[The Fifth Steam Concept Video!]

News: Devblog Update #5 is Live!

Here comes our fifth blogpost accompanied with a hot video with the latest changes. For this period we had a lot of meetings to find a venue and discussions with more experienced game business people to get advice and insight on what we should and should'nt work on.

The Fifth Steam Concept Video!




After weeks of backbreaking coding we have finally implemented a game lobby and host/join functionality for the game. There is no graphic interface for the lobby or hosting except for a console screen and some text documents but it is so far promising.

Reflective Art
This periods biggest changes of visuals are our two new spells: Reflective Shield and Speed Boost as well as GUI for all spells available, accompanied with cooldowns. The shield is a multi-purpose spell that will appear on a target location and reflect any incoming projectile no matterwho cast it. As an alternative for the Blink (Teleportation spell), we added Speed Boost which greatly increases your movespeed for a couple of seconds.

Here are two pictures with the GUI additions: Healthbars and Spell Icons accompanied with cooldowns. There are still a lot of GUI missing but this is the start. Next up will be adding a multiplier meter, a main menu and a lot of other things. Now that the code foundation for GUI is built implementing other elements will be a lot easier.

What’s more?
We also got to know about the upcoming game devs' and publisher meet up conference in Paris called Game Connection the 29th to 31th of October. There is no absolute descision yet but we plan to attend to the conference and pitch our game with hopes of finding an investor. We still do not have any news on our approach towards Sony (PSN) but we are getting there soon enough, the same goes for Paradox Interactive which we also hope to get in contact with soon. Since we probably are going to Paris with Spellsworn the pressure on the production to finish our roadmap and MVP in time have increased and we believe this is for the better.

We also got to know about the upcoming game devs' and publisher meet up conference in Paris called Game Connection the 29th to 31th of October. There is no absolute descision yet but we plan to attend to the conference and pitch our game with hopes of finding an investor. We still do not have any news on our approach towards Sony (PSN) but we are getting there soon enough, the same goes for Paradox Interactive which we also hope to get in contact with soon. Since we probably are going to Paris with Spellsworn the pressure on the production to finish our roadmap and MVP in time have increased and we believe this is for the better.

Lastly, a word about the game: since we now have a basic arsenal of spells the production will start focusing on all those small feedback details to make sure we reach that level of sweetness and polish we want for our presentation of the game. While an official presentation of the game will be scary we are also very excited and optimistic - we will be on our toes! Just like we're running on lava!

What’s next?
In the next video, October 17th, there will undoubtedly be the first true implementation of music and sound effects as well as more GUI and gameplay polish. As soon as that's done we will take in external testers to hear you guys out and see what you like and dislike! If you want to join the tester list send a mail to [email protected] or post here!

Thanks for coming by!
Stefan Jonsson, Designer & Producer
Frogsong Studios

Thanks for the update.

I really like the music in the videos.

Thanks!:D

Sorry for not answering very quick, I've been out travelling! Just wait until you hear the new work of our sound guys!

[Orbital Art!]

News: Devblog Update #4 is Live!

The amount of blogposts we have now are almost longer than we can count (4). These last two weeks have been extremely eventful, we have sorted up our directions and improved our management. Since we made a post about some of our endeavours last week this post will be a little bit shorter than usual.

Now to the fun part! We have released our fourth Steam Concept Video!

Orbital Art!
In terms of visuals the biggest change of Spellsworn is undoubtedly our newly added spell: Meteor Strike!

In addition to the spells we also implemented decals for spellcasting.

We have also added some rocky boundaries to the map!

Except for that the artists have worked continously on GUI-elements, post-processing, improvements in the Magma-shader et cetera.

What’s more?
In terms of management and future plans this week have pretty much flipped all of it upside down, but in a good fashion! Like we mentioned in our last post we had a meeting with David Polfeldt who told us a great deal of things, we learned a lot! Polfeldt really thought we should look into finding and investor and connected us with a couple of really useful contacts. That said we decided to postpone our plans with Kickstarter and not launch it this year, what happens 2015 may be a different story.

We have also made a roadmap for the project and we have decided that the 31st of October is the day when we are to have our so called MVP (Minimum-Viable-Product), a verticle slice of the game where all primary functions and features are implemented, including animations, sounds and music.

A lot of changes are going on but hey, that’s what game development is all about! Iteration, no matter if it’s plans or games!

What’s next?
In the next video, October 3rd, there will hopefully be a full implementation of the GUI. We know we promised sounds and music but that will have to wait until next video too. As mentioned before we will start the external testing soon, care to join? Send a mail to [email protected] or post here!

Thanks for coming by!
Stefan Jonsson, Designer & Producer
Frogsong Studios

Happy to hear another Warlocks fan and thanks a lot, we'll keep at it!

[Art extravaganza!]

News: Devblog Update #3 is Live!

Here is our third blogpost! We are sorry we did not make it to post last friday but alas you will get it today instead and a video on Friday (19th of September.)

