Greetings!

So here we are! July 2013.  Next month will mark the 3 year anniversary of the launch of the first Elemental game!

2010: Elemental: War of Magic

2012: Elemental: Fallen Enchantress

2013: Elemental: Fallen Enchantress – Legendary Heroes

Could we worse. Could be like Star War: Episode 2: Attack of the Clones!

So where do we stand?

Legendary Heroes v1.3

We are still working on v1.3.  The AI got a major overhaul for v1.3 and so there’s a lot of play testing in this.  In hindsight, redoing the monster behavior and the player AI for the same version probably was a bad idea. But in the long run, it’s better to get this out of the way so that players can feel like the world makes more sense.

One nice little touch in 1.3 is that the AI will inform you when it’s cast an offensive spell (see below):

A lot of the AI updates in v1.3 have to do with handling path finding and massing of troops.  There’s been some new internal APIs programmed in that have made it a lot easier for the AI to put together more effective armies.  The AI will also interact more with the player.

For those who play on below normal difficulty levels, have no fear. While the AI will be more “intelligent” we are lowering the resources that they get a bit and making them make fewer decisions per turn so that they aren’t so overwhelming.

Next up for Fallen Enchantress

We have some stuff in the works but it’ll be awhile before we’re ready to announce it.  Fallen Enchantress will continue to go forward with meaningful updates that we’re funding with the DLC purchases.  The DLC system turns out to be a good system as players are able to get more optional content which in turn lets us keep adding new features to the game itself.

v1.4 will probably focus on some UI and performance related items and v1.5 will (I hope) be the big diplomacy update. 

Beyond Fallen Enchantress

There’s a lot more we want to do with the Elemental world.  We debate regularly about what we should name future things.

I.e. Elemental II? Fallen Enchantress II? Elemental: Something New? Or a completely new series?  Tell us in the comments what you think.

Multiplayer

We have a lot of requests for this.  Here’s the basic issue.  The tactical battle system in the Elemental games was not written in a way that allows for multiplayer. All the actions in it happen within its own box. The short version is that all the tactical battle stuff would have to be rewritten, from scratch, to have the tactical battles happen in multiplayer and that’s just not going to happen. That would be extremely expensive for us.  It’s not that we don’t think there should be multiplayer. It’s just a cost/benefit ratio (not just in terms of dollars but in terms of human assets that would have to be taken from other projects). It’s not something I’m happy about either.

More DLC

The DLC has been doing extremely well. Thank you for your continued support! We have more on the way.  The next one we have in mind is called the “Loot pack” which is just adding a ton of new items to the world.  If that does well, there’s more spells and equipment that could be added to the game world as well. 

It would be amazing if we could keep making free Fallen Enchantress updates for years to come with optional DLC paying for it. Talk about a good deal for players.  I’d like to see the kinds of feature improvements to Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes that you’d normally see in an expansion.  The biggest problem then comes down to naming (i.e. do we need to come up with Fallen Enchantress: Infinite Edition or something someday? Give us your opinions there).

Anyway, we are just beginning still with the Elemental universe! Stay tuned!  We would love to hear your thoughts on the game name issues (in terms of making it straight forward to new players).