At this point, it’s anyone’s guess what’s actually going on over with Chronicles of Elyria and its supposed single-player spin-off. But hey, the blog posts still talk a good talk, and this week Soulbound Studios CEO Jeromy Walsh is chatting up how gathering and resources are being designed for the franchise.
As one of the economic roles for the game is that of the gatherer, Walsh wants to make something as commonplace as smashing rocks and picking up twigs “to be as enticing as adventuring.” While players will be doing this manually in Chronicles of Elyria, in Kingdoms of Elyria, they’ll be instructing the AI to do it instead.
“One thing we’re doing differently in CoE and KoE in comparison to other games is splitting the role of collecting and processing primary and compound resources into usable materials from that of producing components and finished goods. We’re doing this to emphasize depth of trade-skill rather than breadth,” Walsh said. “The key here is trying to avoid traditional genre pitfalls by avoiding the ‘the one-man economy’ seen in theme park MMOs.”
Source: Chronicles of Elyria
Chronicles of Elyria stunned MMO gamers in 2020 by announcing it was out of money, had laid off the devs, had closed Soulbound Studio, and had ended development on the game. Though CEO Jeromy Walsh later retracted much of that and said the game was still in production with volunteer staff, the gamers who’d backed it for $14M+ in crowdfunds pressed on with legal action. In 2021, Walsh has been releasing new videos on the production he says is happening, though the focus has been more on spinoff game Kingdoms of Elyria.
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