Knights of the Chalice 2 Update #33

Heroic Fantasy Games’ D&D-based CRPG Knights of the Chalice II was successfully funded through Kickstarter last week. This means that while you can’t currently purchase the game on Steam or GOG, the campaign’s backers can already play its first module – Augury of Chaos. And by the looks of it, some of them have been having some issues with the current build of the game.

As such, we get this update that addresses their complaints. Check it out:

Hello everyone! 🙂

Okay I feel I need to make a small update to answer all concerns.

First of all, if you’re wondering why I haven’t been very present replying to comments on Kickstarter, or on Discord, or on my forums, or on RPG Codex, or approving messages on my forum, or replying elsewhere.

The reason is this: I’m just a human being, and since the end of the campaign, all my time was spent sending out emails and answering emails from people who haven’t got their email, or who are late to the campaign but want to join, or who pledged but could not process their payment, or who have already tried the game but it’s not working for them on their system.

On top of that I have a long-planned flight tonight and tomorrow which I had to prepare, too. So, with all of this taken into account, I just can’t keep up with dozens of new Kickstarter comments / forum messages / Discord comments each day. Apologies for this! It doesn’t mean I’m ignoring your concerns, quite the contrary.

I have sent emails with download details to nearly everyone. If you haven’t got your email, please email me at enquiries[at]heroicfantasygames.com or through a Kickstarter private message and I will give you your details soon.

Now, on to the bugs. Obviously, by now I have been made very aware that the game has important bugs and stability issues, and a 64-bit Mac version for Mac Catalina OS needs to be made. I hear you guys and I apologise sincerely for the bugs. Yes, I will fix the bugs as soon as possible. And I will work on a 64-bit Mac version as soon as possible. This will be my priority from 8 July. I won’t be working on any DLC or any extra content while there are important bugs in the game.

So please rest assured that the bugs will be fixed. I should be able to have a software update on or before 14 July. I’ve been working on this game for so long; obviously I want it to be bug-free. It’s not a problem for me to remove bugs. In fact it is something I like to do. My process with KotC 1 was similar. There were about 36 updates for KotC 1. The game had many bugs in the beginning, now it’s bug-free.

Now, on to expectations and accusations. Okay, I hear the complaint that I should have presented the current version of the game as a beta version, not as a finished version or as a full game. All right. I accept that and I apologise for it.

The reason why I have always presented it as a full game is because, for me at least, it was stable when I played through it and I did play through it from start to finish. So if it’s stable for me, why should I present it as a beta version? Think about it, how could I even record all these combat videos if the game wasn’t working for me or wasn’t stable for me? Yes, you can say that I should have gone through a big testing phase prior to the campaign, and in hindsight yes I should have done that. I’m not perfect so I did not see this at the time.

What I mean to say is that it’s never been my intention to deceive people. With that in mind, if you feel strongly that you have been lied to or that you were misled, and you don’t trust me to fix the issues in a reasonable amount of time, please email me at enquiries[at]heroicfantasygames.com (or through the Kickstarter private messages) before 14 July and we will definitely find a solution.

I don’t want anyone to feel bad about KotC 2 or have such strong negative feelings against me. Doing a Kickstarter is difficult enough with happy people but it’s a hundred times harder with unhappy ones. So, please just contact me and everyone will be happy.

I hear a complaint that the game is too linear. I did mention here and there, most recently in the Q&A with Shane, that Augury of Chaos lacked the non-linear feeling of an open world and that you’re mostly exploring underground levels, and that I wanted to create more of a non-linear feeling in upcoming adventures.

So, while I can totally accept criticism for the game having many bugs, I can’t accept accusations of deception based on the game being linear. The adventure is what it is and I never claimed that it was a non-linear open-world adventure. All I said was that you have a number of ways to resolve situations, and that is true in many cases.

So, please be reasonable with your expectations and criticism of the game’s content. I already feel enormous pressure to provide download links to the people who haven’t got them already and to fix the game’s major bugs ASAP, so please don’t pile even more pressure on me for things like non-linearity. About the difficulty, we can adjust that later on.

Those are the main things I wanted to say today. The main points are: please be patient and I will fix the bugs ASAP and if you’re really unhappy, please just contact me before 14 July. Please don’t worry if you don’t receive a reply before 8 July, I will definitely reply.

Thank you everyone and I hope that you will keep supporting the development of KotC 2! 🙂