November Update

November 26, 2024

Greetings, adventurers of Unyha!

As the frost begins to creep over the lands, our team has been hard at work on one of the most challenging aspects of Unyha’s development: the final piece of the Autochronicle AI game loop — heirloom quests.

Tackling the Toughest Challenge Yet

Heirloom quests represent a pivotal element of Unyha's world. These quests tie deeply into your House's unique history, leveraging AI-driven storytelling to craft missions that are both personal and dynamic. Each quest takes into account your past actions, relationships, and the fate of your heirlooms.

But creating this feature has been no easy feat. The logic behind heirloom quests is extremely complex, weaving together:

• The history of your House, including past heirs and their achievements (or failures).

• Dynamic relationships between characters and heirlooms.

• The evolving world events, threats, and challenges you face.

Adding AI into the mix only raises the stakes, as the system must balance handcrafted lore with unpredictable, emergent scenarios. It’s been a massive undertaking—tricky to test, painstaking to refine, and occasionally mind-bending in its complexity.

Why It’s All Worth It

Despite the hurdles, we’re thrilled by what we’ve achieved so far. The results have been nothing short of magical: heirloom quests feel alive. Each one is a narrative gem tailored to your House’s story, whether you're reclaiming a legendary sword lost in battle, or tracking down a stolen artifact tied to a fractured alliance.

The way these quests echo your previous decisions is something we’ve never seen before in an RPG. The AI doesn’t just create a quest—it creates a story you’ll remember.

Example (still early!)

Ben has completed a first season where his first character Dava founded the house Devian in Brimmar. She practiced her lumberjacking- and woodcrafting skills, and eventually crafted a birch bow. She later enchanted the bow with a Tome of Destruction increasing its power. Before the season ended Dava decided to bind the bow to house Devian as a heirloom.

The season ends and Ben creates his second character Dave. As the new season starts Ben learns that his previous character's bow has been lost from the house's armory over the centuries. It'll now be Dave's mission to investigate what happened to Dava and the bow and try to reclaim it. As Dave starts to study the House lore the clues that emerge point to the city of Brimmar.

And so the quest of the legend of Dava's bow of ruin begins. Using the events from the previous season — the crafting of the bow, the enchantment with the tome, and finally how it was lost — Autochronicle AI can now generate a chain of challenges referencing those past events. It also pushes players to explore new areas of the world as new unpredictable yet personal stories unfold.

What’s Next? Playtesting!

We’re getting closer to letting players dive in and experience the magic for themselves. Our next steps involve playtesting the full heirloom quest loop, ensuring it not only works as intended but truly feels immersive. Playtesters will be crucial in helping us refine the experience further.

As we approach the end of the year, we can’t wait to share more updates and begin opening the doors to Unyha’s evolving world. Stay tuned, and thank you for being part of this journey with us!

Until next time, may your House grow ever stronger.

— The Unyha Team

October Update

October 26, 2024

Hello, adventurers! This month, we’re thrilled to unveil a groundbreaking milestone that’s been years in the making: Autochronicle AI (ACAI) - a fully automated world history system.

Season Summaries Made Epic

With ACAI, each season now concludes with comprehensive summaries that not only capture the season’s events but also the unique stories of individual characters and the broader world they inhabit. Here’s what ACAI can do:

Character Season Summary

ACAI provides a summary for each character, detailing the heroic (or tragic) events they encountered, highlighting their achievements, and immortalizing their legacy within the House they represent.

World Season Summary

The world summary is where ACAI shines in creating a living, evolving world that reacts to the events of each season, recording the rippling effects of player actions and pivotal events, like battles or the discovery of rare heirlooms.

Example

The Era of Ruinous Artifacts, one of immense turmoil and remarkable discoveries, was chiefly distinguished by formidable characters and their consequential choices. House Devian’s progenitor, Dave, stepped out from the cloak of obscurity in the diverse city of Brimmar. His bravery was a beacon of inspiration amidst uncertainty and hardship.

It was during these complex times, deep beneath Brimmar, that Dave stumbled upon the monumental Bow of Ruin. This artifact, of unprecedented value, became the pivot of the Devian legacy, cementing themselves as potent forces. Across the city, Molo from the newly formed House of Ty Lore, also embarked on her legacy-making journey, spurning fear and confronting adversities lurking in the city’s underbelly.

