Check out this amazing new art by Smoked Ham (@smokedKun on Twitter!) I'm so pumped! I think it really captures the spirit of this game, both mechanically and narratively. YAY!
So yeah the other really big thing that's upcoming is the CARAVAN, which is a new rather huge feature coming to CAMPAIGN MODE. Basically, I think that Campaign Mode has been missing a basic "RPG loop" that's pretty important to these sorts of Rogue-lite / X-Com style campaigns in games. I think the Caravan will make each new mission more compelling, and also give each run through a lot more of its own identity.
From the Campaign Hub, you now have a new button called CARAVAN which opens a whole new screen. This screen has a bunch of your Items - basically, the blessings that already exist in the game. But now, there's a bunch more of them (at least five new ones will be added, more coming later), and they can be freely equipped and unequipped to anyone, anytime you want. Not only that but they can also be sold, for GOLD.
(That's right: a videogame has a gold resource in it. Can you believe it?)
Above: a VERY early screenshot of the caravan mode, just to give you a sense.
During missions, there are treasure chests around the map, and once in awhile a unit, upon dying, drops a treasure chest. You can pick them up by walking over them. After the battle, your CARAVAN inventory will show all the treasure chests you picked up. Inside the treasure chests could be:
- A random blessing
- Gold
- A random unit
- Any combination of these
- (later on) other stuff?
From there you can equip or sell blessings as you please to units in your squad. There will be a new little icon on units that have a blessing so you can easily see who has what.
But that's not all! There is also an UPGRADES menu, featuring four permanent upgrades that you can unlock for this campaign: Beds (oh I forgot to mention, units now only heal a little bit between missions. But beds mean units that don't go on missions heal to FULL), Surgery (one random unit who dies on a mission actually survives with 5 health), Gem Lab (Start each mission with extra gems) and Training (units not brought on a mission increase in level, capped at level 3). These each cost a decent chunk of Gold so it's a bit of a longer term power curve.
I'm really excited for this mode and looking forward to getting more feedback on it. I'm hoping to have it ready sometime around this coming weekend, but we'll see how it goes.
Thanks so much for checking out this update!
