Hello there, Early Access players! Spooky season is upon us and we’re hard at work on some terrifying and thrilling updates for you all. The Halloween season is on our minds. By the way, we’re an Irish studio and did you know Halloween is very much an Irish festival? More on that down the line...
As for Eye of Hellfire updates, keep your eyes peeled, you won’t want to miss out this spooky season.
Here’s what we’re thinking about this week:
Getting from A to B
Movement is something we’re continuing to mull over in-game. Here at Gambrinous, we're heavily influenced by board games and card games (all our previous games are), and we love trying out those types of mechanics in our works. We love the idea of planning strategic movement, though we totally understand how it can be hard when you’re moving between sections while simultaneously trying to escape monsters.
Do you prefer clicking over dragging?
Do you prefer larger sections?
Do you plan your cards in advance?
What would you love to see?
Let us know. While we have a core vision for our game, we always love hearing suggestions and constructive feedback.
Combat (and waiting)
We’ve gotten feedback about when you’re engaged in combat and if you don’t have anything left to do, i.e. all cards gone, no vigour left, can’t escape, it can be quite a wait to get the enemies to hit you.
We agree! There is a lull and waiting around and twiddling your thumbs is not a great experience, especially when your friends may not be as quick to end their turn. We’re playing around with ideas e.g. speeding up timers so that you can decide to just take a hit when things like this happen. What do you think? What would you like to see?
Challenging encounters (a hint!)
Heads up: Don’t read this if you don’t want to hear about our mini-boss enemy!
We’ve been watching lots of folks streaming (thank you!) and tackling the Ballerina!
We’ve loved seeing your reactions to her creepily making her way out of the fresco and into the fight space and it’s been very cool to watch your differences in playstyles.
Some teams breeze through, and some folks don't. If you’re struggling, one thing to bear in mind is if you trigger the ballerina on your own, then that more than likely will be more challenging for you. Also, she does dodge (not everything but you might lose out if you throw all your fight in)! So you need to think about what else you can do in her combat screen.
Most players we've seen trigger her fight with at least 2 players in the room. In fact, we originally had her health a bit lower than what it is (it scales now depending on how many players are in game), and it was proving rather too easy for players!
And here are some lovely things you’ve been saying this week!
“We kept hitting each other and losing our minds. 10/10”
“This was such a fun game to play with friends and it's honestly so rare to find games with free friends passes! If you are looking for a fun game to spend an evening, get it you definitely won't regret it”.
“If you like Arkham Horror Card Game, this game is a close digital clone and has great art style and world building. They say more content is coming and if so it's a sold buy” (Yes! More content is coming!!)
Thanks again for joining us on our Early Access journey!
We will continue to squash those bugs but in the meantime, join us on Discord. We’re very active there and we’re listening!
~ Úna-Minh