Dear acolytes,
Since March 25, 2024, we have had the pleasure of designing, developing, and sharing content for Acolyte of the Altar with all of you. Thank you for your continued support and consistent feedback as we all fought our way through the Marrow Wastes, Fading Forest, and Red Shores.
What started as one person's daydream became a seven-person team creating our debut game. We have learned so much from this experience. Both in creating a game for one of our favorite genres, and in growing a community that wanted to be a part of the process, this has been a journey that we will forever be grateful for. Because of your support, we spent the past year making Acolyte of the Altar bigger and better than we could've ever done on our own.
Finishing our first game is bittersweet. We'd love to spend more time in the wastes together, but we're proud of our creation and how much it has developed. The time we’ve regained will be put to great use on our next game, a new and exciting adventure we’ll say more about when the time is right. Follow along, as you do not want to miss it!
Thanks to all of you players, here’s a summary of everything we’ve added to Acolyte of the Altar after launch.
The most substantial improvement has been the addition of 74 all-new Fabled variants of cards that you can unlock by having the base version of a card in your deck when you complete a run, doubling the former card count at launch. These were an absolute blast to design and to play around with when developing, and it was super rewarding to see the community’s reactions live while releasing them in a three-wave structure! We live-streamed developer commentary of us playing with the new cards after they were all released, talking about different details of their inspiration.
The most recent addition of new Events has increased the variety in the choices available when traversing through the wasteland. More specifically, we’ve added seven Events, more than doubling the initial pool that was available at launch! These include events with unpredictable outcomes and ones that have Patron-specific choices.
We’ve added five new Gifts to the roster that can be offered as rewards in runs after completing certain objectives. One can be found after defeating each of the three final Bosses, one can be found after unlocking all of the Bestiary entries, and one can be found after unlocking all of the Fabled variants in the Card Library.
In addition to improving the reliability of unlocking Achievements in general, we’ve added two new Achievements for the most dedicated of Acolytes to unlock.
After testing and analyzing the play patterns that differentiate the strategies of the Patrons and styles of the Monsters, we’ve balanced many of the cards, beast encounters, and gifts according to our intended experience. The most evident balance changes include updating the Hydrozoan Hivemind fight to offer a more strategic choice between damaging the Monster or damaging its jellyfish friends and reworking the Crumbling City’s Excavate ability to add to its Remaining Residents in order to improve that encounter’s cohesion, though there are many more minute ones that are no less important. For more specific notes, browse the News section of the Steam page or the #patch-notes channel of our Discord server.
This summary wouldn’t be complete without a mention of all of the quality of life improvements and bug fixes that have been included in the patches throughout the year. These include (but are not limited to) adding support for Cloud Saves, expanding the Bestiary to include lore for final Bosses, adding Filters to the Card Library, and improving the readability and accessibility in many of the screens in the game. We wouldn’t have been able to iron out many of the bugs without our dedicated community members reporting bugs in our Discord server!
If you want to stay connected with us, we are active on all our social media accounts! This game is very special to us, and we hope you enjoyed your hunt.
Thank you again, acolytes. And, of course, may the Patrons bless you all. - Cameron, Lionel, Kennedy, James, Donald, Nico, and Alex The Black Kite Games Team
