Hey Clockmakers,
Releasing our first Playtest last year was an amazing experience! We were honestly surprised that, even though bad luck had us revealing our ARPG a mere DAY before the biggest ARPG launch of recent memory, we still got a LOT of interest in our game, and a lot of useful feedback.
For this new Demo, we've made significant changes to several systems. Our goal is to improve the early game experience and lay the foundation for the endgame systems that are in development.
We also focused on the main area of feedback from December: controls. We have polished the WASD-movement experience, and properly implemented gamepad support. The gamepad support is still not 100% final quality, so please let us know if you encounter any difficulties or frustrations.
Here’s the breakdown of what we’ve changed:
Game Experience Improvements
Improved WASD and Gamepad Controls
Your Feedback: WASD control scheme had inconsistencies and quality of life issues. Also, Gamepad control was placeholder and did not work on menu screens.
Our Solution: We replaced our "band-aid" control scheme with a polished version. We also officially implemented gamepad support, and everything should be working fine and dandy now (with the exception of the Reliquary screen, which is usable but is still a work-in-progress - it also needs quite a bit of polish for mouse/keyboard as well).
Less Oppressive Clock Timer
Your Feedback: Clock always ticking down can feel oppressive/unrewarding.
Our Solution: We introduced a new in-game drop that adds more Time to the current run’s clock. You are also guaranteed to get +90 seconds from the main Bosses of each Act.
Better Item Pickup and Loot Behavior
Your Feedback: Sometimes it was annoying to pick up items as a melee build or when blasting quickly through the level. Also, chests took too long to drop their loot and it felt like a waste of precious clock seconds.
Our Solution: We made adjustments to how item drops behave: when you open chests, all items will automatically be attracted to you after they finish dropping (you don’t need to stand next to the chest). Now, this logic also applies to loot from enemies: if you are near the enemy when it dies, the loot will automatically be attracted to you. The only case where loot will stay on the floor is if you kill enemies from a range and never get close.
Skill Synergies and Build Diversity
Your Feedback: The game rewards/incentivizes you for including just a few Skills on your bar.
Our Solution: We introduced a new "Skill Synergies" system which provides passive benefits for ranking up any skill; we have also made the Blessings Deck smaller, and you now have less level-ups per run overall - which means you’ll run out of upgrades sooner if you take only a few skills.
Designer Note: It's still a viable option to take only a few Skills if you don’t plan to do deeper than 7-9 Floors in a given run - but now it’s a viable choice instead of always being the optimal play.
More Meaningful Blessings and Upgrades
Your Feedback: Picking up a "Common" level-up Blessing felt bad.
Our Solution: Our new Blessings balance "squashed" stats and made every upgrade more meaningful; Common and Magic Blessings are now more powerful across the board, and the gap to Rares and Uniques is now less jarring.
Smoother Game Flow with Fewer Level-Up Interruptions
Your Feedback: Too many level-ups interrupted the flow of the game, especially in deeper floors.
Our Solution: We made a new XP Curve with drastically less level-ups per run, especially at the high-end. Our new Blessings balance also means each level up is more meaningful than before, so you still feel that power surge, just with less interruptions.
Balanced Gold Costs and Upgrade Depth
Your Feedback: Gold costs for upgrades sometimes were too expensive / felt random. They also felt a bit shallow/simplistic.
Our Solution: We introduced a completely new "Blessings of Foundation" system, which gives consistent and player-controlling price scaling, as well as raised the skill ceiling of the game from the very first run. This is a complicated feature to explain briefly, so check our in-depth explanation below if you’re interested!
New Skill Levels and Mana Rework
Your Feedback: Mana quickly becomes meaningless and overall doesn’t feel good.
Our Solution: We have introduced a new "Skill Level" system. You can unlock new Skill Levels at the Great Bell, which gives you the choice to use more powerful versions of Skills - but at higher Mana costs.
Designer Note: This system has PLACEHOLDER UI and will be clunky and weird to use in this Demo, we apologize for that, but we wanted to push this out as soon as possible even in this crude state.
More Unique Relics Early On
Your Feedback: Unique Relics are really cool but there could be more of them early on.
Our Solution: Just for the Demo, we have unlocked all of the Act 1 Unique Relics on the drop pool. This might make your first runs a bit more RNG-heavy than intended, but provide much more choice and exciting build opportunities.
For the final game, we are currently planning to stick to limiting Unique Relic drop pools early on, and increase it as you progress (this is intended to guide newer players so they are not overwhelmed with choice and/or frustrated with bad RNG). But rest assured that the endgame “Hell Mode” will have a huge Relic drop pool. We plan to ship the game with over 100 Uniques, and keep adding more post-launch based on your feedback.
Also, we've finished fleshing out our Ailments system (which was not a "Feedback" reported by you, but it's still a significant improvement! pats own back).
New Feature: "Blessings of Foundation"
We have replaced the old Gold Totem upgrades with a new tiered system with different categories.
All upgrades and prices start the run at the lowest level, so you won’t see super-expensive stuff right away. By purchasing a Blessing, you will unlock one or more possible upgrades in the same category, so you are in control of how expensive your new Totems will be.
There are six Blessings of Foundation categories:
- Precision: upgrades related to Critical Chance, Critical Damage and Projectiles.
- Force: upgrades related to Elemental Damage, Elemental Ailments and Area of Effect.
- Constitution: upgrades related to Life, Life Regen, Endurance and Healing.
- Lethality: upgrades related to Physical damage, Melee and Bleed.
- Spirit: upgrades related to Mana, Cooldown Reduction, Mana Shield and Conviction.
- Alacrity: upgrades related to Move Speed, Attack Speed and Evasion.
This is a map of how you progress through each Foundation category (we plan to make it available in-game in the near future):
Upcoming Feature: English Voiceover!
We’re happy to announce that with the backing of Mad Mushroom we’ve hired some talented voice talent to do a full English dub of the game. It will be done in time for release later this year, so you will have the option of playing the game either in the original Brazilian Portuguese or the English dub.
Thanks And Have Fun!
Thank you so much for your support! We hope to hear more from you, and make the game the best it can be for release.
If you have any (constructive and respectful) feedback, we LOVE to hear it! You can leave it here on the Steam Community, or join our Discord channel - whichever you prefer!
