Hey everyone!
While visually overhauling the monsters based on your feedback, our lead artist David decided to give those minions of hell that little bit more protection.
Arm pads. Pieces of mail. Metal plates. All bolted or sewn to their inhuman, otherworldly flesh. As if their gnashing teeth, boney spikes protruding from their thick hides and huge, saber-like talons weren’t enough. But it's not like the odds are fully stacked against you. The newest build update sees Palmer on the chase for newly added, differently colored armor sets strewn around the levels, or armor shards laying out and about.
What's blue and gold and makes chingy sound
LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF
Each of the monsters in Project Warlock II is breathing, jumping, shooting, swiping, and or rushing fiend that has a thing for Palmer. That "thing" can mean they can enter a frenzy and rush Palmer head-on. Or fire rockets anticipating where you will be in the next second or two. They can also – as is the case with the new, revamped Imp – anticipate your own shots with a slower projectile weapon. And unless you get close enough to slash them with a sword or blast them both barrels point-blank - that can be the difference between getting them and getting owned.
In short: you'll have to understand those enemies to emerge successfully from each encounter. But we still felt something was missing. Namely - a proper introduction to our nameless, unfriendly minions that you will learn to take care of. To remedy that – each new monster that you face will have his or her intro vignette that will help you flesh out their character. Here’s a WIP clip for Imp.
The first pass on the Imp's intro
CODEX ENTRIES
While on the topic of introductions. Since the Warlock’s levels are way bigger than ever before, it felt fitting to make sure there’s enough to do there when it came to both the enemies, secrets, and collectibles. One of the new items you will get to pick up when traversing the dark world that fell under the spell of the Necromancer is the Codex entry scroll.
These dark parchments hide the information that will help you understand and take advantage of the traits of a given monster and will be readily available to view in the menu. Sometimes the scrolls are laying there in plain sight, but sometimes you will have to take an extra route and do a little searching to find them and seize the monstrous secrets they hold.
Biro's sketches that served as the basis of Codex entries visuals
BONEY WILL MISS YOU (NOW)
Since we’re in what can be tentatively called the “Monster part of the update” let’s briefly touch upon behavior patterns of one particular enemy. One that seemed to evoke a lot of emotions from everyone that had the opportunity to meet Boney in the demo. In the Boney-specific manner, that is: getting it scanned by his shotgun blast from as of yet unseen position.
There’s this less-known movie from the ’90s starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. called “Enemy Mine". It’s a story of a human space fighter pilot and his alien counterpart. Both participate in space dogfights and both end up stranded on the planet below. They begin as mortal enemies only to find humanity (alienity?) in each other and become friends for life.
This story is here to anchor the fact that there is no human possibility for anyone to go from hate to love in the Palmer-Boney relationship. And since it could get annoying especially on the supposedly more forgiving lower difficulty levels – the sniping skills of our emaciated sniper have been nerfed.
The Boney you will learn to like
THE DROP BONANZA
Currently, the number of drops from the enemies is being tweaked to make sure that each level provides the promised challenge. Vials of blood refilling health bar, cooldown tokens dropping as a result of successful combos helping recharge those spells faster, or shards of different colored armors restoring them to their pristine condition. All of these – in specific circumstances – have a tendency to fill out the screen if unchecked. Below is a sample of what that means. Spoiler: this one stays.
No, this is a perfectly appropriate amount of drops
DOUBLE STAFFING
The first spell/cooldown skill you pick up in Project Warlock II is Akimbo. You can check it in the demo for that immensely satisfying effect of doubling down on the ammo consumption and non-neglectable damage output. Or – to put it more bluntly – this allows you to absolutely obliterate enemy stupid enough to get in your way when you brandish that Harvester and decide to magically CTRL+V that weapon to another hand.
Up until the demo, the staffs and swords were not yet using the skill to their desired effect. But recently the staff got their own looping attack animation so that the poor monsters are literally standing no chance to the onslaught of the magic spewing from the two powerful staves.
Staff Akimbo applied to staff's Fire upgrade
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See you next time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1640300/Project_Warlock_II/