Hey there folks,

Before starting this Dev Update, I want to apologize to our Steam followers for the spam over the weekend. Unfortunately, we were unaware that each event would generate a pop-up when they would start (there was no option on our side to disable that). Furthermore, after we noticed that around Friday afternoon, we deleted all the remaining events... but due to a Steam bug, the pop-ups still appeared - even if the events were deleted. We've contacted Valve for a fix so that others may avoid going through the same pain in the future, spamming you guys wasn't the initial intention :( Anyway, now that it's been said, let's move to the Dev Update!

Gamescom is over, and what a weekend that was! From the Early Access announcement to the multiple Art Team Behind the Scene videos and our Dev Live Stream, Gamescom was packed. But before we start today's Dev Update, you know what time it is...


Nap Time! Wait no that's not it.

For those who might have missed the information, Solasta is heading to Steam Early Access in Fall 2020! And of course, every Kickstarter Backer whose rewards included the game (Tier $18 and above) will receive an Early Access Key as soon as it hits the store. More info to come soon!



Not everyone could tune in live to our different Gamescom events, so here they are for you to watch at your leisure:

• Music of Solasta (1h): A collection of experimental musical tracks and variations - some of them might not make it to the final game!
• Dev Live Stream (1h30): Join the Dev Team in a Q&A with the community about Solasta and Early Access
• Concept Art of Solasta (1h): Watch our Art Director work on the Zombie Ogre Concept Art
• Animation of Solasta (2h): Watch our Lead Animator at work on the Run Animation of the Brood
• Environment of Solasta (2h): Watch our Environment Artist tackle a massive Alchemy Decanter as he works on an unrevealed Laboratory level. 
• VFX of Solasta (2h): Watch our VFX Artist upgrade Shield of Faith from its old placeholder version

Following the wake of undeads from our previous Dev Updates, ghosts and other spectral horrors just made their way into Solasta! Now thankfully, not all of them are bloodthirsty monsters looking to hunt your party down - you may even find some friendly faces in the Badlands!


Oy, can you at least say hello before asking these things? How rude. Back in my days...


So... in case you thought regular spiders weren't scary enough, here are Spectral Spiders for your enjoyment


Speaking of undeads, here is an updated sketch of the Blood Brood

Some of you requested new environments to feast their eyes on - and I, being a merciful Community Lead, shall provide.


You will find much more than damp caves and scorched roads in Solasta


Would you look at that, traps are now more than a simple red square.The future is here!


New spell icons in preparation for Early Access!

That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

• Solasta coming to Steam Early Access in Fall 2020!
• Dev Update #19 - Rise of the Undead
• Dev Update Video: The World of Solasta

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/
Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Hey there folks,

The cat's out of the bag! Solasta is heading to Steam Early Access in Fall 2020, and everyone's invited! For those who missed the trailer, here it is:


Q: Will Kickstarter Backers get a key for the Early Access?
A: Yes! Every Kickstarter Backer whose rewards included the game (Tier $18 and above) will receive an Early Access Key as soon as it hits the store!

Q: When will Early Access be available?
A: Fall 2020, more info to come!

Q: Where can I get more info about Solasta Early Access?
A: Tune to our Dev Live Stream later today (Friday 29th) at 7 am PDT / 10 am EDT / 4 pm CEST to ask all your questions about Early Access! We'll do a recap later next week.

• Red Color: Live Streams on our Twitch Channel! Make sure not to miss them, as we'll talk to viewers directly.
• Green Color: Behind the Scene Videos (on Twitch) by our Art Team! Come and watch the daily work of our Art Director, Lead Animator, VFX and Environment Artist.
• Note: Music of Solasta is a one hour compilation of Work In Progress music tracks of Solasta, not all of them may appear in the final game!
• Yellow Color: Come and hang out in Tactical Adventures' Indie Arena Booth with Myzzrym, Community Lead

That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Join Myzzrym (Community Lead) on a chill stream, going over Solasta's debuts, old trailers, bugs and other fun anecdotes about Tactical Adventures.

