Hello dear community.
The time has come, there is no place for bravery! Only the fastest swords will survive there is an amazing new version of our beloved game.
We heard everything you had to say and we're happy to bring you so much news! It took months of work to improve the combat experience, game design, visual feedback from enemies and a less punishing game. (but without losing the challenge!)
In the first moment of this publication we will talk about the general aspects of this new version, for those who are interested, we will mention everything that is contemplated in the patch and deal with the main points that we have learned in the meantime.
Without further ado, here we go.
Basic combat changes.
One of the big points we got from you is that Bravery's combat was harsh and often felt truncated, as well as feeling punishing in an unfair way. We understand this and decided to change some combat dynamics to make things more interesting:
The combat restructuring was very deep, thanks to the feedback we could see that there was a fundamental problem in our approach to the battle design: we believed that the game was a Souls/Sekiro like and we made several decisions in that sense, but the truth is that we got too attached to references that made sense in the initial context of the project, but over time the game had already become something else and we could only realize that after the launch and feedback from the community.
We changed our design approach and instead of keeping a very locked game focused exclusively on parrying we made the character faster with cancellation frames and more immediate responses, we made the side step more responsive and with an invulnerability frame, we also separated the stance damage from the character's base damage so that enemies' posture breaking was always intentional. With that, we opened the possibility for more styles of gameplay and breaking, we managed to make the game more fluid and responsive.
No Place for Bravery is a narrative-driven Action Game and we believe that all these changes will bring a much more interesting combat flow to Bravery as in the example below.
In addition, several other changes have been made that affect how you will face your enemies in Bravery.
We get better visual feedback in combat and more clarity on enemy behavior.
Difficulty level fix.
We'd like to bring a really challenging experience to our players, however, thanks to your feedback that the game was punishing and unfair to our brave warriors, several of the tweaks we've made in regards to combat are already intended to address issues in the game as well. difficulty of the game, but we did a more complete study on the balance in a broader way, taking into account the amount of health, posture and resistance of Thorn and his mortal enemies.
Level design rework
In order to make a better experience, we also made changes to how the game develops, inserting new moments and tutorials that help in learning the mechanics of the game and that generate a better sense of progression.
How to bring the situation of the platforms?
The game's platforming mechanic was something that really wasn't satisfying, in fact it's a remnant of the project's various restructurings. In this first moment, we are transforming several of these sequences into moments in which the player must explore the combat, which is our core mechanic, in a different way: with the possibility of using elements of the scenario in your favor or having to deal with limitations that it generates, as is the case with the new Guardian Base challenges.
Old Design:
New Design:
Usability experience improvements
In addition to all the improvements in the way of playing, we have brought some features that will allow for a usability experience such as:
- Fix Screen Resize;
- Pause on Menus;
- Cloud Save;
- Linux Native Build
One last consideration
We will be continuously working on Bravery to get to the game that we always dreamed of delivering to the community, the goal of this version is to understand how you will feel the game and we hope that you can rate Bravery, so we can understand if the game is better and we can still evolve, after that we intend to take these improvements to other platforms like the Switch.
For the most enthusiastic players, below we will have a complete list with all the changes
Feedbacks and reading, confusion during combat
- What was done?
Visual feedbacks in the UI have been added to improve movement readability of all ranged attacks, breaker and special enemy skills
- Why was that?
In our initial approach, taking reference from Souls games, we understood that reading enemy movements through their animations alone was enough for the player to anticipate their actions, react and generate strategies.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
the game seems unfair to the player, punishing him for mistakes he didn't have a chance to react to.
The way we balance the game's combats with several enemies, it is impossible for the player to be aware of the movement of the various enemies on the screen, he often faces more than 5 enemies on the screen, between melee and ranged enemies, with fast and slow projectiles, so in these situations reading the movements and feedbacks of a single enemy are practically useless, while the player focuses on the closest enemies, several other actions are happening and have consequences on him, but they were not in his field of vision which generates this feeling of injustice , because unlike a Souls, the player is being punished for something that he didn't even have the chance to react to.
