SKALD: Against the Black Priory May 2022 Project Update

As Scape-IT continues to work on their retro RPG SKALD: Against the Black Priory, we get this here project update that mentions a new beefy demo that should be going live next month, and lists some recent improvements in the area of models and animations.

Here are the text parts:

Ho there travelers!
Hope spring is finding you all well! We’re having days in a row with no snow up here in northern Norway and that’s something I guess.
The upside is that “inside weather means more work is getting done on “Skald: Against the Black Priory”!
The Teaser and Demo
The teaser is a wrap! You’ll have to wait a bit more for it as we’re saving it for a festival this summer!
It’s a bit of a challenge to find a format that does justice to the crisp pixel-art of Skald and I think we’re getting very close to cracking the code in this teaser. I can’t wait to show it off and hope you like it. A big thanks to Sarah Gonidec and Roland Smedberg for all their hard work and endless patience!
The new demo will be out in mid June if all goes according to plan! The aim is to polish the game-systems as much as possible so that the demo represents the final game as much as possible in as many areas as possible.
In particular, we’ll be digging deep on combat and the general UI.
I’m adding in a lot more animation frames in general. Both for creatures and specific weapon attacks.
There is still some work on the timing aspect as some animations are a bit too fast or “off” but I can see this will go a long way towards making the game look a lot more varied.
Adding more detailed monster models also makes everything look a lot cooler. I really hope we’ll have the multi-tile monsters fully up and working by the time the demo launches as they have quite a battlefield presence.
Also note how the fire above has a new look! All the flames in the game will now be made by procedural effects. This includes props like camp-fires and torches as well as spell effects. Stay posted as we show off some of the flashy and arcane magics that will be at your disposal!
As the demo comes out, just keep in mind that it will be shorter in content then the current demo – at least in the beginning. It’s very important that what we put out is polished and making it short and sweet is the priority to begin with. Stay assured though: We’ll be padding it with more content as we go!
Streams
In case you missed it, Fiona and I recently did a stream with my producer at Raw Fury: Daniel Jonsson. We had a little round-table about what the day-to-day collaboration between developers and publishers looks like and I warmly recommend giving it a watch.
Coming up, on May 12th at 4PM CET at Raw Fury’s Twitch channel, we’re having a talk with Raw Fury’s rock-star scout Johan Toresson!
We’ll be talking about how scouts work for publishers and how and why you should pitch to them! This is a must for fellow game developers or anyone who is just interested in how the industry works!
If you love indie-punk, ramen with an attitude and new curse-words, Johan is your man (May 12th, 4PM CET at Raw Fury’s Twitch channel)!
Keep following this devlog, my twitter and the Skald Discord to stay posted on our awesome quest to bring you more retro-RPG awesomeness!
Cheers,
AL