The Big Changes Coming for Early Access and Dev Stream tomorrow! DEV BLOG #9

Dear Tacticians,

Skygard Arena launches in Early Access in only 4 days! You’ll be able to discover all the new features in the game when it becomes available on November 18 at 5pm (CET).

In this Devblog, we’d like to share with you what we learned from the demo and introduce you to the new features and updates coming for the Early Access launch.

We were very glad to see that many demo players enjoyed the core mechanics of Skygard Arena, its colorful roster of Champions, and the artistic direction of the game. The addition of the Artifact system to personalize your Champions allowed you to create plenty of diverse teams and test different strategies, including a few quite smart and efficient ones! The possibility to play against an experimental AI with a more advanced difficulty level has also been appreciated. This AI wins almost 50% of its matches against real players, a proof that it offers a real tactical challenge. We also noted that many players were looking forward to playing the solo Campaign mode, which will be coming with Early Access!

For Early Access, our intention has been to improve the game by taking into account suggestions and feedback shared by our demo players. Upcoming updates include the possibility to skip the guided steps of the tutorial missions, several changes to make the defense of your Major Pillar easier, and a nerf of several team compositions that were a bit too strong.

You will find below the detailed patch note for the upcoming 0.6 version (which will start Early Access).

We’re also excited to announce that we’ll hold a Dev Stream this Friday, November 15, from 6pm to 8pm (CET) on Twitch! Don’t hesitate to come ask your questions directly to the dev team, chat about the recent changes and watch a few games of Arena mode with the new Champions Vallya and Bu Shin! Speaking of which, you can discover Vallya Vanguard in the video we released this week, which you can watch below.

Let’s meet on the official Skygard Arena channel on Twitch tomorrow at 6pm CET!

Thanks for your support and see you soon in the Arena,
-The Gemelli Games team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pabvdprZLtY

NEW FEATURES FOR EARLY ACCESS LAUNCH

Solo campaign mode

Delve in the world of Skygard and play 16 handcrafted missions across the first 3 chapters of the campaign. Each mission offers a unique tactical challenge, with specific victory conditions, dedicated arenas and its own enemies. Each mission also has its own soundtrack!

2 new Champions

• Introducing Vallya, Knight of the Silver Kingdom! Discover her Vanguard Persona, a quite resilient defender in melee, and her Commander Persona, an accomplished tactician who will dispatch her teammates with ease and will help them to capture Pillars.
• Introducing Bu Shin, the cat of the Clouds Clan! Play his Shadow Assassin Persona, who gathers power in the shadows before unleashing a devastating blow, or his Thunder Warrior Persona, a real furry dynamo who dashes from one corner of the arena to another while dealing important damage on his path.

New difficulty levels against Experimental AI

You can play Arena games against the Experimental AI with 3 different difficulty levels (up from only 1 in the demo).

• At level 2, the AI will take more time to calculate and will plan its moves over more rounds. It will also play Champions it masters especially well.
• At level 3, the AI will play pre-determined team compositions, custom-made for this mode! With 12 different teams full of synergies between Champions at its disposal, this third difficulty level for the Experimental AI should be a valuable training partner.

New music

Each Arena available in PvP now has its own soundtrack!

UPDATES & IMPROVEMENTS

Tutorial

For each tutorial mission, you can now choose between Guided Mission or Free Mission. Choosing Free Mission will put you directly in combat, with a panel displaying key info, without having to go through the guided steps.

• We understand that a subset of players who are used to this kind of game do not want to be forced to play the guided steps of a tutorial. However, we want to leave the freedom to players to discover every game mechanic by following the guided steps, should they wish to. We now give you the choice to go through them or not!

Systems

Health Points of Major Pillars : 150 → 250.

• Capturing a Major Pillar was too easy, too quick and did not leave enough options to be able to come back in the game or counter-attack. Raising the HP of Major Pillars makes this strategy less easy to set up and should create richer, more eventful battles.

Pillars (both Major and Minor) are now affected by healing spells.

