Stoneshard Update #49

The latest Kickstarter update for Ink Stains Games’ roguelike RPG Stoneshard brings us a general progress report that covers Stoneshard’s recently added NPC schedule feature, the game’s new road system, and some soon to be introduced content. It also shares a number of animations that show off the game’s neat art style in action.

Here are the text parts:

Hello!

This devlog isn’t dedicated to some specific topic – instead we’ll tell about many things we had worked on during the last month. Some stuff has not yet been fully completed and thus is left behind the scenes, so for now let’s focus on more or less complete aspects.

NPC Schedule

This seemingly small and not very important feature took us a decent amount of time and efforts – but it was crucial to make settlements more alive and believable. Previously, we used a much simplified variant of NPCs daily routine: at a certain time they just left their workplaces to go home.

Now their daily routine is much more varied and rich: for example, in Osbrook, the first village the player encounters, local artisans like to have a good drink before going to bed – so after finishing their work they close their shops and first go to the tavern, then go home.

We’ve also introduced interiors for the whole village – now you can enter any house or even barn. Most artisans will be waiting for you inside, and not on the street like before – if their craft allows working outside, of course.

Road System

Another important improvement, designed to give integrity to the game world and ease navigation. No more sudden crypts in the middle of a forest or castles completely isolated from the outside world – most of the settlements and dungeons are now automatically connected by road network. Because of this, you’ll need to actually make an effort to get lost – if you keep the road, you are guaranteed to come across something sooner or later.

Of course, some places in the world will remain isolated – so, if you decide to abandon the road and delve deeper into the wilderness, there’s a good chance you may stumble upon a mysterious hut or some uncharted cave.

Content

In addition, we are working on adding lots of new content: encounters, new weapons and skills. It’s too early to talk about it in detail, but here’s sneak peek at some of this new stuff[…]

Hopefully, by the next time we’ll be ready to show off one of the most exciting parts of our game: skills. So until then!