Hello Skul Squad! Are you enjoying swapping some skulls?
Today, we would like to spend some time to give you an update on what SouthPAW devs have been up to since the last update.
Skul on Switch / XBOX / PS4
We have been continuously working on the porting process of Skul to Switch, XBOX, and PS4 so the players could enjoy Skul anywhere, with any gadgets.
We have been working on the porting process with Blitworks, who are experts in high-quality game porting. We believe in their successful experience in porting Divinity Original Sin 2, Rogue Legacy, and many others. We are almost at the last step of the porting process, and are carefully estimating when would be the best time to release the game.
We aim to release the console version at about mid-October, and we will make sure you know when we fix the date.
Skull Reformation
We believe that every skull’s action needs to be fun to play with and that every one of them should perform just as strong as the others with each play style and item combination.
But with about 100 skulls in Harmonia, we are aware that some skulls don’t come up to the expectations.
To achieve our aim, we are analyzing and reviewing every one of our skulls for the reformation. Hopefully, the system is going to be implemented in the game by the end of the year.
The main problems that we aim to address are as follows:
- Skulls developed from the very beginning with lower performance and mechanisms than the ones developed later.
- Skulls lacking consistency in mechanism with their Awakening process.
- Skulls that cannot fully uncover their potential due to in-game aspects, including enemies.
- Skulls with low specs or bad controlling experience.
We are actively developing the skulls with the features above, aiming to introduce more detailed information on reformation through the next Dev Blog.
And we are going through an experimental phase with applying crowd control on the Boss phase.
It is an experimental tryout as it hugely breaks away from the basic game design. So we are doing much research and trials to develop a new amusement for our players.
We have not fully decided on implementing crowd control in the Boss stage. We want to test it out as much as possible so Skul: The Hero Slayer can provide more exciting experiences.
Every Skul development has one very basic condition: It should be fun.
We aim to make every single skull and its systems have their unique fun, so the players could have more to enjoy while playing Skul.
Hard Mode
We are aware that many players have already become veteran hero slayers of the Demon King’s castle, and they long for challenging quests to conquer. For this, we are working on developing the hard mode.
The original roadmap shows that the hard mode is supposed to come out in Q3. However, we thought it would be best to come out in 2022 Q1 to deliver a perfectly polished version after the skull reformation update. The schedule for the contents that aimed to come out in Q4 will also be adjusted to come out after the hard mode update.
While we are fully aware of the users’ expectations on the Hard Mode contents, we ask for your generous understanding in adjusting the schedule to deliver our best.
The hard mode of Skul doesn’t mean a simple increase of power and HP of Carleon soldiers. We are going through various trials and errors so we can provide you with new and exciting experiences.
The initial plan for hard mode focused on making levels simply more difficult for the players.
We tried constantly changing the patterns of the enemies, changing the map system mechanic to randomly level up the difficulty, trying to create new hardship for the players. We even tried to weaken the player.
However, we quickly concluded that this is just not ‘Skul Style.’
The very core of Skul is the player, and the new content should be there to provide a new experience for the player.
Therefore, we blew away the weakening system. The pattern change system was also discarded as it completely ignores the players’ learning process, ruining the intuitive experience.
Instead, we are focusing on developing brand-new enemies for the hard mode, and implementing a new level-up aspect for the players to stand against the more difficult levels.
We will have new enemies for each chapter.
They will have more threatening patterns than the original enemies and the new and the old will blend to provide a fresh combat experience.
As for the new abilities to deal with the powerful new enemies, we are trying to reduce the effect of RNG compared to the original level-up contents.
The players will control and design the new level-up aspect to tackle the hard mode, along with the original skulls, items, and essences.
You can match the controllable elements to the RNG elements, or you can create synergy by matching RNG elements to the controllable elements.
One thing is for sure: the way you play Skul will be greatly intensified, and you’ll be able to try your way on the new enemies without restrictions.
In this way, we expect Skul Hard Mode to not just stop at being a hard mode. It will be another aspect that further expands the Skul story.
After polishing the existing content through the skull reformation, we expect to present cool and fun hard mode content.
We hope you will continue the journey of Skul with us, sharing your experiences and stories along the road.
Thank you.