The full release of Sidestep Legends is here! In this post I will present the new things that have been added in the 1.0 update, future plans for the game and the detailed patch notes for the update.
Important note: This update includes some rearranges in the skill tree and therefore your skill tree will be reset. All your spent gold will be refunded. Just remember to level up the upgrades you want to have again when starting the game.
Summary of early access updates
For those of you who only played one of the earlier versions during early access let's start with a summary of what has been added in the previous updates during early access. If you have been keeping up with the updates during early access you can skip this part. The first updates improved the collision handling of the player and the path finding for the boss. From my observations from players playing the game these two were the most important things to address first.
The next update added the character Grendel's Mother. She has the unique passive that she can use her basic attack while moving. This was something requested by several people that were more used to playing more relaxed games in the genre. While I did not want to change the game completely and add attacking while moving to all characters, giving this as a passive to one character felt like a good compromise.
The next big update was the minion update. It was divided in two updates each adding two new minion types. Each minion type has their own strength compared to the basic minion. The earth minion has more health, the fire minion deals more damage, the ice minion slows the player and the air minion is faster.
After the minion update it came the map rework update. In this four new hostile abilities were introduced. Two new crowd control abilities, the ice projectile which slows the player if hit and the whirlwind which stuns the player if hit. Each crowd control ability is only present on one map, the ice projectile on Asag's Forest, the root projectile on Pirate Island and the whirlwind on The Forge. So the crowd controls get harder with each map. Two new hostile damage abilities were also added in this update, the arcane spin and the galaxy orb. Arcane spin is mostly on The Forge and Galaxy Orb mostly on Pirate Island. To help the player survive these new challenges two new healing abilities were added, Healing Circle and Healing Potion.
This update also came with a rework of the curse upgrade. It is now divided into four different upgrades allowing for more granular control of the difficulty. One for how fast minions spawns, one for how much damage minions do, one for how many hostile abilities spawn and one for how much damage hostile abilities do. All of them are found in the skill tree.
In the last update during early access I added an important part of games in this genre, the reroll, banish and lock options for upgrades. They can be unlocked in the skill tree and you can unlock a lot of them as long as you have the gold to really help you get to that specific build you have in mind.
This was a summary of the updates during early access, there were some more bug fixes, balance changes and minor features added that you can read about in the past patch notes posts.
New things in the 1.0 update
So let's get to what is new in this update. As you may have seen in the preview image of this post this update introduces three new characters. Each of them has a new ability that they start with and a new passive ability.
Abaddon has the passive Aspect Of The Demon which makes him completely immune to crowd control effects, but whenever he gets hit by a crowd control ability his healing is reduced by 50% for 10 seconds. This hero should hopefully help the ones of you that get too frustrated by the crowd control effects, but you still have to be careful about taking damage since it might not be so easy to heal yourself up again. He starts with the new ability Firestorm which when active summons a circle of fire around the player which damages all minions inside it.
Bodhmall starts with the new ability Bear and Healing Circle. Bear gives you a bear pet that attacks enemies and can be targeted by hostile abilities and enemies. Her passive is Beastmastery which heals her or the bear depending on who has the lowest health whenever she uses an ability or the bear attacks.
Monk has the passive Protective Spirit which makes it so you cannot lose more than 10% of your max health form a single attack or ability. He starts with the new ability Holy Fire which when active damages a nearby enemy every time he takes damage. Look for a couple of new upgrades that lowers your max health but increases a lot of other stats with this hero.
New map Desert. This map is the hardest of the maps and includes all the different hostile abilities and has a higher minion spawn rate and higher ability spawn count.
The next new feature is achievements. There are 100 achievements. Some are simpler such as unlocking a certain ability and some more challenging such as surviving for a certain time or clearing a map with some restriction. Worth noting is that I had plans for about double the amount of achievements but Steam does not let me add more until "your title reaches our confidence metric". Which is a bit of a shame, of course if the game at some point has sold enough copies to reach this confidence metric I will add the additional achievements.