The past week the coders have worked more on the foundation of Spellsworn and yet not much visible to show, currently they are working on a lobby-system and GUI. There will hopefully be a lot more to show in terms of functionality in the coming video.

Art extravaganza!
In comparison the artists tend to do things that are easier to observe, not to mention the first version of our main menu backdrop. You may be familiar with the Warcraft 3 games and that’s where we took a lot of inspiration from. Below you can see both the photoshop-mockup and the current in-engine version.

Another backdrop that’s in the making is the Lobby before the game starts, we figured we wanted to do something more interesting than just photos and textboxes! Here is the photoshop-mockup for the Lobby.

There have also been some work invested in Spell targeting decals, to make targeting easier for the players. In this picture you can see the decals for Blink (to the left) and the Fireball (to the right.)

What’s more?
We have an amazing announcment to make, now we are legally a company, Frogsong Studios AB is now our official name! (AB is an acronym for limited company in swedish.) Furthermore, we are plan our Kickstarter to launch as soon as possible. Our Kickstarter target goal coincides pretty well with Kickstarters recent announcement of opening up to nordic banks.

This Tuesday (September 16th) we are going to have a meeting with a media incubator called MINC who may give us free office space if they take us in for their incubation programme. We hope very much to get into their programme as direct, eye-to-eye contact, works a lot better than offsite communication which we are dealing with now. Yet another meeting will take place this Thursday with the CEO of Ubisoft Massive, namely David Polfeldt, who will take a look at Spellsworn and give us some directions and what not.

It is also time to mention http://www.playstar.se/, a gaming organization hosting servers for a variety of games. These fantastic bunch of people are to give us a hand in the future and support us with hosting the game servers, we hope to have a long-lasting, mutually beneficial collaboration. We cannot express how happy we are to have this opportunity.

All in all, things are going well and we are surely getting there!

What’s next?
In Fridays upcoming video there will be more player-on-player action. Also, the first draft of music and sound effects will be for up for show, stay tuned! As mentioned before we will start the external testing soon, care to join? Send a mail to [email protected] or post here!

Hey just discovered your game, looking good!

I'm curious, will your game contain the race mode (without possibilities of killing eachother) where you race along a map?

I remember the Worms games had ninja-rope races and those were super cool.

Best of luck with your Kickstarter!

Oooh I'm definitely gonna tell the artist that, will make him very happy! :D

[More art!]

Looks nice. Will follow this, I like dota alot
Is it possible to test it?

Happy you like it! :D You've got a good taste, I've been playing dota for quite some time too, probably to many hours, haha!

We will not have public test just yet but we aim to have it as soon as possible since we want to get feedback from players like you as soon as possible. If you want to I can add you to our tester list? Either you can give me your mail so I can send you a notice when time is due or if you prefer I could send a P.M here instead.

Sounds awesome! Thanks for the information, looking forward for new informations! :D

Oh no thank YOU for showing interest, really gives me (and the others) a moral boost! I am not sure if you have seen it already but I realised I forgot to post about our Devblog Post #2 and thought I'd share it here too! The blog can also be found here:
http://www.frogsong-studios.com/devblog/

Lava-Hot News: Devblog Update #2 is Live!

The past week have been a lot about laying foundation bricks for the networking, where we took help from our dear friend Kristoffer at http://www.rigid-soft.com/ who have previous experience with network architecture, he gave us a lot of good advice and tips. Since this picture is quite big, check it out here instead: http://bit.ly/1tvwY8i

More art!
On the art side of the project the initial work on the GUI have been picking up pace and showed some results you can see in the picture below, done by Anders. It should be noted that there is no shop for the spells just yet, this picture is a mockup to give an idea of how it will look like in the end.

Jonathan is iterating the lava still but it already look a lot better than before, especially in movement. Speaking of movement, additional passes on the animations have been done, for one the Wizards now tread on lava as though their feet are burning.

What’s more?
In weeks to come we are to legally (and not only activity-wise) become a company and so there is a lot of effort going into that establishment, we really hope to get it over with as soon as possible as it is a distraction for the production.

What’s next?
We are not yet entirely sure what our upcoming video will contain by the 19th of September, if everything goes right there will be amazing music and sound effects made by our to be announced composers, more gameplay and even hotter lava! As mentioned before we will
start the external testing soon, care to join? Send a mail to [email protected] or post here!

Thanks!

The plan is that we will release the game on Linux also as far as we don't run into some really hard compability issues. Though the server software is to run on Linux and you're right, UE4 is supposed to work fine.

Hahaha, I just love this project! I will try it out sometime, simply because its beautiful ascii!

Dat' mushroom!

Thanks! It definitely one of mine too. We will work on this till it ships or we die of famine!

Oh me too! Always loved magic, who doesn't, right? :D

I worked quite a bit in UE3 and always felt there are some really stupid things, like not being able to change your hotkeys, continous crashing and more. Also mentionable from UE3 was that I hated Kismet, I know C# and have been doing a lot of visual scripting in the StarCraft 2 engine but the Kismet never worked out well for me.

When I heard that they were going to take visual node-scripting to the next level to do something called Blueprints I was entirely turned off.

