As the Guildhall team continues to focus on the design and implementation of the new app, we wanted to introduce you to some of our newer team members and how they are contributing towards that goal as well as share some of the progress we have been making on the next expansion, Vengeance of the Empires.
One of our team members hard at work is Bensley, our new app logic designer. Bensley has been focused on implementing the logic for the stories in the app and is nearly done so that we can open our External Peek. We are hoping in a couple of weeks to start testing it out with our existing beta testers. Bugs and edge cases are sure to pop up that we will correct but we are excited to see the structure of the app take shape.
While Bensley has been focusing on the logic, our story team has been working on getting the written content together. We have also hired Hannah as our new Editorial Director! Hannah started working with us as a story writer last fall, and as her understanding and eagerness to support the new app grew, she became a natural fit to take on a Director role for the fiction we are filling the app with. With her help we have been able to bring in more freelance writers to expedite all of the app’s narrative content. In her own words:
The design of the V2 app has a lot of complexity, and since the Development team has, and is still making updates and corrections, I've had to create some pretty robust documentation and training materials. This usually looks like me harassing lots of people with boring questions on things like word count and episode requirements. I'm pretty sure I've given Zach a phobia of the phrase 'naming convention.' (Sorry, Zach!)
I've hired and am training several new writers to help us create fun and engaging episodes for players. We are working very hard to make sure gameplay always feels fresh, no matter if you play a different character every time, or if you always play with the same Captain, Lover, and Nemesis. To that end, I'm focused on writing and editing the adventures that will be featured in our upcoming External Peek!
Another addition to the team is Sebastián, who has two main responsibilities: first he is updating the UI in response to user feedback from the first iteration of the app. Our earlier iteration of the app had a relatively basic user interface. This new UI should be much more clean, making it more clear what is clickable, and also uses visuals like a map to show where each player's adventure token is located in the game. After that is complete, Sebastán will be jumping back into the much bigger task of helping us implement each story into the app as they are written and approved.
Many of you have been asking and so we wanted to give you some updates on the upcoming Sea of Legends expansion, Vengeance of the Empires, as well. As we've been making steady progress towards the release of the v2 SoL app, you'll start to see more information about Vengeance of the Empires and the SoL reprint Kickstarter. We're not announcing a new date yet as we need to ensure the app is complete and ready for release before the KS campaign, but to ensure we have a successful Kickstarter campaign you may start to see an increase in advertising and promotion in upcoming weeks for Vengeance of the Empires as well as more details about what you can expect to see in this expansion. If you want a sneak peak and also help support our endeavors we run regular beta tests in our Discord for the new expansion factions.
We have been working on the design of the new factions and we don't want to give too much away just yet but our playtesting has been yielding some excellent results. We hope you will be as excited as we are for the new gameplay that will be seen in Vengeance of the Empires!
