Aug 19, 2024

👑Development Blog #5: Divine favors and treasures👑

Kingdom Two Crowns - Daria_Driver

Hey! Angelica here, we are back from the summer vacation and bringing you another update from the development team about the upcoming expansion Call of Olympus. In the last blog we talked about the gods and what their quests might look like. Today you'll be introduced to one of our fiery new mounts, get a hint of what wonderous rewards the gods may give, and gaze upon the blue flames of divinity. Hop aboard and let's set sail together!

The journey to Mount Olympus will be a long and dangerous one, filled with heroic adventures and shining rewards beyond your imagination. The gods will be watching your every move, to see if you truly are the royal hero you claim to be. Will you be worthy of challenging the final enemy that looms at Mount Olympus? Or will your crown be lost to the mysterious Greed?

To keep track of your progress, just gaze upon the giant marble columns standing tall in the distance. For each godly favor gained, the divine flames of the gods shall be lit. All four must be burning bright blue to open up the path to your true destiny. The end goal is clear, but the path you take to get there is up to you. Where shall you start? Do you set foot on the frozen lands that torture Athena? Or seek out the mysterious forest where Artemis' most desired treasure is hidden?

The choice is yours - but choose carefully! The gods will have very different challenges for you, and the rewards you may reap at the end of each will heavily impact how you play the game. Do you seek to wield the incandescent flames of a blazing volcano? Or would you rather see a storm of moonlight arrows rain down on your enemies?

"She was of divine stock, not of men, in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the midst a goat, breathing forth in terrible wise the might of blazing fire."

― Homer, The Iliad

In the ancient myths, the Chimera was a fearsome and raging beast to be defeated by the hero in the story. But I see myself as more of a "Yes, but can I pet it?" kind of person, so when we started exploring which mounts to include in this expansion, the Chimera immediately came to mind. Part lion, part goat, fire-breathing and with an amazing snake tail? Sign me up, I'm riding that thing!

For the right prize, you'll be able to coax her out of her cave and bring the Chimera along on your travels as a steadfast and relentless mount: sharp claws, fiery jaws and all. Just make sure you let her have a snack once in a while!

That's all for today, folks. Keep your eyes peeled for more details about Kingdom Two Crowns: Call of Olympus. We will have more to share soon!

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Jun 26, 2024

☀️Development Blog #4: The gods and their quests☀️

Kingdom Two Crowns - Daria_Driver

Ship ahoy! Angelica Norgren here, the game director. However, these days I might be more of a sea captain, who together with my talented crew is sailing towards the grandest DLC we’ve set out to make. Getting closer to our goal, every day!

*rolls out a parchment* Let's take a look at how we will get there!

We've already talked about how Mount Olympus will be off-limits until you have proven yourself worthy to the four gods; Athena, Artemis, Hephaestus and Hermes. Each and every one of them will have different quests for you. Complete the labors and gain their blessings to take on the final threat on Mount Olympus, a foe of truly epic scale. But surely, you cannot be expected to take on this challenge empty-handed?

A hero with the heart of a hunter

After restoring Artemis's temple the player is guided towards a large island in the north-west, where gnarled roots crawl across the ground, a vast canopy of leaves filter the light, and thick trunks create a labyrinth that hides the most shimmering treasure.

Artemis' love for creatures of the wild is only matched by her love for archery. Also portrayed as the goddess of the moon, we can only imagine how she must feel about the red hue that has haunted the night sky ever since the mysterious Greed started appearing all across the lands. Both huntress and protector, she bestows our royal hero with a hunter's trial. Prove yourself, and you shall receive a generous gift that is guaranteed to aid you in the battle against the Greed.

The gods are not the only ones willing to lend a hand during your many travels. If you happen to come across peculiar long-forgotten, subterranean tombs out in the secluded wilderness, you can try holding out a few shiny gems and a newfound friend might emerge. These hermits are lonesome by nature, but for the right price they will share their highly specialized skills. Pick them up on the back of your horse and new, architectural wonders and strategic options will become available to strengthen your Kingdom further. The hermit house belongs to a certain mathematician with a knack for physics, as I am sure you can tell by the many trinkets and inventions. This hermit will allow you to upgrade your high-level towers to become even more powerful as ballista towers.

Blood, sweat and lava

The next location we are visiting today is the volcanic island where Hephaestus' quest will take place. Hephaestus might not seem like an obvious choice among the ancient Greek gods, as he is not of quite the same fame as his father Zeus or brother Hades. However, as the god of fire and forge, Hephaestus is a master craftsman - one who builds for gods and mortals alike. We chose him to be part of the game because he represents one of the most important themes in Kingdom: building.

