More App News!

Ahoy!

The growing interest in our progress on Sea of Legends over the past few months has been very motivating. We have been making steady progress on the most anticipated element of Sea of Legends, the new app! While we don't have a date yet for external testing of the new SoL v2 app, we wanted to let you know what has been happening since our last app update.

One of our goals for the Sea of Legends v2 app has been to create a more dynamic flow of content from game to game. To accomplish this objective, we've been pushing very hard toward a more episodic narrative structure. The idea was that more self-contained and episodic Adventures would allow for more freedom in how each Adventure connected to your overall story and create a more unique narrative from game to game.

The vertical slice has exposed some of the flaws or issues with our extremely episodic approach. 1) Each Adventure needed to be a more self-contained episode and really taxed the limited word count when trying to present a satisfying narrative. 2) Although we increased the variability from Adventure to Adventure, we lost too much of the overall narrative arc. Consequently, Adventures could feel disjointed and start to lose the sense of continuous narrative progression.

To address these concerns and issues, our focus since the holidays has been to refine the episodic structure to create better overall arcs. Each Adventure is categorized as a specific arc type and links to other Adventures of the same type to create a coherent narrative. If your initial episode asks

you to kidnap Lady Gray of the Dread Tide or steal a precious Relic, your response will guide you into an arc focused on that initial choice. So if you opt to kidnap, your next Adventure will revolve around the kidnapping action itself, and the conclusion may involve seeking punishment for Lady Gray, a ransom from the Dread Tide, or perhaps even sacrificing her in a ritual. The Adventures have a dynamic structure based upon your choices, but the types of episodes you encounter will be more narrowly grouped around a specific type of arc. This still allows us to accomplish more varied combinations of Adventures (although fewer than the completely episodic approach), but it maintains a better overarching narrative for your choices during a game, which feels more narratively satisfying.

In app Interrupt example.

Interruptions

But hold on just a minute… we’ve known that just increasing the amount of Adventure variability won’t be enough to create a truly dynamic narrative experience. So one of the new features we have added to the app is the Interrupt. When another player undertakes an Adventure that affects you and the Faction you’ve been friendly with during your own stories, you may receive an Interrupt. After their Adventure, you’ll see a postscript in which a message is sent to your character alerting them to their rival’s plans and asking for your help. You’ll be able to choose whether to accept the new request or stick to your original course.

For example, maybe Kahina agreed to help capture Bones for the British Empire. Since you’ve been friendly with Bones and the Dread Tide, you might be contacted and asked to help protect him. Complete the Adventure before Kahina attempts the kidnapping and it will be more difficult for her to accomplish the task. Or if Kahina has already captured Bones, you might accept an Adventure to board Kahina’s ship and liberate him. These Interrupts help to make your choices, and the choices of your rivals, more consequential. Not only that, you’ll find it’s a lot more important to pay attention to what your rivals are doing on their turns as it might directly affect you and your story.

In our early testing these interruptions have been positively received and really enhance a sense that Sea of Legends is a living (as much as the Dread Tide are able) and dynamic world where even the decisions of your rival Captains can alter the story being told.

We have even more to share with you in our next app update including new story types and new adventures. Happy sailing!