The final new feature in this update is Steam Leaderboards. I came up with three areas I thought would be fun to compete with other on, minion kills, curse level and overtime. Minion kills is just the number of minions you kill during a game. Curse level is the combined curse level from the four curse upgrades in the skill tree. When you complete the 20 waves on a map your combined curse level will be added to the leaderboard. Overtime is the time you survive on the Death Wave. Each of these categories have their own leaderboard for all four maps, so in total there are 12 leaderboards to compete on.
There are also some balance updates, bug fixes, a few new combo upgrades as well as upgrades for all the new abilities. You can read all the details about those in the full patch notes at the end of this post.
Future plans for Sidestep Legends
So now when the game is out of early access, what is next? With this update I feel like I have added pretty much all the things I really wanted to add to the game. Of course with a game like this there are endless new things you could add and I do have some ideas for new abilities that I did not get to. However unfortunately so far the game has not sold nearly well enough to be able to sustain me as a full time indie developer. So in order to be able to keep doing that I need to move on to new projects.
I will of course make new updates fixing any bugs that appear and I have a few more combo upgrades that I want to add that I did not have time for in this update. So you can expect one or two updates in the coming month with those. But there will probably not be any more significant content added to the game. Maybe I might add some more new combo upgrades every once in a while or even a new ability if I feel the need to take a small break from other projects. Especially if you leave suggestions in the Steam discussion boards or on the Discord server, for example ideas about fun combo upgrades for any of the ability combinations that don't have any combo upgrade yet. That would greatly increase the chance that I add some new things since then it would feel worth it even if the sales aren't enough.
Full patch notes
New features
- New hero Monk. He starts with the new ability Holy Fire and the new passive Protective Spirit
- New hero Bodhmall. She starts with the new ability Bear, Healing Circle and the new passive Beastmastery
- New hero Abaddon. He starts with the new ability Firestorm and the new passive Aspect Of The Demon
- New ability Holy Fire. While active whenever you take damage deal 10 damage to 1 random nearby enemy
- New upgrade Holy Fire Duration. Increase the duration of Holy Fire by 20%
- New upgrade Holy Fire Area. Increase the area of Holy Fire by 10%
- New upgrade Holy Fire Damage. Increase the damage of Holy Fire by 10
- New combo upgrade Holy Fire Block. Gain 15% chance to block damage from attacks while Holy Fire is active
- New combo upgrade Holy Fire Heal. Gain 15% chance to heal for 10 health each time you deal damage with Holy Fire
- New combo upgrade Holy Fire Unstoppable. Become Unstoppable for 1 second each time you deal damage with Holy Fire
- New combo upgrade Holy Fire Armor. Dealing damage with Holy Fire grants a stack of Hardened Skin lasting for 6 seconds increasing the armor by 5, refreshing when new stacks are applied, and stacking up to 10 times
- New combo upgrade Holy Fire Blink. Blink to a random nearby location whenever you take damage while Holy Fire is active
- New combo upgrade Holy Fire Cooldown. Gain 15% chance to reduce the current cooldown of all other abilities by 3 seconds whenever you take damage while Holy Fire is active
- New ability Bear. Summon a bear that can attack enemies and get targeted by hostile abilities and enemy units
- New upgrade Bear Damage. Increase the damage of the bear by 20
- New upgrade Bear Health. Increase the health of the bear by 10%
- New upgrade Bear Health Regeneration. Increase health regeneration of the bear by 2 per 5 seconds
- New combo upgrade Bear Bloodlust. Whenever the Bloodlust abiltiy is active, the bear gets the same attack speed increase
- New combo upgrade Bear Sprint. Whenever the Sprint abiltiy is active, the bear gets the same movement speed increase
- New combo upgrade Bear Block. Whenever the player is invulnerable, the bear also gets the same effect
- New combo upgrade Bear Armor. Increase the armor of the bear by 10
- New combo upgrade Bear Charge. The bear attacks charges the enemy target a short distance. This effect has a 2 second cooldown