Build, Explore, Defend and Conquer. Without building, none of the rest would be possible. Only a true Monarch knows the importance of refined tools, sturdy walls and a fortified castle. Hephaestus's grand forge was rumored to be located inside a volcano, where the heat from the lava allowed him to craft the most magnificent weapons. Weapons a royal hero on a quest to save the lands surely could make good use of. If only there was a way to gain his favor...

The monument in the background on this island is one of my personal favorites in the game. Lodged between three active volcanoes, with smoke pillars rising towards the sky and glowing lava trickling towards the sea, the remnant of a gigantic cyclops can be seen. In the middle of the fearsome creature's skull, the gaping socket almost seems to be observing you from afar. If you look a little closer, two tusks can be seen just above the mouth. A fitting facial feature, considering how researchers today theorize that the cyclops myth was inspired by ancient Greek encounters with small elephant skulls - their craniums had a big hole for their trunks which might have seemed eerily similar to a single eye socket.

Before the heat from the lava becomes too much and the volcanic ash fills our lungs, I fear it is time for us to set sail once again. There are plenty more islands to explore, myths to uncover and powerful artifacts to shine light on.

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Jun 14, 2024

✨Development Blog #3: The fates foretold, for your journey to be bold✨

Kingdom Two Crowns - Beastman

Every journey begins with the first step

In Call of Olympus you will take on the role of a royal hero who sets out on a journey to defeat the mysterious Greed threat on top of Mount Olympus.

As it is a sacred home to the Gods, only a true hero will prove worthy of setting foot on the Mountain. The gods guarding it are finicky beings who are not easily impressed. You will have to go through great lengths (yes, go the distance!) to satisfy them all. Before you're able to take on the Gods' quests, you must find a way to communicate with them. Your first task shall be to rebuild the Oracle Temple and summon the Oracle.

Hey, Angelica here - your devoted Kingdom game director!

In this blog post, I’m going to give you a sneak peek into the beginning of Call of Olympus.

First of all - we need someone to tell the tale. So we're going to revisit a familiar Kingdom element: the Ghost. A helpful ancestor in the shape of a ghostly apparition that has provided players with useful information and been a helping hand through the tutorial in previous campaigns. In Call of Olympus, we're doing things a bit differently - and we have given the Ghost a make-over & a new purpose (and yes, for our long-time fans: we are making updates to the classic tutorial ghost as well. Plus, giving you the option to completely turn it off!).

Inspired by ancient stories of the Delphic Oracle, a priestess who would relay divine messages from the gods to the people, we transformed the Ghost into our own Oracle. Through mystic messages and ambiguous verses, she will help the monarch understand the world around them and guide them through the challenges of their quest - if they so wish. Simply toss a coin to your Oracle at the nearest flaming tripod and your prayers shall be answered. More or less. She can be quite... enigmatic.

Choose your path to greatness

Once teamed up with the Oracle it is time for our Monarch to set sail and explore the world. You will quickly notice that the map is grander than in any other Kingdom Two Crowns campaign. The ten Mediterranean islands that lie before you hold plenty of mysteries, challenges and, of course, rewards to discover. The question is - which path will you choose?

Will you first worship Athena, Artemis, Hermes or Hephaestus and vie for their support? Each deity has their own temple, their own needs and grant their own rewards. We wanted the temples to be inspired by real life tholoi, but not to be straight up copies of the existing ones, so we combined different architectural elements to create our own unique temples nested in an abundance of symbolic imagery representing each god. For example, Athena's temple features sculptures of owls - her animal representatives, a library filled with scrolls to showcase her wisdom and apple trees in the background to subtly foreshadow the contents of the quest that awaits you. Seated in the middle of the temple, there is Athena's idol, a small golden sculpture you are tasked to retrieve before your journey can continue.

During your travels across the lands, you will encounter many mythological beings and creatures inspired by the ancient Greek mythos. Some even willing to come to your aid - for the right price, of course.

One such being, guaranteed to send shivers down your spine, is the creature lurking in the abandoned weaver's house. The building is overgrown with weeds and ensnared in silken threads, making it difficult to distinguish between tapestries and webs. This eerie setting draws inspiration from the myth of Arachne, the legendary weaver who dared to challenge the goddess Athena to a weaving contest. Outraged by Arachne's flawless work, Athena transformed her into a spider, condemning her to weave for eternity. Perhaps you, dear Monarch, can persuade this cursed weaver to lend you a hand?

