- De-listing Sale Notice - 27 February 2021
In response to the requests for a final sale before de-listing, City of the Shroud and the soundtrack will be discounted to 90% off for 7 days starting March 1. After that, both the game and soundtrack will be de-listed and no longer available for purchase. Before purchasing, please be aware that the game will not receive any future updates or support. Here are the most important points to be aware of: There will not be any future updates or support for the game. Only the first chapter of the game is available - this is about 6-8 hours of gameplay for most players, and more for those who play through all 5 plotlines. Online battles will continue to function. The game will persist in users' Steam libraries after it is de-listed and will remain downloadable and playable to those who purchased it. 90% was the highest level of discount available, so that's what I set it to. If you decide to…
- City of the Shroud De-listing from Steam - 15 February 2021
Hi Everyone, I have some important updates for you regarding City of the Shroud - I wish I had better news for you, and it’s very difficult to write this. First, the hardest news: the game will unfortunately not continue development past what’s already released. The game launched to non-existent sales, which we tried to counter with a large-scale update to improve the game and an additional round of PR - sadly, it didn’t work. We continued working on Chapter 2 until part-way through 2019, but by the summer, it became clear that the game could not be developed any further. We explored a few options to continue the story, but they never bore fruit. I’m really sorry that the game won’t be finished, and I wish that weren’t the case. Despite our best planning, we launched at a time that turned out to be unexpectedly difficult (not just for us but for all indies), and the financial blow, not…
- Quick Chapter 2 Status Update - 22 January 2019
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, With the holidays behind us, I wanted to give you a quick update on the status of Chapter 2. Per the last update, the script for Chapter 2 is written, and we’ve also got the quest logic roughed in. But just when we were going to start plugging everything into the game’s database... Moira bravely sacrificed her arm to save her child. That’s perhaps an overly dramatic way of putting it, but just as we were getting back from the holidays, Moira took a nasty spill on some ice while carrying her baby and, though she used her black-belt reflexes to keep the baby safe, she dislocated her (dominant) arm in the process. Ouch. (The baby is fine!) This all means we’re waiting for her to heal for a few weeks before we can finish getting Chapter 2 hooked up and put through the QA wringer. This also means that, since release, we’ve had 4 cases of the flu/myste…
- Chapter 2 Is Coming, And We've Got A Little Preview For You - 7 December 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, We’re hard at work on Chapter 2, so I wanted to take a quick moment to update you on our progress and to give you a small preview of what’s coming. First, a recap: after Omar pulled ahead of Zem during the last few days of Chapter 1’s influence period, the current standing among the faction leaders is: https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F22236761%2F9b9899f4bb871089c62fd16d1fbc92dae6b5d2c2.png You can read the full recap here! With Azura ascendant and her ally Sohrab left vulnerable, what does that spell for the city? Thanks to you, the old alliances are crumbling, but what will take their place is in its infancy. This tumultuous situation will be felt throughout the city in Chapter 2. In terms of our progress, we recently locked the script for Chapter 2 (it’s quite meaty, especially when you consider having all five f…
- Patch 1.05 Released! - 9 November 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, We’re happy to announce that Patch 1.05, which contains our updated enemy AI, is now ready for you to play! The AI in this updates is much more clever and aggressive than the previous iteration, which should make combat much more lively and engaging. Major Updates: Revamped AI: Enemies are more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos. Enemies are better at picking out vulnerable targets and hitting them with clever combos. This speeds up combat and makes timing and use of defensive abilities much more critical, especially on higher difficulties. They may also pursue vulnerable targets if the target tries to run. Enemies have under-the-hood “personality traits.” Each class has a base set of preferences (prefers being aggressive / defensive / using support abilities, etc.), and these can vary across individual units. Enemies now have a bet…
- Patch 1.04 Released! - 30 October 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, Today, we’re rolling out version 1.04 of City of the Shroud! This patch contains new NPC portraits, a number of quality-of-life improvements, and overall polish. Read on for details: Major Updates: New NPC Portraits: we’ve added several variations on existing NPC portraits to give more variety to the artwork. Combat Details: You can now press the (re-assignable!) Combat Details button during combat to display: A preview of your selected character’s range at a highlighted potential destination Character shortcut numbers over your team members’ heads to make it easier to see both where they are and what to press to access them instantly Enemy indicator arrows over all (conscious) enemies to give you an immediate read on their layout Combat Details can be viewed in real-time or with Wait Mode activated, so you can use them for an at-a-glance overvie…
