Here you can find out about the full set of Forms who'll be with you from the outset of Book of Travels' Early Access release. Between them the twelve offer a range or moods and starting points with which to create your own characters. So go ahead, choose a name, pick some personality traits, make a note of your wind affinity and set forth!



The Goodward (wind affinity: eastern) has a pure heart and simple tastes. Harmony and safety are important factors to a Goodward and they enjoy providing such happiness to others. But this is also a character whose curiosity may lead them far from the calm and order they so enjoy. Somewhat eccentric, The Reachant (wind affinity: northern) naturally absorbs the wisdom of the world and is conscientious in their collection of truths and teachings. Usually restless, their journey is one of spirituality and personal betterment, and they enjoy mastering crafts.




The Gleaner (wind affinity: southern) is resourceful and self-reliant - their independence knows no laws and may take a rogue turn. Quick wits and self-sufficiency make The Gleaner a collector of both material and immaterial wealth, but whether they gauge the value of what is amassed is another matter entirely. Tempering strength with kindness and kindness with strength, The Enfolder’s guardianship and servitude never detract from their grace and individuality. Their might comes with the sensitivity of one much invested in their kind (wind affinity: southern).




While The Crested (wind affinity: northern) shows no vanity, they are naturally dignified and uninhabited about their sophisticated ways. Their ease and clear mindedness finds them accomplished in many arts and well placed to succeed in all kinds of company. The Ribboned’s love of home and nature manifests a spirituality that makes profound connections with all things living. Home and community are where The Ribboned is most energised, but their grounded, centred soul means they take both in heart when travelling (wind affinity: northern).




Likeability is not The Larker’s goal but merry times are in the offing when The Larker is around. Adventures come in many forms and are rarely serious - so long as leisure and idle times abound, a Larker’s day is as it should be (wind affinity: western) . The Veiled (wind affinity: western) is at once inconspicuous and remarkable, holding to the edges of activity where they absorb goings-on from a place of detachment and stillness. But obscurity comes with mystique, the allure of which makes this solitary watcher an enigmatic type with a quiet penchant for power.




The Mirther (wind affinity: western) is creative and embodies honesty and youth. They echo rural Romantic archetypes such as shepherds, wandering musicians and artists. They are a daydreamer and find much mirth in or out of company. By contrast The Dimmed is an older, wiser type whose light shines less brightly. Their stoic attitude in company does not temper their thirst for exploration, especially when the quest is enlightenment (wind affinity: eastern).




The Mosswalker(wind affinity: eastern) has feet that are deep in the earth and finds magic in all things mundane. They live a relatively ordinary life but their values are wide and true, making them something of an unconventional, Bohemian type. Striding and far from domestic, The Weatherer’s spirit is forged by exposure to elements literal and metaphorical. Their unequivocal thinking and broad experience finds them well placed in exploration and adventure (wind affinity: southern).

If you like these Forms and want to take a bit of a deep dive into some of the inspirations for the Book of Travels character creation process, check out our Steam post about just that right here or let Game Designer and Programmer Arvid talk you through it in the mini video below!

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team xx



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Today is the 4th of October which brings us just 7 days until release… We are so excited we can barely sleep!

Over the last two years we have shared many things with you, and we will be sharing more in the weeks to come. If you enjoy any of it, please do help us get the lift we need by sharing with your friends and on your social channels.(Links to which are just at the bottom of this post!)

Today we’ve gathered all eight of our dev videos ‘Inside Book of Travels’ in one place. These short and sweet talks from our team cover all kinds of topics, so go ahead and pick your favourites and dive right in! And of course, please comment and share!










Seven days to go... Stay tuned!

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Should you ever wander into The Voices’ Tavern at night time, you may be offered a game of Passage. Passage is one of many ways to distract yourself on your travels and it’s a game of luck and strategy. For full ambiance, why not take a listen to the soundtrack A Game of Passage as you read...




While the game play is relatively simple, the cards themselves are said to hold deeper significance and are regarded as something far more solemn and auspicious than mere entertainment. To many, Passage cards hide a secret, and some folk are quite fixated on discerning a revelation in their inter-relations. And so it’s not only for the material losses folk have suffered that a game of Passage is taboo in Braided Shore. The game is more than a little socially unacceptable, which is why gamblers tend to play discreetly - most usually, Passage is played in The Voices’ Tavern, although Travellers may on occasion find themselves approached by a card-prone stranger.




