The latter part of this post will talk about upcoming content in patch 0.2. The early part here is a chronicle of the Fun Times we've had working on patch 0.2. If you want the latter, scroll down until you see a small crab face.
The Fun Times aka Why Isn't There New Stuff Yet
Around the start of July, someone on the Steam forums asked us when the major content updates were coming.
I, foolishly, answered along the lines of "1-2 months, unless something goes wrong :)"
This was not meant to be a challenge to existence as a whole to take every measure possible in order to stop the patch from being finished. I apologise to existence for the misunderstanding, and would like to clarify that I actually just want to make games.
To keep a long list short, in the last bunch of months our 3-person dev team has enjoyed exciting activities like:
- Various health issues!
- Losing a pet!
- Mold poisoning!
- Losing a home to a mold infestation! (i'm writing this from my mom's basement, like any self-respecting game developer)
- Being harassed by fire alarm malfunctions!
- Water damage scares! (unrelated to the mold thing, somehow)
At least we dodged the Unity Situation. Game's in Unreal. Thankfully. Condolences to anyone stuck dealing with that.
As it turns out, weekly disasters combined with a vague sense of time pressure do not for a good game development make. Things seem to have calmed down a bit, and we've been getting work done again, but at a slower rate (and we're still looking into that new, less poisonous apartment thing). I humbly request we be allowed to keep not getting wrecked.
That's enough venting, let's talk about the stuff you're actually here for: more roguelike dungeon crawly things!
The Major Update: 0.2 - Fairweather Fleet
0.2 is almost entirely content complete!
I'm not gonna say it's coming out soon (even if I still think so). That didn't go well last time, and we do still have to fix some nasty bugs and polish things up a bit more.
Everything promised for the update in the little box on the main menu is still very much coming, but we've got a lot more details and some extra goodies packed into there! We're looking at:
- The new world, Fairweather Fleet.
- A new playable character.
- 9 new items, 7 of which are chest loot.
- Seals, a new difficulty progression/challenge run system.
- Scrap has been removed.
- Lots of adjustments (spell rebalancing, new Librarian passive) and fixes to a lot of things.
The patch has definitely gotten a bit bigger than intended, but I'm pretty happy with the additions!
To elaborate on one of those, the removal of Scrap:
Scrap as a resource added a lot of busywork before the game would let you stack infusions on your stuff, and the choice of throwing away a cool item to get the scrap necessary to make your other items more cool was never a particularly fun one. Neither was having to pass up on infusions so your co-op partner got to use more of them, and it's not great for a co-op game if having more players reduces the amount of fun stuff the game lets you do.
Infusing things is the fun part. Dealing with scrap costs was generally not. So we decided to remove Scrap entirely and add a simpler restriction to infusion stacking: All items now start with 1 infusion slot available, and each time you defeat a boss, all items everywhere gain 1 more slot for the rest of the run.
We also added gold, because vending machines need something you can pay with. The Scrapper makes gold now. Don't think about it too hard.
So far the results of the change have looked promising (mostly positive feedback from playtesters with a few valid complaints we're working to iron out), and a simpler system is easier to get into. Infusing is one of the cooler parts of the game, so we want everyone to get to play with it! To which end, we're also adding Un-Infusers that let you undo infusions and get all the material items back. They can be found at fountains, so feel free to try that infusion you're not sure will work out! ...After the patch. Not yet.
Hopefully soon.
Thanks for reading, and playing :)
- Kalle-Eemeli "Mag" Paananen
Game Designer/Programmer/Multitool Person