Greetings Wildkeepers,
It's a week before Steam Next Fest begins, and we come to you with a major update to our demo.
Thank You for the Feedback
We've been working hard to identify the key areas of the game that needed improvement and designing and implementing solutions. Your feedback has been invaluable in this process, thank you to everyone who played the Playtest and then the Demo, and filled the feedback form or reached out to us on Discord. We take every comment very seriously.
Overall, we're extremely happy with how the game has been received. At the same time, we found opportunities to make it better:
- We wanted to make levelling up more exciting, adding more variety and opportunities for synergies (I should write a full post about synergies, as they are super important for this style of game, and hard to describe concisely)
- Sigils felt a bit too removed from the upgrade loop, as you had to find chests to collect them, but they add a lot of interactivity and decision making.
- The narrative wasn't successful creating the magical world we intended, and some of the dialogue was feeling flat.
- Honestly, the dash just sucked.
From Alpha to Beta
We've taken steps to address each and every one of these in our latest build. These are the changes that you can expect, compared to the alpha build:
- The upgrade options have been redesigned. Each Wildkeeper and Guardian has a unique set of options that match their strengths, and move away from simple "more damage" stats.
- Upgrade options now enable you to specialize your characters even further, based on your choices.
- Sigils no longer come out of chests. Now you get them automatically at three level thresholds: level 1, 5 and 10.
- Team upgrades are also not offered during level ups. This was leading to confusion, so now all upgrades are individual. Instead, team upgrades have been moved to chests, so you can (optionally) go find them to make your whole team stronger.
- We've added a ton of new sigils and significantly improved the presentation of the existing ones. They are still categorized as either Weapons, Bonuses or Arcane (these are total game-changers).
- We've reworked the tutorial mission so instead of being expected to lose, now you immediately get to pick an upgrade and a Sigil, and go on to win the mission.
- All the dialogue has been rewritten to make it feel more like a heroic adventure. Note that this is still just the beginning of the story, and we're not fleshing out all the cutscenes just yet. This will happen during the Early Access phase.
- We created an original animation with hand-drawn illustrations to introduce the story with music and a voice over.
- The dash has been reworked for both Korin and Ophelia. Their dashes will feel quite different, but they're a lot snappier and can be upgraded.
- Every Guardian in the game has been reviewed for improved behavior and more polished effects.
- We added a couple of new enemies and adjusted all the missions. We also added difficulty options for those of you that want a challenge.
- There are now 80+ achievements for you to complete, each with desirable rewards.
- A second music track has been added to the Everglades map.
- Many other balance and polish adjustments.
The Guardians Await
If you've had a chance to try the Playtest or the Alpha Demo, the new update will reset your save. However, the Beta Demo saves will actually be valid all the way to the full game when it comes out in Early Access.
It would take several hours to play through the demo content once, and we feel it's very replayable.
Just today, we were playing the build ourselves for over 4 hours straight, and having a blast. There were some incredible combinations of Sigils and Guardians, and some simply hilarious moments. We can't wait to hear what you think.
So grab the demo and take it for a spin. The use the feedback form or join our Discord to tell us how to make it even better.
For the ancient bond.
Sergio.