- Court of Ashes Will Soon be Free - 3 April 2021
Hello Councilors! 👑 We’re writing today with some bittersweet news. After many discussions between the team, we’ve decided to make Court of Ashes free for anybody that wants to own it. You will see this change on April 12th, and everyone who already owns the game will continue to own it. This decision is driven by the difficult truth that we no longer have time to maintain the game to the level that our fans deserve and believe that it would be unfair to charge for an experience that we no longer have time to support or guarantee. Court of Ashes was an unexpected journey. Being the first game that my husband and I worked on, we learned quite a bit and had even more fun as we brought our vision into the world. We are making our way into the second year since the game's release, and it’s been our greatest pleasure in the world to engage with, learn from, and be a part of this small but h…
- Bugfixes for Non-compatible Resolutions and Load Triggers - 3 November 2019
Hello Councillors, A few more bugs have trickled down over the past couple of weeks, and our team has been working hard to patch them as they are reported. You may have noticed a few small patches come through these past two weeks, and this post is just to provide a little bit of context to what was updated: A few scenarios had missing triggers and would not appear or would appear with the wrong information. These triggers have been updated. Loading the game on certain machines led to a black screen. The load system has been refactored to process scene loads more sequentially. Some machines were able to run the game at non-compatible resolutions. The game now defaults to 1920x1080 for first-time users if their resolution width or height is higher than that. Our team has been so pleased with all of the kind words and constructive feedback that has come through for the game. As well, we'l…
- Unknown Pleasures: 'tis not the season - 25 October 2019
There’s a coat in a window on my way home and I want it. Or possibly a blazer, I was in a hurry. It is purple and the shop had put a sign saying “VAMPIRE” over it, but I don’t need to use the cover of the worst holiday as an excuse. Which reminds me: when did we agree that Halloween was an entire bloody month and not a single day? The Pleasuredome does not recognise this false season (also I coincidentally booked half of next week off anyway). It is time, then, for a resolutely pumpkin-free Unknown Pleasures , our regular selection of the very best games on Steam that aren’t getting their due. Styling it out this week: Bickering nobles, micro planets, and robotic angels. (more…)
- Updates Following Initial Feedback - 11 October 2019
Hello Councilors! Thank you all so much for the wonderful feedback you've provided for Court of Ashes so far! Following comments and private messages from players, we've patched the following issues in our latest build: When loading a file after saving and exiting the application, duplicate scenarios would appear which had already been addressed on previous turns. When visiting councilors after numerous interactions, the game would sometime crash upon conversation start. In addition, some players ran out of scenarios to consider in the late-game and our team has already begun writing more content for that area. At the time of publishing, we've produced seven new scenarios which were finished in time to be delivered with this build. If you already have a game in-progress, these new scenarios will not be available until your next playthrough. Thanks for all your kind words, your construct…
- Court of Ashes Now Available - 10 October 2019
Hello, Councilors! As this message is being written, Court of Ashes is building in the background before packaging and upload to Steam. With it, so too are our own sentiments building. Court of Ashes will be available to play at 6:00am CT. The release of this game doesn’t mark the finish line for us, but rather a grand goalpost from which to proceed. There are innumerable features we’re interested in adding to the game post-release; a few animations, controller support, a number of scenarios, additional scenes, etc. The old quote, “Art is never finished, only abandoned”, sometimes attributed to da Vinci, sometimes Vasari, and sometimes even others certainly applies to this situation. In short… we’re not done. With that thought in mind, we are delivering what we set out to deliver: We offer five distinct characters, each with their own perspective of an overarching story. We set out to d…
- Dev Diary #2: An Artist’s Touch - 7 September 2019
Hello, Councilors! I hope you will forgive my absence in writing. I can assure you that nothing less than a life-changing event could draw my attention away from my responsibilities to you and this game’s development. A lifechanging event it was; I’m married now! While I could spend all day talking about the experience, I had better begin my foray into the topic of this entry, UI enhancements. If you were around for the introductory devlogs, you might recall a confession; as the lead developer for Court of Ashes, my background is neither technical nor artistic. While C.S. Cratel is a programming whiz, my own journey into game development rests on a foundation of bootstrapping and good-natured gumption. The studio has been fortunate to work with many talented artists, but the job of tying their independent works together into a homogenous whole has been an experience unto itself. I’m hap…
- Dev Diary #1: Instrumental Inspiration - 13 August 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F35420186%2F413cb1c2f67b657350043e09ac8c92a70288760e.png The soundtrack for Court of Ashes remains one of the most pervasive features of the game and it does so for good reason, it’s wonderful. You may call me biased if you’re interested in such frivolous matters as being correct. But then, I’m developing a creative work; all things that in the game are those which I’m biased towards. It must first be stated that the soundtrack, in its entirety, was composed by Eric Britt of Orchestorm Productions. How exactly we came across Eric’s work is a mystery lost to the sands of time. What is remembered is his Minute Waltz, the first thing I found when I was shown his Twitter page by C.S. Cratel. As I remember, it was Haydn-inspired and possessed an ominous urgency which I still cannot adequately describe. After retaining Eric’s ser…
- Lorem Ipsum - 7 August 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F35420186%2F9f5bc2c895e39c01d804990f543ea53e65f6ced5.png The title today, commonly used to represent a body of text, yields as both the topic and heading of today’s log: the volume of writing which has come to be known as Court of Ashes. A volume which spans over 110,000 words and hundreds of pages of dialogue in the main story and affinity scenes alone. Following from this, it is difficult to estimate the number of words in the scenarios, of which there are over 250, but here is one scenario with the outcomes removed for your consideration: Fallen Priests While escorting a group of the displaced citizens to the capital, a number of priests were slain in Memreal. No witnesses remain but you have it on good authority that the party was felled by a group of Memrealan horticulturists, mistakenly believing the refugees to be th…
- Courtly Pleasantries - 31 July 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F35420186%2Fcebb54550e881b1ba9b5db764dffd1a660478bdb.png Greetings and welcome. As an introduction antecedes most relationships, let me begin by apologizing for my tardiness in writing to you. Court of Ashes, though announced only two weeks ago, has a storied past reaching all the way back to 2016. The days, evenings, and nights of unwavering devotion needed to bring this project to where it is now may seem like a fine enough excuse for developing in relative silence, but those activities do not subtract from the attention owed to you, the person who will (hopefully) purchase my game. In that spirit of full atonement, let me devote myself as fully to these annotations as I do to the development of my actual game. My game? Whose game? Court of Ashes is being developed and published by Cratel Studios. Folding the development…
