Sovereign Syndicate October 2021 Development Update

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Written by ValH on October 26th, 2021

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Crimson Herring Studios brings us a new development update for their upcoming steampunk RPG Sovereign Syndicate. The update directs us to this PC Gamer article from a couple months back, mentions the team's ongoing negotiations with publishers, and lists some recent improvements.

Check it out:

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a little over two months since our last development update, wanted to share some of what we’ve been working on.

We continue to be surprised and humbled by the positive response from media and the gaming community. We had an article in PC Gamer that gave us exposure with thousands of gamers, many of whom added Sovereign Syndicate to their wishlists and joined our Discord community. It was great for the game and the community, but also felt really special to have an article in a major publication that I grew up reading and have been a fan of for years.

We’ve also been in talks with several publishers who have shown interest in helping bring Sovereign Syndicate to market. While we haven’t secured a publishing deal yet we’ve received some great feedback that’s helped guide our development efforts and we look forward to continuing the conversations.

We’ve also added some new folks to the development team focused on game design, interactive design, and animation. They’ll help us to better define our tarot card and skill mechanics, improve narrative and quest design, and develop more custom animations to supplement the mixamo animations we’ve been using during initial prototyping. I look forward to working with the team to continue improving the game with the goal of completing a vertical slice demo and having it up on Steam for you all to play by the new year.

Since the last update here are some improvements we’ve made:

New Content:

• Added two additional scenes, working on interactables, NPC’s and dialogue for these “levels”
• Additional original music and sound design

Quality of Life Improvements

Various UI improvements

• Camera re-centred on character, added ability to zoom in and out
• Removed slant on UI
• Improved dialogue panel scrolling
• Added access to menus when dialogue panel is active
• Added numeric key support for dialogue options
• Added cursor change for inaccessible areas
• Added tooltip functionality when hovering over UI elements
• Added click and hold to walk/run
• Added wishlist and feedback tools and crash diagnostic reporting

For the next update we’re working on:

• Re-working of our character sheet and how we communicate skill development to the player
• Re-working of the tarot card system, how the skill check mechanic works with the character skills and attributes, and how we communicate probability of success or failure to the player
• Additional inventory items and consumables

Thanks again to everyone who’s engaged with us over the last few months. I’ve genuinely enjoyed chatting with you, answering your questions, and reading your feedback. Your comments have also been great for helping to focus our development efforts, ask ourselves tough questions, and ultimately make the best game we possibly can.

Until next time,

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