Our Development Roadmap
Korppi Games is very proud to present our first road map for Goblin Camp!
First, the necessary disclaimer: while we want to be as transparent as possible about our goals and schedules, the size of our team and the unpredictable nature of game development means we can’t make binding commitments to specific dates. This roadmap represents our aims for the future, but we also need to be clear that plans can and do change.
That said, here’s a lovely visualization of what we’ve got planned for you!
Let’s look at the big picture first. We’ve already had one closed playtest: thank you to everyone who participated, your feedback has been very valuable to us! We’re currently hard at work on the demo, which we hope to bring to you in the first half of 2024. Our goal is to be in Early Access later this year, and within a year or two of that, we’re aiming to have the game ready for full release. And that’s not all, because we’re definitely not stopping development then. We hope to be able to stick with this game for a long time.
In the first playtest stage, players were able to set up traditional farm plots and engage in slash-and-burn farming, a fun and dramatic way to get extra fertility for their farms. The main crop was the pinnacle of goblin cuisine: the noble turnip. Players had access to wood and clay as materials, and could build structures in three tiers: outdoor, earthfast and plank and pole. The game world changes seasons, and already features our advanced water and fire simulations. Goblins are already very autonomous, and can figure out how to build and make things without the player having to walk them through the intermediate stages. They were occasionally menaced by wolves, but guard posts and palisades were available to keep the settlement safe.
For the demo, we’re working on something several of our playtesters requested: more food sources! Goblins will be able to harvest some berries and fruits from the forest, but more importantly and more sustainably, we’re working on implementing fishing. At first, the goblins can catch fish in shallow water with spears. There will be new wooden structures, and we’re also looking to get started with earthworks in the form of ditches. We’re also working on new enemies, and most importantly, our goal is to introduce the shaman in the demo! The shaman will be able to command the spirits of the dead to do his bidding. We’re very excited about introducing a magic system based on ancient Finnic paganism.
After the demo, we’re looking at several new features for Early Access. Obviously this is where everything becomes more tentative, because we’re looking forward to feedback from our players, but some of the ideas we’re developing for early access include more advanced weather, including storms and spring floods, and bringing in dwarven metal as a material for tools and weapons. Goblins will also be able to use shields and armor to keep themselves safe, which they’ll need when they meet the new enemies we’re planning. We’ll also bring in new songs for the shaman, more structures and a morale system for the goblins.
Once we’re in Early Access, our goals include expanding the food system with more advanced forms of fishing, and introducing hunting expeditions. We’re planning to bring in the stone quarry and stone as a construction material and more complex earthworks. A key feature will be a summer ceremony where the shaman is in a central role – that is, unless you choose to play without one. Our goblins will also become more fully fledged individuals: they’ll have personal traits and gather experience as they live and work in the camp. We’re also thinking about more crops, more buildings, more enemies; in Goblin Camp, more is more!
Beyond that, we’ve got lots of ideas, but at this point yet another warning is very necessary: this is reaching several years into the future. By then, we hope to add several new map features and in general, have a more advanced map generation system. New terrain features will include swamps, where players will be able to send their goblins to harvest bog iron. We’re thinking about brick buildings and taking the farming system further into the medieval agricultural revolution, with heavy ploughs and fertilizer to dramatically improve farming productivity. We’d really like to include the traditional Finnish musical instrument, the kantele, in the actual game, and something we were talking about doing as far ago as the original Goblin Camp was introducing some kind of interaction with areas adjacent to the game map. But this is all very much up in the air!
What we hope you take away from this roadmap is that we’ve got loads of ideas for Goblin Camp, and we’re hoping to spend several years working on it. Again, we can’t make any binding promises that these specific features will make it into the final game, but we’re trying to give a snapshot of the kind of things we’re working on and planning, and an idea of the schedule we’re hoping to accomplish them in. Thanks for reading! We’re hard at work making these plans a reality.
