Hi everyone!
It's been close to 2 months since the last update, and we've been super hard at work! Not only have we been porting the game to consoles such as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox, but we've also been doing the final content additions, QOL changes, and balancing adjustments for the final update!
Of course, as I mentioned in the previous update, we added 3 new characters! I'll only be showing 1 for now, but they've all got super cool designs (especially the final one), and incredibly unique mechanics. For example, the one that I show below can't heal in campfires, and instead heals a bit after every single round. This sounds simple in principle, but you can make use of this ability incredibly well if you pair it up with some of the new trinkets that give you bonuses whenever you heal in combat (which this counts as)!
We've also added tons of trinkets, and below you can see an example of one of them! As you can see, it triggers an effect whenever you heal in battle... Can you imagine a character this pairs up well with? ;)
The new weapons we've added in this update are incredibly impactful, and some have more utility than just "deals more damage in a different way". My favourite one however is the Melee Chain, which starts off really weak, but you can power it up to insane levels - way more so than any other weapon in the game. If you have the right character (or one of the new upgrade-related trinkets), it might even be the best weapon in the game.
You'll need to make use of all of these new powerful interactions though, since the game now has 10 ascension levels! The changes in these range from basic power increasers like "enemies are stronger", to more interesting modifiers like giving you less time to beat bosses.
If you manage to beat ascension 10, not only will you unlock the final character, but also the final area of the game.
The interactable crystal that you can see above allows you to unlock a special skin for each of the characters that you've beaten ascension 10 with, so there's an added reward for being a completionist! The two screenshots below show how the new Robot character gets a pink skin, and Gale gets a fiery red skin.
Apart from raw content additions, we've also added ways to allow you to give the game some extra spice. For example, the ice area now has a hidden gadget that lets you turn on a retro filter!
Another one is that the sand area has a hourglass that lets you change the overworld's time of day as you can see below.
We've also added a new introductory cutscene to the game when you play it for the first time, which not only gives you a breakdown of what everything in the overworld does, but it also develops the worldbuilding a bit!
Other additions include a few minor QOL improvements like the adjusting of the menus buttons to make it easier to navigate with a controller (and it makes it faster on mouse + keyboard too)!
Finally, one huge thing coming to the game as a result of the console porting we've been doing is immense performance improvements! The Switch is quite underpowered compared to most PCs, and so we've made a variety of CPU-side and GPU-side optimizations that should make the game run incredibly smoothly even on potatoes! The optimization is actually what has been taking up most of our time since the last update, so that's part of why this one has taken a bit longer than usual.
Anyways, that's it for this update and we're excited to be releasing the final one soon to take the game out of Early Access! The game is on discount for just $3.99 right now, so it's an absolute steal, and it might be the cheapest you'll be able to get the game for a while given that we're launching out of Early Access soon! If you want to support all the work we're putting into the game, leaving a review would be super appreciated! It really is THE best way to help us out!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1714240/Soul_Stalker/
That's it for this update, and see you in the next one :)
- Conrad, Lead Developer
