We've been hard at work for a while on the next big patch for Time Break Chronicles, which is aimed at improving some of the areas on which we've received the most feedback, criticism, and feature requests.
This update started out with a smaller scale in mind, but it's now gotten pretty big, with a lot of new features and quality of life updates as well. We're finally reaching a point where it's close to being ready for release, so we're going to show off some of the upcoming new features in this update post, with some screenshots using the various available UI styles.
Hero Quests, XP, and Skill Points
One of the most frequent things we've heard from players is that the game tends to involve too much "grinding" to find the appropriate skill books to level up, and to acquire the relics you most want to use. It would be much more fun to just play the game, using the various heroes available as best you can, and make progress as you go!
To address this, we've removed all the various skill book types except for Encyclopedia (which has a heavily reduced drop rate), and added a new system for leveling up skills. Heroes will instead earn skill points through 3 different methods:
- Defeating bosses for the first time to earn a Boss Badge
- Earning XP in battles like a traditional RPG
- Completing specific Hero Quests
You can then spend the skill points to level up skills, even mid-mission. This system also serves to level out the difficulty curve from Act 1 to Act 2 much more smoothly, since you'll be steadily earning skill points instead of getting books in small dumps.
Every hero has 3 unique quests that, when completed, award them skill points and another new feature: an Infinite Relic. Claire also has several quests tailored for her various forms.
Infinite Relics
By completing the relevant quests, hero-specific relics can now become infinite. Infinite relics can be duplicated as many times as you want for free, allowing you more freedom to bind them to any hero you'd like.
Boss relics, shop relics, and relics found only via missions will still need to be either found or crafted, but this also serves to make them a bit more special, and will allow us to add a few more of them as well.
Town Progress Meter and Building Upgrade Overhaul
Another point of feedback has been that the building upgrades aren't as interesting as they could be, they cost too much, and there's too many options presented at once. Now that particles don't need to be spent primarily on acquiring skill books and relics, a larger focus will be on purchasing building upgrades.
We've reduced the cost of the building upgrades in general, and reworked many of them to provide more interesting effects that add more "flavor" to various damage types or situations. In addition, instead of purchasing the buildings, they will be unlocked via a town progress bar that increases as you rescue and level up new heroes. This also further serves to incentivize trying out new heroes and completing their quests.
The Town Progress bar also unlocks other things over time, such as Time Break techs, additional reserve and bundle slots, and Skill Points for Claire.
Endless Mode Overhaul
We don't have any screenshots to show of this at the moment, because the interface is still a bit in flux, but Endless mode has also received a facelift. It will now work similarly to Singularity mode, in that each level will present a set of specific challenges, instead of simply increasing the levels of the enemies. Defeat the final challenge, and you might even find something special!
Speaking of Singularity mode, heroes in that mode will also now earn XP like they do in Chronicle. This allows for a bit more creativity when choosing your rewards after the battle, since encyclopedias won't be quite as important to take.
Special Missions
With the overhaul to Endless mode, wanderer hero rescues have now been moved to a new Special Missions feature. At certain times, Quinn will present Special Missions aside the main story to earn special rewards. These are short custom-crafted missions with unique encounters, leading to a reward. Right now these are all rescues of a Wanderer hero, but we have some plans for other special missions in the future.
QoL Features
We've also added quite a few quality of life and other requested features, such as an Auto Battle option, a Battle Log, hover info on battle icons, party menu improvements, some improved interface features specifically for mouse users, and various other little things.
We're hoping to finish the last bits of this update and get it out the the beta branch soon™ so you can try it out. Thanks for your patience and feedback, everyone!