Boz Universe

The Chronicle

Changelog

What has changed in Boz Universe, newest first. The game is in development; nothing here is a release yet.

  1. Craft where you stand, skill trees as night skies, and a new way to talk

    The Craft tab shows what you can make where you are, the workbench arrives, skill trees become constellations with an icon for every skill, talk sits over the world, and the quest board shows its jobs as cards.

    Crafting

    • The Craft tab: a recipe book with a chip per craft, what you can make first, and the grid for where you stand, by hand, at a workbench, at an anvil, at a forge or at a fire.
    • The workbench: a heavy table for carpentry, bowcraft, tinkering and tailoring, built from 6 logs and 4 sticks.
    • Each slot in the grid shows green or red by what you carry, and your village's chests count.

    Skills

    • Skill trees as night skies: branches are constellations and perks are stars, lit as you take them.
    • A painted icon for every one of the 53 skills.

    Quests and talk

    • Talk without a window: words over the world like subtitles, and answers you pick by number.
    • Quests on offer and ready to hand in are marked in talk, with a card saying what they ask and pay.
    • The quest board shows its jobs as cards: take one, follow it, or hand it in where you stand.

  2. Quests, a cleaner screen, and a painted icon for every item

    Quests arrive with First Steps, daily jobs and people with work for you; the screen is cleared of panels; one pause menu holds every window; and all 326 items have painted icons.

    Quests

    • First Steps: a seven-step chain that starts the first time you enter a world, from your first sticks to your first fight.
    • Daily quests, and a quest board in the camp with three jobs a day.
    • People with work for you: a gold ! over someone with a quest, a ? over the one to hand it in to. The camp's smith, provisioner, tailor, healer and magistrate, and the hamlets' folk.
    • The quest log on F7: claim rewards and follow up to three quests on screen.
    • A world's owner can write quest packs for their own world, and everyone who joins plays them.

    The screen and the menus

    • A clean screen: nothing sits behind what is shown, close to the edges, with a setting for TVs that cut off their edges.
    • When your health drops low, the sides of the screen glow red.
    • One pause menu holds every window under tabs: Gear, Craft, Skills, Quests, Codex and Settings, switched with Q and E or L1 and R1.
    • The Gear tab: your bag as cards on their rarity's colour, you with your ten worn slots, and the chosen thing compared with what you wear.
    • A painted icon for every one of the game's 326 items.

    Building and crafting

    • Drag a room or a line: floors and roofs fill a rectangle, walls and fences run along a line, up to 64 pieces at once.
    • Workshops: add-ons beside a forge, anvil or fire raise it a level, up to Forge IV, for more skill and quicker work.
    • On your village's land, the chests feed the benches: the craft window counts what is in them and takes only what you are short of.

  3. Shared villages, karma for kills, and the Codex

    Playing together now shares the village, ponds and boats; kills move your karma; every hamlet has a guard; and the Codex keeps everyone you have met.

    Playing together

    • A world's village is shared: whoever lights the hearth first founds it, and the founder chooses who builds on its land.
    • Ponds you pour, loose stones and moored boats are shared too; anyone can board a boat.

    The world

    • Kills move your karma: hunting evil creatures raises it, killing good ones costs it.
    • Every hamlet has a guard by its fire, in its people's own style, who fights the Ashen and goes for the wanted.
    • The Codex (F2): everyone and everything you have met, by people, the camp and the creatures. Meet all of a people's folk to become a Friend of their land.

  4. Playing together begins, skill trees, hamlets and blueprints

    Five more skill trees, hamlets of the peoples to visit and learn from, blueprints to build again anywhere, new arrows and a repeating crossbow, the first steps of playing together, and a season shop that sells looks only.

    Playing together

    • Host a world from the Play screen, for just you, your home network, or friends with a password; friends join it from Join a friend.
    • Chat with the people in your world: Enter to type, and ready phrases on a controller.
    • Building, digging, gathering, the farm field and the chests are shared, so you can build the same village together.
    • Fight the world's creatures side by side. The loot goes to whoever lands the killing blow.
    • Your character on each server: your name, look, people and element go everywhere, while skills, gear and karma belong to each world.
    • Players can fight each other if the host allows it, under the law: names in colour, criminals and murderers, remains anyone can loot, and the magistrate, camp guards and bounty hunters.

