Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer

[Witchgrove Games]

I think you've added some screenshots since I last looked, the graphics look wholesome.

Cozy-maxxed

Thanks! It might be. Also the latest update improved the graphics a bit more with some contrast/brightness/colour adjustments. I've been trying to improve them from time to time and there are still some graphical elements I want to improve more with the future updates (some textures will need more details etc. and some enemy sprites will need some fine tuning and animations). There are also some placeholders still left, but they are mostly decorative stuff.

[Witchgrove Games]

Steam's Summer Sale has started and Chronicles of Vaeltaja just got an update that finally brings an optional party HUD that can be activated while adventuring, but that's just the beginning! Party HUD is now more dynamic during the battle and makes it easier to keep up with the action. Yes, the combat is now slightly faster too. The update also brought some other combat related improvements, visual enhancements, balancing and optimization.

Also the game is currently 40% off on Steam.

Patch notes with screenshots:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 6159045158

[Rand]

Wow, you're really updating the game a lot. That's commitment.

[Witchgrove Games]

Wow, you're really updating the game a lot. That's commitment.

I try to release at least some sort of update every month, though delays usually happen more than I'd want to. But I'm glad to hear that it shows that I'm committed to this project.

[Witchgrove Games]

The game is currently on 25% discount on Steam. I've decided to delay the Autumn Valley update, because it is now part of a bigger update that I'm working on. But there's going to be a smaller update in the coming weeks, with some enhancements, optimization and bug fixes. It will bring a new loading screen (nothing too fancy, just animated 'now loading...' text), flee mechanic to divris, lake rats and impish spawns, enhanced clouds and improved dialog to some npcs (there's so much dialog in the game that rest will follow in the future updates) and more.

Detailed news about the next updates are coming once I get all the necessary assets ready for some screenshots.

Chronicles of Vaeltaja on Steam

[Tweed]

I need to crack this one open again soon.

[Witchgrove Games]

I need to crack this one open again soon.

If you haven't played it in a while, there should be quite a lot improvements since the last time. Hopefully it will be even better experience!

[Witchgrove Games]

Screenshots and details about the next update behind the link below:

https://www.indiedb.com/games/chronicle ... -to-pramea

[Witchgrove Games]

The update has been released and patch notes with couple of screenshots can be found on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 9645786550

The game is 25% off on Steam until tomorrow.

[Witchgrove Games]

Autumn Valley is now part of a bigger update 'The Great North', which will bring two other overworld areas: Spruce Pass and Winter Wilds. The update will be released later this year and I will make a proper announcement during the autumn.
I released some early screenshots of the Winter Wilds on X, just follow the link below to check them out:

Screenshots on X

[rusty_shackleford]

@Witchgrove Games whenever you feel the game is in a reviewable state I'll force @Tweed to play through it and write a review

[Witchgrove Games]

@Witchgrove Games whenever you feel the game is in a reviewable state I'll force @Tweed to play through it and write a review

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind and let you know when I feel confident enough.
After the next content update the main story should be 90% complete, but there's probably at least one update before that. I've spent last couple of days fixing some performance issues in certain more demanding areas, and I think I can improve them even more.

[Rand]

I am looking forward to the final release.
I purchased it as soon as I found out about it and have played it a while and liked it for the simple old-school style RPG that it is.

[Witchgrove Games]

I am looking forward to the final release.
I purchased it as soon as I found out about it and have played it a while and liked it for the simple old-school style RPG that it is.

Thanks for the support, it is appreciated! I'm glad to hear you enjoy it. I think that the more time you spend with the game, you will start to notice that there are actually more going on than first may appear. For example there's a reputation system that doesn't have any visible stat for the player to keep track on. The reputation will affect on how some of the npcs will react to the player, though the system is not fully implemented yet, because at the moment I'm mostly focusing on to finish the main story and to add some performance improvements. But all in all, an old-school style RPG is what I set out to create; something that is rather easy to get into, but has enough depth and secrets to keep the player interested in. I want to encourage the player to explore and discover things at their own pace.

I hope you'll have fun with the game and enjoy it even more with the future updates!

[DecadeRiptide]

Does it use Unreal Engine 5 tho?

[Acrux]

Does it use Unreal Engine 5 tho?

No. It uses a custom RPGMaker 3D engine.

