Unsung Warriors: a Story Driven Action-Platformer

Created by Osarion & Mountaineer

Explore a fantasy Iron-Age inspired Europe, with Mystical Handcrafted Locations and Ferocious Enemies, playable solo and in Couch Co-op

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Devlog - Unsung beta for everyone & Spear Master for Switch!
28 days ago – Fri, Mar 01, 2024 at 07:54:52 AM

Hi all!

Spring is casually approaching, so it's time for another update! Sit back and relax, and take your time for this one, because we have a lot of exciting things to show.

In this update we'd like to talk about a new boss, the roadmap for releasing the beta for non-beta backers, and the release of golden oldie created by Mikel a few years ago: Spear Master!

Boss in the mountains

As you've come to know of us, we enjoy a good boss fight. There's five bosses to be found in the beta already, and when you're done in the mountains we want you to be able to leave with a bang!

This boss first appeared in our Kickstarter launch trailer. At that time, it was primarily for presentation purposes. However, over the past month, we've been working on implementing this boss fight.

The boss has some of his own tropes. We're not gonna spill all the beans yet, but one of his attacks (a heavy ground smash) leaves some spikes on the ground. This way, you set up the obstacles for yourself while you fight him. So think ahead where you let him smash the ground! Every now and then, another one of his attacks will clear the arena.

This boss will be playable when we release the full game.

Roadmap to beta release for non beta-backers

Last year, everyone who pledged a tier of €25 or higher received access a beta build of our game, containing the opening chapters of our game. We now have an improved build we wish to share with the 467 backers that pledged the €15 tier. Herewith some clarifications in Q&A style.

When will this happen? On May 1st 2024

What does the beta consist of? The content is mostly comparable with last year's beta release, but does include some fixes (mentioned below).

How will I get access? We'll grant you a copy on the preference you indicated on your Backerkit survey.

Will beta tier backers also get access to the same new build? Yes. we're basically merging the two groups now.

When do you intend to publicly release Unsung Warriors? We don't know yet. In the meantime, we hope you're excited to be playing a part of a game that only few people have access to.

How's this build different from last year's build? While we were pretty happy with the reception of last year's build, we did see room for improvement: 

- More variation in combat mechanics: We reintroduce the back stab so that you get an advantage if you strike enemies while remaining undetected. We also introduce the ground smash a bit more prominently, to diversify attacks a little.

- Wayfinding: Our game's setup is a little different than your average platformer or metroidvania. We don't have one large interconnected map, and we don't exactly offer linear levels either. Instead, we have a world map where you can access pretty big areas, most containing some branching paths. To ensure people know which path to take, we tested several solutions, and found a map on location to be the best solution. We found this the most informative and the least intrusive, also when playing co-op. For an impression, see the video below.

- Various other fixes: small refinements such a bit smoother camera movement and slightly more responsive controls also make their way to this build.

Spear Master

We just released Spear Master on Nintendo Switch! The game was first released back in 2020 on Steam and Atari VCS and has gotten a huge update. It now supports 1-4 players (couch co-op) and has been translated to 6 languages in total!

The game was made by Mikel before the launch of the Unsung Warriors Kickstarter campaign. Porting the game the game to the Nintendo Switch was done by Ramon. We learned a lot from this experience, and it'll definitely help with other projects.

Spear Masters game mechanics are easy to learn, hard to master. If you're searching for a game to play with your friends or family, check it out here.


That's all we have to tell for now. You'll hear from us in about two months, when the release of the new beta build is due!

Cheers,

Mikel & Ramon

Devlog - Happy 2024
3 months ago – Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 06:59:17 AM

Hey all,

We hope you've had some wonderful holidays! It's time for another update.
2024 has started and we wish you all the best, be it with gaming and all other things.

Besides the usual celebrations and spending time with our family, we also got a lot of work done about which you can read below!

Druid Temple Levels

In our latest update, we showed a screenshot featuring a new location: the Druid Temple. In this area, players must obtain a specific item from the temple library. Substantial advancements have been made in the level design of the temple, the video below provides a glimpse of the library section.

Screenshot taken from cinematic

Combat gameplay variations

Those of you have tried the prologue or the beta are already familiar with our hack-and-slash approach to platforming combat. In the full game, we want to give you some choice in how to approach things. Since last updates, we refined two mechanics that ought to spice combat up a bit.

Stealth attack

Walking head first into a fight may not always be the best idea, especially when you're low on health. As long as an enemy hasn't spotted you yet, you can surprise-attack them from behind, almost always killing them instantly. Be sure to not get spotted though, otherwise you might be in for a regular fight!

 Ground execution

But what to do when an enemy has spotted you? Or maybe you've developed such a grudge towards an enemy you want to face them head on. In that case, we hope you have the ground execution skill equipped, because it allows you to do massive damage towards an enemy when you've worked them to the ground.

State of the beta

While we're developing new content for the full release, there's also a big group of backers that don't have access to the beta yet. We are planning to change that soon. We just want to change a few small things (mainly w.r.t. wayfinding and combat) so that this new group can test that. Of course, these changes will also be rolled out to the existing beta pool. We aim to give more clarity on this in the next update!