Stream URL: https://www.twitch.tv/tacticaladventures/

• Red Color: Live Streams on our Twitch Channel! Make sure not to miss them, as we'll talk to viewers directly.
• Green Color: Behind the Scene Videos (on Twitch) by our Art Team! Come and watch the daily work of our Art Director, Lead Animator, VFX and Environment Artist. 
• Note: Music of Solasta is a one hour compilation of Work In Progress music tracks of Solasta, not all of them may appear in the final game!
• Yellow Color: Come and hang out in Tactical Adventures' Indie Arena Booth with Myzzrym, Community Lead

Join Mathieu (Creative Director), Xavier (Game Director), Emile (Community Lead) and Pierre (Marketing Director) as we discuss our latest trailer, our game and its future!

Stream URL: https://www.twitch.tv/tacticaladventures/

• Red Color: Live Streams on our Twitch Channel! Make sure not to miss them, as we'll talk to viewers directly.
• Green Color: Behind the Scene Videos (on Twitch) by our Art Team! Come and watch the daily work of our Art Director, Lead Animator, VFX and Environment Artist. 
• Note: Music of Solasta is a one hour compilation of Work In Progress music tracks of Solasta, not all of them may appear in the final game!
• Yellow Color: Come and hang out in Tactical Adventures' Indie Arena Booth with Myzzrym, Community Lead

Hey there folks,

Are you ready for Gamescom later this week? We've got a big reveal right around the corner, so make sure you don't miss it! 



Make sure you tune in to IGN following the Gamescom Opening Night Live on Thursday 27th, around 1 pm - 2 pm PDT/ 4 pm - 5 pm EDT / 10 pm - 11 pm CEST. What is this all about? We sure don't want to spoil the surprise, but you'll see! 



Did you think we were just going to dump an announcement and vanish from Gamescom? No no no, Tactical Adventures will be here during the entirety of Gamescom, with plenty of events for you! Of course, feel free to drop by our Discord server during Gamescom, we'll likely be around to chat.

• Red Color: Live Streams on our Twitch Channel! Make sure not to miss them, as we'll talk to viewers directly.
• Green Color: Behind the Scene Videos (on Twitch) by our Art Team! Come and watch the daily work of our Art Director, Lead Animator, VFX and Environment Artist. 
• Note: Music of Solasta is a one hour compilation of Work In Progress music tracks of Solasta, not all of them may appear in the final game!
• Yellow Color: Come and hang out in Tactical Adventures' Indie Arena Booth with Myzzrym, Community Lead

For those who didn't have a chance to play it yet, Solasta's Steam Summer Festival Demo will be up again from Thursday 27th to Monday 31st. Make sure to grab it while it's available!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister
Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Hello folks,

As usual, the Dev Update following a video is going to be a slightly shorter one. I hope you enjoyed our discussion with Antoine about the lore of Solasta, the video was very interesting to work on. We've had to trim quite a few answers to avoid entering spoiler territory of course, you'll have to forgive us for that. Another challenge was that my co-workers were definitely not being cooperative during the editing stage, as can be seen in the picture below.


Excuse me, I'm trying to work here

When diving in ruins in search for treasure, always think of bringing a cleric - for oftentimes they will be crawling with undeads! Today we'll be showing quite a few of them, from the lowly Skeletons to the more threatening Broods. What is a Brood you ask? Well, stay tuned for more another time...


Look at those moves! This skeleton must have been a bard in its prime


Ghast bro just wants to hug you, but doesn't really know how to


The Wight is nearing completion, and will soon haunt the Badlands as well!


Rough sketch of our different Broods - Blood Brood, Dread Brood and Flesh Brood. Still very much WIP for now!

All of these new folks need a home, wouldn't you say? Fret not, we've been working on great looking environments as usual. They won't be sleeping in the dusty wastelands!


"I see nothing but a cloud of dust in the sun, and the green grass." "Grass? Really?"


"Well, I really think we're lost this time." "Rolling a 1 on Survival probably didn't help either, eh?"

Hocus Pocus aka Abracadabra

We've got more spells incoming for you! We're now starting to tackle 3rd level spells, some of which we talked about in our Dev Update #18 as they are quite different from what we already have in game. For instance, Create Food and Water add rations to your backpack - and as you can imagine, adding items to your inventory with a spell opens the door to a whole new world of bugs and exploits (and modding...?). Similarly, Bestow Curse is our first spell with options, as you have to choose which ability score to curse when casting the spell! And last but not least, Revivify - the staple of any adventuring crew that does not want to lose a party member - has been added to keep the Game Overs away!


