Category Balrum news

We listened to you guys! The most requested addition to our game is companions! With our budget we can’t do companions the way most of you would like, and to be honest Balrum would not be the game it is with a large group. But, we always played with the idea of pets. Meaningful pets that are a strategic addition to combat! So we are announcing the addition of pets to the game! Pets won’t change the game as drastically like a full group of companions would, this way the main character stays a mysterious loner . As with nearly everything pets are an option, if you don’t like the idea of having an animal companion you can simply ignore the feature, we won’t force you to have a pet. To make pets meaningful pets in Balrum will have skills and will level up just like the player, and like your skills pet skills need to be trained they won’t just magically appear, you have to find someone (or a book) who can help you train your pet. There will be different types of pets:
-tank Bear/Boar
-melee Wolf/Spider
-ranged Spider/Eagle
-support Wisp/Deer
You will be able to order commands to your pet so you have total control over them. Your pet will have it’s own inventory(the poor thing will have to carry your stuff, not all pets have inventory space).
Pets will level up faster than the player but can’t be higher level than the player. This allows you to change your pet and have your new companion ready for real combat in a reasonable amount of time.
Taming will have to be learned! You will find NPCs around the world who will teach you the skill. There will be multiple levels of the taming skill and progressing in this skill will allow you to more tightly bond with your pet resulting in buffs and other interesting effects. You will be able to tame every animal in Balrum. So if you want a pig as your pet you can have your mighty warrior pig!

Also as this is a new feature (though we had plans for pets early on) we invite you to our forums where you can share your ideas with everyone and help us make decisions regarding pets. Pets will be financed out of our pockets.

Voodoo Island is an island close to the main continent and is inhabited by a peaceful tribe who live their lives in harmony with nature. The people of the island are religious extremist who won’t tolerate other beliefs than theirs. Voodoo Islands wildlife is distinct from the wildlife on the main continent. You can find exotic plants and exotic animals on this island.

Our Kickstarter page is up! If you can, please help us spread the word! Thank you!

Check out our campaign here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/balconyteam/balrum

Since quite a few gameplay mechanics are affected by light in Balrum we thought that sound should affect these mechanics too! So now if you wear heavy armor your footsteps can be heard more easily than if you were wearing leather. Or if you make lots of noise creating a camp, or crafting something, wildlife might get aware of you!

Here are a few things that are in the game because of our community! A huge thanks for you guys!
And thanks to you, we now know that we are on the right track!

Hope you like the list!

Wound system: For example if a bear critical strikes you, there is a huge chance that you will receive a bleed debuff that might last for a 100 turns, to get rid of this debuff you need to properly tend to your wounds!
Durability: Simple items will degrade with use, but magic items won’t!
A little randomness to crafting: Now you know that nearly in every game if you find a recipe, that recipe will give you an item exactly what it describes. What we mean by a „little randomness to crafting” is that there is a 20-30% random factor to every crafting.
Crafting outcome: You can fail, critically fail, succeed, and critically succeed in creating your items. For example if you critically succeed in creating your potion it will be more powerful than a simple successful create.
Truly Cruel AI: We wanted to make bosses in the game really hard to defeat, and our community voted yes on our idea, so you can expect bosses that are going to be a real challenge.
Rumors: NPCs will talk about rumors and you will be able to see what they are talking about in small and hopefully not ugly chat bubbles.
Random events:
-Forest fire
-Boss spawn
-Epidemics
-Rare mobs that only spawn at a specific time and place, for a specific amount of time. NPCs can give you hints where these mobs have been seen ..etc. (or they might spawn if the proper ritual is completed)
Don’t forget replay value: Each big guild in the game will give the player a different approach to the game, also if you choose different skills to level this will also give you a different feel to your character. (this means that we will give true meaning to skills and they will make the game different)

Naturally replay value was in our original plans, but the guys on the forums directed us in the right way with it.

We always loved to create huge battles with the engine for a little fun.
We had so much fun with these silly simulations, that we decided to add a few bigger battles to the game.

Here you can see one of our simulations:  (simply a silly simulation)

Also, here is how zoom looks like at the moment:

Hi everyone!

In the past few days a lot of things happened to us. We received lots of comments, and we like to thank those who helped us with constructive comments! A special thanks to those of you who are actively trying to help us with your ideas and suggestions on our forums! In the past week we realised that we probably made a mistake. The mistake was that, that we kept the project to ourselves for too long! Seeing the great ideas on our forums made us rethink things. We are going to start the kickstarter campaign a few months after we originally planned! We would like to start the campaign knowing, that we tried to put everything that our community wants in the game! So we humbly ask you to join us in creating an indie RPG! Anyone who has ideas/suggestions feel free to post it on our forums!

We plan on creating polls that will decide if a feature or idea will be a part of the game.

We think that this was a necessary step in creating a game that not only we love, but you guys too!

See you at the forums!

The start of our Kickstarter campaign is rapidly approaching! We are working on our pitch video right now. These are hard times, but the sun is shining and we received many kind comments that gave us a boost! Thank you for that guys!

We put together a little promo video for the project. Hope you like it!
This is a really early build of the game! (pre-alpha)

We at BalconyTeam would like to welcome you to our website.
Our first project is: Balrum.
Balrum is a 2D isometric fantasy RPG made by 2 guys who love PC RPG games.
The game is a little bit of Gothic, Arx Fatalis, The Elder Scrolls, Eschalon Book, Ultima, Neverwinter Nights and you can find a little bit of Thief, Diablo, Arcanum and so on.
We played a lot of games… now we try to pull together all the best things that we loved in our favourite games and put all that into Balrum.
To find out more about Balrum, check out the “Balrum” button above.

Have a nice day!