Salve, amici! Having recently presented at Boston's Festival of Independent Games, I returned to my workshop to hammer out some tweaks to make the game just a smidge better.
Changes
Shop Restocking & Destocking
The shop stock now dynamically restocks. Items also come off of the market each week to represent other buyers. While it's a nice way to make the game feel more alive and make rare equipment more scarce, it's really preparation for Patch 0.7, which will introduce travel.
In 0.7, each city's stores will carry different equipment at different frequencies and the number of goods on offer will be proportional to the city's size. All of that nice systems logic is now there, under the hood, so that we can sail smoothly in to sailing smoothly around the Mediterranean.
Balance
- Injured gladiators now sell at a discount. No more buying a recruit, throwing them into an easy match and selling them right after!
- Matches overall are slightly easier, especially 2 skull matches. Previously the step from 1 to 2 was a bit harsh for new players.
- A 1 skull challenge will now always be available until the player has won their first match. In addition, the challenge system now loosely tracks your successes, making more higher-difficulty challenges available as you win more (and more difficult) matches.
Quality of Life
- Added a button to unequip all items from a gladiator in outfitting
- Added a button to return from team select directly to challenge selection
- Made the last selected gladiator 'stick' in the outfitting screen when moving back and forth between menus
- Increased tooltip font size (and fixed a typo in one of the perk tooltips)
- Rearranged outfitting a bit to keep the funds in the same top-right location they normally appear in. Previously they moved to the center of the screen, which was unpleasantly inconsistent
What's Next?
The next big patch will take your school on the roads (or, more often, the seas). Equipment and arenas will be more tied to the local culture and size of the city you're in. The markets in big cities will have more on offer and the best equipment will only be available from specific towns with master artisans. Challenges and recruits will eventually reflect the location more as well.
Challenges will only replenish at a certain rate, encouraging you to get out of town and see the world when either you're out of challenges or all your gladiators need time to recover. Travel will cost some time and money, but staying put will still have you paying for your gladiators' upkeep, encouraging you to go find appropriate matches.
All this travel will require a splashy and beautiful new world map as well!
I'm not sure how long this patch will take. It depends a lot on how much I 'front-load' the content of all these locations before release vs just build a skeleton travel system with content to follow.
Either way, I'm really excited to bring the world to life and I hope you will be too!