- Patch 1.05 Preview - 28 September 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, We’re working on the first big patch for City of the Shroud while Moira writes Chapter 2, so I wanted to take some time to go over what’s coming: Major Updates: Revamped AI: The AI is getting an overhaul to make it more interesting, more challenging, and to let it better highlight what makes CotS’ combat unique. When the new patch releases, enemy characters will: Enemies will be more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos. Enemies will be better at picking out vulnerable targets and hitting them with clever combos. This will speed up combat and make timing and anticipation much more critical. Personalities: enemies will have “personality traits.” Each class will have a base setup (prefers being aggressive / defensive / using support abilities, etc.), and these can vary across individual units. Ability-specific decision making: the class…
- Chapter 1 Results! - 18 September 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, Chapter 1 is a wrap! Here are the final results: https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F22236761%2F9b9899f4bb871089c62fd16d1fbc92dae6b5d2c2.png A last-minute push over the weekend has placed Omar ahead of Zem. Azura’s merchants are now the most dominant in the city, followed by the rebellion, and then the Syndicate. Navid is trailing his arch-rival Zem by a significant margin, and poor Sohrab can’t seem to catch a break. What happens now? To start, Moira will be looking at not only how each of the factions stands in relation to the others but also at how their alliances and beliefs have shifted over the course of the chapter. As you played, you were not only changing your chosen leader’s influence, but also what they think of the other leaders. So far, you have undermined several alliances, but not always mutually - in m…
- Chapter 1's Influence Period Extended Through September 16! - 10 September 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, This is a quick announcement to let you know that we’re extending the influence period for Chapter 1 until the end of this coming weekend: Sunday, September 16 (PDT). Some newcomers have arrived, and we want to make sure they have a chance to make their mark on Iskendrun. And if you haven’t finished Chapter 1 yet, now’s your chance!
- Patch 1.01 Notes - 6 September 2018
This is a small patch to address one specific issue. Behold! Fixed issue where players may not receive receive rewards from random battles after completing Chapter 1’s story That’s it! We have more updates coming in a larger patch that we’re still working on but wanted to get this update out ASAP.
- Chapter 1's Influence Period Wraps Up On September 10! - 31 August 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, This is a quick announcement to let you know that the influence period for Chapter 1 will be wrapping up in just under two weeks, on September 10. That gives you two more weekends to complete Chapter 1 in order to make your mark on Iskendrun’s Balance of Power and the city’s leaders! Once the Chapter 1 influence period ends on September 10, the Balance of Power and other under-the-hood influences will be locked in and will no longer change (you can still play the game as much as you want!). This will let us begin parsing your decisions and writing Chapter 2! As a reminder, this is how the system works: A chapter is released, with a several-week period where player decisions influence the state of the game world via the Balance of Power and other under-the-hood methods After the influence period is up, we lock in the Balance of Power and other dec…
- State of Iskendrun, Vol. 1 - 20 August 2018
Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun, It has been a little over a week since City of the Shroud launched on Steam, and players are already having a dramatic impact on the state of the game world. As we work our way through each chapter, we will be posting semi-regular updates on developments within the game world to keep you up to date. Welcome to the State of Iskendrun: Volume 1! A brief explanation for those who are new to the workings of the city: as players work their way through the branching story of Chapter 1, every decision they make impacts the the Balance of Power between the five factions vying for control. This Balance of Power is shared by everyone - every player’s every decision permanently alters the future course of the story as written by us, the developers. On top of this, you as players will make decisions at critical junctures in the story that impact how the fact…
- City of the Shroud is Out Now! - 9 August 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPZ23AcAI5E We've launched the first chapter of our real-time tactical RPG with a player-driven narrative today on PC and Mac via Steam! Chapter two will release later this year, followed by later chapters every few months. We’ll also be releasing a definitive edition containing all four chapters for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2019 (and as an update on Steam). Joining chapter one prior to the development of chapter two will let you make decisions that impact who lives, who dies and who rises to power in a truly player-driven narrative, and the collective in-game actions of every player will be the key driver for future episodes written by us, the developers. While you will be able to revisit the first chapter and all story branches at any point, only choices from the first playthrough of a chapter will have permanent consequences on subsequent episodes…
- SRPG City of the Shroud s first episode launches August - 25 June 2018
Upcoming strategy-RPG City of The Shroud looks notable enough on a purely mechanical level, but studio Abyssal Arts’s unusual release plans for it are especially interesting. While a concrete ‘definitive’ edition of the game will be launching next year, the initial release this August will be episodic, and the cumulative, democratic choices of all players will determine how the plot of each successive episode will play out, and how a city-wide power struggle will be resolved. (more…)
