Greetings Spellslingers!
We are currently working on new features, but still need a few more weeks to finish things. So we wanted to let you know what is going on behind the scenes.
Explore the Void!
The main thing we are working on is a deep redesign of the Transcendence (difficulty) system. Instead of simple stages with cumulative challenges, we are introducing the “Void Map”, representing the progress of defeating the Voidwalkers. To traverse the map, you must complete increasingly harder challenges, while unlocking new loadouts/artifacts/relics/etc.
Work in progress, UI may change substantially: Select challenges from a list to match the challenge rating of the Void Map.
New wizard graphics, again
Tim is also working on new character art for wizards, and has made a lot of progress on new Fire and Earth wizard graphics. We’ve got some help from Ghost Ship Games with concepting parts of the new designs with an aim for a stronger ‘personality’, and we’re quite excited for also revamping the wizard animations. The Fire Wizard graphics are going to be available in the next playtest/beta update, but we also hope to have time to finish the new Earth Wizard. We will drop a few more teasers for how they are progressing on twitter and discord, so keep an eye out for those.
Work in Progress: First pass on the new fire wizard graphics.
Work in progress: The new earth wizard art direction.
New map/reward redesign
Thorbjørn started working on redesigning part of the map- and encounter/reward systems, attempting to solve a few different design issues (e.g. shards being too important, too many spells in late-game, shops being too rare). However, only some of these changes will be ready for the next update. There are also a few other changes like how loadouts are going to work, but we will share details on that closer to the next update.
Closed Beta
As a final note, we have been looking into ways to give new people access to the beta. Our plan is to start running short Steam Playtest sessions, but we will combine this with a small closed beta on our Discord. We are expecting to start this process shortly after the next update is released.
That's all for now! We will try to write more posts like this in the future, so please let us know in the comments about the subjects you would like to hear more about.
Tim and Thorbjørn