• We found it frustrating that healing AoE spells, like Archbishop Aiden’s Refraction or Saving Prayer, didn’t help defend Pillars that were under attack.
• This also opens an option to counter an opponent who would focus on capturing your Main Pillar, by making it now possible to heal its HP back.

Victory points for the elimination of an enemy Champion: 1 → 2.

• In our opinion, the elimination of an enemy Champion was not granting enough victory points. Eliminating a Champion requires dedicating an important quantity of resources, much more than for neutralizing a Minor Pillar for instance. We wish the reward to be up to the amount of effort needed.

It is no longer possible for two ultimate orb charges to appear next to each other.

• This would create situations where a Champion could win 4 ultimate charges too easily, without investing a lot of movement resources.

Poison token damage: 20 → 15.

• We noted that the damage received from Poison over several turns had way too much impact.

Experimental AI

• AI less frequently focuses on capturing the Major Pillar and more often considers other strategies, like capturing Minor Pillars and eliminating enemy Champions. This should improve the diversity of games against AI and will allow you to play in more varied situations!

Champions

Health Points

We raised the HP of every Champion who was playable in the demo version. We wish to avoid quick eliminations and give strategies that need several turns to work more opportunities to shine.

• Aerica : 110 → 130
• Aiden : 120 → 140
• Raine : 130 → 140
• Na Jima : 130 → 140
• Daerio : 130 → 160
• Champei : 160 → 180
• Jorn : 160 → 200

Raine (Life Mage)

• Impact Staff → Staff of Power: Whenever an ally of Raine is healed above their maximum health points, this ally gains Impact II → Critical.
  • We thought it was too powerful to be able to stack Impact tokens without any risk at the beginning of a match, before unleashing a devastating move on the opponent’s Major Pillar for instance. This strategy was leaving very few counter options. For this reason, we chose to replace the Impact II token by a Critical token, which cannot be stacked.

Jorn (Predator)

• Venomous Breath: Applies Poison 2 and Bleed 2 to enemies in a 3-cell long cone → Poison 1 and Bleed 2.
  • The impact of the spell was too strong with Poison 2. We wish to keep this set-up spell for Bleed and Poison, as well as its synergies with other moves from Jorn and other Champions, so we only reduce its power.

Aiden (Archbishop)

• Tome of Sight: Increases Aiden’s range by 2 → 1.
  • The effect of this Artifact was too powerful compared to his other Artifacts, so we’re reducing the power of this one to entice players to try out the others.

• Tome of Rejuvenation: Refraction healing is amplified by 10 HP per type of token on the target → 5 HP.
  • We think Refraction is already a powerful spell, combining AoE healing and damage. We want to prevent this healing from reaching an overwhelming amount.

Daerio (Renegade)

• Charged Blade: Daerio starts the game with 6 ultimate charges → 5 ultimate charges.
  • This Artifact had a win rate too high.

Aerica (Sharpshooter)

• Precision sight: Increases Aerica’s range by 2 → 1.
  • The effect of this Artifact was too powerful compared to other Artifacts, so we’re reducing the power of this one to entice players to try out the others.

• Aimed Shot: Deals 35 damage to target enemy. If Aerica hadn’t moved this turn, deals 53 damage instead. → Deals 40 damage to target enemy. If Aerica hadn’t moved this turn, deals 60 damage instead. Furthermore, the bonus damage applies if Aerica used her Secondary Action to switch places with her Sentry.
  • Aimed Shot is the only way to deal direct damage for Sharpshooter Aerica, so we wish to make it more impactful. We also want to make it more relevant with her kit and reinforce the synergy between her Primary and Secondary actions.

Na Jima (Skirmisher)

• Blessed Feathers: Na Jima gains Haste 2 at the beginning of her turn → Haste 1.
  • The effect of this Artifact was too powerful compared to other Artifacts, so we’re reducing the power of this one to entice players to try out the others.

Bug Fixes

We corrected numerous issues that you reported to us, thank you for your help!