Cralon - Dev Update #002 + Trailer

As you may know, we’re also following Cralon, a game developed by the creators of the original Gothic, Risen, and Elex. It’s being made by Pithead Studio, founded by Björn and Jennifer Pankratz.If you’re interested in previous news about Cralon, just type Cralon into the search bar on our website to find the full update history.

Now to the latest Dev Update:

Welcome to our next update! Today we’d like to share our thoughts on the save and load system in the game.

Flexible Save Points

In the RPG we’re aiming to create, the ability to save the game at any moment – regardless of where the player currently is – offers several key advantages over fixed save points or checkpoints. When players can save at any time, they gain more freedom and control over their progression.

This reduces frustration in difficult situations or against tough enemies, as these challenges can be tackled in smaller steps instead of repeating long sequences.

Additionally, flexible saving allows players to experiment with different strategies or choices without fear of permanent consequences. Whether or not you accept those consequences in the end – that’s entirely up to you.

Technical Challenges

Such freedom also comes with certain challenges, as we developers need to be careful not to overload storage with excessively large files.

When allowing saves at any moment, we have to account for various possible situations to ensure players don’t accidentally “break” their save files. For example, if a player is critically low on health and taking damage at the same time, saving should be disabled — otherwise, the save could become unusable.

Implementing flexible saving can also be technically demanding, especially in games with complex mechanics or large open worlds.

Moreover, the save system shouldn’t be used as a way to bypass challenges or make them too easy.

Solution

For this reason, in Cralon we decided to implement a system of automatic save points combined with a limited number of manually usable save slots. This way, you can always load the game and decide when to use a save point — but at the same time, you’ll need to think carefully about the right moment to save, without wasting memory unnecessarily.

You can find more about our thoughts and decisions on our YouTube channel:🔗 https://www.youtube.com/@pitheadstudio

Thank you for your interest — see you soon!

Jenny & Björn

New Trailer