That's it for now. If there's anything you would like to know, feel free to ask here on Kickstarter, on Discord or send us an email.

Cheers!

Mikel & Ramon

Devlog - Level Design progress and process
5 months ago – Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 08:35:19 AM

Hi all,

Welcome to the October backer update! After the release of the closed beta, we've picked up from where we left off and are currently in the process of further developing new levels.

-- Minor Location Spoilers Ahead --

For those of you who have played the beta, you might have encountered this sign:

 The bridge provides access to a perilous mountain area where peculiar events are unfolding.

Travelling up the mountain

 The temperature begins to drop as you ascend the mountain to visit an ancient Druid Temple.

Temple Outskirts

The Druid Temple stands deserted; something terrible has happened there. Nevertheless, you need to venture inside to retrieve crucial information. However, the ghosts of the temple do not appreciate your presence.

Inside the Druid Temple
The Tower Room

About the Level Design Process

The levels in Unsung Warriors often revolve around small stories built around the objective of a larger quest. When we design levels we usually start with the story elements, so we have a clear idea of all the events that need to occur throughout the level. 

Next, we continue sketching a rough version of the level on paper/whiteboard. In this blockout phase, the overall layout of the level is established. The finished blockout serves as a blueprint/reference point for the final level design.

The next step is to actually start building the levels. We usually begin with the platforms. Additionally, the levels are often designed around one or more mechanics. For example, in our beta, The Forge area is focused on teaching the Dash Skill, while the Underground Cellar level is built around teaching ranged weapon combat.

Learning to Dash...

In combat situations, we try to create these little playgrounds where it is often possible to kill the enemy by using the environment. These traps create some fun variations in addition to using your currently equipped items/weapons.

Detail items

The last pass is a detail pass, where breakable items such as foliage, furniture, and other objects are placed in the scene. Particle effects are added, specific audio areas and sound effects are incorporated, and some final lighting tweaks are made.

Rotating the camera in 3D space

Although Unsung Warriors is a 2D game, the engine is actually a 3D engine and the levels are set up in 3D space. Rotating the camera on the y-axis would reveal these flat sprites.

Speedrunners pushing our game to the limits

Community member Abendix has been checking how fast our game can be finished. It's very useful for us, because it teaches us what mechanics can be exploited. Of course, the video does contain spoilers.

Not only that, but on version 0.1.3 he's also the record holder of getting to the furthest wave in The Arena. If you want to see what dying in wave 28 looks like (when enemies have levelled up significantly), check the video below.

Well, we hoped you liked this peek behind the curtains. That's our update for now, we will be posting more news around New Year's!

Cheers,

Mikel & Ramon

Devlog - Post beta, Gamescom
7 months ago – Fri, Sep 01, 2023 at 01:31:23 AM

Hi all,

Our previous update was focused on the release of the beta. In this update we'll take some time to reflect on that, as well as looking forward. 

Spoiler guidance: it's going to be very hard to keep this update completely spoiler free. We don't think reading the update will spoil too much as we'll only be talking about generic events. If you haven't played the beta yet and want to keep your experience fresh, you may want to skip the let's play videos.

Beta evaluation

So what did we learn from the beta? We've been gathering your feedback via the appropriate channels and in general it was our impression that you were pleased with the directions we took with the game! We also saw some let's plays on YouTube, which were incredibly fun to watch for us. We learned a lot from it. Generally speaking, the biggest takeaways from testing were the following:

  • We're going to explicitly introduce the downward slash earlier on in the game. This should diversify combat and increase the pacing of rewards.
  • We're considering what to do when it comes down to player way finding. Many of you didn't get lost, but some did and we think that wasn't your fault. We're playing around with the idea of either adding level maps, or adding directions at certain cross points. 
  • We're running into the limits of the stock music we're using, specifically when it comes to usability for streamers. That's why we're currently talking to composers for a dedicated sound track.

Of course, there were some interesting bugs. Nearly all of them have been squashed (we've released 3 updates to the playtest version in the mean time) but we still want to honor some of them.  

Some of you put a villager into debt by getting 19 bows from them...  

 ...others discovered this exploit to devastate forest wildlife...

...while some even defied the laws of physics and made it to areas they were not supposed to visit.

To all testers: thanks for addressing all these bugs! It has helped us create a more stable foundation of the game.

Some look at the data

Those of you who started the game and accepted Analytics, contributed to gathering of statistics. We collected a lot of (pseudonymized) data about where you died, what weapons you used, how long you took etc. We haven't had a full opportunity to analyze everything, but there's already some interesting things we can share. It's also a nice peek in the mind of our player (see last point).

  •  Players that accepted analytics: 102
  •  Players that escaped the village: 52
  •  Players that made it to the end of the forest: 24
  •  Average Session Length: ~30 minutes
  •  Average play time until reaching the last beta boss: >2 hours
  •  Highest arena result: wave 28 (😲)
  •  Players that knocked the stone mason of his ladder: 16 (bunch of sadists...)

