team and the App functionality, content, and testing has been difficult for us to accurately predict. Learning from this we are going to stop trying to "name the date" and instead focus on communicating the current state of things on a regular basis about the process itself and the actionable steps we are taking to see our projects to fruition. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the top three projects that you would all like to learn more about.
Sea of Legends App 2.0
Since our app-focused update in mid-August, we have been making steady progress on the new app experience. However, the process has been slower than anticipated. The new systems for Version 2.0 of the Sea of Legends app will be able to manage even more variables and create dynamic links between the adventures you and your rivals undertake. It is, therefore, crucial to get the programming foundation right so that the world of Sea of Legends feels driven by your decisions as you sail the high seas. While this project has been underway, we have also been working to train our skilled writers on how to craft new adventures that leverage the power of these systems.
In order to test the new app, we've been intensely focused on creating a vertical slice that incorporates all the new systems with a representative sampling of all the different types of episodic content. This build implements nearly 40 new adventures that represent a comprehensive sample of approximately 20 unique episode types (each adventure is categorized as a specific episode type which affects how they interact with each other). It will allow our team to see these new systems in context and evaluate whether the app is accomplishing our goals for a more immersive and varied narrative experience.
After we complete work on assembling the vertical slice, which we hope to have done by the end of the year, the next step will be extensive internal testing to ensure that everything is working correctly and that our adventures are taking advantage of all the new app features. The data we gather from this process will allow us to see if we need to further refine any systems or if we are ready to move forward. Once we verify that all systems and sample content are meeting our goals for the new gameplay experience, we will be ready to expand the adventure content. Our writers and narrative designers have been steadily working on new adventures already, and we have a growing collection of stories ready for implementation.
As we build out our content, we would greatly appreciate your help with testing. If you haven't already, we invite you to join our community on Discord. Once there, just leave us a message in the Playtest Interest group to be notified when we are ready for beta testers! While our current hope for that timeline is early 2022, we ultimately want your first experience with the new app to be a positive one. So, we will not be releasing it until we can be sure that the final app will enhance and improve your Sea of Legends experience.
