There is many differences between Tower Walker and Mushi. Today we wanted to list 4 of them. The racials, boggin companions, loots in dungeons and the world map.

1. The racials and ancestry

In Tower Walker there is not much depth around the racial abilities. In Mushi we wanted to put more focus into adding more depth to racials. All races now have their own talent tree "Ancestry" with special unique abilities. The game will have 24 different races at launch with a total of 95+ new skills tied to these talents.

For example: Human has "Royal Heritage" which increases crit chance just as it did in Tower Walker, but now in Mushi with the added "Ancestry" tree there is a choice between "Ferocity" or "Momentum" - these bonuses has a chance to proc everytime you crit.

"Ferocity" - Gain an extra bonus of crit power for 5 seconds

"Momentum" - Gain movement speed for 10 seconds.

And further down we have a powerful talent "Warpath" which has a chance on hit to grant 100% crit chance for 5 seconds. Stats in Mushi such as Crit and Dodge has been reworked and rebalanced.

2. Party companions

In Tower Walker it costs gold coins to unlock and level up party companions. In Mushi this has been reworked to be talents for a new set of companions called "Boggins" in the "Traveler" tree. It now costs skillpoints to improve their support instead of gold. Boggins can have synergy with certain races and classes. For example "Fungi" has a special bond with the "Boggin Seer" that plants mushrooms to bring support in combat. The racial ability can boost and greatly improve these types of "Windy Shroom" and "Frenzy Shroom". With boggins there is also new features around gear and special equipment.

(This screenshot is from a dungeon called "Deep mines")

3. Looting in dungeons

Dungeons is much different in the next game than in Tower Walker. We wanted Mushi to be more of a "Dungeon Crawler" with a priority on that dungeon bosses drops primary armor, weapons, rings and pets and the world outside drops materials and resources used for crafting. The bosses out in the world still drops good items but it will be a better balance between looting and crafting. And the dungeon part will represent the looting in terms of spicy and rare items. We put in extra effort to make sure there is unique loots from every boss in a handcrafted journey that begins alot earlier in the game, starting with "Shimmering Depths" located in Desolate Coast around level 30. There is no attunements or level requirements to enter any dungeon. And Mythic key is now only used to reset a dungeon when it is on cooldown for respawn. There is also a detailed bestiary that gives more detailed info about each boss and their loots. There is a total of 7 dungeons in the game.

Ingame loot-wiki for dungeons

4. World map and questing

The way you navigate in the world by using a map in Mushi gives a new experience than before when changing floors in Tower Walker. There is no more soul ring and without the soul ring there is no requirements of opening gates to progress further in. The questing in the world has been reworked and improved. The gathering of resources and materials for crafting is more tied to the balance in the world than before and goes together with the new looting balance in dungeons. The "Auto-questing" feature is now available earlier in the game just after completing the tutorial and it is not required to be unlocked the way it did in Tower Walker.

What is happening right now?

We aim to release very soon, hopefully this month or in the upcoming months so we are currently hard at work refining and polishing the game. The constant struggle between micromanagement versus automation, crafting versus looting, racials versus class-skills and improving core features like dungeons and world bosses versus adding new secondary stuff like deathless mechanics or ascension talents is in full effect. And to maintain a good balance early to lategame for all different classes while facing important decisions regarding design priorities such as staying true to our own blend of "Tower Walker" formula versus adding new spicy outside-the-box ideas on top. Creation is an act of sheer will. We are cooking a sequel and a successor here and this process of evolving is hard but with great struggle comes great rewards. And the greatest reward for us is to see the game become fun to play.

Thanks for all your wishlist and following!

We are 3 people making Mushi and our highest priority is to make sure the game is good and fun to play but we are also exploring options how to reach out to our crowd before launch. It turns out that trying to be heard today in a (very) loud world can be hard. We want to focus on development and the making of a good product first. We think success should be earned by making a good game more so than how much coverage and wishlist you have but we all know that this is most of the time not the case. Current climate today is heavily focused on promotion and marketing for a game more than craftmanship and reaching out is often more important than actually making the crowd happy by creating a great game.

You probably already know that our primary source of new players in Tower Walker is still today mostly "word of mouth" recommendations from friends and family that enjoyed the game so much that they told more people about it online or at work. Tower Walker launched with less than 450 wishlist and our devotion to craftmanship first made us deploy over 60 updates to the game the coming 2 years. So what we are trying to say here is that every single wishlist and follower means alot to us. We wanted to thank everyone for helping us to reach more wishlist for Mushi so far with your amazing support.

First dungeon added to the demo
For those of you that missed the demo launch during Steam Next Fest dont forget that you can try the game today. All characters created in the demo can be transfered to continue in the full game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4192770/Mushi/