Jun 13, 2021

Spire of Sorcery is a part of Steam Next Fest!

Spire of Sorcery - Qfasa

The playable demo of Spire of Sorcery is available for everyone to try during Steam Next Fest, starting on June 16, 2021. To us and to many other development teams, participation in the Fest feels like preparing for E3 and Gamescom at the same time – with the excitement of PAX and EGX thrown on top.

We hope that everyone gets to discover a whole bunch of great new games!

Spire of Sorcery is a party RPG with turn-based exploration and battles that we develop for a few years, and will release into Early Access in just a few months, this autumn.

You can eat mushrooms that change your character's hair color!

You can cook and concoct, mixing resources and discovering recipes!

You can set forests on fire, blind opponents with lightnings, dissolve locks with acid and capture demons to turn them into a useful alchemic substance.

And all throughout the game, you will cast spells, as you play for a party of runaway mages.

When the time came to write the official description of the game, we of course gave some official definitions: it’s turn-based and hex-based; characters have personal stats and traits; the process mixes encounters and exploration, plus some deck-building.

But we don’t really see the game through this lens when we create it. Instead, we focus on the fun stuff that’s in the game: the fears and dreams of every character, their eating habits and their moral traits; what happens when someone consumes giggler eggs, or locust buds; how you can lure shadows under the raincloud and then paralyse them; and how you can get clothing from the corpses and deck-building books from abandoned palaces

Below you will find the FAQ that we complied to explain the basics of the game. On one hand, we urge you to read it at some point. On another, maybe just press PLAY DEMO and see how it feels! =)

Enjoy the festival – play as much as you can!

Spire of Sorcery – FAQ

What is Spire of Sorcery?

Spire of Sorcery is a game about a party of runaway mages. The game is set in the fantasy post-apocalyptic world of Rund, where possessing the magic talent is a crime.

What genre is Spire of Sorcery?

Spire of Sorcery is a party RPG with turn-based exploration and battles.

When is Spire of Sorcery going to be released?

We plan to enter Early Access on Steam in the autumn of 2021. We’re currently in beta, with weekly build updates for those who play the beta.

Spire of Sorcery was first announced in 2017. What happened?

Once we created the word of Rund, we tried a different kind of gameplay – but then decided not to pursue it, as it wasn't as fun as we hoped it would be. We’ve spent the last year developing the current version of the game – turned-based party RPG – which represents our best effort and which we ourselves play every day. You can read this Steam announcement for more details about the transition and the story of the project.

How replayable is Spire of Sorcery?

We have the modding at the heart of our philosophy, so be assured that the game will have accessible editing tools once it’s finished. But even ahead of that, we’ve built in enough flexibility in the world-generation algorithms to make each campaign different from another. Sometimes this means you’ll have a very easy time completing the chapter, and sometimes this means you’ll have a real challenge.

Are you planning to translate Spire of Sorcery into a specific language?

We currently support English, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, French and German languages. Outside of the first two, all the languages experience about 2-3 weeks of delay between when new content shows up in the build, and when it becomes available in a specific language – our translators do their best to keep the pace, but such delays are unavoidable if you want to have a high-quality translation and not a “rush job”. We currently do not have plans to support other languages, but this may change due to sales into specific regions. We also plan to allow any localisations that the community wants to make, via Steam Workshop.

How will the final version differ from the demo?

The Early Access version of the game, when it releases, will have a few more challenging chapters. The full version of the game, when it becomes available, will feature the complete story of the mages – from their escape from the Sanctuary to their arrival in the Distorted Lands. More content and more features – for sure. We try not to get ahead of ourselves, and we design the game step by step. While the Early Access version of the game is expected to ship in the autumn of 2021, the full version is going to ship not earlier than the end of 2022, as we plan to add a bunch of fun content, and it takes time to create.

How long does it take to complete the game?

Spire of Sorcery is based on a campaign, which consists of chapters. Each chapter (outside of the tutorial) takes about 1 hour to complete. The Early Access version of the game will have between 2 and 4 such chapters, and the full version of the game will have between 10 and 15 such chapters – plus whatever side chapters we’ll add, along the way.

In our previous game, we have quite a lot of players who spent 1,000+ hours in the game, and we’re really happy for them – it is also a proof that we can make engaging games. But in general, we think that any game should take no more than 10-12 hours to play through, and then if you like, you can replay it in a different fashion. But as parents with children, we don’t really support the idea of “you must spend 40-60 hours in the game to see the end of it” concept.

Multiplayer?

Our previous game is an online digital board game, so naturally we’re tempted to try adding a sever mode to Spire of Sorcery, too. But for now, we have no plans that would be set in stone. Most likely, we’ll try to create some sort of an “online challenge” mode, where players can compete in finishing a custom chapter that we’ll create just for this purpose. But we have to first enter the Early Access mode, and finish the backbone of the game, before we can start with such experiments. Much also depends on how the community evolves.