- City of the Shroud Comes to Steam August 9! - 25 June 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS6pFzP_7qg We’re launching the game on August 9! Chapter One will be available for Windows and Mac for you to experience, and influence, the story of Iskendrun and its inhabitants. Chapter One is big! It’s got five narrative branches, multiple boss fights, tons of quests, rebindable controls (you can play with one hand on a controller!), multiple difficulties, adjustable game speed, adjustable text speed, our Balance of Power story-influencing system - and that’s not even everything. There’s a lot going on! We’ve been working extra hard to get the game to this point, and there’s still plenty of bug fixing and polish to do between now and release, but we’re really happy with how the game has come together. In fact, last month we added a frequently requested feature we call “Wait Mode.” What is Wait Mode? When we took the game to shows, we’d often get aske…
- City of the Shroud's Live Campaign Kicks Off This Summer! - 1 March 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp95C4IqAiE It’s happening! We’re getting ready to launch City of the Shroud this summer! We’ve been working super hard to get the game ready for launch, and we’re almost there. It’s been a long road, but we’re nearly at the end of it - or the beginning, rather! We are so excited to get the story underway and see what you all do with it. We have tons of ideas about where the story could go and how it could develop, but ultimately it will be up to you and everyone else who plays to determine how the story plays out. We’re also really happy with how the gameplay has come together - several members of the team have spent thousands of hours playing the game, and we still have a blast. Hopefully you will too! The footage in the trailer above is all up-to-date, though YouTube compressed it quite a bit. The game looks great at any setting level, but it looks par…
- City of the Shroud's Live Campaign Kicks Off This Summer! - 1 March 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp95C4IqAiE It’s happening! We’re getting ready to launch City of the Shroud this summer! We’ve been working super hard to get the game ready for launch, and we’re almost there. It’s been a long road, but we’re nearly at the end of it - or the beginning, rather! We are so excited to get the story underway and see what you all do with it. We have tons of ideas about where the story could go and how it could develop, but ultimately it will be up to you and everyone else who plays to determine how the story plays out. We’re also really happy with how the gameplay has come together - several members of the team have spent thousands of hours playing the game, and we still have a blast. Hopefully you will too! The footage in the trailer above is all up-to-date, though YouTube compressed it quite a bit. The game looks great at any setting level, but it looks par…
- Building and Lighting the Battlefields - 31 October 2017
Happy Halloween! We may not be a spooky game, but I wanted to pass out some treats regardless! First, now that asset building is complete (yay!), we’re currently building out and polishing all of the levels for Chapter 1, then putting together their lighting and post-processing effects - all the nice bloom lighting and fancy camera features that make a game “pop.” This means laying out the tiles, then filling the maps with the buildings and props that’ve been building over the last year or so based on the setting for the battle that takes place there. Once that’s finished, we go in with lights and effects to make everything look especially nice. You may recall that we upgraded to Unity 5.5 a while back, giving us access to some nice effects as well as 4k resolution support, which the game takes to very well. To get a sense of how much things have changed, check out the evolution of one…
- Building and Lighting the Battlefields - 31 October 2017
Happy Halloween! We may not be a spooky game, but I wanted to pass out some treats regardless! First, now that asset building is complete (yay!), we’re currently building out and polishing all of the levels for Chapter 1, then putting together their lighting and post-processing effects - all the nice bloom lighting and fancy camera features that make a game “pop.” This means laying out the tiles, then filling the maps with the buildings and props that’ve been building over the last year or so based on the setting for the battle that takes place there. Once that’s finished, we go in with lights and effects to make everything look especially nice. You may recall that we upgraded to Unity 5.5 a while back, giving us access to some nice effects as well as 4k resolution support, which the game takes to very well. To get a sense of how much things have changed, check out the evolution of one…
- Finalizing Our Team Menu UI - 26 September 2017
We’ve been hard at work getting City of the Shroud’s UI hooked up and looking good. There is still some polishing to be done, but we’re really proud of the results! First, here is our new team menu UI in action: http://www.abyssalarts.com/img/uploads/new-team-menu-ui.gif I’ll go into more detail below, but before that, I’d like to show you our new-and-improved City Map: http://www.abyssalarts.com/img/uploads/CotS-CityMap.PNG What’s new here? First, the structure of the map means that it is far more screen ratio independent than it was before, so those of you with 16:10 screens (i.e., Mac laptops) will see improvements on that front. The more obvious difference is that big old chart on the right: the Balance of Power. As you play through each chapter of CotS, the balance of power between factions will change, and that chart will show you the state of affairs at any given moment. You’ll b…