    Skills and their trees

    • Martial Arts takes Wrestling's place, with a tree of Striking, Grappling and Flow. A character from before keeps their points.
    • The Archery tree: Bowman, Crossbowman and Fletcher.
    • The Farming tree: faster growth, stronger watering and double harvests.
    • The Lumberjacking tree: faster chopping, more logs from a felled tree and rare woods more often.
    • Smelting is a skill of its own: melt ore into ingots, and sand dug on a shore into glass and then bottles. A character from before gets Smelting equal to their Mining.
    • Learn from people: villagers, stallholders and settlers teach the first steps of their trades for a little gold.

    Bows and fire

    • Draw a bow by holding the attack: a full draw hits half again as hard.
    • Fire, frost, blunt and barbed arrows that burn, slow, stun or make a foe bleed.
    • The repeating crossbow: ten light bolts in quick order, then a reload.
    • Searing Ray, a beam of fire for Pyromancy.
    • Painted icons for the elements' moves and the archery arts.

    The world and its peoples

    • Hamlets of the land's peoples out in seeded worlds, each with an elder, a stallkeeper and workers who teach.
    • Norse and Turkic hamlets have their own folk: the jarl's steward, the bondi, a skald and a runecarver; the aksakal, a horse-master, a kam and an ozan.
    • Some nights the Ashen, grey-skinned and fireless, raid a hamlet you are near. Drive them off and the elder pays.
    • Each of the ten peoples has its own crest and banner.

    Building and villages

    • Blueprints: draw a building at a drafting table and build it again anywhere, turned as you like. Pieces you had not learned you learn from the plan.
    • Hamlet elders sell their people's plans, such as a Norse longhouse or a Turkic yurt, and vendors buy blueprints back.
    • A village's land grows with each tier, marked by boundary stones. The founder and the builders they allow build there.
    • Your village can fly a flag of your own.

    Seasons and looks

    • The season shop now sells looks only: skins for your gear, never anything that makes you stronger.
    • Items can wear skins that change how they look while they work just the same.

    Controller

    • Quick actions on the pad, so fewer things need the menu.

    The game

    • A new logo: the sun and the night meeting in grey round a newborn world.

  5. The first hour, the Chronicler, and a world that grew

    A new character's first hour is playable from the cold open to the reveal, the Chronicler speaks, and the world grew villages, raids, caves, boats, water and a dragon.

    Story

    • The cold open: the Sundering, drawn line by line as the Chronicler tells it.
    • The Chronicler speaks: 34 voiced lines, with subtitles, the music lowering under the voice.
    • The first hour: every new character wakes on a seam-shard of their own and plays eleven steps, from bare hands to the reveal, with a young archivist of the Nazars beside them.

    The world

    • Seeded worlds about two kilometres across that load around you as you travel, with hills, highlands, lakes and a rim of mountains.
    • Each world is two peoples' lands, each with its own ground, trees, creatures and weather.
    • The land runs on to the horizon in fog. Day and night, six weathers, lightning, and creatures that only walk at night.
    • Caves and crypts under the world, built from each world's seed, with deeper levels, spiders with poison and webs, and draugr.
    • Lakes to swim and dive in, each land's own fish, and the lake wyrm in the big lakes.

    Building and making

    • A build menu of every piece you know, with a quick bar, groups and search; pieces are discovered as you play.
    • Walls and fences snap to the edge you point at; building switches to first person and back.
    • Dig, heap and level the ground, and tread paths you walk faster on.
    • Move water with a bucket: ponds fill from the bottom, overflow runs downhill, and ditches dug at a lake fill from it.
    • Var and Yok on the building grid: levers, threads, shade stones, delay crystals and lamps.
    • Machines: the stone digger, the planter, forge bellows, the conveyor belt and a 48-slot storage chest.
    • Gathering you can see: stones to pick up, trees that fall and rocks that crumble when worked out. Crafting shares the build menu's style.
    • Each people's land has its own look for what you build and make.

