Monomyth Update – Beta Preparations

Rat Tower Software is looking to launch their dungeon-crawling RPG Monomyth into closed beta later this year. And as such, the game’s latest Kickstarter update shows off some screenshots, a quick video, and a general progress report, while also spending several paragraphs on the upcoming beta.

Here are the text parts:

Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!

February went by real fast and Monomyth has made some good progress! This time around the update will be a bit shorter, but there is still a lot of important information I’d like to share with you, so let’s get to it…

Current Progress

As announced last time I spent most of the month on detail passes, which means, fixing environments and making them presentable. I created new assets and overhauled some of the later areas in the game.

Some of these are still “work in progress” and will be revised further as development continues. The placement of items, traps, and secrets is on the To-Do list. Some of the late-game content is still in the block-out phase, which I would like to change within the next few weeks. Earlier areas in the game are already further developed.

Directly beyond the Serpent’s Bastion (the level you know from the Kickstarter demo) lies the “Heartland”. This area is mostly controlled by the fortress of Lysandria. The environment in the heartland is rather diverse. You will find dark tunnels and underground lakes, as well as places of worship and agriculture (or rather the underground equivalent thereof). Most of the area has been fortified by the Lysandrians to defend against attacks from the surface. The whole level still has to be tied together by level mechanics and quests, which I will work on shortly.

Thanks to the musical talent of Isaac Vail, Monomyth now features a background score! Since numerous people valued the calm atmosphere in the demo we decided to keep it subtle, the only exception being the main theme.

Significant progress has also been made with regard to world design. The individual areas of the game are now stitched together, making the game’s world fully traversable from the first to the last level. As I mentioned, not all of these levels are ready yet, but it is another step to properly scale the project. A properly scaled project keeps things manageable and, more importantly, realizable. This step also helps me to test out quests that are spanning different parts of the game – most importantly the main quest. Testing such things early is of course very important, which brings us to beta preparations.

Beta Preparations

Just as we said last year, Monomyth’s closed beta will start around the beginning of Q2 2022 (add maybe a month or so, depending on how things are going). Generally speaking, the beta will likely be held in three phases (B1-B3). The game’s world is currently organized in a way that allows for a subset of all areas to be tested while leaving the main quest largely intact. This is due to Monomyth’s modular quest design approach, which tries to stay away from a strict sequential order when it comes to the player’s main tasks.

My plan is to have a fully working game that can be played from start to end in B1. In every following beta phase, there will be a major content update integrating further areas into the game, expanding the main quest.

The point of this is to stay flexible with regard to whatever priorities we will see emerging during the beta. It also allows for a quick transition into release preparations once the time for that has come. Personally, I feel that at a certain production phase you should keep a game (or any software for that matter) in a state where it could theoretically be released within a reasonable amount of weeks. I would like to achieve this state with the first beta phase. This does not mean the game has to be released that quickly afterward – that is not the plan – but it forces me to think about the core essential content first, to avoid feature creep, and to make sure the project won’t get stuck in development hell. I understand that the latter is a major concern for many Kickstarter projects and I would like to avoid that.

Backer content (items, NPCs, quests, etc) will be integrated throughout the beta. I believe it is a good idea that people first get a sense of the world in which their ideas will exist. Of course, that is not mandatory, so if you don’t want to spoil the full experience for yourself, no need to worry.

For the next month, I have more level design and gameplay programming planned. The goal is now to get everything into a properly playable state. As always, I will keep you updated!

Best wishes,

Michael