It's good.

[Witchgrove Games]

I wasn't sure if there was going to be an update for this month, but then I started to do some experimenting and managed to implement a better Vsync with the option to choose from 30fps, 60fps and Off. It works better than the frame limiter before and with it comes also a new frame counter, which is more accurate than the one before. I also changed the individual tree sprites to use cross shape instead of 2d sprites that turn to camera. The reason behind this performance: the way the engine (or the 3d plugin, to be precise) handles the dynamic lighting with the 2d sprites is very heavy on CPU. With this simple change the game gets a huge performance boost. The cross shape doesn't reflect player's lantern or torch light as nicely as the 2d sprites, but I think the performance is a better choice. I will be looking into the lighting issue and if I find a way to improve it, I will do it in the future. The creator of the 3d plugin (MZ3D) is working on a rewrite of the plugin, which will perform much better, but there is no guarantee that it will work with this game. But I will at least try it once it's released.

Anyway, after these changes I thought that perhaps I can release a small performance update for September and then made a small list of some minor fixes and adjustments. Things were going fine and I got them done. Then something just snapped and I went a bit crazy, so let me list some of the things that will arrive by the end of this month:

- Vsync
- Frame counter
- New battle background music to Twin Falls, the Great Forest, Pramea, Marsh of the Condemned and Lake Road[/list]
- Common battle background music to dungeons
- Option to choose scanlines
- House of Adventurers opened in Pramea
- Every house in Pramea will be unlocked once the town is safe
- Every house in Riverside's farming community is unlocked
- Every house in Twin Falls Castle Field is unlocked.
- Farmer's House in the Great Forest is unlocked.
- Quest Administrators added to both House of Adventurers (they will give smaller tasks, mostly monster part hunting)
- Woodcrafter who can craft bows, crossboss and staves
- 3 new bows, 3 new crossbows and 3 new staves
- Travel Crystal, which allows to teleport to the giant travel stones (it can be obtained after the Temple of the Prophets)
- New skill for the Guide class
- Some staffs will grant a skill/spell for the user as long as the staff is equipped, but they consume energy when skill is used. But the bright side is: For example shooting a fireball with a staff costs only half the energy it would cost when casting a fireball spell.
- Just about every wall torch, lantern etc. have been optimized
- Some other stuff and bug fixes too


So yeah, there is going to be an update this month.

Edit: Two things:

1. About the new battle background music: Twin Falls areas still use the same battle theme as before, but all the other areas will have new music.

2. The other thing I forgot to mention is that I changed the music in Halls of Onkalo and Pramea (before saving the town) to make the atmosphere feel much more ominous. Fog covered Pramea also has a different battle music than later when the town is saved.

[Witchgrove Games]

Kingdom Unlocked Update V.0.8 has been released with many improvements! September's small performance update turned out to be a major one and here are the lengthy patch notes:

Kingdom Unlocked Update V.0.8 Patch Notes on Steam

@rusty_shackleford I think I'm now starting to feel confident enough for an early access review.

[rusty_shackleford]

Kingdom Unlocked Update V.0.8 has been released with many improvements! September's small performance update turned out to be a major one and here are the lengthy patch notes:

Kingdom Unlocked Update V.0.8 Patch Notes on Steam

@rusty_shackleford I think I'm now starting to feel confident enough for an early access review.

@Tweed do you have the free time to do this since you finished your scheduled reviews?

[Tweed]

Yeah.

[Witchgrove Games]

Chronicles of Vaeltaja started its 3rd year in Early Access last month, so it's time to celebrate with a 25% discount and some small details about the upcoming 'The Great North' content update, which will be the biggest one during the whole early access period:

​Early Access 2nd Anniversary Discount Announcement on Steam

[Acrux]

I'm really loving the cozy snowscape.

[asf]

i like the graphics

[Witchgrove Games]

Thank you @Acrux and @asf ! Some of the Winter Wilds textures are still not quite finished and I may have to make some new clouds at some point, but otherwise I'm quite happy with the result.

[asf]

stop tagging me

[rusty_shackleford]

stop tagging me

Tag @asf

[Tweed]

Might have mentioned this before, but is there any way you could add hotkeys to combat? Numbering the actions would make it go a lot faster as would a "repeat last" command.

