Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer
Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer
Description (IGDB)
A fantasy grid-based dungeon crawler role-playing game set in the kingdom of Twin Falls, a lush and colourful world created with beautiful pixel graphics. Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer takes you back to the golden era of pc gaming, when role-playing games like Dungeon Master, Might and Magic, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, WIzardry and Ultima ruled the world. Gather your party of six adventurers and embark on a journey through the colourful kingdom of Twin Falls where sunny fields, lush forests, misty swamps and dark dungeons await to be explored!
Description en cours d'enrichissement.
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Informations Steam
Description Steam (Français)
NOW WITH THE DAYS OF HONOUR UPDATE V.0.8.8.3!
*TRAILERS AND GIFS CONTAIN PARTIALLY OUTDATED GRAPHICS, BUT SCREENSHOTS AND THE DEMO VERSION ARE UP TO DATE*
Chronicles of Vaeltaja: In Search of the Great Wanderer takes you back to the golden era of pc gaming, when role-playing games such as Might and Magic, Wizardry, Dungeon Master and Ultima ruled the world. Experience the classic feel of adventuring and role-playing on a grid-based journey through the colourful kingdom of Twin Falls where sunny meadows, lush forests, misty swamps and dark dungeons full of treasures, secrets and dangerous enemies await exploration!
Gather a party of six adventurers from 11 character classes and choose their equipment from dozens of weapons, armor and trinkets. Improve your characters through classic 'stat and skill' system and teach them class specific skills to take down dangerous enemies in tactical turn-based battles. Use your wits to solve wide variety of puzzles and different tools to overcome various obstacles. Follow the main questline to unravel the secret of the Great Wanderer and take on side-quests to earn experience, coins and better equipment.
Classic six character party system with 11 character classes, such as Warrior, Mage, Witch Hunter, Knight, Conjurer and Guardian, with their own unique skills and spells
Hire more than six characters to experiment with different party builds
Defeat your enemies in tactical turn-based combat with lots of status effects that can change the course of the battle
Earn character class specific bonuses by increasing or decreasing the Honour tier
Explore dangerous and dark dungeons full of puzzles, traps and enemies
Pick locks, disarm traps and solve puzzles to progress in your adventure
Interact with dozens of non-player characters for side-quests, rumours and hints
Dig treasures, find secrets and gather crafting materials for potions, weapons and armor
Experience the classic feel of RPG adventuring from the golden era of pc gaming
No forced tutorials, no hand-holding, no cinematic cutscenes, just pure fun of experiencing and exploring
Graphics and mechanics may change for the final release.
Éditions et prix Steam
Avis des joueurs Steam
Mises à jour et Actualités
Immersion and Optimization Update News
Good day, Traveller! Chronicles of Vaeltaja is getting some pretty great improvements and enhancements with the next update. This is going to be a long one, so I’ll get straight to the point. 1. Optimization There will be lots of it. So far I've had to rely on parallel processes when creating certain mechanics for the game. These parallel processes are very intensive for cpu and one of the biggest, if not the biggest, bottlenecks of the engine. I designed a bunch of very light plugins to handle all those mechanics, for example the torch and lantern system, so there are no longer heavy parallel processes causing unnecessary workload.The new plugins are designed to be active only when they are needed to avoid any unnecessary per-frame work. And I didn't stop there: I went through all my previous plugins and some other plugins that I'm allowed to edit (and which aren't obfuscated), and eliminated all the possible per-frame work that I could. There were some mechanics in a few of the plugins that were running constantly, even though it wasn't necessary.These are some of the mechanics that were turned into lighter plugins: Torch and Lantern system, Party HUD tracking (checks if the HUD is enabled/disabled when transferring from one area to another), Instant Movement and the player icon tracking on minimap. Also the weather and Magic Map plugins both had some unnecessary per-frame work going on that were optimized to work only when needed.Of course, not all the per-frame work can be avoided all the time, for example time must be tracked all the time, and torch duration must be tracked when the torch is lit, but these are lighter to achieve with plugins than with multiple parallel processes running at the same time. I don't know how much all this improves performance on mobile cpus, because I lack the hardware for testing, but I'd expect the game to run better on Steam Deck after the update.So these are the biggest optimizations I can make at this point, and since adding these improvements to the game took so much time and effort, I don't plan on adding them to the demo version, which is based on already dated build anyway.2. Immersion These new optimizations allowed me to finally add proper dynamic shadows cast by other light sources than the sun. This means that now wall and town torches cast shadows too, and so does the player's torches and lanterns. These new dynamic shadows really makes a difference when exploring the dark dungeons or the overworld at night. There's also Options setting to turn off the player's light source shadows, because shadows in general can be a bit demanding with this engine on weaker cpus. And this reminds me that I've done some