Hello everyone!
It's Chronicle time!
The Luxuriant Update Part II: Feedback
The Luxuriant Update Part II has been out for a week now. So it is time to take a look at the feedback we've got. Basically, we've mostly had positive reactions while negative points that were addressed were almost only about two specific things:
- The Great Labyrinth Mission is basically too long, boring and uninteresting. We tried something different, it didn't work. But it is pretty simple to take care of so we plan to address this an upcoming Update.
- The Story as a whole, is repetitive and missions get boring fast. This is a much more complex point, and we tend to agree that the Story/Missions part of the game is not one of The Slormancer's strengths. We also believe that reworking each and every mission won't fix this. So we're still looking for solutions.
What's next?
We've allocated 50% of the resources of the company (being one artist) to start working on our next content update: The Royal Update Part I. It will include 5 new enemies and a new environment, so quite a bit of assets to draw.
While the entire tech department (being me) is currently working on a Quality of Life / Controller / Technical update.
And since HyonD, being the fancy artist that he is, doesn't want to share his precious designs (even to me), I'll talk about what I'm doing instead.
Reworking Controller Support
Jokes aside, we've had a lot more feedback regarding our controller support lately. It is most likely due to the Steam Deck being more and more popular.
To be honest, the very first iteration of our controller support was not meant to be final, and we aimed for something "good enough" without having the Steam Deck in mind or even thinking about how popular playing on a PC with a controller actually is.
Right now, I'm working on the "True Final Omega Version", not the "Final 001 Version" if you know what I mean, addressing every issue that players have encountered.
The goal here is to get the "Optimal" status for the Steam Deck, instead of the "Playable" that we currently have. On top of that, we've always wanted to get The Slormancer on consoles, so I'm working with that in mind. And ideally, a Switch release could be done without any further adjustments that the ones I'm currently making. So it has to be close to perfect.
Here are the points I'm focusing on:
- Better Menu Navigation: I'm adding a cursor (similar to games like God of War or Assassin's Creed) to easily navigate. And it is much much smoother.
- Better Auto-Aim / Aim System: I'm reworking the Auto-Aim to actually work (...) and to be a lot less intrusive when players want to manually aim for their targets.
- Bigger Font Size: Pretty self-explanatory. This is mostly for Steam Deck users, but if your setup is to play on a TV with a controller, then you should like this one aswell.
- Fixing Various Issues: Such as not being able to select Slorm Reapers, or get Challenges Tooltips inside the forge etc...
- More Keybinds options: By allowing every button to be remapped.
- Button Faces: Since I'm planning (way ahead) a console port, I've added different controller styles so you will be able to choose the one you want to use (from X-Box, PS & Nintendo Switch / Steam Deck).
A cursor, bigger font size and a PlayStation design.
Some points are mostly technical stuff, that are probably hard to understand on paper but very easy to feel ingame. So I'll be looking for more feedback once the update is live. As of right now, if you're a Steam Deck / Controller user and feel like I'm missing something that should be addressed, please let me know.
I'm also adding a couple more options on the way for Mouse + Keyboard users, such as the ability to bind side mouse buttons. I'll be looking to add some more if I have enough time.
I should be done with the "Controller Update" by the end of February.
Quick update about the date (also in the comments).
I was hoping to get it done before the end of February but we unfortunately won't make it. The good news is that it is ready (and actually far more important than I expected), the bad news is that I have personal stuff to take care of (nothing to worry about) and I won't be able to upload it and be around to handle issues that may arise.
For this reason, the update will go live on March 7.
And to reiterate, given the nature of our next content update, working on this will not delay the
addition of new content.
That's about it for now!
Have a nice day everyone!