Armed with the legendary Sword of Ruin, Molo's story intertwined with her House's destiny as the sword was imbued with formidable power by an ancient tome. The fates of Houses Devian and Ty Lore, shaped in this epoch, remain resolute in the annals of Unyha's history through their unyielding champions and ruinous artifacts.

Character Endings & Heirloom Stories

As the world moves into the quiet centuries between seasons, ACAI narrates the ultimate fate of each character, chronicling how they lived, died, and how their treasured heirlooms were lost to time. These stories capture what happened to each player’s items, either slipping away to dungeon enemies or traded off unknowingly, leaving mysteries for future characters to discover.

Why This is a Milestone

This system is a product of years of dedicated research and countless prototypes. To put it simply, no other game has anything quite like ACAI. Every action and item leaves a historical mark on the world of Unyha, seamlessly intertwining each player’s experience with the unfolding story of the world itself.

Next Steps: Player Stories & Quest Generation

But we’re just getting started! ACAI’s next phase will use these player-driven stories to dynamically generate quests, encouraging players to set out in search of their House’s lost heirlooms. These new stories and quests will allow players to reclaim pieces of their heritage and continue their House’s legacy.

With each new update, we’re edging closer to opening up playtesting to all of you, and we can’t wait to share this journey together. See you in Unyha!

September Update

September 19, 2024

Hey everyone!

We've been hard at work this past month refining and expanding the world of Unyha, and we're excited to share the latest updates with you. This round of updates focuses on making the crafting economy more strategic, introducing spellstaves for mages, and improving the map and fast travel systems to enhance your overall exploration experience. Here's a breakdown of what's new:

Crafting Economy Refactor

We’ve revamped the crafting system to make resource management and skill progression more meaningful.

• Increased Resource Requirements: All craftables now require 10x the resources and time, ensuring that every crafted item is valuable and production isn't overwhelming.

• New Training Feature: To help with skill progression, we’ve introduced training exercises that consumes fewer resources but doesn't produce physical items. The rarer the materials you train with, the faster your skill increases, allowing for more control over your progression without flooding the economy with items.

Read more: Crafting System Overhaul

Crafting Spellstaves

We've introduced an exciting new crafting opportunity for mages: Spellstaves.

• Gem Extraction from Ores: Players can now extract gems from ores, opening up new possibilities for crafting enchanted items. This adds another layer of exploration and resource gathering to Unyha.

  

• Enchanted Spellstaves: Use these gems to enchant regular staves, turning them into powerful Spellstaves that are suitable for mages, offering new gameplay opportunities for magic-based characters.

Map Improvements

Exploration just got a lot easier and more intuitive with several key upgrades to the map.

• Waypoints on Compass and World Map: Waypoints now show up on both the compass and the world map, making it much easier to navigate and track important locations.

• Pan and Zoom the Map Freely: You can now pan and zoom freely across the world map, allowing for easier planning and exploration.

• Custom Waypoints: Players can now set their own custom waypoints, giving you more control over your journey across Unyha.

Fast Travel System

We're introducing Fast Travel to previously visited Unyha Trees!

• Fast Travel from Unyha Trees:

  You can now fast travel from any previously visited Unyha Tree, using the same cooldown as the

  Recall Home

  feature (5 minutes). This will help make long-distance travel more convenient while keeping the exploration feel intact.

That’s all for this update! We’re really excited about these changes and can’t wait to see how they impact your experience in Unyha. As always, thank you for your continued support and feedback. Let us know what you think, and stay tuned for more exciting updates soon!

— The Unyha Dev Team

Crafting System Overhaul

August 26, 2024

Hey Unyha Crafters!

We’ve been listening to your feedback, and we’re excited to share some major changes coming to the crafting system in Unyha. These updates are designed to create a more balanced, strategic, and rewarding experience for all our artisans out there.

Crafting with Purpose

Gone are the days of mass-producing items just to level up your crafting skills. We’ve heard your concerns about inventory overflow and the unintentional wealth generation from selling excess products, so we’re making some big changes:

Increased Resource Requirements

Crafting now requires 10x the resources and time, making each crafted item more valuable and meaningful. This change will help prevent an overabundance of items and ensure that your crafting choices matter.

New Training Exercises

To balance the increased resource demand, we’re introducing a “Training Exercise” option. This new feature allows you to gain skill progression without creating physical items. It’s perfect for those who want to hone their skills without flooding the market or draining your resources.