You’ll be able to play Passage at any point in Chapter Zero, and while gambling isn’t possible just yet, in future you’ll be able to win or lose your belongings and gamble your way to fortune or destitution. In the meantime. trying your hand at Passage risk-free will be a good opportunity to get to grips with the game in general and to learn some strategy. Then, when gambling is in place, you’ll have Passage skills enough to put to work and win!

The game will also become a deck builder, and as the world evolves, so will your cards! We look forward to sharing more about how you’ll collect new cards and what you’ll be gambling with in a future post.



With just less than two weeks to launch we are really excited to share all that we've shown you here on this blog for the last two years! What features are you looking forward to trying out? Is there anything more you'd like you'd like to get more info on before you play? Please do drop your thoughts right here!

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team x


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

When we made the decision to delay Book of Travels back in August, we knew we wanted to make sure that we were confident that we could meet the new deadline before we announced it to you. A while ago I wrote a post in which I described a set of nasty bugs that I (un)lovingly called the Unholy Trio, and the team has since vanquished that beast. Therefore I can finally say, with confidence, that we have a release date to share with you.

Book of Travels enters Early Access with Chapter Zero on October 11th.

Wow, that felt good to get off the chest. We knew what date we wanted to go with all along, and it has been a challenge to keep that from you until now. Especially when seeing some of you speculating that the game was delayed to next year, or worse. But now it's out there and we can all start gearing up for launch. Thank you again for still being with us – it means the world to us!




We do, once again, want to point out that this is an Early Access launch. There will be issues to be solved, there is content to be added, mechanics and systems to be iterated on and (most importantly) player feedback to be heeded.

Chapter Zero is the first season, if you will, of the ongoing story we're telling with Book of Travels. It will last for the entirety of our Early Access period of two years and we're beyond excited to have you come onboard and be a part of shaping this into the game of our dreams.

We'll have more to share about our roadmap for Chapter Zero soon, but we can share that the first month after launch will be strictly about looking at player feedback and taking suggestions – no extra content will be added until we've taken that time to closely examine your first impressions. We want you to feel like we're actually listening to what you have to say about the game after launch, and part of my job will be to make sure you do.

Exciting times, indeed! Once again, thank you so, so very much for your support, patience and passion. We're less than three weeks away from our maiden voyage, and we can't wait to have you with us in Braided Shore!

Best wishes,
Oliver & The Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Some time ago we took a look at the Book of Travels character creation process in a post that explains how character creation is one of the ways in which the game will allow you a wide range of personal expression in your roleplay (you can get a video insight with Programmer, Game Designer and Discord hero Arvid right here on Youtube).



Today we’re excited to be sharing four new Forms, and just like last time there will be Discord roles available for each one, so if you haven’t joined us there yet, please do dive in and get roled up! It’s been really cool to dip into Discord chat these last few weeks and hear your thoughts and ideas about our videos and reasons for our final date push – it’s also becoming clear that choosing Forms is something of a topic and not always easy! So it should be good to know that you’ll be able to create many characters in the game, and it’s not too early to start thinking about yours - this is a game for creative souls and character creation is just the beginning. We’d love to hear your ideas here or on Discord. And please know that while the Forms represent a kind of archetype they are only the starting point and it’s up to you to develop personas, backstories with as much detail, complexity and nuance as you see fit.

We hope you like our latest additions! And to keep things in one place we’ve added the previous Forms here too, what a varied gallery they make…




While The Crested shows no vanity, they are naturally dignified and uninhabited about their sophisticated ways. Their ease and clear mindedness finds them accomplished in many arts and well placed to succeed in all kinds of company. The Ribboned’s love of home and nature manifests a spirituality that makes profound connections with all things living. Home and community are where The Ribboned is most energised, but their grounded, centred soul means they take both in heart when travelling.




