Hello Necromancers,
We’re well on our way to finishing off the last bit of content before rolling out the full release of the game.
In the meantime I wanted to do a little update to address some long-time issues, especially the tutorial and the onboarding process. There’s also a couple also small features that made their way into this, such as summon orders! This is something I’ve wanted to add for a long while and finally got around to it.
If any of you have played the game and thought that you liked the concept but perhaps struggled with understanding the core concepts of how to play the game, this update is for you. We received feedback that the introduction to basic gameplay mechanics was too vague or unkind, and in the interest of a more fun, more accessible game I agreed it was worth dedicating some time to fixing that.
Please check out the changelog below for full details. As always feedback is greatly appreciated and welcome. Join the discord to talk to us directly!
Love,
VOID
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Changelog
Created three distinct play modes; Game mode, Tutorial mode, and Practice mode.
See below for full details.
Added “Summon orders” functionality
Uses the same key (summon) to perform
When looking at a soul orb, this will summon a new friendly unit
When looking at an enemy, pressing the summon key will order all friendly summoned units to prioritise attacking the target unit
When looking at empty terrain, this will add a temporary waypoint to get friendlies to scout this area and attack anything they find on the way.
This is a new feature and still very much a work in progress, so any feedback is appreciated!
Improved some scaling issues with the character model relative to the game world (no more tiny baby ant man)
Fixed some other issues that arose as a result of this scale change
Fixed some overstretched tiling issues with the lower moving platforms / Centrifuge
This will likely need to be further developed and refined for consistency but it’s an improvement for now
Removed some menu options such as “start in the middle” / “enable console” as this is no longer necessary for tutorials.
Game mode will always start in the middle
Console will always be active for Tutorial mode and Practice mode
Other menu tidiness tweaks
Some minor improvements to console commands and interfacing
Fixed infinite sliding
Reduced head-bobbing motion while walking (he got sober)
Increased ground stamina regeneration
Revenants slightly more accurate
Added Overload powerup (Infinite ammo)
New modes
Game mode
This is the standard gameplay mode that will be used to submit legitimate (no cheats) runs to the Steam leaderboard. No cheats or developer tools are available in this mode, and this is what will be used to leaderboard placement / achievements (on full release) and other unlockable content.
Practice mode
Uses the same scene / map as Game Mode but automatically has God Mode enabled, along with the access of the console with the Tilde/Backquote (~/`) key. This allows players to play all the demo version content without dying and the ability to test lots of other features of the game with the console without submitting these runs to the leaderboard and compromising its integrity.
When the full version comes around this will likely be structured slightly differently so as to be a bit more “spoiler free” regarding late game content, but currently this content does not exist in the demo.
Tutorial mode
This mode is a new scene / map specifically intended to teach the core mechanics of the game.
God mode and console keys are active automatically in this mode also (although fall deaths are still possible.)
The tutorial involves several platforms / areas where a few tutorial tasks are available to be completed to learn the concepts. There is also a video to support understanding of the concepts in each zone.
The structure of the tutorial is such that all of the tutorial is not mandatory and is skippable, but thorough understanding of all concepts is very much encouraged. I hate tutorials that pause you and break the flow of gameplay immersion, so this tutorial does not pause at all and leaves you to manage the pacing of your learning yourself. You are therefore also perfectly able to skip forward to later areas of the tutorial without having to finish earlier areas (although some grappling hook skills may be required to do this faster.)
It is recommended to check back into the tutorial again later (when the full version, or even new updates come out) to see if guides on new content / features is now available. Full version content will add a couple more mechanics to the game (new weapons / spells) so some explanation and practice may be worthwhile here also.
Please check out the tutorial and Practice mode, especially if you haven’t been able to get too far in the game previously or if you just want to see some of the later game content without the punishing nature of needing to get good run scores to progress!