Hi! It’s been a while since our last update. The Fireball team has been going through a few changes – we’ve gained new information, onboarded new people, and switched to a new production tool so we have stronger project management and, more importantly, better estimates. After analyzing our new data, we decided that the early access release needs to be pushed back a little. 🕰️
Our goal was to release early access on September 30th at the latest. But as things sometimes go with creative projects, we underestimated the scale of some tasks. We wanted to avoid big issues that could arise from rushing things, so instead of putting more pressure on our developers (who are already working super hard), we shifted our priorities. It will take more time to complete all the features needed for a good early-access experience.
Thanks for understanding and for being such an awesome community. Here’s more info on what exactly we’re doing and what you can expect moving forward – and of course, enjoy some sneak peeks from our content department! ⬇️
Early Access Version Feature List 📜
In a few weeks, we’ll have the first version for internal testing so we get an idea of how everything is functioning. Once we’ve identified most of the bugs and design mistakes in our internal version, we’ll set an exact date for the early access version. 🗓️
To summarize, our new timeline looks like this:
The internal version released in a few weeks – you’ll get complete walkthrough videos
Time for bug fixing and optimization
The new official date for early access is set
If the early access version is a success, we’ll consider what other features to add first, make an estimation, and then give you more information about the official release.
This is what you’ll be able to do in the early access version:
As a Game Master
Create a campaign ✅ Ready
Invite friends by their usernames ✅ Ready
Role-play via chat ✅ Ready
Use whisper function to talk to only specific characters ✅ Ready
Talk to other users in an out-of-game chat room ✅ Ready
Access character sheets ✅ Ready
Setup ability checks and saving throws ✅ Ready
Edit characters’ hit points ✅ Ready
Change background scenes ✅ Ready
Manage characters’ items ⚒️ In Progress
Set up rest ⚒️ In Progress
Manage characters’ experience points ⚒️ In Progress
Set up conditions (paralyzed, blinded, etc.) ⚒️ In Progress
Set up exhaustion levels ⚒️ In Progress
Use a ready-made world map ⚒️ In Progress
As a Player
Create multiple characters ✅ Ready
Use both role-playing chat and out-of-game chat room ✅ Ready
Access your character sheet ✅ Ready
Manage your items ⚒️ In Progress
View features and spells ⚒️ In Progress
Level-up and multi-class ⚒️ In Progress
Edit your background information, alignment, and traits ⚒️ In Progress
All users will…
Receive notifications for new messages and game invitations ✅ Ready
Be able to send direct messages ✅ Ready
We’re also working on…
Underlying mechanics ✅ Ready
Features that have been pushed to the full release version and subsequent major updates:
GM-Player Matching (You can use our Discord for that in the meantime)
Editing the ready-made world map & creating your own from scratch
Location Maps
Battles
Ready-made adventures
Homebrewing
3D Dice
Again, we apologize for the delay, but we want to ship a product that you’ll love and use for years to come, so waiting a little bit more will be worth it. That’s a promise. ✊
While our iOS & Android teams are working on all this, the rest of the teams keep improving the product.
We’re Creating a Lively Fantasy World! 🗺️
Our content team grew into two people: Mar, our writer, was joined by Tom – an experienced content designer and project manager who previously worked at Bohemia Interactive, the studio behind hit games like Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis and the ARMA series. He is also a HUUUGE Dungeons & Dragons nerd. 🐉
Mar & Tom are currently putting together the first region in the Fireball world, where you’ll discover the first ready-made adventures. We want to create stories full of complex NPCs & Villains, hard moral choices, and adventures with nerve-wracking climaxes – available in the full release version.
Take a sneak peek of our short class descriptions to get a sense of our new writing. ✍️
Avatar Builder & New Background Scenes Are Ready! 🎨
It’s been two months since Anna and Stan joined Chris in his efforts to make this app as visually stimulating as possible, and lately they’ve been working day and night on the Avatar Builder. You’ll be able to create a custom look for your characters. For each race and gender there will be variations of hair styles, clothes, and facial features. For some races you’ll be able to customize special elements, like a Tiefling’s horns! 👿
Choose a thematic scene as a background for your in-game chat. 🖼️ Scenes are static images – such as a shadowy cavern or a bright town square – that add the atmosphere of a specific location to your game. The Game Master can change the scene at any time. We have a lot of scenes drawn and ready, and more are on the way!
Now the art team will be focusing more on monsters, item & spell icons, and map elements.
Refined User Experience: Matching, Ready-Made Adventures, Battle ⚔️
For the past two months, Jan was working on game design. We felt there was still room for improvement, so we refined a few of the features that are coming your way.
Matching 👯 players and GMs together is critical to us, because 82% of people have no one to play with, according to our initial research.
Ready-Made Adventures are important as well. You can focus on the game itself and not get overwhelmed by a prep-time, especially if you’re new to role-playing. The new ready-made adventure design is stronger on story branching and chapter navigation. A quest-relevant collection of NPCs, Monsters, and Key Items will be also easily accessible. 🧰
The Battle feature is one of the hardest to design and program, so we’re still working on it. Our goals are to make battle actions more simple. It should be also easy to create a battle map and control characters, monsters, or NPCs. We’re also very grateful to our Discord community for all the constructive feedback! 🙏
Thank you for your patience. We’ll do our best to deliver a truly high-quality product as soon as we can.
We understand you might have questions. Feel free to ask us anything on Discord, Instagram, or Facebook. 💬
Thank you! Fireball Team