Greetings Heroes!
It was super exciting to have you play in our very first playtest and we can't wait for the next one!
Today we'd like to give you a little peek behind the curtains and talk about the most brought up feedback points during the playtest and what we are working on going forward!
As with game development, we can only focus on so much at the same time and we will have to make some tough (but important) decisions when it comes to what features we want to focus on next. Decisions are often a mix of upcoming game features we have planned, our core design pillars, team structure (who can work on what) and of course your feedback!!
Your feedback is super important and valuable to us and know that even if your feedback, or the game feature you gave feedback on, was not called out we have still read it and that it has been noted down! It truly helps us decide what to focus on next!
Let's dive in!
The good, the bad and the.. Billy?!
Let's have a look at the three most brought up topics!
1. Game controls
We made this first playtest controller only - and oh, did you let us know! It became pretty clear that a lot of you would prefer to have the option to play with either controller or keyboard & mouse!
We'll make sure to put keyboard & mouse controls on a higher priority going forwards so that in the future you can play with whichever method you prefer! Of course we'll keep on improving how the controller feels as well!
2. Adding friends and playing together
Friend matchmaking was not working as intended for a lot of you. Since the game is made to be co-op we'd really like to give you the ability to be able to play with your friends! We are working on the Steam friends list so that you can play together or queue up as duo next time!
3. The Luum system
There's been chatter and feedback regarding the Luum system and how Luum is gathered during gameplay. Some of you suggested that the game needs a passive luum regen, others feel a reset of both HP as Luum between islands is the right course of action while others want the drops to work slightly differently than they did during the playtest.
At this moment we have not decided on any changes to the Luum system, but instead we will keep a good eye on how it develops as we add new shards and features like unlockable rewards in the Hub that might affect Luum gain. We'd love to hear more of your feedback regarding this topic in future playtests to come to see if your opinion has changed.
Doubling down on what works!
We loved hearing that you are looking forward to play more and are excited about the cooperative and Roguelite elements of the game (so are we!)! We'll make sure to double down on them as we continue to develop the game and add more content!
As we know you all love to know what's next, we have a little teaser (just a little peek) for you of some of the new features we are working on!
- As we are a Co-Op game we want to create more cooperative play opportunities (combo's!) via shards! Some simpler examples would be applying poison stacks together as a team to activate de-buffs or setting an enemy ablaze so a teammate can make them explode!
- We are working on more clear communication of status effects on enemies via UI improvements. We know it can be tough to see what debuff is on what enemy during a fight so we are working on making these more clear!
- We've started work on the first set of powers you'll be able to unlock in the Hub before you set out on your missions. As in typical Roguelite fashion, these powers can be unlocked by playing the game and will help you both get more powerful over time as well as allow you to personalize your sentinels the way you like to play them and show skill expression.
As always, these are early teasers and therefor not final! Some of them might change over time as we develop the game.
And of course.. Bug fixes and balance changes!
We got reports of chittering, clattering and odd scaley creatures going around (no, not you Billy!). Some are big, some are small and others are.. well.. we have some bugs to squash!
With your help we were able to identify and catalogue bugs like for example the game over screen not showing at times, the ability screen persisting through teleportation, characters falling through the floor on certain maps and much more!
Of course we'll also keep tuning balancing and will work on making movement feel smoother as we go onwards.