Hello great vikings,

What has been happening?

We at Runic Dices Entertainment have now been working nine months on developing Nanokings. These past few months have been with many difficulties and challenges for us as real life engagements and full-time jobs have prevented us from concentrating our efforts into Nanokings. Despite these challenges we have been working tirelessly to continue developing the game, and we are very happy to announce that we will be starting a Kickstarter soon so that we can spend all our time on developing Nanokings. We have recruited new full-time members, freelancers, and consultants with a total of 14 members to push development.

Nanokings was a passion project started by me “Isbrjotur” – Icelandic for Icebreaker – and I would like to introduce myself to those of you who don’t know me yet. I’m from Iceland, 33 years old and a family man with a child who was unfortunately born with the TBX4, and another one coming soon without TBX4. With the release of Nanokings, I hope to, so to speak, break the ice and raise awareness of this Ultra-rare genetic disorder and raise some charity for it when we are established. But other than that, I am also an entrepreneur, a self-made man and a gamer all my life and I never imagined that I would one day be able to create my very own game with the help of so many wonderful people – including you, the players. After reaching the kickstarter goal, we can change Nanokings into a full-time job, and with that we hope to have more frequent updates and in the end a much better game. Thank you all for the support so far.

There is another thing I have on my mind regarding the current gaming industry. For far too long, the gaming industry has been straying from its path of one-time payments and respect for the players. Micro-transactions, P2W and predatory monetization methods are too common and have become the rule rather than the exception. I think that games should be made with entertainment and enjoyment in mind and they should be something you can play with your family and friends. Not something created just to raise money and exploit the players’ goodwill with rehashes and old games in new packaging. I want to go back to games with good gameplay and interesting stories that fascinates and captivates people and makes you play for hours and hours like what old Blizzard did to me with Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. All is not lost, however, and I truly believe that games with good gameplay can still be made without predatory monetization like the games From Software (Souls genre), Atlus (Persona), and Vampire Survivors, and Gunfire Reborn have shown. I also believe that the players want more games like these with gameplay and enjoyment in focus and I hope that more developers are ready to turn the tide and create more honest games. We at Runic Dices Entertainment have been funding the game from our own pockets till now all in order to create the game that we ourselves have envisioned without a publisher forcing us to implement a predatory monetization system like microtransactions or forcing us to pump out soulless sequels, however, we are open for offers if we can retain the creative control of the game.

Now to a more uplifting topic. This is what we have achieved in the past months from our last Devlog:

PS: Why we include marketing is because we don’t have a publisher and in honest we don’t want someone to affect our game pushing micro-transaction into our game or have any control of our development. However if there is any publisher out there who would be ready to take us on without taking our creative control or push things into our game we would like to have that conversation.

Marketing:

• Social media improvement in concept art
• Running ads on Facebook/Instagram to funnel into our Pre-launch Kickstarter (6000+ clicks but low conversion, but we have 85 follower which is awesome!
• Improved marketing workflow
• Website launch – www.runicdices.io
• Collab – Posted SELINI game (made by his father and son, recommend checking it out)
• Interview with players that have tested our games
• List of Streamer list, Youtube channel lists and press lists collected 500+
• Content plan refined
• Kickstarter updated
• Úlfur Abilites

Art:

• Explosion ax rework
• 12 Power up icons
• Level up animation
• Grass sway and sprites
• Gifs
• Raven regular mob
• Boss Zulak – Swipe and charge
• 7 Items and animations
• Bow of bleeding new weapon
• New UI/UX completed
• More environmental assets and polishing
• Splitter rework

Game development:

• Fixed Pipeline for build
• Fixed Sound engine implementation
• Fixed Attribute system improved
• Fixed Silver dust animation
• Fixed Meat not giving health back on pick up
• Fixed Game crashes on pumping heart
• Fixed now that knockback makes mobs slide not teleport
• Fixed Mobs spawn inside a collider and get stuck
• Fixed When level up some weapons are not clickable in level up menu
• Fixed Item level up not available in level up screen
• Fixed On enemy death, corpse slide on the map
• Fixed When breakable objects are broken, lights and object stay too long
• Fixed On weapon level up, the current level and next level is not present.
• Fixed Burrowing – Boss fight behaviors – Zulak Boss
• Fixed Status indicator on enemies and character
• Fixed After death character gets stuck
• Fixed Explosion Ax new animation

Sound:

• FMOD Implementation
• Boss Zulak (Walking, scream and abilites)
• Sound for different items
• Weapon LVL up panel sounds don’t carry onto new scenes as it should
• Level up sound
• Dust

Narrative:

• Different version of tribes
• Weather system
• Svend the Harsh
• Seal race
• Veiðar heiðir – Tribe and backstory for each mob
• Backstories related to all items, weapons & pickups
• Raven race
• Zulak profile
• Úlfur backstory and abilities
• Mega totem
• Unlocks
• Ring Mechanics

That’s it for this now. Feel free to ask us any questions or share your thoughts, can always check us out on Discord.

The Nanokings Team