The team is really excited to fill you in on what our latest progress on the Battlefield is. For the last month or so we’ve really been hammering away at the basic combat mechanics for the Kenshi (Swordsman) and some basic Long bow mechanics for our next character. (any guesses?) Our first Battlefield map, Gifu Crossroads is well underway and I’d say it’s probably around 33-50% done.

Art Update

We’ve been iterating greatly on the overall design of Gifu, and really want to make sure there’s plenty of space for battle, but not so much that there’s no strategy involved. We’ve gotten a lot of the base camp stuff ready (tents, banners, flags) for the Hanako Clan and once we nail down a good design for the Yamai Clan symbol we will be doing a treatment for their battle camps as well. We’re also working on a set of flammable cover (yes you will be able to catch some things on fire with fire arrows, fire bombs and possibly ninja stealth ignitions) to give more cover variety and start to resolve that type of gameplay.

The character team is working hard on the next character that are stoked to show you when it is ready. In the meantime, the animation team is working hard on polishing combat animations, working on some new animations for a heavier attack stance and some special things we’ll have to announce around April.

Programming Update

We are working hard to get all the mechanics squared away for basic combat before we go into the really crazy stuff for the Kenshi in the next push. We want all of the basic attacks that are non-ability based to feel solid enough to move on with the next character and their attack scheme. Additionally, we’re putting a lot of menus/UI/HUD stuff together that’s getting close to displayable and working on the game rules for the Battle game mode.

Overall we’re really happy with where things are going, playtests are becoming more and more entertaining with more features to play with each week. Once the map is in a good spot we will start releasing Playtest video footage videos again and a very special video at the beginning of April of our SECRET game mode.

Here’s an early screenshot of Gifu!