Dragonkin: The Banished Interview: Devs Almost Added A Full Fledged Morality System

I think it’s fair to say that Dragonkin is better than Chaosbane in every gameplay aspect. We learned a lot with our first Hack & Slash and, I believe, significantly improved the game experience.

So players who enjoyed Chaosbane should enjoy Dragonkin as well. That said, Chaosbane was set in the Games Workshop universe, which attracted players who weren’t necessarily fans of the Hack & Slash genre. I hope those players will enjoy the world we’ve created for Dragonkin.

We wanted two things for Dragonkin’s universe: Medieval Fantasy and Dragons! Eric Chantreau, the Creative Director, built the whole world around that simple idea. Of course, the world has its own unique features and depth, which players will discover especially throughout the story mode.

We’re putting a lot of effort into that story. For now, only the Prologue and Chapter 1 are available in Early Access, and the rest of the story will arrive with the final release.
So if we add more lore-related content, it will be after the full release.

It’s something we thought about at one point during the design phase. We wanted to differentiate players who chose to side with the Dragonkin by consuming Dragon blood from those who stayed loyal to humanity. But it made the game very unbalanced, prevented players from switching paths, and essentially turned it into two separate games, which didn’t make much sense anymore.

We did keep some elements of that idea, though, through class specializations with the Wyrmlings.

The grid works with fragments that contain skills and modifiers. We’ll be adding more with each update, not to mention the new character that’s on the way. That said, the new fragments won’t be any rarer or more hidden than the existing ones.

The Wyrmlings are indeed a core part of the theorycraft, they’re literally your character’s specialization. Every time we change or improve a game system, we consider this aspect. For example, in the first major update, we’re adding a lot of Artisans, and nearly all of them can influence or optimize how your Wyrmlings function.

The first thing that comes to mind is that our game doesn’t require any internet connection to play. Even when we add online features during Early Access, players will still be able to play offline.

Also, even for the online mode, we’re keeping server dependency to a minimum. Only the town, which you can share and improve with friends, will be stored on a server, the core gameplay will run peer-to-peer.

It’s literally half of our current development time. We monitor, analyze, listen, and interact with our players. From that, we gather insights and make specific updates. I can mention, for example, improved combat feel, new camera options, accessibility settings, major balancing tweaks for leveling, and more.

We always hope our game will be well-received. Releasing in Early Access is definitely a risk, some players expect a fully polished product and are disappointed. But we believe it will pay off in the long run. We’re making heavy use of player feedback. It also gives us some distance to reassess balancing, which is crucial for this kind of game.

For now, we’re focusing on the game modes we’ve already announced. Our current system with the Hunting Board seems to be well-liked, and we’ll refine and expand it in the first major update.

We don’t want the game to turn into a live service. We might add more content as DLCs, but the core experience should remain the same for all players who bought the game.

No! No official modding is planned.