[Witchgrove Games]

Might have mentioned this before, but is there any way you could add hotkeys to combat? Numbering the actions would make it go a lot faster as would a "repeat last" command.

Unfortunately I can't give any definitive answer to this at the moment and here's the reason: The core plugin of the battle system is obfuscated, so I can't access its code and so far I haven't found a solution for this in the plugin settings and features. But this is something that I will take a better look on in the future and see if I can find a way to do that.

But I have some good news: I finally got an inspiration to write an overview of the game play mechanics to give an idea how much there's actually going on in the game, so prepare for the wall of text.

Chronicles of Vaeltaja starts with a bunch of questions that determine the main character's name, gender, reputation/honour, starting equipment and the amount of stat and skill points and coins. After the main quest is accepted, the game opens up and the player is free to explore the gameworld at own pace. Some overworld areas are locked in the beginning and they will open up as the story progresses, but otherwise the player is free to either follow the main quest, do some side-content or just explore the kingdom.

CHARACTER AND PARTY SYSTEM

The game has a six character party system, which means that the player can hire more or less party members, but there can only be six characters in the active party. This way the player can experiment with different party builds without starting a new game. For the main story related reasons (which will open up properly later, if I'm lucky enough to make the other games I've been planning - more about this later) there is no proper character creation. But there are hireable characters from 11 classes and some of them, such as Mages and Conjurers have sub-classes. For example, the player is free to decide if Mage becomes Wizard or Warlock, or something between. Most of the character classes also have male and female versions, but there are exceptions: There is only a female Witch and male Knight, Guardian and Witch Hunter.

The main character's class Guide is the jack-of-all-trades and is the one who should be used to interact with the NPCs, because other classes won't have skills, such as Speech. There are some skills that the main character shares with certain classes, such as Stealing and Lock Picking (Shadow class has these skills too) or Disarm Traps (Hunter has this skill also). This way the player will have the freedom to let the main character do the lock picking/stealing/disarming or hire Shadow or Hunter to do those and improve the main character's other skills.

STATS, SKILLS AND BATTLE TECHNIQUES

The Stat and Skill system is quite traditional with stats, such as Strength, Stamina, Intelligence and so on, but there is a twist: The player needs to find a good balance with the stats. If Warrior spends all the points to Strength, the character will hit hard, but is slow and has a bad defence, and therefore will end up dead pretty soon. Same goes with the other classes. Also, some stats will affect certain battle techniques (more about these later) and interaction with the game world. Perception will help with finding certain secrets, such as hidden buttons in paintings and secret stashes, or noticing hidden traps before they damage the party. Charisma can affect to what topics some NPCs are willing to talk about.

Each character class will have a class skill or two (the ones with sub-classes). Class skills will determine what battle techniques or spells the character can learn; the higher the skill, the more powerful techniques can be learned. Equipment related skills (such as Sword, Axe, Whip, Light Armor, Heavy Armor) work like class skills; the higher the skills, the better equipment the character can wear. Weapon skills will also increase the attack bonus. Then there are skills, such as the already mentioned Lock Picking etc. and skills like Resilience (increases hit points) and Channeling (increases energy points which are used by spells and battle techniques).

Most spells and battle techniques are used in combat, but healing related spells and skills can be used outside the combat. Spells and battle techniques can be bought from the shops or found in the dungeons. Some stats can improve the effectiveness of a battle technique or a spell, for example Perception can improve certain battle techniques for Hunter etc. Weaker battle techniques and spells can usually target only one enemy, but they can cause certain status effects (more about these later). Strong battle techniques and spells can target multiple enemies.

COMBAT AND STATUS EFFECTS/STATES

Turn-based combat has a two row system for the party, which means that the physically weaker party members are in a better safe in the back row. But there are other aspects in the row system too: Most melee attacks won't reach the backrow, but on the other hand ranged attacks deal more damage to the backrow characters. Basic melee weapons, such as swords and axes, can't be used from the backrow, but Witch Hunter's whip and Guardians polearm weapons, such as combat staves and halberds can be used from the backrow. Spells don't have these kind of limitations.