Create Food and Water, 3rd level spell, Conjuration


Bestow Curse, 3rd level spell, Necromancy


Revivify, 3rd level spell, Necromancy

That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

• Dev Update Video: The World of Solasta
• Dev Update #18 - Spells & Camera
• Solasta at Gamescom & Indie Arena Booth 2020

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Hey there folks,

August Video Dev Diary is finally here! Lore fans rejoice - this Dev Diary is an interview with one of our writers about the World of Solasta. Come to learn more about Solasta, its history, geography and religion - and enjoy the beautiful Concept Art as a bonus!


Enjoy! If you have any other topics you'd like us to cover in a future video, please make sure you leave a comment :)

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/

Hello folks,

We're back with a new Dev Update (to the surprise of no one, I'd imagine)! Summer is really hitting us hard in Paris, with the temperature rising fairly high. With no air conditioning for those working from home, we have to rely on good old fans to keep us alive in these harsh times. And we're not the only ones...


Our fluffy friends are also victims of the hot weather.

We're very frequently showing off new spells in all their VFX glory, but we haven't often talked about what goes on behind them. In fact, creating new spells is fairly simple in our editor... as long as the options are already coded. Want to add Cone of Cold to the game? No problem, cone-AoE already exists thanks to Burning Hands. Adding Shatter? We already have sphere-AoE with Fireball. You get the idea.

However, what happens when the spell introduces something new? Something as seemingly simple as a new shape to tackle now has to go through the hands of our programmers (especially our graphic programmer) to make sure it's implemented properly for our game designers to play with. It's the same whenever you want to add a new effect - and let us tell you, there are a LOT of spells with very singular effects...


Cylinder & Wall AoE spells can now be added to Solasta! 


Vampiric Touch may seem very straightforward, but you can keep using it every turn for 1 min (or until you lose concentration)

To name just a few, we've recently added spells like Create Food and Water (generating new items in your inventory), Fear (forcing players / AI to run away), See Invisibility / Invisibility (handling combat / AI behaviour against invisible enemies) and Stinking Cloud (forcing players / AI to pass their turn if they fail). As you can see, most spells at higher level always bring their fair share of headache if we don't properly prepare beforehand! 

Anyway, let's end this section with some new spells that are fully dressed and ready to be shown to the world.


Misty Step, 2nd level spell, conjuration


Stinking Cloud, 3rd level spell, conjuration

Gone should be the days where the walls would work against our poor old camera, for we now have the power of... transparency! 


Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. Better than it was before. We have the technology.

We all know what time it is... Art time!


High Poly model of our Wight. See folks, that's what happens if you don't listen to your dentist.


A cape for our Skeletons. It gets awfully cold waiting for adventurers out there in the Badlands.


Concept Art for a monastery. Necromancer for scale. Wait, what was your Investigation roll again? 


We create each architectural elements from the level's concept art, which shows how important concept art is

We've had them for quite some time in-game, but without any animations these Giant Eagles spent their time T-posing to assert dominance when we would run into them in random encounters. This will no longer be the case, as they've now been graced with a standard set of animations!


It looks cute, doesn't it? Let's see if you still think so when we triple their size and give them a taste of humanoid flesh..

That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

• Solasta at Gamescom & Indie Arena Booth 2020
• Dev Diary #17 - Everybody Loves Magic Items
• https://www.solasta-game.com/news/48-dev-update-2-dungeons-dwarves https://www.solasta-game.com/news/85-summer-qa-the-recap https://www.solasta-game.com/news/85-summer-qa-the-recap https://www.solasta-game.com/news/86-dev-update-16-here-be-monstersVideo Dev Diary - Combat & Action Economy

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Hey there adventurers,

We rarely talk about numbers, but we just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who've been following and wishlisting Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Thanks to you fine folks, we've been in Steam's Top 100 Most Wishlisted upcoming games ever since the end of the Steam Summer Festival! Now, back to our announcement...