Stance damage and strong attack
- What was done?
Thorn's base damage has been split into two, now with the sword he no longer deals posture damage, nor with bow basic attacks. Charged basic attack is now a strong attack that also deals stance damage.
- Why was that?
In the previous version Thorn dealt damage both to enemies' health and posture, it was a design decision because we didn't want weak and strong attack, so that the possibility of breaking posture was not absolute for hammer or parry, so that players could also break posture playing looser.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
Here it solves a confusion also generated by the design, we have a feedback that plays a slowdown of a few seconds every time an enemy resets the posture bar, what was happening is that during sword combat on many occasions the player broke posture of several enemies in a row, once again giving the impression that the game is too slow. With the separation of posture damage from the basic attack, in addition to combat becoming more agile, the satisfaction with the posture break has become better, as now the effect happens after an intentional action by the player.
Player Attribute Feedback
- What was done?
Added feedback when the player is low on Health, Stance and Stamina.
- Why was that?
We considered that only with the indicators on the screen the player would be able to check his resources.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
In the heat of combat, feedback is extremely necessary to give the player tips on what is happening, he ends up not looking at his attributes when he is surrounded by enemies, and this generates the feeling that he died, or lost a resource suddenly, that it was unfair.
Side Step & parry
- What was done?
Actions now have absolute priority, they are immediate and cancel any other action that is being executed, even overlapping with each other.
Final Side Step's recovery frames can be canceled with another action, except with the side step itself, evolving the side step decreases the recovery.
Frames of invulnerability added to the basic Side Step. Now, Thorn flashes blue, which is the defense color in the game, every time it's invulnerable during a Side Step.
- Why was that?
By design we wanted the player to feel that every attack was costly for Thron, so actions were not cancelable with others, he would have to commit to every action as the combat was supposed to be extremely technical, it wasn't just about positioning yourself right, but also take actions at the right time and be punished when you make a mistake.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
We wanted to ignore the conventions of the genre a bit in this approach, but some standards are already well ingrained in players and many have reported that combat felt sluggish and unresponsive, in part because of the lack of canceling actions.
Animation cancel:
Side Step - Invulnerability feedback
- What was done?
invulnerability frames added to basic Side Step.
Thorn now flashes blue, which is the defense color in the game, every time he is invulnerable during a Side Step.
- Why was that?
We believed that the player would master this mechanic without needing clues.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
It gives more agency to the player and makes using Side Step a more viable and less punishing game strategy, as players were already trying to go to the dash side like in the souls games.
Difficulty levels
- What was done?
Thorn's health, stance, and stamina have been balanced across all difficulty levels. The amount of health, posture and damage resistance of all enemies has also been revised.
- Why was that?
Our intention was to make a game that at the base level was difficult and that the player had to be very aware of his actions.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The game was too hard in all modes and extremely unfairly punishing. the player couldn't enjoy the game if he didn't play the specific way that the game was satisfying, focused on using parry, but the convention of the genre actually makes the players play more inclined to Dash/Side Step than to parry, therefore the previous game design it was not working in several situations.
Rework Level design
- What was done?
Prologue and ActI (Guardian Base) - change in the level design and combat design from the beginning of the game to improve the learning of the mechanics with new tutorials and generate more interesting combat situations and that generate a better sense of progression in the player.
- Why was that?
We had less experience in that part and we put a lot of the game's combat in the prologue and ActI out of fear and as a solution to make the design more interesting.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The feeling that the game doesn't change much over the course of the adventure and the sense of variety in combat
PS: we still need to take these improvements to other scenarios in the game. The level design we're currently working on for a patch is the Prison of ActIV, to make better use of the crossbow improves in a true bullet hell sequence for the game.
Pausing in-game menus
- What was done?
game now pauses when in-game menus are opened.
- Why was that?