Likeability is not The Larker’s goal but merry times are in the offing when The Larker is around. Adventures come in many forms and are rarely serious - so long as leisure and idle times abound, a Larker’s day is as it should be. The Veiled is at once inconspicuous and remarkable, holding to the edges of activity where they absorb goings-on from a place of detachment and stillness. But obscurity comes with mystique, the allure of which makes this solitary watcher an enigmatic type with a quiet penchant for power.




The Mirther is creative and embodies honesty and youth. They echo rural Romantic archetypes such as shepherds, wandering musicians and artists. They are a daydreamer and find much mirth in or out of company. By contrast The Dimmed is an older, wiser type whose light shines less brightly. Their stoic attitude in company does not temper their thirst for exploration, especially when the quest is enlightenment.




The Mosswalker has feet that are deep in the earth and finds magic in all things mundane. They live a relatively ordinary life but their values are wide and true, making them something of an unconventional, Bohemian type. Striding and far from domestic, The Weatherer’s spirit is forged by exposure to elements literal and metaphorical. Their unequivocal thinking and broad experience finds them well placed in exploration and adventure.

-------

Finally, we’d like to say a word about what has been termed our ‘indefinite postponement’... it is not indefinite! With every day that passes we get closer to securing our new release date, and while we’re not yet ready to reveal it, it really isn’t that far away! It’s so important to us that we have your trust and that means that we want to be sure that the date we give really is the date we release and not a day later. So when we know for sure, you will too. Book of Travels is coming! Stay tuned and stay in touch!

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

When you last heard from us, we made the announcement that we wouldn’t be able to hit our previously set release date of August 30th. Today we would like to give some more insight on why this decision was made and where we're at in development. But first things first: on behalf of the entire team at Might and Delight I would personally like to thank every one of you for the amazing understanding and support that you showed us when we announced this delay to you.

It was clear that many of you were disappointed, just like we were, but the overwhelming majority of you still voiced your support and faith in our decision and it's hard to explain how comforting that was to us. So, once again, thank You so much for still being with us!

Now, onwards...




As we described in the delay announcement, it was thanks to the feedback and data provided by our beta testers that we realized that we weren’t in a releasable state. And while there are many things that could use some ironing out, it was mainly three issues that we felt absolutely needed to be looked at before launch. Since I'm so cool and edgy I've been calling this set of bugs ”The Unholy Trio".

The Unholy First, and probably the most annoying out of the three, is a severe case of rubberbanding. This would have our players click to move somewhere, only for the game to slingshot them back to a previously occupied location and it made travelling take much longer than it should. Obviously this would be a problem in any game, let alone one called Book of Travels. Worse yet, it didn't only affect the player, but also things like NPCs and our combat system.

The Unholy Second made it so that things started spawning in places where they shouldn’t. Events would appear in the wrong positions on the map, forest animals could be seen in densely populated cities and enemy characters would pop up into tea houses. Is there any place more inconvenient to be ambushed in than a tea house? The Unholy Third is simply making NPCs invisible to the player, which happened randomly here and there.

We can’t have that, now can we?




Now, I'm happy to report that the team is very close to fixing all three of these issues so that none of the players jumping in on launch day will be haunted by them.

Of course, since we are launching into Early Access, we do want to emphasize that the game will have issues like bugs and balancing issues on release. It’s just that these particular bugs were too prevalent and too detrimental to the general play experience for us to just roll with it, despite the fact that Early Access titles aren’t expected to work flawlessly right out of the gate. The Unholy Trio needed to go.

Besides polishing work, there’s another upside to the extra time that we've allowed ourselves. The team is currently deepening the experience further than we would’ve had time for previously, with more quests and dangers for the player to dive into. Additionally, we are making new areas that we’ll add to the game world early in the Early Access period. We will have a more detailed roadmap of what is to come after launch soon.

We’re not announcing the release date today, but we have decided on one and it's not as far off as some of you have been speculating. We’re so excited to start this journey with you, and that's what it is going to be – a journey. That's why we're doing the Early Access period, because we want to shape Book of Travels together with our players. The game we envision in our dreams wouldn't be possible to make without you and we're so appreciative of every one of you who wants to be a part of it.

