It's been a wild ride, these last couple of years. We initially thought that Hellcard would be a quick six-month adventure. After the prototype became popular we knew we couldn't just throw it together, it had to be well-engineered. Then the pandemic hit, we switched to working from home and didn't see each other for over a year.
Most of us had the opportunity to share a beverage and cake on the Early Access launch, almost a year ago. Turns out we were busy not only with making games - two babies were born in the meantime :archduck:
During this whole time, we fulfilled the planned roadmap for the 1.0 launch. And we made foundations for even more content that will come after today. Some of you have already seen glimpses of a 5th playable class when the game glitched. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the 5th class but, hypothetically, if such a class were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed :Archduck:
But I digress and you are here to see what content we have for 1.0! I will write a longer post with development stats in a couple of days. The community was invaluable, you sent us an insane amount of feedback and helped to shape Hellcard into what it has become today.
Thank you! :paperheart:
And now, without further ado... No wait, I have to share our brand new 1.0 Trailer (sans the annoying Octopuss voice this time!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpMt2qZz--8
And now, without further ado for real...
What's new in 1.0?
First of all, the Tinkerer!
Tinkerer
A fourth playable class with a complete twist on game mechanics joins the heroes. A slower, more strategic class that slowly builds up to snowball later in the battle.
An adept of the same university as The Mage. Any time this comes up in a conversation he makes a point of highlighting the fact that he was in the engineering department rather than getting a worthless unscientific and theoretical magus diploma. A strong believer in science, sweat, and gunpowder.
He comes along with
- 101 new cards,
- 8 starter artifacts,
- new location,
- 6 new outfits,
- new resource-based mechanics,
- 5 new AI Tinkerer Companions,
- and, of course, a full voiceover done by Ed Mace, our long-time collaborator who does gruff gunpowder-obsessed characters like no one else!
Year of the Dragon Outfits
When we found out that our 1.0 will coincide with the Chinese New Year and that the new year will be the Year of the Dragon we knew we had to add themed outfits. Especially since we have at least two dragon fans in the official Discord server :archduck:.
These outfits are available to everyone starting now.
Reworked Endless Mode
Endless turned out to be a very popular mode and we got a ton of feedback on it. Two reservations that came up the most often were the difficulty scaling plateaued after 60-80 floors and that the modifiers broke some builds entirely making them unviable in the late game.
We revised our approach and decided to give more agency to the players. Now every couple of floors you will be asked to pick a new Torment Modifier out of three. It will have random power and will stay active for a random number of floors. Both power and duration will be visible to you when making the choice.
That way, you can now control the difficulty and it will organically increase with some floors being very tough followed by easier ones. You also get one more layer to run planning, since you can now pick Torments that fit your party's build.
Full Changelog
- New playable class: Tinkerer . An adept of the same university as The Mage, with an engineering degree rather than a theoretical magus diploma.
- Completly new Tinkerer's mechanic utilizing two new resources: Screws and Cores
- 101 new Tinkerer's cards
- 8 new Tinkerer's starting artifacts
- 6 new Tinkerer's outfits
- New location unique to Tinkerer
- 4 new seasonal dragon-themed outfits for the Chinese New Year, one for each class
- Total overhaul of the Endless Mode - players choose difficulty modifiers every second floor, monsters not only scale their HP and Strength but also their abilities. Difficulty modifiers can have different strengths and different floor spans
- New endless modifier: Arachnophobic - Start each battle with a random number of webbed cards
- New endless modifier: Freezing - Start each turn with a random number of Freeze influence
- New endless modifier: Gutted - Lose a random number of max HP
- New endless modifier: Mugged - Exhaust a random number of cards at the beginning of the battle
- New endless modifier: Shielded - Monsters start the battle with a random amount of block
- All random values in Endless modifiers are affected by the difficulty scaling algorithm
- New artifact: Other Shoe - Gain a +2 damage bonus for the next turn, if you haven't used any Skill cards this turn
- Added avatars next to other players' choices when selecting Endless mode modifiers
- Sped up repeating actions of selected monsters
- Balance: Flawed Ruby artifact now gives 3 additional mana on the first turn but takes 1 mana back afterward instead of taking 2 mana on the first turn and giving 1 additional afterward
- Balance: Friendly Toad artifact now heals 4 HP when skipping Card Rewards instead of 10 HP but doesn't lower the number of cards on Card Rewards
- Balance: Stone Mask artifact now gives 3 Max HP instead of 1 after the battle where the owner didn't lose any HP
- Fixed a crash when leveling selected companions
- Fixed negative XP when finishing a run with a very high XP
- Fixed Devourer getting stuck in the intent loop when a large number of monsters were killed at the same time
- Fixed some monsters not properly scaling their features and actions in the Endless mode
- Fixed some monsters not properly showing their scaled features and actions in the Endless mode
- Fixed skip modifier incorrectly being displayed as chosen after the selection was changed
- Fixed incorrect monsters' intents after they were double moved (using Stamina Burst, Bookmark, etc.)
- Fixed Blighted modifier increasing even the 0 damage attacks
- Fixed companions doubling their deck when entering Floor 2
- Fixed retiring a companion always retired the one on the left when using Large UI
- Fixed code logging crash debug data
- Network traffic optimizations
As always,
Stay Safe in the Paper Dungeons :archduck:
Konstanty