For this final patch of our first demo, we went through the feedback we’ve gotten so far, and took the opinions of the amazing people who tried the demo as a starting point for the changes we’d make. We focused on working on what’s already there, since for this demo we didn’t feel that it would be smart to introduce completely new gameplay mechanics. We did make a small exception though, more of that later!
The first main point of this patch is the balance. Overall, we felt that for most players the game was too difficult. Second, there were some rather great difficulty spikes along the duration of the level, since the power gap of normal weapons and imbued weapons was very big. Third, players felt that the overall balance of poems was quite off, some being much better than others. Same went for the weapons. So, we completely revamped the balance, and almost all weapons and poems went through some changes. Generally the game also became quite a lot easier, the point of this is to make it more accessible for more players. In the future, experienced players will be able to add challenge to the gameplay through various difficulty modifiers, gaining some nice rewards along the way!
The balance update in a nutshell
- Bridged the gap between normal and imbued weapons: buffed most normal weapons, and nerfed most imbued weapons
- Tweaked the spawning specs of the level to make it easier, and also to follow a more linear difficulty curve
- To balance the poems, now each poem level also gives %-based boost to all weapon damage. The amount varies, depending on the initial effect of the poem
- To underline to importance of poems, we decided to add all 8 runestones to the map, of which player can unlock 6 during a run
Second main point of the update is the map. While we got lots of positive feedback about the atmosphere of the game and the immersive feeling that the map achieves, most players thought that navigating the map was too difficult. Also, there is something hidden in the map that most of the players didn’t uncover. To tackle these things, we
- Added some landmarks to the map, hopefully making it easier to navigate
- Added a teaser about something hidden in the map ;)
Finally, while players seemed to enjoy the final boss quite a lot, there were also some things that definitely needed improving. Players pointed out that hitting the boss with the weapons was too difficult, and that the fight also needed a bit more of that “horde” element that’s usually present in games like this. So, according to the feedback, we decided to create a new mechanic for the boss fight
- The boss now spawns minions during the fight
- Damaging the minions also deal damage to the boss
We of course also fixed some bugs, added some quality of life and user experience improvements and as a surprise updated most of the normal enemy sprites with completely new animations!
After this update, we will keep this demo open for about a month to gather some new insights regarding the changes we made. Then we will close the demo and focus on creating some completely new content including new weapons, bosses, characters, progression and brand new mechanics! We will release another demo for the upcoming Steam Next Fest in the summer!
Thanks for being a part of the journey of Versebound, we hope that you’ll stay tuned!
Detailed patch notes
General balance
- Changed enemy spawn rates during the level
- Tweaked boss HP multipliers
- Tweaked various enemy stats
- Increased Lingonberry drop chance
- Reduced normal enemy collision damages
- Moderately increased player movement speed
- Slightly increased most enemy movement speeds
Balanced weapons
- Rye Loaf: Increased knockback force and reduced cooldown on all levels, increased damage on all but first level, increased bread durability on later levels
- Northland Bow: Decreased damage
- Vengeful Tears: Increased damage and trail length on all levels, shuffled some level up specs
- Knife of Kalervo: Increased damage on mid levels
- Hammer of Ilmarinen: Decreased cooldown on all levels
- Verses of Old: Reduced max rotation speed time, increased knockback force, slightly reduced damage
- Arrows of Ilmatar: Reduced damage and knockback force
- Broadsword of Ukko: Reduced damage and knockback force
- Ahti’s Force: Reduced projectile damage and cooldown, increased trail damage, trail slow amount and projectile knockback force
- Wrath of Ilmarinen: Reduced damage
- Blooms of Tuonela: Reduced damage
Balanced poems
- Poem of Recovery: Reduced HP regeneration rate
- Poem of Sturdiness: Reduced damage reduction amount
- Poem of Quickness: Increased cooldown reduction amount
- Poem of Reach: Now also affects interaction range (unlocking runestones and opening stone altar)
- Unlocking and leveling poems now also increase damage of all weapons
Updated enemy animations
- Both variants of Kyy (the snake)
- Both variants of Tonttu (the gnome)
- Both variants of Hiisi (the goblin)
- Both variants of Aave (the ghost)
- Hiisiemo (the goblin boss)
Other
- Increased the runestone amount in a the level from 4 to 8
- Added landmarks to the map
- Added a teaser of something hidden to the map
- The boss now spawns minions during the fight, damaging the minions also deal damage to the boss
- Aave, Strong Aave and Tulikko no longer collide with props (stones, stumps, etc)
- Bosses now spawn closer to the screen
- Added a visual and sound cue when a Bilberry spawns
- Added scary glowing eyes to Hiisiemo
- Updated the runestone arrow sprite to be more understandable
- Added a space bar icon on top of the stone altar when it is interactable
- Added a timer to the game screen
- Small text and other fixes
- Tweaked Knife of Kalervo to now hit the enemies touching the player
- Bug fix: level up / poem unlock / stone altar opening / death event could happen simultaneously
- Bug fix: enemies leaving Vengeful Tears trail might not revert back to original movement speed
- Bug fix: main menu buttons could be clicked before leaving the data consent panel
- Bug fix: Kyy (snake) sprites flicker when touching certain props