Hi there, I'm Tony and I wanted to give you a quick update on all of the things we've been working on here in (currently) sunny Scotland since we announced Into the Restless Ruins.
Strap in, cause it turns out we have been busy!
Player Goals
In early versions of the game players just kind of had to build - it didn't matter where - in order to reach an arbitrary limit and trigger the boss card appearing in your hand. This meant you kind of lacked direction, but it did encourage building tight, well connected dungeons, which is satisfying. To give the player something to do each night during the Harvest, we introduced the Relic collectible which would be spawned somewhere in your dungeon, that you had to grab and return to the start.
We wanted to give the player more immediate goals when building, and that's when we came up with the idea of placing four "Seals" around the map. You now had to build to and active all of these to trigger the boss, and we mixed in a couple of fakes just so to give some variety. In terms of building goals this worked great - you had specific stuff to work towards. But it promoted building just tendrils out to the Seals, rather than the satisfying well-connected builds. It was also super annoying if the Relic spawned in the opposite direction than where you needed to go. This is the version of the game that's in the initial trailer video.
We went back and iterated on what we enjoyed and didn't enjoy in both versions, and tried a bunch of things out. Eventually we settled on what you can see in this exquisitely detailed design documentation...
Now each level starts by showing you the Warden's lair - this is the target you're trying to get to - and then scrolls to where you start. Each section of the ruins has a bunch of fog rooms, and one of those is the Seal you need to claim to remove the wall blocking you from the next section.
This gives us the best of both worlds - you're confined to an area and have to think about using that for the best connectivity which gives the satisfying feeling when a room fits just right, but you also have long and short terms goals that are clear.
Levels
Once we'd got all of that set up, iterated and playtested, and knew what we wanted, we could throw away our hard-coded new level and set up a system that lets us create more using the same rules.
We added two more - Jarlshof is a horizontal level where stages alternate left and right, and Moondial is circular with the Warden's lair in the middle.
And once you have more levels, you need a way to choose which to play! We've also quickly put in some progression here, so you need to defeat each Warden to unlock the next level.
Scoring
You might have just spotted on the level select screen there, each level also shows your high score. That's because we added in a scoring system. Up until then levels were simply "did you defeat the Warden or not?" which is kind of limiting, to be honest.
Now we tot up a score based on a bunch of factors you've achieved - how much damage you dealt, how many cards you upgraded, that sort of thing (at the moment we've only added 6 things here, but we have a lot of scope to do more).
It also gives us a nice place to let you view your final deck. Is there anything else you'd like to be able to see on this screen after a run?
Character Stats
That's not the only new screen we've added! As you place rooms in Restless Ruins you will often find them changing your character's stats, giving you buffs (and in some rare cases debuffs). It was getting hard to keep track of how powerful you were, so we've added a panel during the building phase that shows exactly what's going on - where you're strong and where you're weaker.
Weapons
For a long time, Into the Restless Ruins has given you a sword - and that's it. It's never been intended to be a "Survivors"-like "Bullet Heaven" experience where you rack up ridiculous screen-filling attacks, as we've always wanted the focus to be on how you build the ruins so that you can navigate them.
But we have always wanted to give players options and fun things to play with, so we've added a small variety of weapons. These can be found in weapon shrines which appear occasionally in fog rooms, and you can only hold one at a time (but you can switch back at the shrine later if you change your mind.
The first weapons available are:
- Bow - A powerful but slow ranged weapon.
- Staff - A mystical weapon that fires beams dealing continuous small damage to two nearby enemies.
- Bombs - Look, they're bombs. You chuck them, then shortly afterwards they go boom. What more is there to say?
Are there any other weapons you'd love to see?
Tutorial
Yes, we added a tutorial! We've been taking the game to a few low-key events. These are always super useful because we can watch people play and see what things they're enjoying and what they're struggling to understand, and we can also get some direct feedback.
Because we're there in person, for the first few events we would just hover about and tell folks what they needed to know. But we've been wanting to get some tutorial screens in so that we can be more hands-off (and also so that we can sit down - exhibiting is kinda tough on the old feet with a lot of standing about).
And tutorials are also handy because soon people will be playing without us being there...
Demo Coming Soon!
What!? I know, I also can't believe I left this until the very end of the update. But it's true! Into the Restless Ruins has been selected to be a party of the Yogscast Tiny Teams event this year, and so we're going to launch a public demo at the same time.
We've very excited to hear what you all think of it, and to get all of your feedback using the very slick in-game feedback menu that you can bring up at any time!
Thanks very much for reading - it's been a big chunky update (and I've left out all of the smaller stuff like adding new enemies, rooms and boosts, and adding a system of passive Charms - we'll have to dig in to that another time).
If you'd like to chat more, you can use the Steam forums here, or join us on our Discord!
And we'll be back with another update next month for the demo launch!
Cheers,
James, Rachel & Tony.