organizing in the Options Menu too.Night skies will get stars, which are not 2d skybox layer, but actually 3d dome, so the stars stay the same and they work with Nvidia 3D Vision too. Not to mention that the night skies look much more atmospheric than before.I've made some adjustments on lighting system, and stormy nights are now darker than before. Also, Autumn Valley and Winter Wilds have their own day/night lighting and skyboxes to give them own unique atmospheres. And speaking of skyboxes, the battlebackgrounds have new skies too, and what’s even better: The weather conditions follow to the battles too! I created a battle weather plugin that adds a weather layer for rain, storm and snow.Some other improvements: Camping animation is fixed to scale properly on 1440p resolution and thunder storm sounds much better.3. Hardcore Mode While Chronicles of Vaeltaja has never meant to be an immersive sim, I’ve always wanted the kingdom of Twin Falls to feel as immersive as possible. Of course there are some very clear limitations when it comes to interaction, because as a solo developer I need to draw the line somewhere, but compared to most grid-based 1st person RPGs the game is already pretty feature rich. In the early development, when the game wasn’t nearly as deep as it has become, I made some choices to exclude certain mechanics found in many games of the genre; for example the need for food, water and rest. For some time now I’ve had this idea of implementing them, but because not everyone likes the pressure that these kinds of mechanics will bring, I wanted to make them optional. Also, the idea of adding just optional visual gauges to keep track of felt a bit lacking, so I gave the whole idea some time to develop in the background, and eventually Hardcore Mode was born.Hardcore mode can be enabled/disabled at any time in the Options menu, and it makes some dramatic changes to the game: eating, drinking and resting are mandatory, lanterns need oil or recharging, torches are affected by rain, most states/status effects are no longer removed after battles, enemies are stronger in every way and they can ambush when the party is resting or passing time. Adding to that, Inns are more expensive and they offer room with or without a meal.When enabled, Hardcore Mode adds Water Flask and some Food Rations in the inventory’s ‘Tools’ tab and alternative item shop inventories with necessary supplies. Food rations, Water and Oil Phials can be bought from the item shops, but Water Flask can be re-filled in spring water fountains/ponds, and the party can drink from those same spots too. The Lantern Maker in the Castle Town will re-fill Oil Flask when paid, but certain dungeons have oil jars for re-filling. Food Rations, Water and Oil Flasks and Phials can be assigned to the quick bar and used like any other tool. These new tools and items are hidden from the inventory when the Hardcore Mode is disabled.There are optional visual gauges to track Food, Water and Restfulness, but also some other optional visual sings to help notice these new conditions: for example, the colours will start to fade from the game world when the party gets hungry or thirsty. But there are other penalties too: the party will get weaker and more vulnerable, movement speed slows down, characters start to lose energy and eventually health. When hunger or thirst strikes one Food Ration or sip of water is enough for the whole party, so there is no need to feed each character separately.Light rain dims torch light, medium rain extinguishes the torch after a short while and heavy rain won’t allow it to lit at all. Lantern and Bright Lantern need oil, while Magic Lantern, Spirit Lantern and Lantern of Life need recharging after they run out of energy. I designed the whole torch and lantern system with the Hardcore Mode in mind, so the whole system is much more flexible than before.Cold will be a factor too in Winter Wilds with some visual indicators, and of course, gameplay related penalties.4. ContentWhile testing these new features and mechanics, I have also been working on the next content update’s assets, and I’m trying my best to finish enough content to release at least some of the Winter Wilds’ areas with these new improvements at the end of this month. I have had to re-design some of the sprites, and I’m still working on some of those re-designs, so things haven’t progressed as fast as I had hoped for, but I’m pretty optimistic to get some meaningful content ready for the update.There’s always a risk of delays, but if nothing unexpected happens, the update will be released before the month is over. If I fail to create enough content for the Winter Wilds, I may consider delaying only the content and release these improvements at the end of this month. Whatever the case, I will keep you informed when the time comes.I hope these news get you excited, because after this update Chronicles of Vaeltaja will be even better than ever before!Chronicles of Vaeltaja is currently 25% off.Thank You!Jani/Witchgrove Games
Chronicles of Vaeltaja Update V.0.8.8.4
Good day, Traveller!This update fixes the issue that caused the Honour to decrease when collecting monster parts from fleeing enemies to complete the certain House of Adventurers' quests. I have also made changes to some enemy mobs, and increased the drop rate for rare monster parts, not to mention some adjustments and optimization to ambient sounds.Patch Notes:Honour no longer decreases when hunting monster parts from fleeing enemies to complete House of Adventurers' quests.Bandit mobs in Pramea have been changed to Outlaw mobs.Bandit Archers have been added to some of the Bandit Cave enemy mobs.Bandit Boss chest has now more appropriate loot.Increased drop rate for rare enemy parts.Ambient sound adjustment and optimization.Reduced the echo in some caves and dungeons.I hope you enjoy these changes! See you in Twin Falls!Jani/Witchgrove Games