There are a lot of status effects/states to give more depth to the combat. There are many basic states, such as stunning, poisoned, sleep, bleed and so on, but some of them doesn't play out like they usually do: For example stunned character can still act, but with massive penalties to actions. Then there are more exotic states, such as hypothermia, oiled or soaked. Some spells and states can cancel certain states or have other effects on them; For example, water or ice spells can stop character or enemy from burning and fire spells are more effective on characters or enemies that have been covered with oil.

The combat itself plays out like in Wizardries: At the start of each turn the player gives orders to the party members and then watches how the turn goes. This way the player can never have an absolute control over the battles, which gives them a slight element of surprise and makes them more exciting.

THE GAME WORLD, GAMEPLAY, ITEMS AND TOOLS

The Kingdom of Twin Falls consists of multiple overworld areas with their own visual style. There are sunny fields, misty swamps and lush forests and jungles, but there are also dark and dangerous dungeons. Both, the overworld and the dungeons, are built to encourage exploration. They both have their own secrets and treasures. The player can enter every house (although getting into some of them may require some extra steps first) and talk to every NPC. There are shops that sell tools, equipment and other stuff, and it's even possible to steal from them. Yes, stealing is possible, but the player can also get caught by doing so, and eventually even banned from the store until a fine is paid. Stealing (and other questionable actions) will lower Reputation/Honour, which can affect how some NPCs react to the player. On the other hand, completing quests and doing some good deeds will raise Reputation (and some NPCs may even reward a player with a good enough reputation). The reputation doesn't have any visible value; just like in the real world, you can never know for sure what other people really think about you. The Reputation/Honour system will be expanded in the future to affect more NPCs than it currently does.

There are other things to do in the game world than completing quests and battling with enemies: The player can buy tools, such as shovel and pickaxe, to dig treasures and mine ore. Certain potions and equipment can be crafted, but that is optional. Crafted weapons, armour and accessories can give good alternatives, but crafted weapons and armour won't be the best ones in the game. Some crafting materials can be acquired from enemies and others can be found from digging spots, chests, tree stumps or other parts of the game world. Good Agility will help to gather some materials, such as butterfly wings. Crafting materials can also be sold in the House of Adventurers, where the player can also get some smaller tasks to earn experience points and coins.

The overworld has a day/night cycle, so tools, such as torches and lanterns, are useful outside of dungeons too. Talking about lanterns, they can have other qualities than lighting the way: Magic Lantern regenerates the party's energy points while it's turned on and Spirit Lantern destroys ghosts without fighting with them. Then there is the Eye of an Oracle, which can be used like lanterns, but it will also reveal things that are otherwise invisible, such as hidden levers, invisible doors and ghosts. The Eye of an Oracle will also consume the main character's energy points when used, so the Magic Lantern is a very helpful tool once the player finds the Eye of an Oracle.

Magic Map, which can be obtained from the Royal Cartographer, is useful tool when navigating the dungeons, but those who want to draw their own maps are free to do so. Another notable tool is the Grabbling Hook, which will let the player climb up and down the holes that doesn't have ladders. Then there are two types of Camping Gear: the regular will only restore hit and energy points, but the premium one will also revive fallen party members. Otherwise healing can be done with spells, potions, healing items, battle techniques, resting at inns or visiting the temples.

There many dungeons in the game and some of them are optional. They will contain puzzles, traps, secrets, treasures and enemies. Unlike in the overworld, the enemies won't respawn in the dungeons once they are defeated, though there is at least one optional dungeon that is an exception. Puzzles come in many varieties: There are lever, floor plate and other puzzles. Some of the puzzles even take an advantage of the Eye of an Oracle. Some dungeons are more focused on puzzles than the others. Both, the dungeons and the overworld areas, have illusion walls that hide secret areas and treasures. The dungeons have secret buttons, levers and so on.

All this should give quite an idea how much there actually is going on in the game, and yet I have a feeling that I'm forgetting something.

EDIT: @Tweed Now I actually remember, that there was an ability to repeat the last command, but it stopped working because of some other plugin caused a bug in the battle plugin. Good thing that you brought this up, I will have see if I can locate the bug. If I remember correctly, the plugin responsible for the bug shouldn't be obfuscated.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Kalarion has been playing this and it seems pretty gud, keep it up

[Witchgrove Games]

@Kalarion has been playing this and it seems pretty gud, keep it up

Thanks, I'm very glad to hear that!