Hi all!
My name is Reza and I’m the Design Director at To The Sky. First of all, I would like to take a moment in this dev blog to thank you all for playing the demo and providing us with your feedback. It means so much to us that you have taken the time to sit down and play our game. I can’t express that enough, so thank you, and keep giving us feedback. We read through everything.
Godbreakers
For those unfamiliar with our debut-title Godbreakers or curious to learn more: Godbreakers is a fast-paced, intense third-person four-player co-op roguelike with a focus on absorbing enemies' abilities and cancel actions. Each run, you can choose between six different archetypes that have different strengths and weaknesses and offer new gameplay. Tinker with items to find synergies between the Archetype's strength and the abilities that you absorb. Each biome that you visit has unique gameplay mechanics, enemies, and bosses.
How did it all start?
So Godbreakers, this project started about 4 years ago when me and some friends and old colleagues decided to start our own studio. We wanted to create a studio where gameplay came first and make games that leave a lasting mark. After months of tinkering and discussion, we finalized the first draft of Godbreakers, and I must say that the current game is quite close to the original pitch. In the original pitch, players had to travel to ever-changing fractal planets, fight bosses and take the defeated bosses limbs and graft them onto the player. That last part seemed to be a bit too big of a task for us, so we instead pivoted just a “little” to absorb enemies' powers and all the items would change the players appearance (which in itself is a big task, but I think we have managed that quite well). For a while, we were only six devs, but over time, the team grew, and we could tackle bigger features and start to flesh everything out.
So, back to the beginning of the project, we focused a lot on getting the movement right and drew a lot of inspiration from a range of high paced third person hack n' slash games when it comes to attacks and attack chains. We knew that we wanted to create a fast-paced game with a lot of freedom for the player. To create that sense of freedom, we began experimenting with the possibility that the dash in our game would cancel all animations. When we got the Dash and Animation cancel in a good state, we knew that we had created a fun, intense and fluid gameplay foundation. After the Dash, we began to examine the various attacks, random world generation, and the behaviour of bosses and enemies. Bosses are something we knew we wanted to be a significant moment in this game. In many rogue games, the boss can be a bit “simple”, so we wanted to have bosses that would challenge the players movement, spatial awareness and also have some strategy. Uhr is our first boss we built and he was designed to be a bit simpler than the other bosses to have a good starting point for new players and teach the player about moving around in the arena, but also to use the Absorbed Abilities against the boss to maybe dodge mechanics or line up a powerful combo. So if you find Uhr a bit easy it's understandable, I promise you the other bosses are harder, so you just wait :)
Now, with a little bit of a background story, let's move on to some of the bigger feedback we have gotten so far.
Player Feedback
Target Lock
This is a big topic, but I will try to keep it concise. So, with how fast and chaotic the game is, and in some encounters you are up against a lot of enemies (especially in later boss fights), we didn't feel that target lock was necessary because enemies are dying fast and it's just a lot going on. Having to change the priority quickly on the fly and adding a target lock would go against that and slow down the game. One of our main pillars of the game was to have a fast, fluid, and responsive experience. Target lock in a game where you are just fighting one or two enemies makes much more sense or when the enemy AI has a queue system for when to attack. The feedback we've gotten before is that at the beginning of the game players want target lock but that sentiment usually quickly disappears and after some more time in the game they are saying the opposite; that they don't need target lock.
However, with all of this said, we hear you, and we are looking into adding Target Lock to the game but we can’t promise it will be there at launch. Something to bear in mind is that we are a small team and everything we make, we want it to be made properly, which means “No hacky tech solution”, “is it fun to use?”, “Does it work/does it have any bugs?”, “How does it match the vision of the game?” and so on.
Hit stun / Stagger
Hit stun feedback is something we also typically receive before players become accustomed to the game and its flow. Because our dash is so powerful and when we were building the game we didn't see a reason to add hit stun and it's mostly because we wanted the player to move around and attack instead of just “standing still” spamming attacks. Adding Hit Stun would shift the tempo and feel of the game from you constantly being in motion and almost dancing around the enemies to more of a “slugfest”. And we wanted players to feel rewarded when they managed to reach the end of a combo chain, both in terms of damage and the cool animation. Hit stun can be introduced in many different ways, with diminishing returns, cooldown, or only certain attacks having it. Given how the game flows and plays, I can see Hit Stun being added to specific attacks, such as the Secondary Attack. But introducing this feature now would be a big undertaking, and we are in the final stages of getting this game out and sadly don’t have time to add it. We don’t want to introduce something completely new at the end of our production that could potentially add new bugs and risk ruin the fluid combat and gameplay feel. We have been very careful in how we implement features with reviews and a lot of testing.
Another idea that has been floating around is Stagger. This would be a mechanic where mini bosses and bosses could get stunned if the stagger meter fills up. We prioritized making the game more stable and focused on the core features rather than adding this; however, I see us investigating this feature in the future.
Some ending thoughts
While writing this devblog, I am grateful for all the feedback you've given us. I’m truly happy that so many of you have had the opportunity to experience a part of the game that we have been putting our hearts into. I hope that you all enjoy the final game as much as you have enjoyed the demo. We have received so much great feedback, and if we had all the time in the world, we would implement many of them. We are trying to build a solid foundation, with gameplay first as our primary focus and ensure that we implement all features in a robust and solid way. But don’t stop giving feedback, head over to our Discord and post it there. Also, if I could go back in time, I would definitely change certain design choices, but it's easy to sit here 4 years later and reflect on all the things we have done. Sometimes you just have to commit and trust in yourself and your team, which, btw is amazing.
Thank you to both the team and players for this journey, you are the best!
Thanks,
Reza
Design Director at To The Sky