- New combo upgrade Bear Jump. When you use Weapon Throw the bear will jump towards the targeted direciton, damaging any enemies it jumps over
- New combo upgrade Bear Flamewalk. The bear leaves lava pools behind it whenever the Flamewalk ability is active
- New combo upgrade Bear Pickup. Bear can pickup gold and xp
- New combo upgrade Bear Healing Potion. Bear can pickup healing potions
- New ability Firestorm. Summon a circle of fire around you dealing 5 damage every half second for 4 seconds
- New upgrade Firestorm Damage. Increase the damage per tick of Firestorm by 3
- New upgrade Firestorm Area. Increase the area of Firestorm by 15%
- New upgrade Firestorm Duration. Increase the duration of Firestorm by 15%
- New combo upgrade Firestorm Heal. Heal for 1 health each time an enemy is taking damage from Firestorm
- New combo upgrade Firestorm Armor. Gain 5 armor for every enemy currently currently inside the Firestorm
- New combo upgrade Firestorm Block. Gain 0.25 seconds of invulnerability for each enemy killed by Firestorm after it ends
- New combo upgrade Firestorm Attack Speed. Gain 5% attack speed for every enemy currently inside the Firestorm
- New combo upgrade Firestorm Movement Speed. Gain 5% movement speed for every enemy currently inside the Firestorm
- New passive Protective Spirit. You cannot lose more than 10% max health due to damage from a single attack or spell
- New passive Beastmastery. Whenever you use an ability or your pet attacks the one of you with the lowest health heals for 4% of max health
- New passive Aspect Of The Demon. You are immune to all crowd control effects, but every time you get hit by a crowd control effect your healing is reduced by 50% for 10 seconds
- New map Desert. This map has the highest base number of ability spawns and faster minion spawns than the other maps so it should be more of a challenge.
- New upgrade Glass Cannon. Increase your basic attack damage by 25, ability area by 25% and ability damage by 25%, but reduce your max health by 25%
- New upgrade Forbidden Knowledge. Increase experience gain by 25%, cooldown reduction by 15% and ability duration by 25%, but reduce your max health by 25%
- Achievements. 100 achievements to unlock. See https://steamcommunity.com/stats/2077590/achievements/ for a full list
- Curse Leaderboards, one for each map. Survive all 20 waves with as high combined curse level from the skill tree as possible
- Overtime Leaderboards, one for each map. Survive the death wave for as long as possible
- Minion kills Leaderboards, one for each map. Kill as many minions as possible in one game
- New combo upgrade Blink Healing Potion. Spawn a healing potion at your old position after using blink
- New combo upgrade Blink Firestorm. Spawn a fire circle around you after using blink dealing 50 damage to everyone hit
- New combo upgrade Blink Lava Pool. Spawn a lava pool at your old position after using blink
Balance changes
- Block Heal now needs a heal ability to be unlocked before it is available in the upgrade pool
- Increased the bonus gold for surviving all waves from 200 to 1000
- Increased the bonus gold for each second overtime survived from 1 gold to 10 gold
- Channel Heal now heals every half second instead of every second, base healing of the ability has been halved to compensate
- Block Heal upgrade now apply for all invulnerability and not just the one from the Block ability
- Block Weapon Swing upgrade now apply for all invulnerability and not just the one from the Block ability
- Increased the starting Healing Potion limit from 3 to 6
- Increased the Healing Potion count upgrade increase from 1 to 2 per upgrade level
Bug fixes
- Fixed the description of the Weapon Dash Damage Stacks buff that had the wrong damage value
- Fixed a bug causing ability curse damage to be used instead of minion curse damage when calculating minion damage
- Fixed so Reroll, Banish and Lock upgrades get reset properly when refunding skill tree upgrades
- Revive upgrade in the skill tree is now reset properly after refunding upgrades
- Area upgrade in the skill tree is now reset properly after refunding upgrades
- Fixed a bug causing less abilities than intended to spawn on The Forge map
- Fixed a bug causing Healing Potion throw range to not properly being upgraded by ability range upgrades
- Fixed so circles are activated as long as the player hit circle overlaps the circle, instead of the player mid point
- Fixed a bug causing Dragon Resilience to somtimes activate when trying to use an ability but not succeding
- Fixed a bug causing banished combo upgrades to reappear