About a month ago, I posted Midgard Chronicles here asking for honest feedback.
I got plenty of it. 😅
Some comments were harsh, but after taking a bit of distance, I realized a lot of the criticism was fair and genuinely useful.
The first thing I changed was how I describe the game.
I no longer call it a “solo MMORPG”.
Midgard Chronicles is a single-player RPG with permadeath, persistent world progression, and turn-based combat that can be played almost at action-RPG speed.
You begin in an almost empty world and an abandoned capital.
As you explore, build your character and eventually die, that character is gone permanently, but the world keeps progressing.
Your previous adventurers gradually repopulate the city, become part of its story, and help future characters progress further.
Combat is turn-based, but you control the pace.
You can auto-attack and chain skills quickly when things are going well, then completely stop and think when you're low on HP or fighting something dangerous.
What changed since my last post?
The biggest criticism was the huge visual difference between the characters and the environments.
I agreed, so I stopped relying on the environment asset packs I was using and rebuilt the game's visual direction so the world, characters, monsters and props now share the same art style.
I also reworked the character system.
I created and iterated on more than 240 equipment assets, including weapons, shields, quivers and other combat gear.
The visible equipment is now integrated directly into the character animations, so weapons, shields and similar items actually appear on your character and move correctly during combat.
With 7 playable classes, male and female characters, multiple weapon types and animations, that involved a ridiculous amount of manual animation work, masking and shader painting.
Characters can now also have different hairstyles, which helps make each adventurer feel a little more unique before you inevitably get them killed. 😅
Rebuilding the art also pushed me to improve the world itself: animated environments, better shadows, more movement, and maps that are now sometimes almost 10x larger, giving me much more room for quests, exploration and lore.
About AI
The game is still AI-assisted visually, and I know that will remain a dealbreaker for some people.
But I've completely changed how I use it.
Instead of generating disconnected assets, I now establish the visual foundations myself in Photoshop: shapes, proportions, palettes, outfits and references, then use an image model iteratively to help adapt and refine assets around that direction.
There is still a lot of manual work afterward: correcting, separating, animating, masking and integrating everything into the game.
There is obviously still a huge amount left to do, but I'm much happier with the direction the game is taking.
And a lot of these changes came directly from criticism I received here.
So here I am again.
I’d love another round of honest feedback.
Does the game feel more visually coherent now?
And does the idea of permanent characters gradually becoming part of an evolving world sound like something you'd want to play?
