It’s here! As promised, Impossible+ has just been added and is available for those who have won an Impossible game, and hence unlocked the mode. I’ll give the lowdown on how Impossbile+ works below, but I’ll also just do a general re-cap of what has changed this week.
Starting off with a big thank you to all who have left a positive review! It helps so much for just a single bloke trying to make something interesting! To see the number on Steam almost at 100 is wild and so humbling - massive thank you!!
As usual, its been a super busy (read: sleepless) week, coupled with me heading off in a direction I didn’t expect. As many of you know by now, I like to lurk around in Streams and watch any videos that get posted to YouTube etc. One thing I’m constantly hearing is re: text size, and accessibility. Enough was enough - I needed to spent more time on this, that was super clear. My apologies to anyone who has had a bad time viewing/playing Vault, I’m hoping tonights patch is a good push in the right direction in terms of UI changes.
So what’s changed?
- Firstly, fonts are larger, pretty much across the board. Some of the intro/blurb text needs addressing still but card fonts, tooltip fonts, and top bar fonts have been updated. The font is thinner, and cleaner to read.
- Card backing colour has been lightened to help with contrasting text
- The top UI bar has increased in size a lot, with new icons and layout to help keep things clear
- The Runic Power bar has moved to permanently sit at the top UI bar, rather than being on the board during battle.
- The Threat Stack now contains your HP and Round number. A note on this, this is the most questioned change so far through Beta Branch testing this week. I’m hoping next week to set up an options menu where players can customise what’s shown in that bar.
- Card Keywords are now sitting at the bottom of the card, in a dedicated name plate.
- There's a few other small things like using colour to help separate stuff, and placing common elements that other games use and players are used to in more common positions. Vault already changes a lot when it comes to gameplay, having some familiarity in some places is going to be a good thing I think.
Impossible+, or, choosing how you’d like to die...
So this system has been designed for a while now and I’m so happy to finally have it in. I wanted to provide something different to the usual linear progression based + systems, and the Instability system is the byproduct of that.
You’ll start with an Instability of 5, and the more your win, the more your max Instability will increase. You have full control over what modifiers affect your run. Costs are still being evaluated and even more options are planned - feel free to throw feedback at me! How far can you get? Excited to see some Instability 25+ challenge runs happening.
Coupled with the system is the Instability Setup sharing system. This allows you to set up a configuration, copy the code to your clipboard and send it to a friend (or enemy!) so they can take a shot as well! One note about this, the code is very long. I’ve got a new system which is being tested right now and should replace this long code with a much more manageable one next week!
Other than that, it’s game on. As always, I’m very keen to hear your feedback on the system and can’t wait to see who can take some of those high level Instability Achievements.
And yes, there are some exclusive backgrounds and deck backs on their way for those who are able to take down those higher level Instabilities! Coming next week...
As always, feel free to head over to the Discordand fire up a conversation. And thank you again to all who have left such awesome reviews!
Next on the Roadmap - a new class!
All for now,
Josh
Edit: Forgot to add the actual Patch Notes! Sorry!
1.3.25
+ Gameplay/UI;
- Impossible+! As promised, Impossible+ is here. Read all about the details in the Steam post!
- Many, many UI tweaks - more changes to icons, fonts, layouts etc as I continue to try and polish the UI.
- Lots of Tooltip changes to help cut down on the 'bulk' of things.
- You can now right click on the map popover to mark hexes.
- New Potion quick bar on the pre-fight screen.
- Void Stone effects on cards will now show in Orange.
- Card text scaling on longer cards.
- Lots of little minor QoL changes (many which I forgot to document! Doh!)
+ Card Changes;
- Juggle is now a 1 cost
- Mithril Blades is now an Uncommon
+ Bugs;
- Discord button now links correctly!
- Lots of minor card interaction bugs.
- Battleplan will no longer reset after each fight.
- Death Blade has had its damage prediction corrected.
- Eroding Sanity on Impossible+ shows correct projection now.
- Spell corrections.
- Metor's Purge ability is no longer effected by Rage .
- Haunted tooltip updated.
- Many Block cards have had the Block keyword added.
- Shield Wall will show the correct numbers now.