I don’t understand how the game works. Where can I find the explanation?

Watch this tutorial video –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2pQK27o8e8

– or complete the first 4 tutorial chapters in the campaign.

If you still have questions, feel free to ask them on the game’s official Discord server or on Steam forums!

I have a suggestion – where can I share it?

We’re always happy to get feedback! The Discord server and the Steam forums are the best places to share it with us.

What is NOT in the current demo, but will be a part of the game?

We’ve got a few things in development that are going to happen, because we’ve tested them and they seem to produce fun effects:

travel magic
lots of moral choice stories
adventures (simplified on-the-spot quests)
personal relationships between party members
non-human party companions
the Spire, and its many upgrades
a system of curses to compliment the system of injuries and diseases
more creatures, more biomes, more weather effects, and more mechanics in general

I don’t like this game. I think you should develop something else!

Just let it go, dude! We’re not going to be able to develop a game that pleases everyone (and their mother). Our small team is doing the best that we can to deliver an original, fun game with lots of content. It’s unavoidable that some players won’t like what we do. Please don’t hate it, just find a game that you like more – and support it and its creators! Let peace, love and cool games prevail.

I like this game! How can I help?

The most important thing for us is your feedback, and your comments. What drives us is the understanding that we make our players happy. Please wishlist the game, tell us about the parts that you love – and the parts that you find confusing – and we’ll do our damnedest best to improve the experience! We’re a team of 7, which is not a lot, and we’re only human, but with the motivation, and the goodwill of the community, we can move mountains!

Jun 12, 2021

Official First-Days Hotfix Report

Chicory: A Colorful Tale - banov

Version number on launch was 1.0.0.50
The latest build is now 1.0.0.53

New Features:

"Teleport to Luncheon" in Options menu lets you warp safety if stuck
"Clear GIF" button on title screen - now you can use and re-use the title screen as a full-featured time-lapse drawer and exporter!
Toggle Cursor Stick with L3 - option added to let you live toggle the sick which pilots the character and cursor. Might be helpful for left-handed players
Setting font style to "Readable" also sets a minimum text size so it can't get too small
*New text added when a certain character appears in the Master Gallery after beating the game - this appeared to be a bug previously but we actually had to write new text for this (lol)
*Added one new content warning for a certain NPC

*These changes are awaiting localization in some languages and will appear in future builds for non-english languages

Fixes:

A massive memory leak was fixed in the Game Maker engine. This caused unpredictable issues and crashes after many hours of play on all platforms
Colors on map screen get cleared after playing for a little while
Crash with certain custom brush styles (we think we've fixed all these crashes, but there might be some problematic variations we haven't found yet)
Phonebooth can ring in inaccessible areas in Gulp Swamp, Dinners
Selecting December as your birth month instead displayed January
Issue with re-spawning when swimming into water sometimes
Bug with Pizza's animation after reading a letter
Found kittens reset colors if creating a GIF in Beans' house
Crash with rock bugs going out of the level
Crash when editing Dr. Cheese's palette by deleting all colors and then adding one back
House visitor event could trigger at an awkward time in the endgame
Cashew turns around when collecting paint samples
Cashew animation frozen
Softlock when jumping off a certain area while solving a puzzle on Spoons Island
Lemon endgame animation layering
User can set "enter" or "start" as the back button, breaking the control config screens
Crash when getting a hint for a certain side-quest in the postgame
Reduced contrast on Boss 1's hit effects when "Flashing Effects" are disabled
Able to re-trigger ending sequence by jumping into tree after end of game
Extremely rare crash with squareroot function when drawing vigorously on Mac
Extremely rare crash with Pizza rendering? (might have been a memory issue??)
Crash when encountering a specific easter egg in Supper Woods using cheat-like methods
Transition to title screen when using a door in Chicory's room (this MIGHT NOT be fixed, we couldn't reproduce it, but we found a probable cause and fixed that)
Completing a certain post-game sidequest, undoing it, and then re-doing it caused an unexpected line of text to display if certain choices were made earlier (trying not to spoiler, lol)
[PS4] crash when connecting co-op with 3+ controllers connected to console
MANY Out of Bounds/bad screen transitions fixed, including but not limited to these areas: Wielder Temple entrance, Supper woods bottom-right corner, Dessert peak first screen, Grub caverns, Nibble tunnel glow shrooms, Yum cave glow shrooms, Sips river bridge, Dinners side area, Luncheon Pea/Ginger rooftop, Banquet rainforest pillars area

There are still a small number of known issues that we are working to keep up with. Thank you for your patience! And thank you for playing and also for all the kind reviews!!!!!!!! They help us a lot :)