Last month, Soulbound Studios’ Jeromy Walsh wrote another long-form address discussing the merging of design documents for Kingdoms of Elyria and its erstwhile (i.e., originally Kickstarted) game Chronicles of Elyria, as well as working on the website for the titles and re-opening its “toxic” Discord. Following that post, Walsh held a Discord chat last week for a reportedly very limited number of fans, which prompted players to submit feedback about his current plans for the game; that prompted a dev blog-length response to those followers on Discord this week.
According to Walsh, feedback from players fell into three categories: suggestions on what he should be working on, feedback that re-opening Discord is a bad idea, and thoughts on how much information should be shared. In all three cases, Walsh effectively tries to defend his stances.
He explains that getting the game’s website back up and running is important not only for Discord integration but to ensure players know when tests are running and for a “better Alpha 2 experience.”
He also believes that stronger moderation tools and recent feedback would make the Discord’s return “safe and desireable.”
Finally, he rationalizes showing as much of the game’s progress as possible instead of waiting to show gameplay, screenshots, or other in-game footage as a way to ensure followers can “truly understand either the amount of work involved in making a game like CoE or the measurable progress [he’s] making.”
In conclusion, Walsh says that he will continue working on the website for a while longer and will slowly open portions of the Discord to the public; this will happen in tiers as the game moves through its planned alpha and beta stages. We hasten to point out here that all that has been offered is the shipment of a portion of KoE this year, while there were earlier plans for testing leading into a late 2024 release. All the while, the one-man studio has been in debt and paying down legal fees as a result of a backer lawsuit that was dismissed.
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