In the future we can do even more profound analyses with our data (like heatmaps of player death points), but we'll save that for later. We can also see where errors occur in game. Sometimes players may not even notice these errors, but it's nice for us to be able to fix them anyway.

Some videos of playthroughs

We'd also like to honour some videos of people that played our game. Here Shireen is having fun with our beta!

The following video by demajen had a mix of praise and (fair) criticism, which partially lead to some of the improvements mentioned above.

Got a video we might not have seen yet? Let us know!

Next steps

So we're going to take a few months to test the improvements we mentioned earlier in our update. After that we'll be releasing the private beta to the rest of the Kickstarter backers. We don't have an exact date for this yet, but we'll keep you posted here.

Meanwhile we're also working on the rest of the game. More levels to discover, more skills to play with and more enemies and bosses to defeat. This added content will form the full game. We don't have a release date for this yet, but it won't be in 2023.

Gamescom

Last week we also attended Gamescom, Europe's biggest gaming fair. We were in the business area to talk to various people in the industry. We made a lot of interesting new connections with other businesses and got a lot of enthusiastic responses on our beta from industry professionals.

Two visitors trying the beta, Ramon studying their play styles

That's all we have to share. We'll be releasing the next update in about two months from now!

Cheers,

Mikel & Ramon

Beta release time!
9 months ago – Fri, Jun 30, 2023 at 03:07:28 AM

 Dear backers,

Today we are excited to share the beta version of Unsung Warriors with you! Within a few hours everyone of the beta tier and higher will receive a code that you can fill in on either Steam (Windows, Mac and Linux), or the Atari VCS. 

Once you've received the code you can go here on Steam..

In Steam, hit Games -> Activate a Product on Steam

 ...or here on the Atari Vcs.

On the Atari VCS, redeem your code here

The key you receive can be activated on the platform that you've selected in your Backerkit survey (more info about that in the Q&A section).


Unsung Warriors is also compatible with the Steam Deck.



Q&A

We've tried to think of any questions you might have, and provide an answer below.

I didn't receive a key. What happened? Only beta tier backers and higher will receive a key today. Furthermore, at the time of posting this we haven't sent the keys yet, we'll be doing so in the coming hours. If by tomorrow you still haven't received your key, please first log in to Backerkit (via an email likely sent around June 20th 2021 to your Kickstarter email address), to check if you've filled everything in correctly. If that doesn't solve the matter, please reach out to us on [email protected].

Where can I share my feedback? There's several places to go. On the Steam forums you can create topics in the beta feedback sub forum. It's safe to post spoilers here because only Steam users with access to the beta will be able to see it. On Discord we've opened a special channel for beta feedback. And lastly, you can reach us on [email protected]. Due to the large number of backers, we may not respond to every message, but know that we do read everything.

What will we do with your feedback? Tastes differ, so unavoidably we're going to have to make some hard choices. In our Kickstarter updates we'll try to motivate our decisions as much as possible. Also, because we're only a team of 2 people, fixing bugs (especially the minor ones, like spelling and graphical glitches) may take some time, possibly up until release.

Can I publicly show the beta of Unsung Warriors? Sure! The more people see our game, the merrier. We're firm believers in the value of word-of-mouth. So feel free to post about it on social media and fitting communities that you're part of.

I'm a streamer/influencer, can I use Unsung Warriors to create videos? Yes! We'd appreciate it if you mention that it's a playtest (with bugs, things that may change and not being content complete yet). You can help us by calling on people to wishlist the game on Steam, or refer them to our socials.

Please read the in-game startup notification for more info.

Are there cheats available? Well, sort of, but please don't use them unless you know what you're doing. If you press ` on a keyboard, a debug menu will appear. At some point, we may instruct you to type stuff in there to fix certain bugs or request certain information. If you use it yourself, without our instructions, you may permanently break your save file! So be aware that once you've used the debug menu, we can't help you fix any bugs you may experience. If you've opened it by accident, press ` again to quit.

Does my save file transfer to (possible) updates to the beta, or the full release? We can't make any promises on this. We've capped the coin limit at 500, to make sure that if it transfers, beta players won't be too overpowered.

What happens next? You folks playing the beta will probably yield feedback, bugs and other valuable info that allows us to improve the game. Furthermore, the game is not done yet content wise, so we'll be going back to our attic to build the rest of the game. At some point we also want to share the beta with the rest of the backers, and when the game is done we still need to create the art book. For all these plans, we don't have dates yet, but we will continue to post Kickstarter updates so that you know what we're working on.

Indigo 2023

Last but not least...  Unsung Warriors was showcased during INDIGO Showcase 2023, a leading Dutch indie gaming conference. INDIGO awards a price to the most anticipated game, and we were among the final three! We were honoured to be on stage with two other finalists. During the showcase we had a lot of fun playing the Arena and first level of the game with people attending the event.

That's it for now. The next update will be no later than within 2 months from now. 

Happy playing!

Cheers,

Mikel & Ramon