Why Early Access?

“We strive to create a bond with you the player and this project early on. So far we have developed a lot of fundamental features, a lot of the content is being produced right now, but from each iteration we would enjoy to receive requests, ideas, feedbacks, to improve Tales of Tarium towards the goal of creating an unforgettable experience for all.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We estimate to be in Early Access for about 12-14 months but everything will depend on how fast we can reach our milestone, hunt down the bugs and implement new features requested by the community. We won't rush the development cycle, our focus is to create the best experience possible for everyone not just reach a impossible deadline.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“Story
We would like to add the entire main story, that add more subjects of the Ikki's Journey, since his Childhood until he joins the Domula and his fight against the Kingdom together with his Domula's companions, and all the quests to ensure that the game can be completed. Every item, NPC and quest are scheduled to be created and tested to ensure that the game can be beaten, plus every party member is expected to get its own personalized quest to better expose their personality. This won't be a required quest to complete the game, but more so to enhance the experience.

Gameplay
We're planning to add joy-pad/controller support to the game, totally integrated and configurable at any moment by the player.
Also, we're focusing on adding some visual tutorials using images and GIFs and their implementation can be more integrated into the gameplay, usually taught by some NPC.
We intend to create a system that during fast travels inside the gameplay some random events may occur resulting into a different gameplay for every player.
We'll also would like to add talents and attributes system that the player need to roll a dice to try and test if an action will be performed.
Besides, we're planning to implement every location alongside their own NPC's with their own stories, which will require more quests, items and models to be produced.
We plan to insert more companions with different classes to maintain a more diverse gameplay in each playthrough.
And lastly we may add more difficulty mode to the game allowing more challenging combats or easiest ones.

We're eager to implement ideas from the community into the game in order to enhance the gameplay to create a fun and enjoyable experience. Every bug encountered may instantly become our focus, and we hope to release the content bug free, and the content that was already implemented may be thoroughly polished.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Currently the game is in Alpha release, with the following mechanics implemented:

Save System, we'll try our very best to preserve the same save system throughout the entire duration of the project. If by any chance some major feature requires the save to be restarted the community will be notified about it.

Combat System, the combat will be subjected to some alterations in the future but it's core is fully implemented. Currently players can select from a wide variety of skills to be used inside the combat, some of this skills may apply some status or conditions and when used with other elemental skills can provoke unexpected results.

Dialogue System, the dialogue system fully implemented and may be enhanced into the future by community request.

Interaction System, the interaction system is implemented and players can interact with the environment and NPC's. This system is bound to be enhanced into the future but currently it's fully functional. Players can interact with elements inside the game world, collecting craftable items, open some key doors, interact with NPC's.

Party System, this system it's fully functional players can select party members to control outside the hub, separate members to solve puzzles.

Quest System, we created and implemented a lot of base type quests, KillQuest, CraftQuest, MultiQuest (quest that link one to another), RescueQuest, FetchQuest, Talking Quest, etc. And all of those types can be experienced from the Alpha that we have released.

Skill System, with the current state players can allocate skills to be used inside the combat, with each new level some skill can be unlocked, and the skill scales with your ability points.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Pricing will not suffer any alteration during the development or after its release.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We're aiming for a collaboration with the community, during the iteration and implementation of the roadmap we expect the community to come up with feedback, comments, suggestions, requests and criticism, they're all more than welcome. We'll use these points to:

BALANCE
Balance the game to make everything more enjoyable.

CONTENT
Create more quests, items, NPC's, classes from community suggestions or enhance any existent quests from feedbacks.

BUGS
Hunt down every bug found by the community.”