Haha, nice one We definitely won't release in October and the first half of November. You're right, we only have the GC integration to finish but Max is currently on honeymoon for a couple of weeks so it's been pushed back to the end of October. Then we have the Apple submission process which can easily take a couple more weeks, and that's it, it's the second half of November already. Time flies! But please stay with us while we're finishing the game. We really can't wait to put it in your hands and that's gotta happen eventually right?!!
Nice to hear from you again! Looking forward to the release and I'm sure the end-result will be great! Since the ai is done, can you tell us something about how that works? Will there be many different difficulties and maybe even personalities? The Catch-up-guys did a cool thing with adaptive difficulty. Could we expect something similar from Kingdom? Will there be GC-achievements as well? Pedroapan
The AI will feature 3 difficulty levels. We do not plan to have adaptive difficulty nor different personalities, at least for the launch. After testing the AI at EGX we figured out some ways to make it a bit more interesting but we're already quite happy with its current state. The Hard AI is a tough one, while the easier levels provide a more aggressive, fast-paced challenge. We're obviously looking forward to having your feedback on it once it's out! As far as Game Center achievements go, we had a brainstorm session with lots of cool ideas and we hope to have some implemented for the launch. It's not a priority though, compared to finishing GC match-ups and ironing out the tutorial and the few remaining things that we have to fix
Hi guys! Here's an update on what happened during the past few weeks: Paperwork That's it, the company's finally created! We're still allocating some time to paperwork but it feels great to have this huge milestone behind us now! iOS 8 We've had to spend some time fixing visual bugs and layout issues due to the new larger iPhones and iOS8. This is now done and Kingdoms looks great on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Localization Thanks to very friendly people, we now have the game translated in: - English - French - Italian - Spanish - Portuguese - German - Swedish - Japanese - both simplified and traditional Chinese We're still hoping to have Arabic and Russian too before launch but we're already glad to work on a game as inclusive as possible. Beta We're still thinking about using the new iOS 8 built-in Testflight beta to give a few lucky users (you) the chance to help us find potential bugs and validate gameplay tweaks before the official release. We'll tell you more as soon as we make up our minds about it. In the meantime, I'd strongly advise to keep an eye on this thread and our newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/spacebears And here's a little surprise that we hope you will enjoy! That's right, (wip) game replays! We're building this with very simple web tech. What that means is that we're able to display a replay in-app at the end of a game but also basically anywhere else, as long as it supports basic Javascript and CSS3! You'll be able to share and watch Kingdoms replays to learn new moves and understand what went wrong or right in your strategy! As you can tell, it's still not as polished as the rest but we'll be improving this over time so that your replays can look as good as the game itself. Well, that's it for today guys! Feel free to ask me any question!
Ok, now I want to get my hands on this game. Will be glad to help you guys with betatesting if you let me. Pedroapan
This game looks a lot like the boardgames Inverse, by Don&Co. Where did you guys get your inspiration?
I had a chance to try a Kingdoms demo at EGX London this fall and I really liked it. Even though I lost every single go to my husband It's a very neat and clever game in it's simplicity and I'm looking forward to the release. Good luck! Jutta/Glad Game Studio
Thank you guys! Don't worry, you'll be the first to hear about it if it happens We have never played this game, we'll try to have a look at it! We covered Kingdoms' origins in this blogpost if you're interested! Thank you very much! We're glad you stopped by and liked the game!
Hi Pedroapan! I'm sorry to disappoint you but Santa is still busy and won't be able to bring you your gift on Thursday But here's an update on what happened recently and the plan going forward: Tutorial As we're getting closer to releasing the game (we definitely are, believe me on this ), we reworked the tutorial for something more polished and more complete than what we had initially implemented for festivals and contests submissions. We've taken the usual step-by-step approach, with both interactive and passive explanations. There are still a few quirks here and there but it's already a huge improvement! Let us know what you guys think from this gif: Replays We've also made huge progress on the game replays in the past weeks. But why don't you see the progress by yourselves? Here's a game I played (and lost…) against the AI (Hard) yesterday It plays one move every time you tap on it. As you can see, it looks a lot better now! The most important parts are done and we are no longer working on this at the moment. The plan is to get back to this feature when Kingdoms will be submitted to the App Store. As it lives on the web, we'll be able to update it easily at a time where we can't do much for the app itself other than waiting! Let us know if you have any ideas or feedback on this feature! App Store As you may have seen on Twitter, we've been having quite a hard time creating the App Store account for the company. But a very helpful manager from Apple reached out to us yesterday and helped us getting through this. Phew! There's still a tiny issue with our bank but that is being fixed right now and we should be able to enroll as an iOS developer by the end of this week! Going forward With the upcoming App Store holiday shutdown and the fact that we still need to implement Game Center and smash a few bugs, the game is definitely not going to release before the new year. We appreciate your support and patience while we go through all the joy and pain of creating a proper business at the same time as we're finishing the game itself. Rest assured that we are working hard to ship a great version of Kingdoms as soon as possible. Stay tuned! Bonus We've been inspired by Pantone's new color of the year 2015 for a brand new theme. We hope you like it!
