We're keeping up a good monthly stride with a new slate of features and fixes. Make sure to join us on our Discord to join in all of the play test fun! As per usual you can jump to the bottom for a more concise bulleted list.
This month we put a lot of effort into improving our map creation workflow. There were certain elements of map making that were tedious in the past so it's been too burdensome to quickly try out fun new ideas for maps. With our new map editor this is a problem of the past and we are excited to show off some pretty dramatically different map ideas at this month's play test. We're also excited to someday put this editor into your hands and see what the community can come up with!
Another major gameplay experiment we are trying out is the Team Refresh. If everyone on the team refreshes in the same round the entire team will get Decisive 99 and Empowered at the end of the round. We've got lots of ideas for where to take this system so please let us know what you think!
Sandbox also got a major reworking of its tools inspired by the new map editor so that you can set up just about any experiment you can imagine. This rework will also be a major boon for our ability to more rapidly design challenges which is our next major thrust for the coming month.
There's so much more good stuff in the bullets below. It's been a great year so far and we're looking forward to so much more in Q2 and onward.
Gameplay
- New maps: Defender, Lattice, Refreshing, and Trial by Fire each wildly different than the other
- A new game mechanic called Team Refresh that gives your entire team a boost when you all refresh in the same round
- Gimbal is continuing to get refined with a couple card tweaks and Charge now increases by 1 each round
Art
- Antourenein has been killing it as of late with a brand new set of vfx for Selene's human form animations
- We've got an awesome new WIP map background of the desert world of Tayassu
UI/UX
- A brand new set of sandbox tools and interface for quickly trying out ideas. Sandbox settings have been removed as they are no longer needed
- Input remapping got an extensive rework to be cleaner and more intuitive
- Ghost state is now back to tracking the full turn rather than a single action. This should make it clearer where you are in your card's action
- Reworked the interface for controlling multiple characters
- Made the hand wrest control from the player less so that it feels smoother to interact with
- Added visibility indicators to the discard pile interface
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a soft lock with Selene's Swift Exit
- Fixed some linked vfx like Gimbal's static and Valencia's Adrenaline flames so that they show independent of each other when 2 of the same character are in a game
- Fixed the ping audio issue
- A potential stability improvement to card tooltips hopefully addressing a crash from the last play test
- A variety of small fixes to improve the handling of cards especially when controlling multiple characters
- A fix for field tooltips sometimes showing when they shouldn't
- A fix for non-keyboard input to be able to trigger expanding/collapsing the hand