Knights of the Chalice 2 October 2018 Update

Back in August we learned that a Kickstarter campaign for Heroic Fantasy Games’ Knights of the Chalice II was in the works and that it was supposed to launch in November. However, the latest development update informs us that the campaign had to be postponed and should now be going live sometime in December instead.

And apart from that, the update tells us about the developers’ ongoing battle with bugs, mentions the party-splitting mechanics and riddles, shares plenty of screenshots, and more. If you’re interested in the game, be sure to check the update out. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s always my priority to fix bugs before I add new content. So far, there’s enough content for a party of five characters to reach level 7. There is one recruitable companion.

There are two places where the party is split up temporarily. When this happens, the player chooses one or two characters who go forward without the rest of the party. Each of the two sub-groups may then face battle encounters without help from characters in the other sub-group.

There are various reasons for why a party has to split up. Maybe there is a ladder to climb and the ladder can support the weight of two people only. Or maybe you can dive and follow a narrow underwater passage and there will be enemies who attack as soon as they see the first few characters arrive, not giving enough time for the party to regroup.

Concerning puzzles and riddles, I am now providing a [Hints] dialogue option. This is because I don’t want players to get blocked by such obstacles. I also don’t want players to miss optional content or rewards just because of a puzzle or riddle that may not be as straightforward as I thought initially.

Most recently, I’ve been working on an unusual encounter. Depending on player choice, there can be more than 50 combatants. As a result, I have had to create an accelerated-AI mode designed specifically for that kind of battle. That mode is switched on by a script command. Having the AI review each combatant thoroughly is fine for small battles but it slows the game down too much when there are many combatants.

Also I did some work to accelerate the loading of saved games. Now it’s quite fast. Totally not like CRPGs where you have to wait for a minute or more to load a game, I hate that.

[…]

In any case, I’m going to need a bit more time for content production. I would really like to add some more content to the prologue adventure before the launch on Kickstarter and Steam. So the KS is likely to be in December rather than November.

My sincere apologies for the delay. Really, it’s the nature of game development. It can be very unpredictable. You find a new bug and then you have to spend a whole day identifying it and fixing it, because it would make the game look so bad if you did not fix it. And then the next day you find another bug. Things like that.

But you can rest assured that the game is very enjoyable! Most of the combat encounters are very tough. More so than in KotC 1, you need to strategise every aspect of the game, including your battle tactics, your dialogue choices, what you spend your gold on, the way you develop your characters when you select feats and spells for them, and how and when you use your magic scrolls and consumable items.

Thank you for reading and feel free to post comments! Until next time!