Indie Call of Saregnar - a Betrayal at Krondor-inspired RPG

[garren]

While we wait, found some youtube recommendations of BaK piano covers, cool stuff:



The guy has some more, but didn't wanna spam everything here.

 

[Abu Antar]

Demo releasing sooner than expected.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Thanks, Santa!

 

[PulsatingBrain]

DEMO AVAILABLE HERE (Steam page)

 

[Infinitron]

https://inthekeep.com/call-of-saregnar-demo-release

Dina has finally made up her mind! You can now snag the first official public demo for Call of Saregnar on Steam! Everyone on the dev team has been busting their butts to get this demo to you by Christmas so Ho-Ho-Hold any negative comments til after they've had time to spend the holiday with their families!

Dina is watching you...

The public demo expands upon many of the areas and ideas behind the previous closed demo. While there is a fair amount of additional content, the majority of the work that went into this demo was getting the game into the smoothest version of itself that we could, and finishing the content that had previously been absent from the already created gameplay areas.

Thank you for checking out our demo! Please let us know how you feel about it through the proper channels:

Call of Saregnar

Twitter / Website / Discord

In The Keep

Twitter / Discord

 

[Vapid]

I entered the shop next to Dina's inn, looked at the goods, declined to purchase anything and got stuck in the shop. Couldn't leave, couldn't open the menu, nothing. Anyone had the same bug?

 

[V_K]

I entered the shop next to Dina's inn, looked at the goods, declined to purchase anything and got stuck in the shop. Couldn't leave, couldn't open the menu, nothing. Anyone had the same bug?

That's capitalism for you.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Yes, bugs have been reported. We'll solve them asap. Seems like closing windows with Esc can lead to this kind of situations. Sorry

 

[Vapid]

Yes, bugs have been reported. We'll solve them asap. Seems like closing windows with Esc can lead to this kind of situations. Sorry

Nah, that's cool - you're still working on the game. Also, did I miss something, or does the purchase window not tell you how much money you've got on you?

 

[Rhuantavan]

Yes, bugs have been reported. We'll solve them asap. Seems like closing windows with Esc can lead to this kind of situations. Sorry

Nah, that's cool - you're still working on the game. Also, did I miss something, or does the purchase window not tell you how much money you've got on you?

The amount should be visible on the widget in the bottom right. Unless that one was also hidden by mistake. The shopping interface needs work anyway.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

Clocked in around ninety minutes in the demo before reaching the end. Nice little preview with the Betrayal at Krondor roots being apparent. I do think a codex or digital manual that explains things such as stats would be helpful for those who are not too familiar with Krondor. Also the soundtrack is amazing.

I entered the shop next to Dina's inn, looked at the goods, declined to purchase anything and got stuck in the shop. Couldn't leave, couldn't open the menu, nothing. Anyone had the same bug?

The UI is still there just invisible, do be warned that if you encounter that bug the mouse movement will be locked. This can also be remedied by entering the shop and exiting by clicking the exit button.

 

[J_C]

This game brings back memories of Might and Magic VI, and I love it.

One really small annoyance: when you interact with something there is a small fade out effect. Then when you end the interaction there is a small fade in effect, and only after the fade in effect ended, you get back control and can move and use the mouse. I'm suggesting that when you end the interaction, you get back control immediately, so you don't have to wait for the fade in effect. I know it is just half a second, but it adds up.

 

[Nutria]

Played it for a half hour and was very impressed. It looks and sounds good. The UI is intuitive. I think anyone who's played BaK will feel right at home with the UI and the setting. The only bug I found was that if you hover over a city on the map and close the map with the keyboard, the name of that city keeps displaying by the cursor.

 

[Alienman]

This game just shows me how much I suck at riddles. I hope I never get trapped by a psychotic enigma-crazed prankster and put under any kind of time pressure Batman style. I got 2 out of 3 at least (from what I found).

 

[lukaszek]

grass needs something to break the monothone. It feels a bit like playing mm7 - like mm6 but no one had time to put flowers in

 

[V_K]

Are there sidequests in the demo that you can get but not finish? Or I'm just blind?

Spoiler

Particularly, the missing woman and forgotten god quests. On the former, I've talked to Arthur and but I can't find any bucket by the stream or any tiggerable encounter. On the latter, I thought either the priestess or the witch might have something to say, but neither wants to speak to me.