Until next time,
Oliver & The Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Thank you for being excited for Book of Travels, and tagging along on our journey with us – whether it's in the comments on Steam, replies on our various social platforms or with a pledge to our Kickstarter campaign. We can't properly express how much your support and interest means to us, and how invigorating it is.

We're giving this project our all, and have been doing so for years now. It feels strange to be so close to "the finish line" that is the Early Access launch and have all of you be able to experience our game with us.

However – we aren't as close as we like to, or even thought we'd be. This became apparent to us during the course of our closed beta, as our wonderful testers sent their reports to us. So we made the difficult decision to postpone the launch of the game once more. The team simply needs the time to stabilize it.



We want to be able to deliver an Early Access game that we can stand by. But believe us when we say that we don't make this call easily, and we understand that this will disappoint anyone who couldn't wait to jump into the game this summer. At the same time we also believe that we owe it to the game, to ourselves and – more importantly – to you to make sure that Book of Travels meets our standards.

Therefore we won't give you a new release date today. Instead, we'll nail that down when we are in a position of confidence that we can actually hit the new deadline.

Again, we understand that this isn't the news you want to hear. We crave for You to be able to play our game too! Right now, though, we can only hope for your understanding and patience. It won't be long before you'll hear from us again.

Thank You.

Sincerely,
Oliver & The Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

If you’ve been following our various ramblings you’ll no doubt have heard us using the initialism TMORPG for Tiny Online Multiplayer and today we’re going to try to answer some of the many questions that we’ve heard and address some of your practical concerns about playing together. Let’s dive right in…


Currently we can’t give even a rough estimate just yet, and this is because the team will spend much of Early Access reading the play data in order to adjust numbers to make a good balance of player meetings and solo experience. Game Designer Beta Alves says “We’ll be watching how often groups form and balance and tweak accordingly. We’ll be avoiding a situation in which you’ll always be in groups – we want the joy of company to come with the contrast of some solitude so you can appreciate how it feels to travel alone and with others.”

To tell us what your experience of meeting frequency is and to keep your views heard, be sure to drop them into the relevant chat in our Steam forum (to be populated!) once you start playing in just 13 days – eek!


“Even though they appreciate the incognito elements of the game, players want to connect with their friends” says Beta, and that’s been something that we’ve heard often from backers and community. In response, the team has been working on ways to make sure that you can find one another.

To set out together, start by joining the same server, and then once you’ve created your character, you’ll be asked how your journey begins – choose the same options as your friends and you’ll spawn together.




If you’re travelling together and log out together you’ll be together when you log back in, resuming your adventure in the same place – together. But if you want to meet with someone who’s setting out at a different time (or time zone!) than you, an ancient temple on an island makes a landmark meeting point. It’s known as the Khelim Temple, and if you need a quick way to get there, there’s a particular knot spell that will come in handy. Don’t worry, it’s not hard to acquire, but to do so you’ll need to unravel a little – so listen as you travel!

Of course another very special place to rendez-vous is Travellers’ Meadow in the north west of Braided Shore. You can of course get there on foot or for Kickstarter backers, use the Travellers’ Portal – and take any non-backer companions with you.




When you do find one another you’ll be able to communicate using emotes, your own collection of pictograms that will evolve through growth and usage as you travel the world and gain knowledge of its land and culture. You can read more about emotes here.

We’ve been listening to your thoughts and ideas about how you’d like to leave traces of your travels or exchange thoughts or memories in the game. As part of our Kickstarter we promised to implement “Sharing memories”, a way to remember your meetings through passed on items.




If the chance encounters that you have lead to meetings out-of-game that would be lovely, and Steam and Discord will be the main places to find one another. We also hope to have some other ways for you to share stories in the future, but at the moment these plans are far too raw to reveal… For now we are just very much looking forward to hearing all about your travels – together or alone, we hope they are many and magical!

Best Wishes

Helen & the Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Combat in Book of Travels has been something of a (ahem) divisive issue, with many wanting a damn good brawl while others would rather avoid confrontation altogether. There will indeed be avoidance tactics at your disposal - more on those later! For those in the former camp, here’s a bit about the kind of conflict you can expect.


