Alpha has landed!
about 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 10:33:37 PM

Stonekickers we did it!

I just sent out a release email from itch.io. All you ALPHA tier backers (NZD50 and above) should have it in your email box associated with your pledge.

A MASSIVE thank you to everyone but especially Roy, our code goblin who has worked tirelessly over the last few weeks to get this alpha done for everyone!

Hope you enjoy the game and we look forward to your feedbacks (and even your bug reports :))

We're going to crash and sleep now!

Ready for Alpha?
over 7 years ago – Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 04:14:15 PM

Hey there Stonekickers

We're super busy getting everything ready for alpha for next week, so please forgive the short update.

Live stream 

I'll be doing a stream again, usual time (Sat 11am NZ/ Fri 10pm GMT/ Fri 5pm EST) making the final 4 Grassland maps and just talking a lot about the state of the game and about the alpha release. So if you have any burning questions or want to help me make some levels or just hang out with the cool goblins, please join us.

https://www.twitch.tv/lost_goblin

Names

We've collected all the goblin names from almost everyone (we'll reach out to the handful that have not provided those yet) and added them to the names database (slight modifications made here and there due to size or format or copyright concerns). So you will potentially see your goblins name in a game very soon! :D

Rewards

T-Shirt

I have ordered a test batch of T-Shirts from the printers and they should arrive in the next few weeks. The final design, based on the concept looks like follows:

The print area didn't allow for anything lower than what you see in this mockup, so we had to improvise a bit but I think everyone will be happy with this result!

Poster

We haven't had time to dedicate an artist towards the final poster. We tried one render based on the concept everyone chose and to be honest, I'm not super happy with the result. I would ideally love to find an artist to do a good painting style of the game, as a poster, but I am focused on getting the Alpha done right now, so once that's out we'll get back to this item and can discuss with you guys what we want to do with it. Maybe even get art submissions from our community?!? :D

Forums

We'll be doing some private tests with a few people on the forums this weekend, maybe involve some of the backers during the twitch stream to do some tests, we'll see.

I think that's it for now

Chat again soon!

2017 - the year of the Goblin!
over 7 years ago – Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 06:21:36 PM

Happy New Years Stonekickers!!

I hope you all had a wonderful and joyous festive season and holidays. We spent time with friends for Xmas and NYE but where working hard between and since because we are super excited about getting the alpha build out to all you wonderful supporters!

So... where are we at?

If you have been following the twitch stream or watched the videos you will know that we have been working on getting a basic seasonal system in the game so you will know and see when the seasons change, which of course is important. Here are some screens from what we have at the moment:

This is still not final but as you can see the trees change colour as the seasons go by and then lose their foliage in winter. The ground still needs to change colour as well - we're working on this next and then we will look at adding simple snow and rain particles at the appropriate times. This system is not as advanced as I would have liked to get it, but as we didn't make it to this stretch goal I didn't want us spending too many resources and too much time on something too complex either.

We haven't only been working on art stuff of course. We have done lots of good work on improving performance and fixing bugs in preparation for the alpha release as well as added the Shaman and Priest jobs to the game!

Here is a male and female shaman casting magic missiles at a wraith:

and here is a Priest healing an injured sleeping goblin:

This is all still a bit rough and will keep improving over time but its very exciting that we have magic in the game now!

Social Stretch Goal Story Moment

Speaking of stretch goals, one that we DID make was the 500 likes for our Facebook page!

 

So here is how this is going to work: We will be posting the scenario and rules on the Facebook page in the next few days and everyone that is on the page (liked it) will be able to vote for how the story moment will work! This is the first time we are doing an open design like this on Facebook so its a bit of an experiment but lets see how it goes. If it goes well we can do more of them in the future, especially if we hit some more stretch goals!

A similar thing will be done with our Twitter followers when we reach the 2000 follower mark!

 

So as always, keep sharing our things wherever you do your social media.

Alpha releases

Of course the most important thing is the upcoming Alpha release to the alpha backers. This release will be exclusive to the Alpha tier backers and we're very excited to get it into your hand and cant wait to get your feedback and help to improve the game going forward. We're still aiming to have this done by end of the month and everything is on track to do so. Game development has lot of unexpected challenges however so if anything changes I will make sure to let you know.

We will most likely be delivering the game to you via a itch.io key - we are in the process of sorting that out. More news on this soon.

Forums

We have the forums up but I'm not convinced of how good they are going to be, especially for the King backer tier group. I suggest the best way forward to be using the forums for general discussion and bug reports and the like and then having a Slack channel for the King and Chief backers for community and chat. Please let me know what you think in the comments. I will be emailing a registration out for both soon anyway and we can again see how it goes and make adjustments along the way as needed. My main priority is having an easy and accessible channel for the Stonekickers to discuss Goblins of Elderstone and for us to chat to you about updates and designs and for you to report bugs and other issues.

