Hardland Patch Notes — September 18, 2019
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Today is the day. After over six years of development Hardland is ready. I'll let that sink in, because I haven't fully internalized it myself!
My sincere thanks to everyone who supported us through Early Access; Hardland exists because of you. The people on the forum deserve a special thanks, because Hardland is immensely better because of you. At the end of the day, we are a tiny indie team who got a lot of help from people in the front lines to find the land mines, the flow issues, and anything that needed attention. Being able to rely on that has been massive. Thank you.
People have been asking what other game Hardland resembles. The most accurate thing would be to say it's a modern Quest for Glory. The Quest for Glory series, for those unfamiliar with it, is an adventure game series by Sierra from the 1990s with role-playing elements sprinkled on top. One of the defining games for both Timo and myself, it's no wonder its influence seeps through strongly to our game.
In a smaller way, it also resembles Her Story. The similarities are less obvious, but in both games, you're trying to assemble a complete picture in your head from smaller individual bits of story. The conclusions you draw over time change depending on how much of the picture you have in your head.
And there's a lot of picture to complete: as Hardland's store page description implies, this game's world is deep. It's not just marketing speak to say there are many secrets to uncover, because there are so many that I've myself forgotten about half of them by now! I don't expect people to find them all in a hurry either.
Hardland can also be a difficult game to grasp at the start, because it does not follow convention. It's quite deliberately trying something new. I hope people will get into the game, and stop to really pay attention, to listen. Bit by bit, slowly, you'll learn the intricacies of the world, and the relationships between people. It's about mastering knowledge. Like the Dark Souls of narrative games.
The release version is out. v1.0, if you will. We'll get some sleep now, and come back tomorrow to continue monitoring that everything goes smoothly and tweak the game as needed. I want to close with screenshots from the release version, showcasing the breadth of the game.
There!
P.S. It's amusing to look at this picture. There are so many different paths forward from this prototype. When you look back, there's just one.
Kimmo