Hi, Project manager here bringing you the first of many weekly updates.

There are a lot of new additions and changes that have come through our alpha stage development; many, many hours in crafting Anchored at Sea (AaS) into a fun, accessible and aesthetically pleasing game. Throughout our look development our major goal was to have a fun, cartoon-esque and vivid appearance. One of our major milestones into closed alpha was implementing a colour palette and toon shader that complimented the aesthetic of our repurposed naval vessel building design.

Water is really hard

As water is the largest component of our game, it is something that is constantly changing. Designing a water shader that is visually appealing whilst also optimised to work as effective as possible on mobile devices, is a task we are constantly iterating upon.

We have gone through many different versions: here are a few different variations throughout our current development (expect to see more versions of the water shader in the future).

Combat... Fight!!

One of the main things to do in AaS is to make like a pirate: pillage, scrap and fight your way to glory. Fleet battles, the player vs player combat system you will get to enjoy in AaS, has seen a lot of love and consistent quality of life changes. This system we really want to feel fun and make player choices feel impactful.

The most recent change we have made to fleet battles was to change the battle ground from an open sea to a more corridor based battlescape. This has had a massive effect on how combat feels. In our opinion, and from feedback from early testers, this addition has made Fleet battles much more enjoyable and easier to navigate.

Boarding Passes

Onboarding and Tutorialisation, also known as how to play, has had a face lift. Making sure that you, the player, can navigate their way around our UI and systems is one of our top priorities. We can have the best looking game and the most engaging combat systems in gaming history, but if you don’t know what to do, its just going to get frustrating! Games are meant to be fun, not frustrating!

Our new and improved Tutorial, walks you through the basics of each system and helps you to find your way around, whilst rewarding you each step of the way. To add some character and flavour to the experience, we have utilised the hero character you choose at the beginning to be your guide for the basics of each system; there are a lot of systems and nuance to how you choose to play after that point.

Welcome Hero, I have a task for you!

Questing is a core system to AaS and the major component to our onboarding and tutorialisation. Once you have completed the basic tutorial quest line, we branch out into more system specific quests introducing the additional systems that play into the various aspects of AaS. Currently developed quest lines consist of: the main tutorial quest chain, the HQ quest chain, Hero Quest chain and the troop Quest chain. There are more system quest chains to come in the near future.

In addition to these system quest chains, we are also developing a narrative based quest line, to help build the lore of the world. This quest line development will also help to introduce new content further into the life of AaS.