Coming to Arcadian Atlas is the ability to recruit new party members! In a war-torn land, building your forces is key, and building your party's composition in a smart way can mean the difference between victory and defeat. At the recruitment center, you're able to choose from a pool of recruits to join your party, determine their class, rename them, and even get some special bonuses!

Although a pretty and relaxing area, this IS a recruiting ground for fighters from all different walks of life. Fighters? Small space? Nothing could go wrong.




Devoting their lives to rigorous routine and a pure focus on their training, Monks have abilities that can break through the defenses of even the hardiest of foes as well as reshape the battlefield to their advantage. Those that strike hard and fast are dedicated to the way of the Furious Blows, showing unrelenting aggression as their hits deliver a torrent of damage and various debilitating effects, even unto death. Some monks specialize in the mystical ways of the Arcane Energies, providing a versatile set of skills to enhance their party while striking at their enemies from afar.

In a tactical dynamic, Monks are great to have on the frontline alongside other melee classes, as they can gain a quick combat advantage by overwhelming opponents with slow effects and a large amount of damage. At the same time, Monks can also provide a major defensive advantage to other party members close by, establishing zones of protection for your forces and setting up a nigh-impenetrable front to keep enemies engaged!




In the mountains of Arcadia, Borneano rests as a city positioned on the slopes. Dotted by buildings and paved with walkways to traverse the map, the change in height provides a number of vantage points to rain down on enemies below. For those at the base level, a literal uphill battle awaits; with agile enough party members, the cliffs can be taken quickly, evening out the playing field!



The Twin Otter team's still hard at work developing the winding and arduous story of Arcadian Atlas. We can't wait to show more as time goes on, so stick around as we keep sharing more exciting updates! Until next time!

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ICYMI: We were part of the Indie Arena Booth Steam event last month! There, we were able to share the Arcadian Atlas demo to players everywhere for the very first time, as well as a brand new trailer! We were really excited to see literally thousands of you play the demo and show off your tactical skills (while using Poncho, right? RIGHT????) as you squared up against some challenging encounters to overcome!

Your feedback has been incredibly helpful in figuring out design decisions the team is working on and considering, including class balancing, battle pacing, overall difficulty, control schemes, and more! We'll be working to implement some of the feedback we've received as we continue working on the game.




Today, we're sharing a very first look into one of the sub-classes of Arcadian Atlas: The Reaver! Watch the shadows, because the shadows are watching you.

Reavers are known for their sudden and relentless strikes on their enemies, unleashing an unexpected onslaught before stealthily slipping away into a hidden state. Those that follow the path of the Dagger Arts are capable of delivering a flurry of blows using short blades, with each attack inflicting various status effects that cripple their enemies while Hired Assassins favor precision strikes, dealing massive amounts of damage in one fell swoop and even bending the shadows to serve them.

For fans of the sneaky-stabby methods, Reavers will be your bread and butter. Their high mobility make them the ideal class for closing distances, locking down a specific target to ensure they go down quickly while being able to evade any retaliation. They're not meant to stick around for a stand-up fight, so apply a lot of damage and effects, then get out fast!




More beautiful, luscious environments? Is that even possible? (Yes, yes it is.)

This month, we're showing off the Stronghold Outskirts! A seldom-used fortification, the area has fallen into disrepair and dereliction. As nature begins to overtake the ruined stone edifices, what new conflicts will arise on this once-dormant pathway? Where will this path lead, and most importantly, how will you pave the way forward?

Arcadia is a land full of conflict, and that conflict is born from a whole host of ambitions and personal desires. We're excited to continue showing off more as we go along, so stick around and find out just how you can build your party to survive the coming conflict! We'll see you next month!

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Hey everyone! We've got a brand-new trailer to show off as a part of IGN's Awesome Indies showcase, with a look into the coming features and the fractured land of Arcadia! War is coming, and ruinous powers will make themselves known as you build your party and fight through complex tactical battles. An ancient darkness stirs; will you be ready to face it down?