Days of Honour Update v.0.8.8.3
Good day, Traveller! Chronicles of Vaeltaja’s new update has arrived, and while it doesn’t bring any new content yet, it is still a solid update with lots of fixes, changes and some nice improvements to give some extra depth for the game. For a long time one of the gameplay mechanics have been bothering me: the Reputation/Honour system. While it has been a nice thing to have in the game, I’ve always felt it was a bit too shallow, and lacking the potential it could have. Since its release, the Reputation/Honour system has mostly determined how many of the NPCs react to the player, but I have always wanted it to do more than that. And now it does; I think my obsession with Ultima IV has finally paid off!This update splits the Reputation/Honour system into two separate mechanics with their own purposes. This means that now the player can have low Honour despite a good Reputation. While the Reputation mechanic does what it has been doing so far, the Honour mechanic is more tied to combat, though it has its use outside of combat too. Also, until now the Reputation/Honour has been sort of a hidden mechanic that hasn’t had any visible indicator. While I like the idea that the player is never too sure how the NPCs will react, it made the system a bit too vague for the player. From now on that has changed too.Reputation and Honour both have their own tiers, which are shown in the main menu above ‘Coins’. Both of them have eight tiers: Reputation: Corrupted, Infamous, Disreputable, Commoner, Honest, Reputable, Peerless and Immortal Honour: Outlaw, Honourless, Dastard, Craven, Freeman, Steadfast, Chivalrous and VirtuousReputation will increase or decrease the same way it has been doing since the beginning; by completing the main and side quests, and by making choices in the dialogue. Honour is a different beast; every enemy encounter has the potential to increase or decrease it. By acting honourable the player earns points to the Honour point pool, and once the player has earned seven positive or negative points, the numerical value of the Honour increases or decreases. Once the numerical value has increased/decreased enough, the Honour tier changes. Freeman and Craven are sort of neutral tiers, but once the player reaches Dastard or Steadfast tiers, characters start to earn bonuses to their parameters and element bonuses on each level-up. Naturally, the next tier increases the previous bonuses, but also adds more bonuses.To make things more interesting, each character class has their own individual bonuses. Also, negative tier bonuses are effective too, and they are different from the positive bonuses. Though, there are some exceptions: For example, Witch is sort of a neutral class that has the same bonuses on both tiers. Negative tiers can have some disadvantages: For example, on negative tiers Warrior becomes more reckless fighter with increased attack power, and decreased defense. If the Honour tier changes to lower, the characters will still have the gained bonuses from the higher tier, but they won’t increase until the player reaches the higher tier again. Same thing with the negative tiers. There are also some universal tier bonuses: Steadfast tier grants +25 EXP from every enemy encounter, while Dastard grants some extra coins, and so on. There is kind of Spiritual vs. Material division between the positive and negative tiers. Also, negative tiers are faster to achieve than the positive tiers.So, how does one earn those Honour pool points? Winning fair combat grants one point, and letting the weaker enemies to flee grants another. On the other hand, attacking fleeing enemies grants negative point, and so does escaping from the battle. Sounds easy, huh? Well, there’s a but: If the player tries to earn those points by acting honorable, but then makes a honourless decision before the tier increases, the Honour pool resets. Same thing with the negative tiers. In general, it is much easier to act selfish, and I wanted to bring this aspect to the game. But remember, some of the choices in quests can increase/decrease Honour’s numerical value too, bringing the next tier a little bit closer.Past couple of months have been a bit busy for me, so my development time has been more limited than I thought, but I have used all the spare time to work on the game. Unfortunately this month is still a bit busy, and I won’t be able to work on the game for the next couple of weeks, and my time online will be very limited. The good news is that things will calm down at the end of June, and then I will be able to get back into the full-time development. Due to these recent busy times, I didn’t have time to implement any in-game description of the tier bonuses; today is the only proper chance for me to release this update, and because of some crucial bug fixes, I wanted to be sure that the game is updated before Steam’s Summer Sale. This decision also gives me a few days window to monitor if some crucial bugs appear, and to release a quick fix, if needed.For my bad luck, I spent two days trying to fix an issue that actually wasn’t there, so that wasted some important time, and lead to this last moment decision to release the update without all the in-game details. But there are some other changes coming to some of the in-game descriptions later anyway, but until then the tier bonuses can be seen by tracking the parameter and element values in the Status Menu. Yes, the Element Damage Bonus column finally has a purpose! This reminds me that I added some new parameters in the Status Menu, and changed the names of some of them; Hit is now Accuracy, and so on.Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to test all the tiers with every character class, but the whole system seems to work in-general. All that said, the balance of the Honour system will probably need some more fine-tuning in the future. I have already done some overall balancing by increasing special attack damage for some enemies, but more will follow with the future updates. Three other important things about this update:1. I’ve added an experimental Shadow Optimization setting in the Options Menu. I didn’t have the chance to test it with a weaker setup, but in-theory it should improve the performance a little bit with weaker CPUs and GPUs. I noticed some very small improvement on my own setup, but if the game already runs good on your system, you won’t see any real difference if the Shadow Optimization is enabled. If you are playing the game with, for example Steam Deck, I would be interested to know if this setting has any visible effect.2. The Goo of a Rotten Fish has been added back to the game. It still doesn’t have any particular use (that will change in the future), so its there more for the fun to see how NPCs react to the player while carrying it. This time the player has the choice to take it or leave it in the crate, but it can also be returned to the same crate or be given to the Fisherman for storing, but you might have to complete the side-quest given by him first. Yes, the Fisherman now works properly too!3. The mysterious ‘Magic Map Bug’ is finally fixed. It turned out it wasn’t very mysterious after all; I just had forgotten one crucial detail on how the map data storing mechanic works when I made the last improvements on the auto-mapping system, so there were some map data overlapping and therefore causing the data corruption.About the Next Content UpdateI was having some issues making the Winter Wilds’ main dungeon interesting; once again the basic idea was good, but my ideas for executing it were lacking. Working on the new Reputation/Honour system gave me a needed break from the dungeon, and that paid off: Now I know how to make the dungeon much more unique and interesting. Because of this I will have to make some new assets, such as textures and sprites, but the good news is that I’ve already started working on them. I still plan to release the Great Northern Part 2 update during this summer, but like I said, the rest of the month is very busy, and the full-time development will continue after a couple of weeks. I will share more details about the release and the content once I know better.I hope you will like these new changes and fixes!Patch Notes New Stuff:Enhanced Reputation and Honour system with tiers and bonus rewards.Experimental Shadow Optimization setting.Some optional dialogue.Updated some of the core plugins to newer versions.Changes:Increased the damage of some enemy skills.Goo of a Rotten Fish is placed back into the crate with the option to leave it be, and to return it back into the crate. It can be also given to the Fisherman to store.Green Slime can no longer be poisoned.Reduced the echoing in Bandit Cave and Lake Road’s Underground Passage.Adjusted schedules of the NPCs in the Castle Town and Pramea to prevent lag.Pramean Mayor stands still waiting the player in the town square after the Lighthouse is compeleted.Pramean Mayor no longer ends dialogue too early, if Siren is still alive after the Lighthouse is completed.Adjusted ambient sounds in the Town of Pramea and the Islands of the Prophets.Adjusted illusion wall texture positions to hide the secret areas better in some of the dungeons.There were two NPCs named Seela in the Castle Town, so the other one’s name has been changed to Siralda.Changed sprite for the NPC named Pentar in the Castle Town, because one other NPC was already using the same sprite.Pramean House of Adventurers’ map icon has been changed to the correct one.Marilla’s name has been corrected in Gammen’s dialogue and Quest Journal entries of the ‘Family Heirloom’ quest.Removed the Map Piece I from the chest in the Old Tower (it is still in the same room where it should be, if the correct quest is active).Removed all the unnecessary and unused plugins.Some grammar and spelling error corrections in the NPC dialogue.Fixes:Magic Map no longer corrupts the certain floors in the Wizard Tower, Halls of Onkalo or in any other dungeon.Fisherman NPC works again, and the Goo of a Rotten Fish can be given to him for storing.Missing Ring quest is fixed.NPC named Lannek in Riverside South now works correctly, though he might not be interested to talk if you visit him at his home late in the evening; after all, he’s been working on the field the whole day, or at least standing there the whole day.The first main quest objective registers properly as ‘completed’ in the Quest Journal after the player accepts the quest from the king.Quest Journal updates correctly when talking to the Voice of the Prophets in the Temple of the Prophets.Witch Hunter’s Thorn Whip and all the arrow techniques use the correct skill parameters.Underground Lake House’s northeast secret button shows and works correctly.Soul Shard quest’s tree puzzles reset correctly, if the player doesn’t complete them.Orb of Passage scales properly in the 1st floor of the Temple of the Prophets.Statue of Prophet can be activated with mouse in the basement floor of the Temple of the Prophets.Leaf Pond’s Quest Administrator shows the correct amounts of monter parts in the quest descriptions. She also accepts correct amount of monster parts in each quest.Entering the west wing in the Castle displays correct name.Skybox no longer shows through one of the mountain walls in Riverside North.Fixed the texture glitch in one of the secret areas in Riverside South. I wish you a great summer and exciting adventurers in the kingdom of Twin Falls!Thank You! Jani/Witchgrove Games
