Our last update was roughly around the end of March, and it was a quiet update, as part of promoting the game at our usual run of in-person cons. But with V.13, we're very quickly approaching the beta window for our title, and we would like to get the word out. Here's the major points of V.13:
-Overhauled character assets (and other artwork)
-Shop mechanics
-Tighter combat animations/movement
-Expansion of combat/damage mechanics
-More in depth weapons/armour types
-You can now customize colours of the inventory tab (because it's fun)
-Expanded levels and their content thereof
-More Alchemy (potion crafting) options
-New voice acting
Let's break down the big players this update:
Overhauled character assets/Tighter combat animations/movement Many party members have seen a lot of their animations completely redrawn from the ground up. This goes from idle/walk animations, but more interestingly, combat animations.
Most characters now have a slew of jump based attacks, where they engage enemies with their attacks more up front and personal, which is also much snappier. Rather than walking back and forth, the jumps are quick and impactful.
Not only that, the character improvements have also come to portraits, as well. Further updating even more looks for characters.
Expansion of Damage Mechanics Up till now, damage was very straight forward, with three types: Physical, Magical, and Pure. This trifecta still is paramount, but now there's a lot more just under the hood. After the damage type is known, there's now a "damage instrument". These are basically the medium of the damage source, like Hack, Piercing, Blunt Hot, Cold, and so on.
Certain armour types are more vulnerable, or resistant to damage instruments, and some might even make you outright invulnerable to some sources. Not only does this create some interesting flavours for the combat encounters, but it breaks up the monopoly that armour was having over the meta game. No matter what, if you had high armour -- especially physical armour -- there was simply no means of counterplaying outside of hoping high armour of one type meant low armour of another.
These new mechanics give us a chance to create some really stand out encounters, and armours that simply do not fit all sizes.
Shop Mechanics The demo didn't previously have any available shops for the player to play with, we've now added at least one. Technically speaking, the player doesn't really ever need to engage with le heckin' capitalism to beat the game, but it definitely is encouraged. We also had shops on the back burner for far longer than we care to admit, as well.
Finally, you can open shops to buy and sell accordingly. The assets have been remade for better HD feeling, and to add a personal touch: shops now all have names, and a preview of the shopkeeper in the corner while the shop menu is displayed.
In a prior blog, we mentioned wanting to use multiple currencies based on your world location, to create a greater sense of immersion and commerce in the world, but for now, only one money type is used.
That more or less does it for the big changes this patch. We hope you like the smaller things, too! Maybe next time we'll be announcing beta playtesting!