Combining the best of yesteryear and today: 2-player co-op, branching quests, and rich storytelling!
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
For Backers Only
Elmon Dean here, and welcome to our 3rd backer-exclusive update! We've been very busy this past month with planning, pre-production, and managing our surveys. We're going to talk about our game development progress, animation, new vocal tracks, along with the some Backerkit and surveys issues.
First we'll start with the new stuff since the Kickstarter campaign:
Above is an example of the newest tileset (the pixel art for each level or environment) for our city. We now have at least 60% of the tilesets completed for the game. Compared to the first village, the city will be huge and host at least 2 taverns. We plan to make this area a great hub for exploration, side quests, and relaxation.
Next is a work-in-progress of one of our bosses (which some of you may have seen an earlier version posted on X):
We want each boss to be memorable rather than just a mere obstacle at the end of each area. This particular boss is a gigantic version of the hob, which can be found in our first dungeon below:
Thanks to you backers helping us reach the $180K stretch goal reward, we have partnered with Tonari Animation studios, which is based in Tokyo, Japan, to produce all of the animated sequences in Godshard Chronicles. They will start with the opening animation.
Beforehand, we produced our animation with a skeleton crew. With Tonari Animation, we can achieve a higher-quality production with a proper crew, including a director, producer, character designer, etc. Our animator, J-Marcos, will also join the company to further his career.
Our first goal with Tonari is to produce the opening animation sequence. In order to maintain a sense of artistic consistency, they will also take care of any remaining animation that will appear in the game (previous and future). We will provide more updates on this as they come.
Production for the opening animation scene will start once Noriyuki Iwadare composes a new track solely dedicated for it. The track will also have Jennifer Stigile (Lunar series singer) on vocals! You can watch our latest interview with her here:
Jennifer will travel to Japan later this year to meet Noriyuki Iwadare and record in the studio with him! This will be their first ever meeting despite Jennifer singing on several of Iwadare-sensei's previous songs. We're currently planning on having her sing not only 1, but 2 vocal tracks for Godshard Chronicles!
For the most part, our surveys went well. We have received almost 3,000 of them back already. If you have NOT yet received or filled out a survey, please contact us and Dylan will help you.
As with all things, there were a few slight hiccups with BackerKit. One issue we had was DOUBLE CHARGING.
We are aware that BackerKit has double charged just under 5% of our backers. This is an extremely easy fix, so please contact us if you notice this has happened to you. We believe the cause of this is that some of our Kickstarter backers mistakenly added the item(s) that they pledged for to their BackerKit cart ON TOP of their original pledge, leading to the cost being doubled. If you suspect that you might have done this or something similar, reach out to us via private messages, email, or contact Dylan on discord.
We're currently finalising the enemies and levels for the first chapter, along with the UI for our menus. We would like to have a playable demo by the end of this year. In the meantime, we'll continue posting updates on here and on our social media pages.
You can also follow our development on social media:
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Remember this stretch goal during the Kickstarter campaign?
At the time of the campaign, we were in talks with this actor, but we didn't have enough time to get all the paperwork ready. We appreciate your patience for the wait. Now that everything is in order, here is our official announcement:
Those of you who played Xenoblade Chronicles 3will recognise Harry McEntire as the voice of the main character Noah. He has done a stellar job on that game, expressing a wide range of emotion. He has also played Aethelwold from the Last Kingdom, Hunwald from Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and he is even credited on Final Fantasy XVI.
In Godshard Chronicles, McEntire will voice the high-ranking Mana Knight Thelonious Bane, who also happens to be a paladin (sprite pictured above). We'll share more about Thelonious in the future and where he comes from.
In addition to the game and the upcoming comics, we currently have several novels available in the Godshard universe. Although the novels share the same world and lore as the game, they are different stories with different characters written in the high-fantasy genre style. They're currently available on Amazon here: [link]
Note: the novels aren't required to enjoy the game, and playing the game isn't required to enjoy the novels.
If you haven't already done so, you can join our Discord here: [link]
Here you can interact with some of the staff, actors, and other individuals who share the same interests!
We are truly humbled by your support. Thank you again, everyone! Development of the game is proceeding at a great pace. We'll continue posting the updates routinely, so keep an eye out for us.
Cheers!
The Team at J-Cat Games
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.