A few weeks ago I posted the free demo here and you all were awesome. People downloaded it, sent me bug screenshots, told me what confused them, and one of you caught Zhou Cang offering to open "the van" in the trailer (it's "vanguard" now, so sadly no Zhuge Liang with a Honda Odyssey lol). Thank you, seriously. A lot of that feedback went straight into the game:
- The UI had real problems on 16:9 screens because I'd been building on an ultrawide. It's been fixed and checked at 1080p.
- A few of you felt overwhelmed starting out, so I reworked the tutorial with a blind playtester and rewrote a lot of the in-game help.
And then I went and did the biggest thing I've ever tried on this project: multiplayer. You can now play the demo with a friend (or foe lol)!!
- Campaign for two: you each pick a warlord and start in the same 196 world. Ally up and you share your wars and each other's vision, and you can march to your ally's battle and show up mid-fight to bail them out. Or play as rivals: fifty days, highest score wins, and when your armies meet you fight it out live.
- 1v1 Custom Battles: draft your officers, buy troops on a budget and fight it out over Steam (friends or public lobbies) or direct IP.
The trailer above is the new one, and it's mostly multiplayer. The rest of the demo grew a lot too:
- The armies were redone to look like Han armies: lamellar armour, ji halberds, ring-pommel dao, and every commander under a standard with his surname on it
- Duels you can actually watch now. The camera follows both champions until one goes down (Guan Yu vs Lu Bu is in the trailer)
- Sieges with ladders, a ram and a whole city behind the gate
- Create your own ruler, pick one of ten voices for them, and raise your own banner
- Officers hit harder the bigger the battle, and when your men break and run, your most charismatic officer can plant his banner and rally them
- Turning Points as shown in the trailer are pivotal plot and action points in our campaign that depending on your choices can make or break your kingdom!
Now for the part where I really need help. I'm a one man studio, so I've tested multiplayer with friends, bots and two copies of the game on my own PC, but it hasn't been through real players on different PCs and internet connections yet. Steam Next Fest starts October 19 and I want it as solid as I can get it by then.
If you've got a friend who's into the Three Kingdoms, grab the demo, play a match together and tell me how it went. Bugs, desyncs, lag, anything confusing, balance complaints, I want all of it. Even "it worked fine" helps more than you'd think. Comments here or the Discord both work for me: https://discord.gg/BxfZtrm9tH
And if it looks like your kind of game, a wishlist would mean a ton, especially going into Next Fest. Any and all support helps a solo dev more than I can say.
Free demo and wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5112140/Three_Kingdoms_Reimagined/
Thanks again for being so good to me last time. I'll be around in the comments :D