Stoneshard – Future Plans

Now that the big Trollslayer early access update for Stonehsard is up and running, the developers over at Ink Stains Games share their plans for the game’s nearest future. Before anything else, we’ll get a smaller content update that will expand the turn-based RPG with some new weapons and skills. This will allow the team to focus on some bigger things, including a new dungeon generation system and improved enemy AI.

You should click the link above to find the updated development road map and the notes for the latest early access patch. And here’s more on what you should expect:

Hello everyone!

We have some important news for you today. First of all, the 0.5.8.6 patch has been released, bringing new content and some major fixes. The full changelog can be found at the bottom of this post. Now that the entirety of the “Trollslayer” content has been added to the game, we’d like to share our updated development plan as well as some info about our future goals.

As many of you could have noticed, the current content is limited by the first 7-10 levels – characters outgrow most dungeons and enemies upon reaching this threshold. We are well aware of this problem, however adding high level content is meaningless until we resolve two important issues.

Ideally we’d like different enemy factions to have distinct behaviour patterns. Right now the enemies only differ in their stats and skills, as they share a single template for their actions. To fix this we plan to dedicate a few months to fully rework our AI system and some of the associated systems.

The same can be said about dungeons – right now they are generated based on shared parameters. The only two things which set them apart at the moment are graphical assets and enemy rosters. We, however, would like to make the dungeon crawling process in our game much more memorable than clearing out similar room after room. That’s why we plan to work on a new dungeon generation algorithm along with the AI rework.

Both of these tasks are fairly difficult and time-consuming, and both of them require extensive testing. That’s why we can’t give you the exact date this time – we’ll have to work on these elements until we are completely satisfied with the results. For now the approximate date for the updated AI and updated dungeon generation (and any associated content as well as some additional features) is summer 2020.

To keep you from getting bored during these few months, we plan to release a series of minor updates over the course of this summer to introduce some additional content such as new weapon types and new skill trees. The first update is planned for the beginning of May – it will add crossbows, polearms, and, perhaps, something extra to the game. Follow our devlogs and announcements for additional information!