Hello, minions!
Emotions are slowly settling down after announcing the launch date for Be My Horde. Don’t get us wrong—we’re still excited. The OTK Games Expo showcase was a blast, and we’re thrilled to have participated in it. But now that our hands have stopped shaking, we can focus on diving deep into what you can expect from our upcoming roguelite horde survival game. In today’s devlog, we’d like to share more info about something we call The Dominion. This is Moriana’s base, where she returns after each death to gather her strength and become more powerful.
P.S. Just a quick reminder—Be My Horde will launch on June 18th in Early Access. Be sure to wishlist the game; it’ll greatly help us and allow more people to meet Moriana. And she does like the company… Now, back to the devlog.
BECAUSE REASONS
From the very beginning, we wanted Be My Horde to have the regular roguelite loop: fight, fail, learn, improve, repeat. You know the drill. As you may have noticed, if you played the demo, you could buy or improve your abilities after finishing the run by spending souls harvested during gameplay. Each resurrected enemy equals one soul in your wallet. Upgrading Moriana was available through a regular “ending screen,” with three icons you could select and choose. However, we never wanted to stick to boring menu screens in terms of improving your necromancy skills.
We decided to create The Dominion. This is Moriana’s place where players can raise creepy and dark structures with the harvested souls. Each structure gives you new abilities, like changing the style of necromancy from “cooldown” to “instant” or generally improving your skills—such as increasing movement speed, starting army size, the number of minions you can resurrect at once, or even modify your run by adding extra objects and enemies... We believe The Dominion is a great solution for a few reasons.
Immersion and Attractiveness
We realized that a lackluster menu screen may not be very attractive and can decrease immersion by taking you out of the action. Instead, we aimed to keep the updating feature within the game’s environment. Similar to Hades, where Zagreus returns to his chambers after each death and gains new abilities and weapons by interacting with various objects, The Dominion keeps you engaged as you’re still PLAYING the game rather than scrolling through the menu screens. This makes the process of upgrading Moriana much more attractive.
Lore
First of all, more Moriana is always better. We think it’s not arguable. Even if Be My Horde doesn’t possess a rich story with many characters and twists, it has a hidden lore we created. In The Dominion, you can uncover some of its elements and learn more about Moriana’s character. It fits perfectly to let you get to know her better by spending time in her “home.”
Readability
With “menu screens,” one issue is the risk of overwhelming players with too much information, making it all unreadable. We’re not fans of those huge windows with dozens of yet-to-be-unlocked skills - pictures, walls of text, numbers, etc. Putting all of that into structures you can raise in your Dominion lets you calmly explore all the ways you can upgrade Moriana and her necromancy skills. It also follows a considered order in which we let you unlock the next structures. Everything is readable and not overwhelming.
Pace
Be My Horde is a game where the pace starts slow but becomes very intense as your horde grows with each minute and each wave. This intensity can be very high, so when you fail and immediately reload the level, it can feel odd to start slow again. This is common in most roguelite titles, but visits to The Dominion allow us to address this.
After each run, you get a moment to rest and settle down by exploring The Dominion, spending souls to raise new structures, and picking up modifiers (more about those in a moment). This preparation for the next run helps you rethink your strategy. When you return to the battlefield, starting slow feels less annoying because you had a moment to catch your breath. The feeling is completely different, thanks to it.
PICK YOUR POISON
The Dominion isn’t only about updating your skills; it’s also about changing the rules of play. You can raise a structure that allows you to modify the level at some point. By spending souls, you get points that can be exchanged to add new interactive objects or even enemies to your next run.
For example, you can place graves on the map. These spawn randomly and are a great source of free minions that you don’t have to kill. They are already dead and ready to join your malevolent horde.
Another example is the Summoning Circle, which also spawns randomly on the level. It can summon more enemies, which is great if you have a large army and want to expand even more before the next wave. It may be risky, but if used wisely, it can tip the scales in your favor.
And finally, urns. Vessels that your servants can easily break, potentially containing healing for Moriana, temporary movement speed upgrade, free souls, or sometimes even enemies to kill—it’s like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’ll get.
All of these objects are not available from the start. You must unlock them and add them to your run through the special structure. The points you earn during gameplay are limited, so you must decide what modifications work best for you. Additionally, let’s not forget you can also unlock ENEMIES.
You may have already met Sheep and Priests in the Be My Horde demo. However, these units are now unavailable from the start and must be unlocked, similar to the objects described above. This element of choice adds depth to the game. Is it wiser to spend points on Sheep? Or would you rather encounter graves and Priests instead? The choice is yours, and after raising the appropriate structure, you can customize your run as you wish.
WELCOME TO YOUR NIGHTMARE
The vision for The Dominion evolved during development. Initially, we considered a graveyard that fits our formidable necromancess. Next, we thought of presenting Moriana’s base as a simple medieval castle, referencing dark, romantic novels like Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
But it wasn’t enough. We needed something better and more original. Our artists created the solution — we needed The Dominion to be modular for design reasons. Everything should be easily expandable with layers. So, to make it cohesive with the art, our artists got the inspiration from “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri. Specifically, Inferno with its layers, where the deeper you go, the crazier and scarier everything becomes. We decided to do the same in Be My Horde.
Moriana’s Dominion is a hellish place right from the worst nightmares. The structures are disturbing and terrifying. There’s blood everywhere. The more you develop The Dominion, the more structures you raise, and the more you upgrade them, everything becomes more fleshy, scarier, and bloodier. It’s your own inferno, growing more unpleasant with each step. This fits the mad side of Moriana’s character and gives us more artistic freedom than a graveyard or medieval castle.
MY OWN DOMINION
What else can you find in The Dominion? This is something you need to discover for yourself. The way we designed The Dominion allows us to easily add more structures and objects, so you can expect many updates during Early Access. It already offers many opportunities to upgrade Moriana’s powers or modify your runs, but it’s just the beginning. We still have many ideas for The Dominion.
Please let us know what you think about this feature. Do you like the idea? What would you like us to add to The Dominion? Be sure to check out this and other features of Be My Horde on June 18th, when the game launches. Ultimately, you can’t fulfill the fantasy of becoming a dangerous and formidable necromancer without your own dark base. So, create your own Dominion and bring suffering to this fantasy world. You’re the evil one in this scenario, after all.
PRAISE BE MORIANA!
The Polished Games Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2499520/Be_My_Horde/?beta=1