I already figured out about the next year thing from your twitter... Seeing how cool is now the tutorial and an actual game (very cool web feature) doesn't diminish the pain tough....on the contrary.... CAN'T WAIT!!!! I can already see this game being a staple in my daily async schedule. Also, I can already see how much I will suck at the game.
Absolutely stunning! Looks like you aim to have all bases covered. I don't mind waiting (well, actually I do), when the game looks like it's going to be a winner. Hopefully this will be a big hit amongst the casual player base as well! Happy holidays, see you on the other side! Looking forward to try to beat you all when the game releases! /Pedroapan
Thanks for the kind words guys, your support means a lot! We could not let you go without a little gif(t) so here it is! Happy holidays!
Hey guys It's time for our first 2015 update! 2014 Recap Newsletter If you haven't read our "end of year" newsletter yet, it's still available here: http://tinyletter.com/spacebears/letters/transmission-2-our-first-year-at-space-bears-working-on-kingdoms Game Center We started implementing Game Center during the holidays. It's now fully functional and we're hard at work fixing bugs and polishing as many remaining quirks as possible. We're also preparing the launch by recording App Preview videos, taking screenshots for the App Store page and so on. That takes a lot of time to do right but it also feels closer to release than ever! Here's the new Games List! We had to rework the original screen because of the various Game Center states that a game can be in. After using it for a couple weeks, we're pretty confident we made the right choice. It feels way better to use, even with a lot of games! This is the place where you can start new games, see which games are ready or awaiting your opponent's turn, and the result of finished games. Tapping on those pops up a modal allowing you to watch and share a replay, ask your friend for a rematch (or invite as friend if you're not already), or remove the game (when you're done with it): Let's watch some Kingdoms replays Our current QA phase requires playing a lot of online games, and thanks to a few dedicated testers, we've been lucky to discover and fix a ton of little things already. But that also means that some of them are becoming more and more experienced at the game. I'd like to show you a couple interesting replays from yesterday. Both are very agressive games, with very early bonus moves and a lot of turnarounds. I hope you enjoy them! - http://replay.kingdomsgame.fr/#20150120141166881-adhoc - http://replay.kingdomsgame.fr/#20150120142261882-adhoc Well, that's it for today! Thank you for reading and let me know if you have any question!
Looks great as always! Hopefully I will not have to wait much longer before I can try it myself! Looking at those replays I noticed that there is not a lot of fortifying and the two extra moves makes the game rather "swingy". With four moves on a 5x5 grid you could almost cross the whole field in one turn. I imagine that it also makes it rather hard to calculate your opponent next move since there are so many possibilities. Maybe that's just because I've never tried it but do you feel the same way when playing, or do you fell that it is possible to plan ahead and play strategicly rather than just react? Will there be some kind of online ranking and match making, or league play or is it just random and friend-matches at the start? //Pedroapan
Hi Pedroapan! It's indeed swingy as both players were using very aggressive tactics! That's what happens when you rush toward your opponent's king and don't use fortifications. It gives a very different feel to the game when you play cautiously It takes quite some time to master the game well enough to plan several turns with 4 moves on both sides but a thoughtful and experienced player can manage to do so. The thing is, the more moves you get, the more chances you have to make mistakes, use them in a suboptimal way and let the other player cut you off and get back in the game! But that's also true for your opponent Depending on your experience, it's also totally possible to react turn after turn and see where it goes! From what we've seen so far, beginners really enjoy playing like this! We've started working on ranked matchmaking this week, I'll tell you more as soon as we make visible progress on the feature!
Hey guys! We've got two big things to announce today! First, Kingdoms changes name and will now be called Kindo! You can read more about why we changed the game's title on our blog here: http://blog.spacebears.fr/post/110246803537/why-we-changed-the-title-of-our-game-right-before The second thing is that we've submitted a beta to the App Store! And you can sign up here: http://goo.gl/forms/dzSyniW4u7 We'll be adding users periodically so don't be mad if you receive the invite a couple days after signing up! See you soon in the game!
This is awesome, exceeding my own expectation too. Already played some games against AI and online. Wonderful execution, super sleek already despite being beta, fun, fast and deep too. If you are interested I highly recommend you check out the beta at the very least. See you online!!!