Stream

I will be doing another live stream this Saturday (11am NZ/ Fri 10pm GMT/ Fri 5pm EST) as per usual. If you are interested in hanging out with us, seeing progress on the game or just want to chat please follow us so you get a notification when the stream goes live.

https://www.twitch.tv/lost_goblin

Reward orders

We will start the physical reward orders over the next few weeks. The TShirt final art is still underway, we havent had much time to get to this as we've been very focused on the Alpha build. Once the build is out and we feel we can divert some time back to these we will do so. I'd like to at least get the TShirts and Posters done in February.

That's it for now. I am genuinely excited about getting the game into your hands (as well as nervous of course!) and look forward to your reactions and feedback. Keep in mind that this is ALPHA, a game in this state would never be released to public, it has lots of bugs and tonnes of stuff missing, but the core foundations are there. We still have 6 months of alpha polish to do and then once we go to steam early access mid year we will do at least 6 months more of beta polish so its a long road yet. Your feedback, support, comments, bug reports and input will all help us tremendously to deliver an amazing video game when its done.

As always thank you so much! 

Lets make 2017 the year of the Goblin!

<3

Survey and Pre-Orders
over 7 years ago – Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 10:21:22 PM

Greetings Stonekickers!

The final votes are in and the original backers of Goblins of Elderstone (YOU!) will now and forever be known as the Stonekickers Clan! I couldn't be more pleased! We will be working on a special clan logo that the Chief and above backers will have exclusively in the game.

The votes for the TShirts and Posters came in as well and the winners were quite clear. We will now work on the final design for these to be ready in January when we start the shipping. So now I can send out the BackerKit survey to collect shipping info's as well as what your goblin name will be for those of you at the Goblin Namer tier and above. The survey will go out in the next day or 2, PLEASE fill this out as fast as possible so we can lock it in and get all the items ordered and sorted.

PLEASE NOTE everyone above Goblin Namer tier - I will send out another survey or contact you to start the process for naming and or designing your Heroes, NPCs, Rulers, Gods etc AFTER this initial round of surveys. We are not ready to deal with the extra design work right now. Let's get the names and shipping details out of the way for everyone and then we can get into the juicy bits of adding your special unique content. 

Add-Ons and Late Backers

This also means that we can now accept add-ons through BackerKit! Our Kickstarter page now allows us to gather more funding from people that missed the campaign or hear about the game from now on - they will not have access to the design and naming tiers - they are essentially pre-ordering the game and maybe buying some add-ons. This is great for everyone because we can continue on to our stretch goals and build more resources to complete and polish the game. 

So - if you know of anyone that was interested in the game but missed the Kickstarter Campaign, you can now point them to the page to get involved!

This is the goblin Alchemist - he makes potions for the shamans, witchdoctors and priest to use - cool right? This is a late game unit.

Have a great week Stonekickers!

Gustav and the lost goblins

Forums, Designs and more!
over 7 years ago – Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 06:36:07 PM

Greetings goblins!

I hope you are all well! This is a quick update on things going on;

Kickstarter is transferring our funds, we're just waiting for them to clear into our account - this should happen in a day or 2.

The Clan name was tied for Oathpledgers and Stonekickers!! So.... final final tiebreaker round :) Please vote here

Forums

I have completed making and somewhat testing the forums. Now please know I am not a web developer and this isn't super easy for me, so please please be patient as we roll it out and deal with issues and bugs as we develop it. There are two levels of access, one for Chief and one for King level backers. There are about 200 Chief level backers and just over 100 King level backers. I know not everyone is interested or will participate in forums but I expect 20-40% of you will so I'm sure our website and my admin skills will be able to handle the load. 

Lets see how it goes and we can always explore other options or systems (such as discord or slack). The important thing for me is to provide a place for you guys to keep up the conversations around Goblins of Elderstone and a place for us to interact with you to deal with bugs and features and so on. Also keep in mind that we have an official subreddit r/goblinsofelderstone which you can also use if (like me) you prefer reddit over forums.

I will send out a registration link for the forums soon, I just want to do a few more tests this week and make sure I feel confident in how it has been set up.

Posters and Tshirts!

We have made some concept designs for posters and Tshirts as promised. These are the ones going out to the physical backers and above. BUT will also be available in the BackerKit page as add-ons!! yeay!

Please vote for your favorite designs here.

Here they are (these are rough concepts):

 T-Shirt designs are also just concepts, not final art:

Once we have the final votes on these we can create final art.

That's it for today. Look out for the BackerKit survey, it will be sent out in the next week or so.

I will again be attempting a Twitch Stream on Saturday morning NZ time (Friday night EU time/ Friday midday US). If you are interested in these click follow and notify on the Twitch page and you will get a notification whenever we go live.

Take care everyone!

Gustav