The Wild West wouldn't be complete without some western music. The last couple of weeks we began implementing music for combat, exploration, and even boss music. Music adds a lot to the atmosphere and feeling of the game and makes it even more fun to fight a boss or explore the world. These are systems we're still working on but they are well on their way to being complete. 

This week we added something called a bind stone into the game. Bind stones can generally be found at towns and act as a place to bind your location, as well as level up your character. Upon death you will return to the last bind stone you activated. You can also use return to town spells to go back to your last bind stone. A big part of our gameplay loop is going out and exploring, and then returning town to sell resources, upgrade gear, and level your character. Bind stones help us achieve that in a more natural way. 

We are also still in the process of doing detailed environmental world building. This means we're combing through the desert and loading it full of rocks, cacti, bushes, trees, and so forth. We're well on our way to being done with this and so far it's turning out great! The desert feels dense and full which makes it a lot more fun to explore. 

This past week we also added in some lootable containers throughout the world. You can now find barrels, crates, bags, and even some safes scattered throughout the desert. Any of these you see can be looted and often contain sellable resources or some kind of utility items like bullets or bandages.

We've also been recently working on fleshing out the first town. We've added various merchants and people you can talk to. Some of them might even tell you some secrets! Right now there is a sheriff, doctor, clothing merchant, general merchant, blacksmith, bartender, innkeeper, banker, and some residents that walk around town. In addition to working on merchant inventories we've also been writing and implementing NPC dialogue so that you can talk to most of the characters you encounter.  

As always thanks for reading and we'd love to hear your feedback! 

A major aspect of Wild West and Wizards that sets it apart is well, the wizards! We love the concept of taking fantasy and RPG elements and putting them into non-traditional settings. Because this is a important and unique aspect of our game, we want to make sure that the RPG elements really get their time to shine and that it doesn't just feel like a western with fantasy elements tacked on. 

One way we are doing this is by having classes and talents. We've been spending a lot of time designing classes for the game, each of which have their own talent trees. The ideas are endless but so far we've got some good concepts for about seven or eight different classes. Our goal at first is to keep it simple, and so we may only have a few classes at early access release, but we can certainly add more later. 

Classes provide a neat sense of character investment and also good replay-ability. Playing as a certain class could potentially change large aspects of the game, encouraging second and maybe even third or fourth playthroughs. 

Talents will essentially be passive skills that augment your abilities and the way you explore and combat enemies in the world. While talents will be restricted to certain classes, we are planning on keeping abilities open to any class. So most spells and such will be found or earned throughout the game and not particularly restricted based on your class. But talents will be a way to invest your character class and augment the type of abilities you might want to use. 

As always we are still working on world building and trying to make the desert, plains, and forest as dense as possible. We want a world that you can get lost in and that's interesting to explore. We've recently been working on creating small paths throughout the world to provide a sense of direction if you choose. Of course you'll be able to go off the beaten path and we actually encourage it. Exploration and discover will be huge elements of the game and you'll be rewarded for doing so. 

In addition to environmental world building we've also been working fleshing out some towns and their stores, adding furnishing, NPCs, and things of that nature. 

One constantly evolving area is AI animations and combat. We want combat to be fun and exciting and while we are a small team with limited skills, we still want it to look professional and polished when you encounter AI. We've been doing a lot of work tweaking animations and trying to get things to look natural and also feel good. There's still some work to do in this area but overall we are making good progress! 

Our main focus early in development has been to get the general world built from an environmental standpoint (adding trees, rocks, bushes, and placeholders for content) and adding all the mechanics and systems needed to play the game. A lot of those mechanics include things like looting, talking to NPCs, combat, talents, leveling up, etc. We are nearing the end of having most mechanics complete, and so soon we will be moving onto the actual content stage which we are very excited about! 

This means soon we'll actually be adding in quests, placing enemies throughout the world, adding in a lot of loot and all of the balancing that comes with that, adding in discoverable buildings such as cabins, churches, abandoned shacks, etc., and fleshing out towns. It'll be a lot of work because the zones are pretty big, but we expect it to go fairly smooth and fast overall. 

In the next few months keep an eye out for more content related updates and information on early access release. 

As always thanks for reading and let us know what you think!