In case you missed it: We're part of the Indie Arena Booth Steam event, where we have a demo available! Equip your party, choose their skills and battle through challenging encounters until August 29th!

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From August 25th to August 29th, play the Arcadian Atlas demo and flex your tactical skills in challenging encounters as you equip and specialize your party to your specific playstyle!



The team has been dedicated to providing a solid experience across the board, giving a sample of every part of Arcadian Atlas while building out additional features and content as development progresses! More classes, more items, and more encounters are on the way, and we're excited to show more as we keep working on the game!



As we work to improve the game and show off some of what Arcadian Atlas has to offer, we're also looking for your feedback! We've got an in-game "Feedback Survey" button included in the main menu, where we highly encourage you to tell us what you like, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see in the game! Your responses really help us work on the direction we take with some design decisions, so we greatly appreciate any feedback provided.

Speaking of showing more off, we've got more brand-new announcements to show off tomorrow as a part of IGN's Awesome Indies showcase, so keep an eye out there when that goes live! The land of Arcadia is fractured and perilous, and ambition is the most dangerous foe of all.

If you missed out on the Kickstarter update, you can check it out + new stuff being worked on here!

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Arcadian Atlas is an incredibly special project that Twin Otter have poured their hearts and souls into, and we couldn't be prouder to support them on their development journey. As massive fans of turn-based tactics ourselves, we're more than just a little excited to show you more along the way! Speaking of that, we've got more to show you in due time!

The team announced recently that they'd be presenting at Indie Arena Booth as a part of the event, where you'll be able to play a demo of the game! Not only do we have more to show you there, but we're also going to be part of the IGN Awesome Indies showcase on August 26th! We can't wait to show off more about the war-torn world of Arcadia, who's involved, and just what lengths some will go to in the pursuits of their desires.

On a final note, we're grateful for the feedback we've received from players as the team works to refine and build on the game. We've seen a lot of positivity and support from the community, and we're actively working with the Twin Otter team to bring you all an amazing experience!

Thanks for reading, and we'll see you in a week!


P.S. Poncho best boi.


- The Serenity Forge Team


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First, we want to start out by apologizing for the long interlude between updates and progress reports. It wasn’t for lack of wanting to provide y’all with up-to-date info on the project -- And we are extremely excited to share what we’ve been up to with all of you.

Thanks to our amazing backers, the Kickstarter campaign afforded us the ability to do all we had promised: 

• A fulltime year of work on Arcadian Atlas covered for Becca
• Full game OST + sound design fees covered
• Programming fees partially covered
• Physical backer item production fees covered

Going into this, Becca & myself were aware that once the KS-funded dev period was up, we would be taking on day jobs/freelance gigs/contract work to pay the bills and cover the remaining programming fees while we moonlighted as developers for Arcadian Atlas. 




It was going fine... until about 1.5 years ago, when the team began to take hit after hit, suffering multiple job losses and freelance gig offers drying up. And that was before Covid-19 hit, when the remaining jobs and scant contracts we did have were swallowed up completely.


But this is not a sad update.


We needed to wait until we had 100% solid news (though we drafted an extremely sad update months back in the thick of the worst of it, but we refused to pull the trigger on it).

Now, after so much fighting for AA, we have an update we actually want to write - with news we really want to bring to y’all.

After many months & multiple pitches to a handful of talented indie game publishers, video calls and Covid-19 related funding hiccups, we are extremely excited to announce we have partnered with a publisher to cover the final stretch of Arcadian Atlas.


What does this mean for all y’all folks that believed in us and supported us before anyone else?

Well...

• 
  The team is now able to develop Arcadian Atlas full time all the way up to release. No day jobs, no contracts, no nothing stealing our focus from the game.
• 
  Additional platform support!
• 
  A publisher-level QA process means an even smoother experience for the final product.
• 
  Localization possibilities so we can bring Arcadian Atlas to a much wider audience across the globe!
• 
  Even more we’ve got cooking in the background—like more physical goods than you can shake a stick at!
• 
  Most importantly—a short production timeline. Kickstarter backers that funded the Early Access Beta Tier? The full game? Get ready, because we have further details to come!