Why the Change?

Our goal is to create a crafting system that feels purposeful and rewarding. By limiting the amount of items produced and increasing resource value, we’re aiming to:

Control Wealth Generation

Reduce unintended wealth creation by limiting the number of items players can sell.

Encourage Strategic Crafting

Make resource management a critical part of the crafting process.

Foster a Healthy Economy

Maintain item rarity and value in the marketplace, preventing oversaturation.

We believe these changes will lead to a more engaging and balanced crafting experience, and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts once you get your hands on it.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback as we work to make Unyha the best it can be. As always, stay tuned for more updates!

— The Unyha Dev Team

Summer update

August 18, 2024

Hi Spiritlings! We haven't only been drinking beer in the sun this summer. Here's a bit of update on what's been going on for the past months. We've made significant strides in both the lore and gameplay mechanics, aiming to enhance the depth and richness of your experience in Unyha.

But first: we've decided to keep these updates coming monthly or so. The idea is to keep everyone in the loop, and when it's time -- up to date and ready to do some play testing!! Ok, here's a rundown of our latest progress:

Spiritfolk Integration

Spiritfolk Lore and Style

We've been hard at work weaving the mysterious and enchanting Spiritfolk into various aspects of the game. From their ancient ties to the Unyha Tree to their influence during character creation, you'll find the Spiritfolk's unique culture and mysticism reflected throughout the world. Their presence adds a layer of intrigue and magic, enriching the overall narrative.

Spiritfolk Poetry Generator

A particularly fun addition is the automatic generation of Spiritfolk poetry based on players' story-worthy events. When you accomplish something significant in the game, the Spiritfolk will now commemorate it in verse. This feature not only deepens the lore but also creates personalized, poetic keepsakes of your adventures.

Magery Overhaul

We've completely revamped the magery system! Introducing Spellstaves and Manaflow, two new elements that redefine how magic is wielded in Unyha. Spellstaves now serve as conduits for powerful spells, while the Manaflow system adds a strategic layer to spellcasting, ensuring that mages must carefully manage their magical energy. This overhaul brings fresh dynamics and challenges to all things arcane.

Online presence

New website & Steam page with two promotional videos. The website also houses a new wiki about the game, where we're continuously add high level core concepts.

Additional Updates

New Lobby Screen

We've introduced a brand-new lobby screen that offers a comprehensive overview of your House's past characters, its armory, current heirlooms, and recent events. This screen acts as your central hub, keeping you connected to your House's legacy and helping you plan your next moves.

Story-Related Mechanics and Emergent Events

To keep the game world vibrant and unpredictable, we’ve added more story-related mechanics and emergent events. These additions are designed to keep your experience fresh, with new challenges and surprises around every corner.

System Feedback Clarifications

We've been listening to your feedback and have worked hard to clarify various system messages and feedback loops. These changes aim to make your interactions with the game's mechanics more intuitive and transparent, ensuring a smoother and more enjoyable gameplay experience.

Tweaks and Balancing

As always, we've been meticulously tweaking and balancing the game. From combat adjustments to item stats, we've fine-tuned numerous aspects to create a more cohesive and balanced experience. Your continued feedback will help us keep Unyha as fun and challenging as possible.

What’s Next?

With all these updates, we're closer than ever to the playtesting phase, and we can't wait to have you all dive into the world of Unyha and explore these new features firsthand. Stay tuned for more news on playtesting, and as always, thank you for your ongoing support and enthusiasm!

Until next time, may your House's legacy grow ever stronger!

Ben & Vik

Introducing the "Unyha History" Discord Bot!

August 07, 2024

Hey Adventurers!

We're excited to share a sneak peek at a new feature we're working on—our very own Discord bot, "Unyha History"! This bot is designed to keep you connected with everything happening in the world of Unyha, even when you're not in-game.

What does Unyha History do?

• Daily Summaries: Every day, "Unyha History" will provide a concise summary of the most significant in-game events. Whether it's legendary battles, the discovery of ancient heirlooms, or key character achievements, the bot ensures that you never miss a beat.

• Event Alerts: The bot will also send real-time updates on major in-game happenings, giving you insights into the evolving storylines and rivalries within Unyha.

