Hey scouts!

We hope everything's looking festive wherever you are at the moment. If not, don't worry, we're bringing you plenty of reasons to celebrate. Since we're closing another year, we thought it would be a good time to give you a little recap of everything we have accomplished in 2024 during the development of Oppidum. So jump in our time machine and let's get to it

A big shoutout to our community

Back in January we got our Discord community together to have a private beta with our most loyal followers. We really enjoyed watching them play, learning their impressions and getting their feedback to improve upon a demo that was available during Steam Next Fest. Thanks to all the feedback we received, we were able to improve the game and get it to where it is today. It's really amazing for us to watch people that are excited to play Oppidum, who look forward to it. So we wouldn't want to miss our chance to send a big shoutout to our Discord community, always ready to offer their support, and give you a reminder to join and help our little family grow larger

The living world of Oppidum

Oppidum takes place in an island called Insule, blooming with magic and wildlife. So of course, it was only natural that we took our time to make it look and feel right. We made sure to fill Insule with important landmarks, interesting spots to explore and places you will visit either by chance, or guided by the expansive story of the game. We want you to get familiar with this land, from the Gusty Hill to the Wetlands of Murmurs.
However Insule is not only a lush island, but a dangerous one as well. There are many perils waiting in your path for which you will have to be prepared. Around this time of the year (that is roughly April) we finished programming and integrating the first version of every enemy in the game, which was a huge milestone! Every enemy has their own special abilities or strategies needed to defeat them, so they will offer you a challenge and keep you on your toes.
Soon after, we integrated the weather system, to fully immerse you into the natural cycles of Insule. Personally, I think this added a lot of ambience to Oppidum, and we took the time to put a small video together showing you how this feels! [previewyoutube=tZAeKZyY6-Y;full]https://youtube.com/watch?v=tZAeKZyY6-Y[/previewyoutube] And last but not least, Insule is more than its biomes and its dangers. It's also its people! NPCs started looking better than ever, and showing their full range of personality after we implemented animations and let them interact with their surroundings.

Time to showcase our progress

Since the game was improving so much, we needed to do something about how we presented it to the outside world. For example, the Steam store was looking a bit outdated. So we jumped into the game, snapped a few pics and dressed it properly with some new videos and screenshots. Here's how some of them compared:

And we couldn't have chosen a better time, since around this time, we got featured in a couple of articles from some important media outlets like PC Gamer, IGN and 3DJuegos! We were beyond excited about these articles which, among other things, highlighted this extended gameplay video you can also watch on our Steam page. [previewyoutube=zIbEWgEwJ1w;full][/previewyoutube]

A plethora of new things for the game

At this point after Summer, we had a more than solid base, so it was time to start polishing and adding every extra feature we still hadn't had the chance to put into the game. For full context, here's a small comparison showcasing a small part of the work we had done from February 2023 to October 2024. [previewyoutube=RksXJEfwuDw;full][/previewyoutube] We took this time to include extra, but important features, such as fishing, horse-riding, and an improvement of our character customization, aside from many other things we're keeping hush hush for now

So what's next for 2025?

Well... you'll have to keep an eye on us and see for yourself! We're at a polishing phase, integrating anything that's left and working hard on some big marketing pushes until release. Speaking of which... Oppidum is set to be released during the first quarter of 2025 we will give some more definitive information in the future, once we're confident in a date, but we hope this gives you something to look forward to in 2025. At this stage, we need your help more than we ever did. If you enjoyed this little recap of 2024, consider sharing it with friends, your favorite streamers, or post it to your socials, so others can also get excited about our progress and join the family. They're more than welcome to join our Discord as well! In the meantime, we'll keep working on it and sharing our process with you And as a final send-off for this update, we want to leave you with a little tease of a new feature were working on. Any guesses on what this could be about? We think it will give you the opportunity to exhibit your knack for discovery
From the EP Games team, we wish you a really Happy New Year!

[ 2024-12-26 15:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]