We're still working out specific details with the publisher, and we hope to have more details for you all when we can make an official announcement!


To call it a shot of adrenaline for all of us is an understatement, and we’ve got our noses to the grindstone—pumping out animations, character portraits, the programming underpinning it all, and everything else that breathes life into the world of Arcadia—and we can’t wait to share it with you all soon!

Some much needed good news in the midst of this topsy-turvy world we’ve all found ourselves in.

In the meantime, let this encourage you to keep fighting for what you’re passionate about. Y’all keep healthy and socially distant, and please be good to each other. We’ll be here fleshing out Arcadia—fully masked, of course!

Sincerely,

The Arcadian Atlas Team

Howdy from Texas again, ya'll!
We've got a smorgasbord of new goodies to show off this time around, from new maps, brand-new mapping features that show off the capabilities of the BITE Engine, a new challenger with distant relation to our dearest trash-panda, Poncho, and much more!
Let's dive right in:
Seeing as we named our sweet lil' dude below after our favorite western-wear (and because it's a dang cute name), we wanted to flesh out his move-set with that western bravado we all love so much:

And we've been fleshing out Poncho's entire move-set, including making some modifications to his charge and casting cycles with tail swishes:
  But there's a classic western song Becca and I love by Willie & Merle, Pancho & Lefty, and we thought, you know... Poncho needs a buddy. Sooooo, without further ado, a new challenger approaches!
  Lefty is a Red Panda, and while hailing from a distant and mysterious land, he's come to have a classic western showdown with our pal Poncho. And watch out when he swings that big stick of his, cause bamboo doesn't bend or break easily.
   And with all this work on our furry friends, we haven't neglected some of those small touches that give our other characters life, with some custom animations like Fennic's below:

And with all this work on animations, Patrick's been hard at work expanding the Map Editor Features of BITE, like the new ability to customize key mappings for all the Editor's features. So whether you're more comfortable with the Arrow Keys or WASD, he's got you covered:

And building maps ain't easy, so he's added new brushes from a single-tile, four-tile and fill brush to quickly cover more ground!

But my favorite new feature is the simple Impasse System, which allows you to designate individual tiles that are impassable, leaving the control completely in the creators hands as to how maps are navigated. Plus, it looks beautiful:

We've already gone through and added these impasses to our existing maps, spreading the love as you can see below:

And we've worked up a few new places for you to cause havoc, like these alternate, fighting-enabled interiors:


Oh, and did we mention we're hard at work on a new biome: the desert! That perfect place for Poncho and Lefty to square off in, especially if a tumbleweed blows through:

And these improvements from BITE are already filtering into the Cutscene Editor, which Patrick is engineering to include streamlined event re-ordering, actor additions, and a whole slew of visual tweaks that we've got previews of below:

We're excited to show off the practical in-game implications of this next time!
I guess the desert tiles are bringing out the country in me, but we've only just begun with these and another exciting biome we've got in the works:

Wait, is that snow?!
Guess we'll all just have to wait and find out :D. So until next time, holster those six shooters and go play some video games

Welcome back adventurers! We've got some awesome news this go-round for not just backers, but creators, so keep your eyes peeled.

But before we jump in, if you've ever wanted to see the artistry behind Arcadian Atlas live, soon you can! Becca and I have worked to get a Twitch stream set up where you can watch her live-stream art creation, from maptiles, character design, animation work, and more!




Give her a follow and keep your eyes peeled for her first live stream announcement. For more info & polls on things like preferred stream times, check out her twitter page here.

Introducing: The BITE Engine

Way back when we jumped from RPG Maker to the more expansive world of Unity, we had a vision for not just our dream game, but for a creation tool so user-friendly it could be given to anyone who wanted to make a tactical RPG (one of the most notoriously difficult genres to create).



