2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!
I just realized that today marks 2 years since I created the first playable copy of what has now become Spellswords! Even though the development and ideas were coming together in primitive forms back in 2021, it wasn't until 2024 that I managed to piece together a fully playable version.
To celebrate the occassion, I wanted to take a look back at some key dates to see how far the game has come.
- May 23, 2024
- First playable copy of ‘The Terror of Drakthyr’ was created. This version had a 120+ page event book to flip through that was very similar to Barbarian Prince.
- July 7, 2024
- The game was overhauled to be more like the version it is today (without the event book) and renamed to ‘The Terror of Drakar’
- March 16, 2025
- The first public playtest of the game was released under the game’s now current title of ‘Spellswords’ (this version was on Google Drive for a long time, but the download stats were never visible)
- April 12, 2025
- Completely redesigned the world map
- September 2, 2025
- The Spellswords itch.io page was created, published, and a completely overhauled version of the game was released for the public to playtest
- September 11, 2025
- Reached 200 downloads on itch.io
- October 27, 2025
- Reached 400 downloads on itch.io
- January 8, 2026
- Reached 500 downloads on itch.io and Introduced a massive graphic redesign of the cards to bring it closer to a professional standard
- February 5, 2026
- Overhauled the look of the Dwellings book
- February 16, 2026
- The playtest documents were removed as maintaining them took away from development time.
- March 8, 2026
- Overhauled the look of the character sheet
- March 11, 2026
- Overhauled the look of the dungeon maps sheet
- May 14, 2026
- Overhauled the look of the Cities & Villages sheet
- May 15, 2026
- Overhauled the look of the spellbook covers
- May 20, 2026
- Reached 70 followers on itch.io
The Future of Spellswords
Of course, there was a whole lot more things that happened in those 2 years, but these are just a few things that came to my mind as I looked back. And, as the game has come so far, in the next update I will be taking the game out of its 'Alpha' phase and into its 'Beta' phase where I will be focussing my efforts more and more on playtesting and getting the balance and fun feeling as good as it can.
As we're approaching this new phase in game development, the future of the game is looking very bright and I’m very optimistic about a very late 2026 or sometime-in-2027 release date. My goal is to give the game a max of 1 year in the beta stage, but life sometimes gets in the way and development is sometimes put on the back burner for a bit.
What Else Needs to Be Done?
- Lots and lots of playtesting. This is the main thing that needs to be done as it dictates what else needs to be done. I’m particularly focussing now on the balance of encounters to see what is too easy or too difficult.
- Create the Oracle cards
- Write the following sections in the Rulebook: The Game Master, The Oracle, a huge example of play that starts at character creation and ends after finishing up a cave dungeon, and make sure multiplayer rules are clear throughout the rulebook.
- Continuously make formatting adjustments to all components so they look as professional and thematic as possible
- Compile a list of all of the artists I use for the art I’ve purchased and the art I use that’s royalty free (will be a long list for sure)
- Consider redesigning everything in Affinity according to the printing standards of whatever company I choose to use to print the game (considering either DriveThruRPG or the Game Crafter).
- Create a video showcasing the newest version of the game (the first video I made is extremely outdated and no longer appropriately represents the game in its current state)