    Villages

    • A hearth founds a village. The wooden hamlet brings settlers who cut wood and forage; the stone village adds stonecutters, farmers and a trader.
    • Raiders come some nights, batter your walls and run off with food. A palisade and a watchtower help; settlers shelter, and walls can be mended.
    • Pens and ranching: penned animals make eggs, wool, milk and truffles.

    Out in the world

    • Sailing: rafts, rowboats and longships on the lakes, and the Sailing skill. Fish from the deck.
    • Camping, Tracking and Spirit Speak; Peacemaking, Provocation and Discordance on an instrument.
    • Hiding, stealing, locked chests, traps and poison.
    • A map that charts the land as you walk, and Cartography.
    • The dragon, and free flight on flying mounts up to where the air grows thin.
    • Mounts have their own stamina; Riding and Athletics are skills; stables to keep them.

    Controls and interface

    • Three camera views: overhead, a follow camera you turn, and first person. L2 aims over the shoulder.
    • A shooter-style controller layout; holding L1 shows what each action slot does.
    • Stamina for sprinting, jumping, dodging and heavy blows.
    • Accounts on your PC, each with its own characters and worlds.
    • A settings window, a stick dead zone for worn controllers, larger text, first-time hints, and a log with tabs.
    • Warned big blows: shapes on the ground before bosses and elites strike.
    • A cel-shaded look with ink outlines, and the Boz Universe crest on the title and loading screens.

  6. Boz Universe goes 3D

    The first 3D slice of Boz Universe, with most of the game's systems carried over, the four elements, and everything playable on a controller.

    The 3D game

    • A first 3D slice of the world, with real models for people, gear, animals and the Proving Grounds camp.
    • Fighting, archery, bandages, gathering, crafting, farming, pets and mounts, spells, saving, the backpack and the character window, all in 3D.
    • Hadrik's ring: the gauntlet and the champion duels.
    • Death as a ghost, healing stones and healers.

    Magic and fighting

    • Elemental magic: fire, water, earth and air, with moves, energy and specialties, and the Elements window.
    • Fury, special arts, ultimates and skill trees for Swordsmanship and Mining.
    • Heavy attacks, cleave, target rings and jumping.
    • Loot beams, item levels, salvage, comparing gear, and reforging at the anvil.

    Who you are

    • Your people and path as the first step of making a character.
    • Clan skills for every people, and three new peoples: Indian, Egyptian and Inca.
    • Words of power in the old scripts.
    • Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence that grow by use.
    • Start from nothing: the tool in your hand decides what you gather, from wood to Seamsteel.

    Look and sound

    • The dark-gold interface: Cinzel and Alegreya, filigree frames, tabs, compass and minimap.
    • Music in the world, birdsong and animal voices; title and character-creation music.
    • Every window can be steered with the d-pad.

  7. Play with a controller

    Boz Universe can be played with a PS5 controller, or any other.

    Controls

    • Play with a PS5 controller or any other pad.

  8. Pets that grow, and the ring

    Pets level up, learn tricks and breed, and Hadrik's ring opens with the gauntlet and champion duels.

    Pets and the ring

    • Pets grow, learn tricks and can be bred.
    • The ring: the gauntlet, champion duels, and sparring for pets.

  9. The first prototype

    Boz Universe began as a single-player 2D prototype on a northern shore, and grew most of its systems in a few days.

    Where it started

    • A single-player 2D prototype on the Midgard shore, with melee combat, skills and karma.
    • Inventory, paperdoll and looting; gathering and crafting with a skill cap and titles.
    • Magic with a spellbook and reagents; tailoring, alchemy, archery and bowcraft; farming.
    • Animal taming and pets; mounts, and flying on the sky-drake.
    • Markets with living prices, vendors and a bank; the Proving Grounds.
    • Thieves' skills; bard skills; camping, tracking and spirit speak.
    • Boats, sailing, deep-sea fishing, sea serpents and treasure maps.
    • Death as a ghost, healers and healing stones.
    • Quests with chains and a quest board; deeds and titles; seasons and challenges.
    • The first pieces of Boz's own art, starting with the anvil.