Hi everyone!
It's been 3 days since the release of Soul Stalker (feels like it's been a lifetime already with how many updates we've made!) and as every day since launch, we have another hotfix! Before we go into that though, I wanted to propose future plans for the game, as well as request some suggestions from the community! Also, if you've been enjoying Soul Stalker we would really appreciate it if you left a review! It's the best way to support the game
Map System + Difficulty
While many of you enjoy the Slay the Spire-styled map system, others feel that it needs more node types in order to increase the decision making in the game. On top of that, some of you also feel that the base difficulty of the game is still too easy, despite the balancing changes made since release.
Because of that, I propose the following adjustments made to both increase choice in the map screen, and increase general difficulty:
- Splitting up trinket and weapon shops. This change would make it such that shops no longer sell you trinkets and weapons, instead shops are either weapon shops or trinket shops. The benefits of this change are the following:
- More decision making since you now have to choose paths depending on what kind of shops you want to hit.
- Higher difficulty since you have to plan more.
- Players will no longer have the issue of getting served weapons in the shop when they're happy with their current arsenal.
- Separating weapon upgrades/healing from shops. Right now, entering shops prompts you with the choice of upgrading a weapon, or healing. This happens before you get to buy trinkets. Separating the upgrade/healing from shops into a new node (tentatively named campfire nodes) of its own has the following benefits:
- More decision making since you have to choose paths depending on whether you want to spend a node on upgrading/healing.
- Higher difficulty since you have to plan more.
- Changing the regeneration stat to not heal after combat. The regeneration stat currently heals you after each combat, and is used to determine healing in the pre-shop screen. The new proposed use for this stat would be to only determine healing in campfire nodes (and would be increased for each character to account for the fewer instances you would be healed). The regeneration change would have the following benefits:
- Harder runs since you get healed less often.
- Rewards good players for not being hit, as they can choose to upgrade where other players would have to choose to heal.
I want to re-iterate that these are all proposed changes, so nothing's confirmed yet but I wanted to get feedback from the community regarding these potential tweaks in order to be sure that this is the direction you all want Soul Stalker to go in! Feel free to give me your thoughts in the comments below, or join our Discord server for more fluid discussion! Anyways, below are the patch notes for today's hotfix!
Beta 1.0.7
Most of today was spent trying to replicate a single bug that caused the following issues.
- After beating an act boss, the victory jingle would sometimes play twice.
- Beating elites would sometimes automatically reroll your stat/trinket choices.
While I was not able to replicate the bug, I believe I was able to find the cause of it and put in a safeguard in the code. Since I was not able to replicate it I can't be 100% sure that this safeguard fixes it, but I would really appreciate it if you told me if these issues were fixed if you previously ran into them!
Roadmap
While we don't have a roadmap yet, we're starting to form ideas as to what one would look like. Our current development plan is to try to get the game as close to 100% stable as possible in the next 1-2 weeks, and then reveal the next big content update (new character, trinkets, weapons, etc). We want to keep future plans relatively loose so that we can adequately adapt to the will of the community, so we'll only be announcing 1 update at a time in advance!
That's it for this update, and if you've been liking the game and want to support us, we would really appreciate it if you left a review! It's the best way to support Soul Stalker! Let me know what you think of the proposed changes, and I'll see you for the next one!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1714240/Soul_Stalker
- Conrad, Lead Developer