We wanted a constant sense of urgency.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The player was very overloaded during the fights and was not using enough items or messing with the inventory, maybe this change improves and makes him use more items during the fight, create more strategies.
Self-consumable item
- What was done?
Enemies now have a chance to drop items that automatically heal, health.
- Why was that?
Enemies just dropped items that the player would need to enter the inventory to equip or use, once again thinking about the extremely technical and intentional combat we wanted.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
Makes combat fairer and removes the need for player pauses in combat.
PS: We're currently working on item drops for Stance and Stamina, but it will also involve a full balance of the item drop percentages of the game.
Breaker Attack on enemies
- What was done?
The base posture damage that enemies do to Thorn has been lowered and an attack variation called Breaker has been created for all enemies, the Breaker attack consumes half of Thorn's posture bar if the attack connects.
- Why was that?
Enemies followed the same pattern as Thorn for health and stance damage.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
At various times the player was confused when he lost his resources, this solution was created to solve the damage in the posture, but it ended up generating a completely new and interesting dynamic for combat situations.
Full Screen behavior
- What was done?
tweak so that the player could play the game in Windowed mode and in different resolutions.
- Why was that?
It was a bug.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
Several players complaining about not being able to change the project's video and resolution settings, in addition to not being able to play in windowed mode because the game forced fullscreen all the time.
Crossbow rework
- What was done?
The player no longer needs to worry about aiming with the crossbow when shooting directly with the attack button as he will always hit the nearest enemy, but he can still enter aiming mode to choose the enemy he wants to hit.
When the amount of arrows reaches zero Thorn automatically reloads the weapon, this action can be canceled with Side Step or Parry.
- Why was that?
Again by design we understood that it was important to aim and allow the player to miss their actions.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
In fact, the most important thing is the player's concern to position himself and be in the right place to perform the actions in order to be punished, he does not also need to be punished with the possibility of missing arrows when playing without aiming.
PS: The aim assist was improved for the controller, keyboard and mouse still demands precision.
(Enemy) Heblin Dasher
- What was done?
Creation of a variation of basic Heblin that gives a Dash attack.
- Why was that?
Before this enemy did not exist because the design and amount of life of the enemies allowed longer combats.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
After adjusting the life and posture of all enemies and Thorn's Damage, it was necessary to create a basic enemy that attacks the player before he is in range of his attack, because as the enemies now only resist two attacks and the player has a lot of posture the dynamics of combat have changed drastically and we need to get the player to move more defensively instead of just charging at enemies smashing buttons.
(Enemy) New Order Area Cancel behavior fix
- What was done?
Now the enemy fires his skill in a cadenced and predictable way serving its purpose of making the player not stand still.
- Why was that?
He played two different skills with different amounts of projectiles, I believe to keep the player away from him as well.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The character's various skills made him very chaotic and not predictable, in addition to polluting the combat a lot.
(Enemy) Archers and ranged attacks in general
- What was done?
We removed the update of the enemy's aim from the moment of the attack and left it in the moment of anticipation of the attack.
- Why was that?
It felt more accurate for the type of game where we wanted enemies to update their aim when releasing the attack.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
This generated many unfair situations where the player at a short distance felt the impossibility of dodging attacks, now with the aiming feedbacks the feeling of evading attacks beyond anticipation is much more satisfying.
(enemy) New Order Bullet Hell Rework
- What was done?
Instead of him shooting 12 arrows in a semi circle, he now targets the player and shoots arrows in a rhythmic sequence in their direction.
- Why was that?
Design decision.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
It makes bullet hell combat less confusing and gives the enemy a purpose, to make the player move while being targeted by their attacks.
(enemy) Heblin Tank
- What was done?
Behavior tweaked to become a game miniboss.
- Why was that?
The enemy was a generic tank that was in several combats.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
With the new design tweaks the need to have more interesting enemies for key combat moments became necessary, the tank is one of those enemies that has been reworked to be more challenging as a miniboss.