As you might imagine, there’s no PVP combat in Book of Travels, instead you’ll face off against characters, creatures and mysterious beings, most of which you’ll find in the Wilds. Towns or villages are somewhat safer, where the main threat comes in the shape of bandits offering a duel, but off the beaten track packs of wolves or bandit gangs may present you with a heavy duty challenge. Supernatural adversaries may appear too, so stay watchful or you may just find yourself up against the might of a Maisu or the chaos of a Kettem. Fighting for survival is one thing, but acquiring exceptional items or bounty hunting may also find you baring arms.


Should you find yourself in a combat situation, the first thing you’ll need to do is prepare. This is a combat system designed around preparation, initiative and timing and there are three essential stages that build up to the decisive moment. Before you begin of course, you’ll first need to survey your surroundings for a worthy opponent. Putting your hand on your sword will cast a red circle about you, alerting you to anyone (or anything) within challengeable radius. You’ll also be able to see their Force and Ward numbers, which will help you decide if you want to take them on.



Having selected a worthy opponent, you’ll need to make sure that you’re ready for action: equip your gear, cast any knots or drink any teas that you think are fit for the occasion (such as the Warding Arc - a knot that protects you from one hit, or Lilit's Cinnabar Brew - a tea that increases your force). This is also a course of action that you’ll need to take as a preventative measure should you see a threat close by, so even if you’re not looking for a fight, it’s a good idea to keep some spells close to hand. Some opponents are aggressive and will put their hands on their swords or enter combat preparation stances (e.g. wolves or Kettem) if you get too close!



Once the initiative has been taken it’s all about the timing! The longer you wait to strike your opponent, the more accurate your blow will be - so while your chance of hitting your target increases you will remain vulnerable to assault. Every second that passes between you and your opponent will be loaded with the tension of not knowing who will strike first... Dare you risk receiving a blow or will you deal your own, less accurate strike? The choice is yours! The stakes get higher still once you’re hit, which will leave you dizzied and knocked off balance and with your chance to hit back diminished - a very strong blow can significantly reduce your chance of landing a return strike.

Should you take a hit during battle, your Ward becomes depleted by the total count of the Force owned by the attacker. But once it's all over and should you survive, your Ward will return to its full value.




We’ve often been asked, can you evade conflict altogether? Certainly! Just as in life there are ways to stay out of trouble! If you’re a more peaceful player and you detect a threat from afar (red name tags are an indicator) you can choose to skirt around it, and if that doesn’t work, then you’ll be able to evade it by equipping skills such as a Smoke Cylinder - a fast acting ability that grants temporary invisibility. This way you can choose to quietly pass trouble by, or hide, or become invisible. And if you’re feeling cheeky and in need of supplies, you might be able to nip in and steal from a bandit without any conflict at all by using teleportation!


And what if you want to decline? Or if, once that circle is drawn an enemy takes initiative, you don’t want to fight? You can simply walk away. If it’s bandits you face, then in this case your worst fate is usually robbery, and unless you refuse to hand over what’s demanded you won't face an attack. Your final get-out option after initiative is taken is to flee - fleeing won’t have any permanently adverse impact on your character, but it will mean that you’ll wake up somewhere completely new and for a while you’ll be slow and demoralised.

-----------------------

We hope this sheds a little light on this much anticipated topic, and we’ll get some answers to your questions so please do leave them below! In the meantime you can find out more about dangers in Braided Shore in our new video short with Artist Lotta tomorrow (follow our Youtube to get notified), or hear a game dev perspective on designing combat for a serene game from Lead Programmer Jens at his Nordic Games talk right here.

Just 20 days to go! Thank you for being with us!

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team xx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

When you play Book of Travels there is no linear questline, instead every player will have their own journey and stories to tell. Find out more about how our game design works to make your journey unlike any other...

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

We are just over three weeks till launch day and we are EXCITED!

During these last weeks we'll be sharing some short videos where the team talk about the game - we hope you like them! Number one is about cooperative gameplay and features Lead Programmer, Jens Berglind.
Please support us by sharing it, and if you haven't wishlisted us yet, just press that button below! We'll be posting two videos each week, so subscribe to our Youtube to get notified... and please do leave us your comments! Maybe we can even drag Jens away from his keyboard to say hello.




Much love,

Helen & the Dev Team x

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/