But then I tried it.

Blueprints is the single most amazing thing about UE4 and it is extremely powerful in comparison to its decendant Kismet. Also the fact that they have released the full source code for the engine is simply fantastic as it gives programmers a lot more playroom and removes a lot of the workarounds.

UE4 is also of course very pretty and all in all, after sitting down with it, I have to say I really like the engine.

Just discovered this project, must say I love the environment I've seen so far!

Hello there ndke!

The post definitely needs more info, I'll make sure to add more.

The game is played out in rounds, last man(or team) standing, you can die from just being damaged by spells but it is most likely that you will die from being knocked out into the lava as every spell has a certain knockback. This knockback is based upon a multiplier that is built up when you are hit, just as in Super Smash Bros which you are probably familiar with.

We are developing the game in the brand new Unreal Engine 4.

[Latest Update]

Latest Update
Devlog Video Update #14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2YU0G-QY3M&feature=youtu.be




http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=385795837/

What is Spellsworn?
A fast-paced arena-styled game set to be initially released on PC, where masterful Wizards are piled up against one another to let cascades of arcane power engorge the battlefield. Consider it a mixture of sumo-wrestling and wizard duels with controls reminding a lot of MOBA-games such as League of Legends and Dota. The game is heavily inspired by the ever so popular WarCraft 3 custom game mode Warlocks.

How is it played?
After finding a server with your friends and matched up against some additional players, a match is played out over about ten.  The players start out with only two spells available, a fireball and another spell of their chosing. After a countdown the round will start and spells will fly across the arena, knocking the Wizards back and forth and out into the lava. When all but one have been vanquished the round is over and all players are rewarded a resource based on their performance and placement.

This resource is spent on unlocking new spells and then the next round starts. When all the rounds have concluded a winner is declared and the match is over.

Who are the developers?
Frogsong Studios is a startup studio consisting of five members, all situated in the vicinity of Malmö, Sweden. We are currently developing  Spellsworn in Unreal Engine 4 alongside our first game A Mole Odyssey in Unity3D.

Want to know more? Go to http://www.frogsong-studios.com/ or directly to our presskit: http://www.frogsong-studios.com/presskit/

Update Backlog

Devlog Video Update #14 (Latest)




Devlog Video Update #13




Devlog Video Update #12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzeTJnA_ovA

Devlog Video Update #11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiVvYTBfqlM

Devlog Video Update #10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57k-ZWGjbEs

Devlog Video Update #9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDUmXKsh3g0

Devlog Video Update #8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWxQIbQ_A-w

Steam Concept Update #7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L22AoyarV8s

Devlog Video Update #6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il7pH50ofxo

Devlog Video Update #5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RvoL_KhTmA

Devlog Video Update #3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZd9i6AZrIA

Devlog Video Update #4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZd9i6AZrIA

Devlog Video Update #2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrjZ-ggonS4

Devlog Video Update #1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dgH9n-lz68

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/FrogsongStudios
Twitter:https://twitter.com/FrogsongStudios
 

This quote from Neil Gaiman has always stuck with me:

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

I think it applies equally well to game design. Often, I find that a lot of problems are best solved through an indirect approach. For example, early on, a lot of people would comment that they'd want to know what color the different walls are, and people suggested things like having different colored grids, having the walls be colored all the time, or some kind of HUD showing wall colors. The problem was that visually, it just looked really awful.

However, when I added arrows to the boxes, it actually fixed this problem, because now, you could deduce which walls were which color based on the boxes in the room. And while that would only show you wall colors for the boxes you have, the other wall colors were actually irrelevant.

I think that quote is very applicable indeed. You really have to put up with all those ideas and suggestions, they mean that they care about your game for whatever reason and that's something to value dearly. Finding the solution, like you did with the arrows, that's the hard part. Like you said, an indirect approach is probably the way to go, very case specific of course.

Just post your update and I'll give some feedback if I happen to come by the thread!

OH YEAAAH!

Nice job and congratulations! :D

Its really good to hear what you learned from GDC, rough comments from users can really beat you down and sometimes it is indeed very hard to see through and realise what the actual problem is. Maybe its exactly what the users are commenting on or maybe it is something completely different.

The game looks very 'artsy' now in a good manner, there are quite a few bad examples on
being artsy' but I really think you're doing it right.

About those posters, make sure to have one or more japanese people to actually read it through and give you feedback. I haven't been much with japanese but what I learned is is that sometimes the do and say things very differently, even though they have the same intentions. Maybe there is something in your fliers that adresses this cross-cultural thingy!

The layout and looks really good, readable and the pictures are interesting to look at.

Just like The_RonJones I just felt like dropping by give you a comment.

When I first saw Relativity it was on a twitter feed I think and honestly I wasn't impressed at all, now that was quite some time ago and I just thought it was "just another puzzle game".

Then I kept on seeing the name Relativity popping up, even in some articles, and now your game actually looks impressive. You've gone far with the art from what it was.

Best of luck and I'm happy to follow your progress, just like The_RonJones!