That dream is beginning to become a reality concurrently with the creation of Arcadian Atlas. Patrick has been hard-at-work on the foundation for what we are dubbing the BITE engine enhancement - an add-on that utilizes Odin Inspector's tools to create easily-modifiable units, scenarios, skills, items, weapons, and scenes. The best part: this tool is being developed in conjunction with Atlas, meaning every benefit to the system is a benefit to the game, which includes the following:

More Power to the Game Designer - A large portion of a game designer's life is turning knobs and whistles to balance values and to create the best possible experience for the player. You've all probably played RPGs with horrid difficulty spikes, or gotten bored going hours without a challenge. BITE allows us to easily and quickly implement your feedback when it comes beta time!



BITE Engine's Weapon Editor

Smaller File and Patch Sizes - To get Arcadian Atlas' prototype off the ground, we initially utilized Unity Prefabs. Moving to a new different segmented form of data means we can be much more efficient with the size of the game, as well as any patches we make on Steam (and elsewhere). We know some of you backers have internet data caps, so we want to keep file sizes as user-friendly as possible!

Advanced Cutscenes and Scenarios - We've forged a giant pyramid of stats, classes, status effects, and skills out of the prototype's design work so far. Cutscenes and scenarios (missions) rely on pretty much everything, so being clean and organized with those building blocks allows us to quickly create, reorder, and modify events.


BITE Engine's Core Editor

Plug & Play Capabilities - We've re-structured the logic and data to separate it from the graphics, which is a fancy way of saying Arcadian Atlas and future tactical RPGs using BITE will require far less digging into code-bases to create and play!

Effortless Changes - With BITE's data-driven design, we can remove, add, and change everything from units, status effects, skills, missions, locations, cutscenes (or most anything else) effortlessly midway through development based on new needs and feedback!


BITE Engine's Unit Editor

Iconic

To celebrate BITE, we wanted to show off some of the graphics we're paring with Patrick's data-driven systems.


Menu and Stat Icons

Iconography is an integral part of the user experience, and serves both as localization tool (because images require no translation) and ease of navigation. We love the design challenge of creating icons for our stats, items, text boxes, and menus that are at the same time simple, clean, and communicate efficiently. See below just a handful of those we've cooked up for our items:


Item Icons

Interior Designs & Graphics Galore

And of course behind the scenes we've been hard at work on all the graphics, from animations, items, and some drool-worthy interiors. You'll show yourself outside? Why not show yourself INSIDE you reckless warriors!

This go round Becca has been working up some graphics for house interiors and our Recruitment Centers throughout Arcadia. You can see a few of these below.


Recruiter Maptiles

And if we zoom in a bit you can see some light pouring through new windows, and bench for troops to sit and wait (because isn't a Recruitment Center just a glorified waiting room) , and a fancy desk for processing new troops.


Interior Details

Of course, when you're not waiting, you're training with some quality practice dummies and an assortment of weaponry for our discerning warriors:


Interior Details Cont'd

And when you're ready to lay your sweet head to rest, we've got a deluxe bed you could probably cram a couple of people in (uncomfortably, but this isn't a charity!) and some barrels full of wine to help the long hours seem short.



Oh, and not zoomed in on is that lil' cactus. Because we might be thrifty interior designers, but we're not animals. Get some greenery in there!


Crossbow Animations

We're also putting finishing touches on our primary attack animations, ensuring all eight frames front and back are as smooth as possible. From the heavy crossbow toting Ranger above, to the gargantuan hammer our Apothecary is dragging around below, we're nearly done with all our CORE classes and their various fightin' styles!


Hammer Animations

And of course a whole slew of new items for our re-vamped BITE enabled item editors!

Next Time

We're excited to show off some of the interior maps we're working up with these shiny new graphics, the expanded Skill sections of BITE, and lots more art next time! Be sure to check out Becca's Twitch streams and our twitter pages for up-to-the-moment previews and sneak-peaks!

Until then, keep your controllers warm and your bodies cool as we end out this record-setting summer heat!

~Taylor

Arcadian Atlas is officially on Twitch! Follow along for behind-the-scenes footage and art streams~