Exile Princes Demo Released

[Jubal]

You can now get the demo! It's available at the Steam store page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2824620/The_Exile_Princes/

The demo version lets you play the first 35 weeks of a campaign, with the task of getting to 40 relation points with a city. If you succeed, or hit week 35, that ends the demo campaign. Only one map size and one faction are available, and the hardest difficulty is locked too: those other options will be unlocked at full release

[The Seamstress]

I just got myself a Steam account just so I can play this  Though I haven't played any (new) video games in ages, so don't expect any profound analysis from me... My expertise doesn't really go beyond "yay" or "nay", but I'll surely try to give you some feedback.

[The Seamstress]

Well... Game Over. Alas, I didn't last long. The wibulnibs got me 


Update: Is there any way to see which quests/tasks you have currently to do? Because I forgot one among all the wibulnib & bandit fighting and back at the castle they would only tell me to complete it, not what it was.

So... after about one hour of exploring & trying, I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it, and I like it so far! I only encountered one problem: during a battle, the "turn" button wouldn't react, and I couldn't retreat because I was ambushed, so I ended up stuck and had to quit the game.

[Jubal]

Well... Game Over. Alas, I didn't last long. The wibulnibs got me 

Update: Is there any way to see which quests/tasks you have currently to do? Because I forgot one among all the wibulnib & bandit fighting and back at the castle they would only tell me to complete it, not what it was.

So... after about one hour of exploring & trying, I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it, and I like it so far! I only encountered one problem: during a battle, the "turn" button wouldn't react, and I couldn't retreat because I was ambushed, so I ended up stuck and had to quit the game.

Uhrk, that is a known bug I just haven't worked out exactly what causes it yet. Were you fighting bandits, or vorthals?

For your current quests, there's a quest log in the Information side-menu, or just press Q to get a quick read-out.

All feedback and thoughts very welcome!

[The Seamstress]

I think it was vorthals.

Thanks, I'll try that next time I play!

[The Seamstress]

Back with a few thoughts after some more playing - take it with a grain of salt though because these things might as well be "me" problems:

I kept confusing the cities, walked around aimlessly and wished there was a tiny map in one corner of the screen to show me where I am vs. where which city is, because even if I got told initially I couldn't remember as soon as I had more than one or two tasks at a time - until it occurred to me to look up "Information", and there it was... directions! Hooray! Might be because I'm a friend of at-one-glance-overviews, going more by visual rather than textual clues.
 
Which leads me to: a little too much text during the fights for my taste, I ended up skipping to read it altogether unless something dramatic happened, indicated by a different font colour.

Another thing I noticed was that you don't see how much money you have while you're in a city? So I happened to spend too much on more than one occasion, lol. All the hiring of troops and staying at inns and paying the bard and buying lucky charms... too tempting.

Lastly - and I may have just missed this, like the "Q" mentioned above: Sometimes you get tasked with training archers or something, and I haven't found out exactly how to do that?

Still, I'm having fun so far 

P.S. Someone offered me to buy a ship - how would that be different from normal ships, is it just so you don't have to pay a fee every time you embark?

[Jubal]

• Yes, it's not the best game for effective visual cues. A lot of that is engine limitations: I can't do easy overlays etc and the map system is not well designed to do directional pointers.
• Yeah, I've found it tricky to work out how to make fights feel better on the text readouts: I want enough text to give people a sense of how the mechanics are actually working, but that is a lot of text to put down every round. I'll look to see if there's a way to cut it down a bit, or maybe make it less repetitive: I'd sort of like it if it felt more like it was narrating the battle and less like a "readout" but that might be over optimistic. There's also a big difference between easier battles where it's a lot of unnecessary info, and really tight or more complex battles where the feedback might matter more.
• Indeed, there's no instant readout: Z is your stats hotkey if you want to check what money you have on any screen that doesn't show it automatically. (Also H is your hotkeys hotkey, so do check that sometimes to check what quick reaout options you have).
• If you buy a boat you can sail it around and it will stay where you leave it so you can board it and set sail again later.

Unit training: this is a bit complex, there are some hints in game but here's the actual system. If a unit has enough experience and has an upgrade possibility, you'll get an option to upgrade it. You can check what a unit can upgrade to - if anything - in the army menu. If it has multiple options it'll randomise (so you might want to say "no" if you get offered an upgrade to something if it's not the upgrade you want). Units get experience by fighting rounds of combat, or if you have anyone with the "trainer" skill they'll add bits of XP to other units.

Companions/heroes don't upgrade into other unit types, they just get stat upgrades as they gain XP.

If a city asks you to train troops, you can always train those units from their local citizens. It's usually two steps of upgrade e.g. Exilianople Citizens -> City Watch -> Halberdiers.

Thank you again for all the feedback, I'm glad you're enjoying it!

[The Seamstress]

Aaah I see. Thanks for explaining! I'm definitely looking forward to playing the full game version when it's available. 

[quby]

Hi! I made an account just to say how much I enjoyed Exile Princes!

I was served up the Next Fest demo because of other games I play and I loved it! I love the art and the tunes especially (was it you singing them??). My run ended as I was trying to clear out an army of bandits to push my town rep over 40 but got wiped out instead. I didn't manage to train up a new army before the time limit. 

Still, I was very charmed. I've wishlisted and eagerly await the release.   

[Jubal]

Thank you so much for the kind words! And welcome to the forum

And yeah, the art I can mostly thank actual medieval artists for - I have a list of the original manuscripts I based the game images off somewhere, though I did quite a bit of image editing in some cases - but all the tavern songs were written & sung by me, there's 13 or 14 I think now and there'll be an achievement for finding 8 or more in a run of the game in the final version. Some of them have specific requirements, like there's one that only plays in taverns in port districts of cities, and six are keyed to particular factions and will only play in their owned cities.

If you've any other thoughts/feedback I'd be super happy to have them: I'm considering how a release will work at the moment, but I'm hoping it'll be quite soon, maybe late November. I'm mulling over whether or not it'll need an Early Access patch where the full game is basically released but I take a round of post-release feedback to clear up remaining bugs and add some quality-of-life bits before deciding it's really done.

[quby]

Hmm, constructive feedback isn't exactly my forte, but one thing I found a little confusing was how morale worked? Is it reputation based? I found when I tried to raise a new army after getting owned by bandits I was having trouble keeping my army together despite having enough coin.

[Jubal]

Yeah, party morale is a single party-wide score which you can think of as combining current events and reputation, so if it's taken a bad hit, it'll take some time and victories (or some nights at the tavern) to increase again. If you got your whole force mostly wiped, it's understandable that your next batch of recruits might be a little nervous about signing on

Tavern stays and some search opportunities in farmland are good for morale boosts.