This feature will be especially helpful as we approach playtesting (which we hope to begin soon!). It’ll allow all players to stay informed and engaged with the game's evolving world, even during those times when life pulls you away from your screen.

We're eager to see how "Unyha History" will enhance your experience, and we can't wait to start playtesting with all of you. Stay tuned for more updates, and if you haven't yet, make sure to join our Discord to be part of the conversation!

Until then, may your House's legacy grow ever stronger!

— The Unyha Dev Team

Unyha Wiki: Your Guide to the World of Unyha

July 19, 2024

Unyha Wiki is now available on our website. As a work in progress, the Unyha Wiki will be continuously updated with detailed information about the game, providing players with valuable insights into the mechanics, lore, and characters of the game.

To kick things off, we've added two initial articles:

• Golden State - Learn about the prestigious Golden State, a condition that players can achieve by accomplishing significant challenges. Discover the benefits, process, and strategic implications of this unique feature.

• Seasons - Explore the concept of Seasons in Unyha, periods of intense historical significance that shape the world and your House's legacy. Understand how gameplay is structured around these pivotal times and what you can expect between seasons.

Stay tuned for more articles and updates as we continue to build and expand the Unyha Wiki. We hope this resource enhances your gaming experience and helps you navigate the rich world of Unyha.

Thank you for being a part of our community!

New Art Direction & Nordic Game Conference

May 21, 2024

Hey peeps!

Unyha is now a medieval GOTH Autochronicle Online RPG. We found the goth art direction to spice up the concept and align perfectly with autochronicle as well as the style and attitude of what we want Unyha to be.

Gameplay Trailer

For this, we've kicked up this brand new website, with a gameplay teaser trailer and a lore video.

We are also attending the Nordic Games Conference to network, look for partners and collaborators as well as celebrate/kickoff of the new push.

In the following weeks, we are focusing on setting up the playtesting flow via steam so we can invite more players to Unyha and start getting into regular consistent open testing phases.

Major design breakthroughs!

November 14, 2023

Hey folks,

We recently made some major design breakthroughs thanks to the results of the previous playtesting, so we are gonna push the aforementioned playtesting fiesta a couple of weeks. This will give us time to fully close the main loop of character bloodlines, seasons and heirloom inheritance. Our goal is to have all these core elements in place for iterative and successive playtesting with seasons beginning 2023.

Some sneak peaks of what it currently looks like and will in the future:

• When you first log into your account, you will now name your House, the "family name" upon which your legacy will be grow.

• 3 starting areas with 2 levels of blocks which players need to collaborate to unlock

• By the end of a seasons you will be able to transfer your characters accumulated fame into your heirlooms which you want to keep for the next season.

• As a player you are now about 10x stronger from the start, make sewers action-fun from the first moment and a lot of skills more accessible.

• New HP/Mana bar and ability icons, inventory is coming too (with limited slots!).

Nothing is set in stone, but this is the current outline and what we are working on/towards.

Vik

Playtest complete - Sewers remain infested!

October 27, 2023

Huge thanks to all of you who joined us and helped us explore the sewers! The results were beyond expectations as we got really positive responses on our efforts put into making global improvements from the last 6 months: general polish, UI, performance, stability, graphics and gameplay interactions.

The Living Dungeon System was also a great success. We could see how players were challenged by the ratkin defending their nest and actually no one managed to eradicate the threat as we had hoped. Brimmar sewers remain infested! The idea behind this is to have DEEP dungeons which you can return to when you have grown stronger. We want a mix of players across the map, not static "low-level" vs "high-level" areas. The challenge here is to find a balance where new waves of enemies doesn't feel punishing if they are above your level or skill hence finding ways to make retreat an action of consideration and easier to assess. We already have some solid ideas on how to achieve this.

Since we are fans of quick iteration and fixes, we've tried to address all of your feedback with recurring patches. A lot of tweaks & fixes have been done already during the test, but some issues will require more time and careful balancing e.g. fame bonuses & health pools.

As always, gathering this feedback is super valuable to us and keeping a close relationship with you, the players, is what is going to make Unyha special in the end.

Stay tuned for next playtest announcing shortly!

Spooky Testing Weekend

October 10, 2023

It is FINALLY time to PLAY!

This Sunday 9/10 a small number of invites will go out to you who signed up on the website.

