Hi, everyone! It's Ryan, creator of Wicked Seed.
In addition to working on new content for the game I have also been working on making a new update to the demo. I'll go over what all will be included, but the main new feature is the Despair difficulty mode.
The current Normal and Hard difficulties are pretty similar. Hard will bump up the health and damage of enemies and make them a bit more aggressive. However Despair difficulty adds on top of that and is inspired by the Madhouse difficulty in RE7. Here's what you can expect from Despair difficulty:
Enemy and Item placement is different
From the very beginning it will become evident that things are different! Enemies are where they weren't before, you'll fight different enemies in different areas, and all item and key item placement has been changed.
New items
In addition to the placement of items being different, you will also come across items not found in Normal or Hard. An example is the Box of Scrap. When recycled it gives a modest amount of scrap, or it can be combined with a Chemical to make High Powered Ammo.
Second is the Jar of Coffee. Rest areas on Despair difficulty do not have any servings of coffee, but a jar of coffee allows you to add a serving to a rest area of your choice.
High Powered Ammo adjustment
Enemies on Despair difficulty have much higher health, but to counter act this, high powered ammo gives a significantly larger damage and stagger damage boost than compared to Normal and Hard.
Because of this increased emphasis on using high powered ammo, you'll need to make each shot count and strike enemies when it's most advantageous.
Exclusive rewards
There will be Despair difficulty exclusive challenges and rewards. In addition, costumes can be found throughout the game that can only be acquired when playing on Despair. The hidden knight statues are also in different places on Despair and will give a different costume if you manage to find them all.
My goal with the Despair difficulty was to not only increase the challenge of the game, but to make subtle adjustments to the game's mechanics to give it a slightly different feel.
Finally, Despair difficulty will be unlocked upon completing the demo on Normal or Hard after installing the upcoming update.
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I've also adjusted the enemy respawn system based on player feedback.
Before
- Enemy encounters would have a decreasing chance to spawn based on the number of times the encounter has been cleared. This check would trigger when loading into the area or loading a saved game
- Enemy encounters could be forcefully reset when picking up certain key items, viewing certain events, or entering certain areas
- Taking a break at a rest area would respawn enemies for that area only
After
- After clearing an encounter it will never respawn until taking a break at a rest area
- Sometimes new encounters will appear based on progression Example: Previously Seaside Six encounters would respawn when obtaining the Cabin #4 Key and the Wyatt Park Key. This has been changed to only activate one encounter in each case and these encounters are now new with different enemy configurations. This also allows you to obtain the "first time clear" bonus of these new encounters instead of the reduced rewards from being forced to clear encounters you already beat.
- Some encounters will not respawn when taking a break. These are most notably mini boss encounters (such as the Kraken's Arm or Great White Pterashark)
- When taking a break at any rest area, enemies in all areas will respawn
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New combat mechanic: Flanking
The combat system now detects whether you are hitting an enemy in the front, on the sides, or from behind. Each enemy has a damage multiplier on each flank, but typically most enemies take increased damage from the sides and even more so from behind.
In addition, some enemies have destructible flanks which, when destroyed, triggers a variety of different effects. This could be inflicting a large amount of additional damage or preventing the enemy from performing certain attacks.
When you hit an enemy on a flank that provides a damage bonus, an icon will appear behind the damage number letting you know you are striking a vulnerable spot.
Proper introduction and more information on the mechanic will be shown in a tutorial pop-up in game.
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New costumes
With the addition of Despair difficulty, I felt it only right to add in some more costumes to reward those who complete it! Two costumes can be found through exploration and the other when completing the demo on Despair difficulty.
(Observant readers may recognize the pose of the hidden costume. I wonder what it was inspired by?)
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Other upcoming adjustments
I've made other adjustments as well. Here they are in no particular order:
- Flashlight now aligns with where you're looking and not where Ella is facing
- Added more discoverable named locations when exploring giving a bit more context on where you are and also additional exp for those who like to explore
- Critical damage bonus has been reduced from 50% to 30%, but now ignores the enemy's defense. This should make crits feel about the same on "normal" enemies, but feel a lot better on higher defense enemies like the Clinger.
- Fixed some shader issues on Ella's skin related to certain lighting conditions, and when in different damage states
- Fixed a variety of bugs.
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Wow! That ended up being longer than I planned for, but I guess I had more to cover than I thought.
Last note: The new demo build is currently being tested and I am hopeful to have it released within the next few days.
To anyone who made it this far, thanks for reading! And thanks to all who have provided feedback and reviews to help me make the game better.
I'll post again early June with some other, not demo related, things I've been working on and what's coming next.
-Ryan