December 2018 – Six Ages Development Blog

New Year’s Eve

This year, we finished “Ride Like the Wind” and released it to the App Store. It’s gotten pretty good reviews, including making it onto at least three “best of the year” lists (Gamasutra, TouchArcade, Pocket Tactics). And players helped us find bugs, so we released 6 updates (also adding more leader portraits and treasures, and the possibility of becoming known as a weasel).

Screen shot from Unity editor, showing face assets The story of bringing the game to other platforms wasn’t as happy, though at least our first programmer did not perish from life-threatening medical issues. Our new developer has been making good progress, and we are still on track to release in 2019 (as we originally hoped). Although the game will be available elsewhere too, it helps visibility if you wish-list it on Steam.

Our publishing partner, Kitfox Games, has set up a Discord channel where you can discuss the game. Other online resources include a wiki, a subreddit, and a “let’s play”.

I spoke about Six Ages (and King of Dragon Pass) at NGS2018.

And we began working on the second game, “Lights Going Out.” This will tell an entirely different story, continuing the saga of your clan generations later. Since the basic game system has been implemented, it’s already possible to get through a few game years. We’ve got 63 interactive scenes working (and partially tested), and 17 story illustrations completed.

Port Update

I’d promised an update about the work moving Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind to more platforms, but I just realized it was only via Twitter. So here’s the official note, from our publishing partner Kitfox Games:

Six Ages Steam Release Delayed
DECEMBER 6
Greetings riders!

Six Ages is more than a myth or a legend — it’s going to be playable on Steam (hopefully)… but not as quickly as we’d initially planned.

Unfortunately, the original programmer we contracted in the summer didn’t work out, and although he had to visit the emergency room a couple of times, he’s thankfully recovering now. But we have had to re-start the porting process with a new porting partner.

We’re happy to be working with Rusto Games, a small outfit in Finland (three cheers for Finland!) who are big fans of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, which makes us big fans of them in turn.

We aren’t sure exactly what the new release date is, but we’re hoping to hit desktops (PC and Mac) spring or summer 2019. You’ll be the first to know when we have more details. In the meantime, David and the team has been making lots of bugfixes, so it will be the most polished release of the game it can be.

Thanks for your patience and support!

<3
Victoria, Tanya, and the Kitfox clan

As they point out, the silver lining is that this gives us more time to find and fix weird edge case bugs (such as two random events occurring in a specific order and timing).

Rusto Games has made significant progress, so I think we’re still on target for our promised date (see our FAQ): 2019.

In the mean time, please wishlist the game on Steam, which helps get us visibility for next year’s launch.

Chapter Two Progress

We’ve been moving steadily forward on the next Six Ages game, “Lights Going Out.” It’s in the production stage, and we’re busy creating scenes and art, extending the game design, and coding.

The concept art process let me make a document to guide our artists, and we currently have 7 pieces of scene art complete. (Others are in progress.) rider on horse, her hair blowing in the wind And with six new portraits, you can almost assemble an entire clan council from new characters!

There are over 250 scenes briefly described (e.g. “earthquake” or “flood”). 31 are now coded, and can be run.

Other bits of game design are moving forwards as well, such as new ventures and magic. And there’s a new map.

Since this is the second game in the series, there’s a lot that doesn’t have to be created. Although not enough is really working that you can play the game, you can at least run through a game year.

The automated testing has a few rough edges (since some of the unit tests assumed scenes from “Ride Like the Wind”), but it’s been useful catching problems in the game so far. And the game is far enough along that QA can start exhaustive scene testing.

Speaking of bugs, working on the second game accidentally pointed out a problem with the first one. (The fix, enabling many more random rumors, ended up in version 1.0.7.)

Speaking of second game, the mechanics of loading a completed game and continuing are in and working. We’re taking note of various decisions and accomplishments that your clan can carry forward (though you’ll also be able to play without ever having played “Ride Like the Wind”).

I think the biggest advantage of working on a sequel is that scenes can be up and running almost as soon as they’re written, so we can see how they work while they’re still fresh in our minds. There’s a lot less that you have to take on faith will work.

It’s a very different game so even though we know scenes run, we won’t know how they all fit together for some time. But I’m encouraged so far.

P.S. This work is not impacting the schedule to bring “Ride Like the Wind” to more platforms, and we hope to have an update on that soon.

P.P.S. It does mean that fixing bugs in “Ride Like the Wind” has a lower priority, though that’s still happening.