So, slight change of plans since our last post. We've decided to pause Legacy Quests for now and finish up on closer-to-finish systems instead. And this time around, we are doing things a little bit differently than we have over years. We will run a series of shorter playtests, more focused on specific aspects of Unyha. This will help us understand you better and give more time to address specific feedback on how you want Unyha to run.

This first playtest will focus primarily on our Living Dungeon Systems while getting general feedback on the many many many changes we've made over the summer! What better way to spend the spookiest weekend of the year deep in a murky dungeon?

PS! We will do our best to run bi-weekly playtesting from now on, so if you don't get an invite this time, chances are high you'll get one soon enough.

Closed Early-Access October

September 20, 2023

Hello, hello, hellooooo! We're happy to let you know that the game is closing up on getting ready for some sneaky early-access testing this October. Starting October 1st we will begin inviting a limited amount of people who signed up on the website to a closed early-access alpha version of Unyha. Here we will focus our testing on the brand new Legacy Quests which are unique quests with narratives based on real player histories. We will also be gathering feedback on the overall player journey, gameplay UX/quality of life and finding any bugs to squash. As soon as we find that the game is running great, we will transition into open early-access alpha on itch and get more people online. To maximize your chances of entry (and help us greatly!): - Signup on the website: https://unyhagame.com/ - Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/unyhagame - Follow us on itch: https://realspawn.itch.io/unyha Cheers, Vik

Stealth Mode deactivated in Paris

September 15, 2023

Long time no see! This year we've been in a bit of a Stealth Mode and just focused intensely on polishing that core loop to make our concept as clear as possible. However, last week we got invited to Paris to demo Unyha and got some really good feedback. This was really encouraging and we thought this would be a good time to come out of stealth. We'd like to begin testing in small scale again and are really looking forward to getting some more feedback!

Summary of changes since last post (non-exhaustive, many small tweaks and changes are done across the game):

• We've created an intro sequence to illustrate more clearly what the game is about

• Death Screen - Added more info on exactly what happens after you die.

• Living Dungeon System - Lots and lots of tweaks to make in align better level by level

• UI - New "toggling mode" logic, Portrait in top-left corner, seasons overview showing stories, fame, heirlooms, leaderboards and stats

• Graphics fidelity, we've pulled down the resolution of all textures to create a more homogeneous art direction

• Lore stone - we replaced the storytelling barrel with a lore stone at the center of town to make it more fore fronted.

• Bow timing bonus - Mechanic skill is measured and communicated with feedback. The better you time your bow pulls in a succession the more damage you can do.

• Procedural dungeon decorations - added a system to fully spawn dungeons procedurally with pretty decorations (button-click)

• Lots of new resources and types for leatherworking - fleshed out to support more elements

• Monster looting - if you die in a dungeon, monsters will loot your non-heirloom items and distribute them in treasure chests in the dungeon

Cologne GamesCom

August 16, 2023

Hey friends,

Unyha is invading Cologne for this year's GamesCom! We're here to mingle with peers and gather first-impression feedback from players, and wisdom from industry legends.

Don't hesitate to get in touch for a demo or simply a chat, coffee or beers.

Prost! Vik & Ben

We Ride becomes Unyha!

July 19, 2023

Dear friends,

We are today happy to announce that we are going to focus 100% on building this game as the first title of Realspawn Studios.

After spending most of this spring doing market research and talking to experts in the industry from all across the world, we've learned that the best way to bring our unique, carefully crafted concepts and game ideas to as many players as possible, is by fully committing to build and ship this game.

For 5 years, we have been shaping and researching novel game ideas without feeling the need or pressure to ship something we are not 100% happy with. At the same time, building games is what we love and it has always been done part-time. This is what we are going to change now.

This transition means many new things for us, for players and for the game. As of today, we are renaming We Ride to Unyha to highlight our new focus and get a fresh start for everything new to come. Unyha is still going to remain very much like We Ride, but with a much clearer concept and direction of what the game is about, closed game loops and tighter mechanics (more details on all of this later).

Some practical info: - New website https://unyhagame.com/ - Unyha will be closed-testing only. You all will have testing-access, but new players will need to signup and wait for a spot. - Many new changes are already implemented (character customization and clothing system) which we'd like help tweaking - Next big milestone is September 30 with stress-testing of back-end, content + lineage-system (more details coming).

Cheers, Vik, Ben & Rob!