Hi esteemed Wantless enthusiast,
We’d like to wish you a happy new year! May we use it to build a fun game together.
It’s been another 4 weeks, and though the holiday season has slowed development a little bit, we’ve still managed to get some work done. Here goes!
More visual effects
We’ve added new VFX to the game, slowly catching-up with all existing gameplay effects! In no particular order: shield, poison, bleed, fracture, grief damage, fear damage.
Many more such as thorns, cleanse, buff, debuff, push and pull are being saved for later!
New effects to craft with
We’ve added new effects to enhance your skill crafting capabilities.
- Thorns is a buff that causes you to reflect a flat amount of damage back to attackers every time you’re dealt damage.
- Toxic is a debuff that inflicts a pure damage tick every turn for 3 turns. Its only difference with Poison is that Toxic stacks. Inflicting Toxic to an already intoxicated target increases its damage and refreshes its duration.
- Shadowed is a buff that causes your next skill to be cast twice in a row. Double damage, double healing, double toxic ticks...just don’t combine it with effects that don’t benefit from multiplied casts, such as unstackable buffs.
- Restore AP instantly restores an amount of Action Points. We found one fun mechanic was to try and extend your turn for as long as possible.
New enemy passive effects/modifiers
Enemies can spawn with passive effects, or modifiers, depending on patient traits (more of that in a minute). Here are some new modifiers we’ve added:
- Reflective enemies reflect negative effects (debuffs, damage over time and disables) on the caster. Forget all debuffs, you’d just be hurting yourself.
- Vengeful enemies reflect a % of the hit damage they’re dealt back to the caster. Damage over time and indirect damage sources (explosive barrels, thorns) bypass that effect, so pick your skills carefully.
- Power hungry enemies deal more damage for each AP you’ve spent during your turn. Play safe
Sound
One of the few tasks still standing between the team and a playable demo, is adding sound to the game. We’ve listed over 200 sound effects that need designing and integration, with a few dozen now implemented. We’ll be using rough sounds and placeholder music at the moment and intend to work with professionals to turn these into unique, quality assets when we’re ready.
That’s it for today’s development highlights, now onto our deep dive: Patients, part 2.
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Part 1 left us with 2 important topics to cover: patient traits, and unique patients.
1) Let’s start with patient traits
As we’ve briefly glanced at in part 1, traits are patient characteristics that delineate their personality and impact their gameplay.
Non-unique patients spawn with a rarity level that defines both the number of traits generated for them and the pool of available traits they can be chosen from (example: some traits will only appear on patients that are Uncommon or rarer).
Since most (not all, mind you) traits make transposition harder, rarer patients with more traits tend to be more challenging. It’s up to you to decide whether you’ll risk it for more abundant rewards.
We’ve decided this feature was a must for multiple reasons:
- Increased challenge variety and replayability.
- Additional decision-making parameters when designing your skills and your build.
- Increased surprise and reward. That excitement shiver you get when dropping rare loot shouldn't be limited to loot!
Down to details, what do traits do, exactly?
I mentioned traits alter gameplay, here are multiple ways they do that, along with implemented examples:
Alter a patient’s reward
Item rarity, number of item options to choose from, number of items you can pick, amount of currency, amount of experience, reputation stakes...most patient reward parameters can be affected by traits.
- Monk: yields no currency, yields triple the experience.
- Generous: you can choose 1 extra item reward.
Add a passive effect to all enemies
Passive effects (or modifiers) are effects that remain on an entity throughout the entire transposition, and that cannot be removed - we've briefly mentioned them at the beginning of this devblog. Many traits strengthen enemies with passive effects that require you to adjust your build and strategy, but some might also benefit you!
- Stoic: enemies have increased resistance to Grief damage. Pack Pain or Fear damage-dealing skills instead.
- Calm: enemies regenerate health at the beginning of their turn. One shot skills or healing reduction is advised.
Add a passive on hit effect to all enemies
On hit effects are effects the enemy will inflict every time it hits you.
- Eloquent: enemies inflict disarm on hit. Disarm keeps you from using offense skills for a turn. Bring the right cleanse skill or make sure you don’t get hit!
- Bully: enemies push you on hit. Movement skills might help you get close quicker if you're using a melee build.
Add a passive effect to Eiris
Good old passive effects again, only this time they're attached to Eiris.
- Infuriating: you’re Berserk. You’ll hit harder and get hit harder, and you’ll only be able to use offense skills.
- Envious: you’re Slow, meaning moving will cost more AP. Builds that don’t need to move much or multiple movement skills are advised.
Alter the mind maze’s structure
Floor count, room type tendency, a mind maze is composed from multiple parameters that can be altered by traits.
- Pompous: maze contains more Elite rooms. Elite rooms contain stronger enemies.
- Refined: maze contains more Treasure rooms. Treasure rooms are rare rooms that hold rewards. You’ll like treasure rooms.
Add modifiers to each room
As we’ve mentioned in part 1, rooms themselves can also have modifiers that alter gameplay inside.
- Disorganized: rooms contain many destructibles (crates, explosive barrels…).
- Brilliant: rooms contain 1 Rare enemy. A Rare enemy has 2 generated passive effects and increased stats. It is also guaranteed to yield item rewards!
There are many, many more traits and trait categories than are listed here, but hopefully that’s enough to get your curiosity. Now onto our second deep dive subject!
2) Unique patients
Unique patients are handmade patients (as opposed to procedurally generated ones) we design ourselves. They’re essential to telling the world’s story, creating compelling side quests, and challenging you with unique transpositions for special rewards.
Here’s what differentiates unique patients from generated ones:
- Handmade: we determine their traits, rewards, difficulty, often even their exact mind maze layout.
- Stories: these patients have stories. That is to say you’ll learn a bit about them before transposition starts.
- Progression and persistance: unique patients aren’t limited to a single encounter. Successfully transposing them may cause them to come back later for you to uncover more of their story. They’ll have renewed challenges and rewards.
- Events: some - not all - unique patients are associated with main or side quest events. Some may unlock passage to the next area, others may unveil a special upgrade that lets you craft new skills or discover secret areas.
Your generated patients will occasionally be replaced with a single, compulsory unique patient, blocking your progression through the main questline. Like a story boss would in a classic RPG.
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That’s it for today’s devblog. We sincerely hope you had an amazing holiday season, and that you have a healthy, prosperous, productive year 2022!
We’re always happy to chat on Discord.
Until next time, stay safe, and play awesome games!