We always thought of Underboard as a game where you explore dangerous places, as our third monthly update we're finally bringing that concept to the game with the new map system. The system also brings a lot of player agency with it, opening new ways of mastering the game.
Map System
Previously runs had 3 acts, each with 10 stages that granted rewards when completed. The order in which those rewards spawned for each act was pseudo random, with the goal of adding variance to runs.
In Omen (our early demo) stages had multiple combats as you progressed through the acts, we liked that later acts lasted for longer because you were doing more combats, but those combats didn't provide extra rewards and felt like padding.
In general, more combats lets you enjoy your team for longer if it's strong, but it also makes you dread losing more Life if it's weak, potentially ending the run before crucial upgrades or reaching the next boss.
We wanted to bring more combats per act in a more rewarding and intuitive way, that also lets you choose how you tackle them instead of being a mandatory amount in a fixed order.
There is also the fact that every combat was completly independent of each other, so you couldn't really make plans to counter enemy teams before encountering them.
So, runs now work in the following way:
- Runs have 3 Maps.
- Each Map contains an amount of Map Traits, increasing in later Maps.
- Enemy teams in a Map are more likely to have Map Traits.
- Maps contain Areas in a random grid layout, all start undiscovered.
- You discover Areas adjacent to your current position in the Map.
- All Map Areas have a combat against a different enemy team.
- All Maps have 10 Areas that grant character, item and spell rewards.
- Maps have an amount of Combat Areas where only Experience is granted on completion, increasing in later Maps.
- Completing Map Areas that grant rewards increases the Map Difficulty, making enemy teams harder.
- After completing all Map Areas with rewards, the Boss spawns on the Map, locking all uncompleted Combat Areas.
- Boss Areas continue to have multiple combats where killed enemies revive for lost combats.
- Completing the Boss Area allows you to choose your next Map from a set of options where you can preview their Map Traits.
We also changed the old run background with a new one where you see your characters move through Areas as you complete your Maps!
Now that you can choose your path in a Map, build against enemy teams, and get more Experience, we slightly increased how quickly enemy teams increase their team size in the first Map and added a minimum amount of Trait bonuses for enemy teams in later Maps,
As a final point for the new map system, its greater design space compared to the old acts allows us to keep expanding it with new type of Map Areas on future updates and all sorts of risk vs reward options via the future meta-progression system.
Misc Changes
- The Holy Grail item can no longer spawn on enemies in the first Map.
- Increased the base Critical Attack Chance of characters to 20% (from 10%) to make sources of Critical Attack Multiplier feel better by themselves.
- Increased the Poise Damage bonus of the Impact trait to 10->20 (from 5->10) to make stunning characters easier. Items with Poise Damage were also buffed to 10 (from 5).
- Health Gain was converted to Health Loss, so that receiving Health damage slowly lowers the available Max Health that a character can recover. This is now shown in Health bars as gray Health, as well as showing the stat in the character tooltip. Characters can take a total of 10 times their Maximum Health as Health damage before Health Loss reaches 100%.
- Fixed tooltip rounding character skills power scaling values when they use a single digit.