This is just a small glimpse into the many new wonders that await in Call of Olympus. Keep an eye out for the next dev blog to get to know your divine benefactors a little better. The Gods are waiting!

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May 29, 2024

⚡Development Blog #2: Endless horizons⚡

Kingdom Two Crowns - Daria_Driver

“Mysterious whispers, deep in nature's embrace

An ancient threat awakens in this wondrous place”

Hey there, game director Angelica speaking. Things are starting to heat up over here! Even though the announcement was just a small glimpse of what's to come, we have been getting so much positive feedback from you all. We can't wait to share even more!

While most of the team is very busy polishing those pixels to perfection and implementing new features (or ironing out a few nasty bugs) I was still able to convince our talented artists to take a moment and share their progress in this environment-themed development blog. There will be plenty of time for us to talk about things like the campaign, divine quests and new features later on. For now, in order to tell this Odyssey of our development adventure, which in time will reveal completely new and bigger threats, I would like to start from the beginning with the foundation - the world. What does it take to bring our Greedified version of ancient Greece to life?

Hello from the Mediterranean - greetings from the art team!

More precisely, from sunny Croatia! Hello everybody, today you are greeted by some of the members of the art team. We are Sara and Valentina, and we will tell you a bit more about your Greek adventure in Kingdom Two Crowns. Living in Croatia was a huge plus for us while working on the Greece setting because we share some similarities with Greece, especially the natural coastal parts. Both of us could draw from our experiences of going to the seaside and capturing the natural beauty of this part of the Mediterranean.

We couldn’t solely rely on our experiences, so when we started working on the new Kingdom biome, we first set out to gather plenty of references for anything ancient Greek- related. We brushed up on our art history, relearned Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders, pediments, triglyphs, metopes, etc. We did the same for the vegetation, googling all kinds of flora that were present in ancient Greece and tried to learn more about them: olives, pine trees, juniper trees, oleanders, laurels, asphodel plants, etc. If it was in ancient Greece, it would be added to the game. That led us to the new Kingdom look which should evoke the feeling of a Greedified Mediterranean vacation. You will find yourself exploring dry forests with those iconic cicada sounds.

In the midst of the Greek forests there are small patches of civilization left, the mysterious statues by which the ruler can make their subjects stronger and increase their chances of survival in the face of Greed. Inspired by lifelike statues of ancient Greece, we tried incorporating some classical poses like contrapposto and letting a wide variety of sculptures found in temple pediments influence the identity of our magical ones. One of my (Sara) favorite concepts was an archer statue inspired by the marble archer from the west pediment of Temple of Aphaia. (Un)fortunately, to resolve for more variety of units in this setting, sometimes things had to get cut like a Gordian knot. In place of the archer, what we needed was a slinger, so the archer sculpture got booted and replaced by this lil stone throwing guy. To blend these marble structures with the environment, we withered them down and covered them with Dionysion, or if you wanna be nasty, Ivy.

While working on nature for the game, we went for the “classics” of the Greek vegetation. We wanted the players to immediately sense that they are in a sunnier, slightly drier and coastal environment. Everything is a bit rockier, with bushes being more compact (except for the oleander bushes) and somewhat scarcer. We toyed with the idea of having foloi oak forest, but it detracted from the coastal look we were aiming for, so we decided to stick with the types of trees found near the coast.

This decision put us in a bit of a pickle because we lost our only deciduous tree, and as you all know, winter does come to the Kingdom. What is a dead giveaway for winter, you ask? Trees without leaves. So, we went on a hunt for an acceptable tree that would still feel coastal and shed its leaves, and we came up with the wild pear, or its grander name, Pyrus spinosa. By the end of working on all the trees, I (Valentina) developed a "professional disorder," as we say in Croatia, of checking out every single tree I see in real life and turning around just to gaze at it. It has become a joke at this point when I nudge Sara and say, "Hey, check out that good-looking canopy."

****

We trust these glimpses into the enigmatic forests of Call of Olympus have stirred your spirit for the journey ahead. A loyal steed and a fiery torch shall be your steadfast companions as you venture into the verdant wilderness. Perhaps that mount is closer than you think? You just need to somehow figure out how to free it from its petrified prison.

Yet, be wary of the foreboding purple lights that shimmer along the winding path... who knows what wonders and trials lie in wait?

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