Hi everyone! It’s been way too long since my last post, but I’ve been busy working on the next big things coming into the game with the upcoming 0.7 version.
Let’s talk about the current state of the game first. Tower of Spirit is an important project for me for many reasons. First, it is my very first commercial game as someone who has only been a game dev for 2 years. Second, it’s a solo project and it means I had to come up with everything from design, art and code all by myself. Obviously, the challenge is pretty big. Everything takes time, especially when the art part is fully hand-drawn and animated frame by frame. That’s the main reason the game has a unique look, but it’s also the main reason why new content takes so long to make. Tower of Spirit artstyle is something I’m really proud, but regarding mechanics and design, there are some flaws, flaws on which I have been working for some time.
In January, I will release an important update which will change how the game works. I’ve been working on a complete rework of the run progression, the rewards and event systems. You can find below the first big changes:
- Run Progression: player will be able to choose different paths after each encounter and decide for what kind of reward they fight for. This will drastically change the flow of the game and improve decision making and replayability.
- Rewards: you gain a lot of stuff when you win a battle but most of it is meaningless when you reach a certain point. To fix that, the reward system has been reworked entirely. Each battle grants only a certain type of reward but you are part of the decision for what it is. Balance will be changed accordingly. Experience was not really reliable and kind of felt weird for a rogue-like, that’s why I'm getting rid of it. Health, mana and emblem point upgrades are still here as battle and event rewards.
- Emblem is one of the main features of the game. What kind of sucks about it is that you cannot switch them outside of the bonfire menu. It was a design choice first, but a bad one I believe. You will be able to change what emblems are equipped between encounters and the one you choose will be always visible on screen (similarly to relics in Slay the Spire or more recently Peglins), so you can always know what kind of benefit you have.
Because those changes affect every part of the game, most of the code of the game is changing. That is why new content should not be released before the end of january. But I have big plans for that too. Regarding the full release of the game, I’m hoping sometime around June 2023. And that’s all for today, I’ll make some announcement when the version 0.7 is ready to be released. Thanks for everything!