Overall impressions - looks very pretty, has the cozy familiar BaK feel. But the writing needs an editing pass for conciseness - it's not terrible, but at times there's too much of it even for such a writing-heavy game.

 

[madrigal]

Fell into the void near the temple and traveled to wolfhall but it was completely empty, brought back memories of Daggerfall.
Dialogues stopped working at some point, reload fixed but then the savegame was corrupted and would not quicksave or quickload.

Bought the sword in the shop but there was nobody left to wack. Game looks good.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

What a wonderful Christmas surprise. I'm very much enjoying the demo, the atmosphere of adventure and wonder is very strong. The music is brillant, reminds me of the greatest RPG-compositions and the sound design in general is very well done. One - albeit small - thing: I miss some kind of flowing animation in the rivers/brooks (the current animation doesn't look like it's flowing). Other than that the graphical design is simply divine.

 

[Alienman]

Any idea when the full game will be released? I really want to play more!

 

[Inland Empire]

The soundtrack is really impressive. Good work!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Any idea when the full game will be released? I really want to play more!

It’s roughly .001% closer to release though.

Let's see, that took roughly 12 hours. So by my math that means it will only take...

...13.69 years...

You're off by a digit. It's 136.9 years.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Yes, bugs have been reported. We'll solve them asap. Seems like closing windows with Esc can lead to this kind of situations. Sorry

Key mapping doesn't seem to work on Windows 8 + AZERTY keyboard.
Whenever I try to remap directional buttons, either with keys or arrows, it doesn't work and when i get back to the settings, directional buttons seems to have been assigned to printscreen/printscreen/...

Voiced intro.
If you can't make it great, don't go for voiced narration.
Here, the voice isn't good enough (you need a deep manly voice or a deep suave woman's voice).
It's too long, make it shorter, particularly since the story is banal at first, you should synthesize your intro for the final release and eventually add pictures slides, like 3-4.

Fix Camera view
It'd be just great to get a button to fix the camera, just like in Might and Magic (at least with greyface's patches, but i think the base game does it already), I'm not sure I'd play it with the starcrawlers free horizontal + vertical movement.
To be clearer, a button to lock/unlock vertical camera movement.

Well, I couldn't walk one step so my feedback stops there.

 

[Narushima]

when you interact with something there is a small fade out effect. Then when you end the interaction there is a small fade in effect, and only after the fade in effect ended, you get back control and can move and use the mouse.

Yeah, that's a tiny thing, but it's annoying.

I took some notes:

In the intro illustration, the text says the thief ran away, but he is depicted walking.

One of the characters is said to have a bloody nose, but he doesn't.

Sam and Hewan seem interchangeable. They get no introduction, we don't know who they are, yet we're supposed to be them (or one of them, don't know). I'm generally not a fan of in medias res, which often seems used with no thought behind it these days.

There are too many random noises in the tavern, they need to be spaced out a lot more.

In dialogue, some words are highlighted and italicised for emphasis. The highlighting makes them look like they are clickable, à la Ultima, but they aren't. Italics should be enough.

Coins in the game have odd names that mean nothing to the player coming in..In a very interesting video about game design, Mark Rosewater, lead designer for Magic: The Gathering, talks about "piggybacking", that is using your players' preexisting knowledge in your game. Players will know about gold, silver and copper coins. They won't know about the terms you used and already forgot. I saw a couple more instances of that in the demo, where an item or a place was artificially given a new name. That doesn't add to the game world's background, it just creates unnecessary confusion. As Rosewater says, "you don't have to teach players things they already know."

It's really tedious to run from place to place, there's nothing to make travel interesting.

The shopkeeper is called a she, but it's a dude with a beard.

In the shop interface, it would be useful to immediately see which items are equipped, with an icon or a letter, so you don't have to right-click something to tell.

Typos:
In the description of a "Simple staff": "if the need arised"
Talking to one of the tavern's patrons: "Rations, not matter how well prepared"
One of the riddles: "Wars have been fought to deside where I rest"
Don't remember where: "he was important deity"

 

[toro]

I've tried the demo for a couple of minutes: it's solid work but it really needs to let players walk in shallow water.

 

[Narushima]

I've tried the demo for a couple of minutes: it's solid work but it really needs to let players walk in shallow water.

Right, the invisible walls feel pretty bad.