We're happy to announce that Tactical Adventures will be present at Gamescom and Indie Arena Booth 2020! Both events will take place from Thursday August 27th to Sunday August 30th - and everyone is welcome to join, since everything will be available online with no fees attached! We will be sharing more information as we get closer to those events, so keep an eye on our newsfeed.

The lovely people over at Indie Arena Booth have provided us a fun little tool for each studio to build up their own little digital booth, which we're currently working on to make the Tactical Adventure area a fun place to visit! 


A very early version of our digital booth, testing out the tools provided to us


Playing around with some of the interactive gadgets, you can see our trailer playing on the screens!


Gradually replacing the cubes with some decorations - can you recognize the room we used as inspiration?


Adding some more decorations, still struggling a bit with the floor for now but we'll get there eventually!

While there are many limitations to this tool, it is nonetheless a very fun experience to work on making a Digital Booth! We look forward to having you drop by as a tiny little character to visit us once the event goes live, to talk with our NPCs and check out all the cool events that will be scheduled.

That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

• Dev Update #17 - Everybody Loves Magic Items https://www.solasta-game.com/news/48-dev-update-2-dungeons-dwarves https://www.solasta-game.com/news/85-summer-qa-the-recap https://www.solasta-game.com/news/85-summer-qa-the-recap https://www.solasta-game.com/news/86-dev-update-16-here-be-monsters https://youtu.be/7zPoiLJF2Zg
• Video Dev Diary - Combat & Action Economy
• Dev Update #16 - Here Be Monsters!

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

Hey there folks,

We've spent a lot of time on our Combat Video Dev Diary, so this week's Dev Update will be a little bit lighter than usual. Fun fact, around the same time last year we were hard at work to get our first version of the Ruins of Telema ready for GenCon 2019. Back then, we were both eager... and anxious - it was the first time Solasta would be playable by anyone unrelated to the project. Would people come to play it? Would they like it? Did we make the right choice coming to GenCon - an event primarily centered around tabletop - with our video game? 

Thankfully, everything went fantastic. Tabletop players flocked to our game stations (we only had two available!) and queues started to form - we even had a couple of fans arriving before us in the morning to get a chance at playing the demo. If you're curious, we did a small recap with pictures here.

Anyway, back to today's Dev Update. But before that...


 Doudou doing her best to pester our Producer during meetings. Taking notes is not an option.

Let's start by showing off one of the most requested feature during the Steam Summer Festival: A tooltip telling you why you have advantage / disadvantage (or when they cancel out). Many of you highlighted the fact that it wasn't always obvious why you were rolling with advantage or disadvantage (most often the latter), and thus couldn't adapt your next turn to avoid running into the same problem. Well, we just implemented a first version to help you with that (WIP as usual)!


Here I have neither advantage nor disadvantage because the conditions cancel each other out (unlit = no light)

We've just started implemented magic items with active powers! Staff of Fire? Check. Wand of Magic Missiles? Check. Boots of Levitation? Check.


And with all the original properties, including self-destructing if you roll poorly! (woohoo)


And up we go!

It wouldn't be a proper Solasta Dev Update without a healthy dose of gorgeous environment now would it?


A nice little alchemist table. Now that I think about it, selling potions must be very lucrative in Solasta.


So hmmm... Remind me your passive perception score again? Oh, no reason really.


Something is brewing deep inside that castle... brewing... get it? If you groaned, roll 1d6 psychic damage.

Let's end today's short update with a couple of spells and... a little update on the Ghoul, which will soon be implemented ingame! 


Laugh all you want, you'll fail that Constitution saving throw at some point. We'll see who laughs after that.


First version of the Ghoul's idle animation


Invisibility, 2nd level spell, Illusion

That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.

Read our previous articles here:

• https://www.solasta-game.com/news/48-dev-update-2-dungeons-dwarves https://www.solasta-game.com/news/85-summer-qa-the-recap https://www.solasta-game.com/news/85-summer-qa-the-recap https://www.solasta-game.com/news/86-dev-update-16-here-be-monstersVideo Dev Diary - Combat & Action Economy
• Dev Update #16 - Here Be Monsters!
• Summer Q&A Recap

Article by Tactical Myzzrym