Greetings Wildkeepers,
Today is a big day. After a long three and a half months of work, we're finally ready to announce that Wildkeepers Rising is very close to full release.
We've prepared this trailer to celebrate the occasion. I hope you like it:
As you can see in the trailer, Wildkeepers Rising will go 1.0 on October 23rd. That's a bit over a week away!
We will have a launch discount of 10% and Steam has a 30-day cooldown after that when we're not allowed to discount the game, so make sure you pick it up that week!
Before I give you details on what's in this release (hint: it's a BIG one), I thought it would be good to reflect a bit on our Early Access journey, and how you've helped made Wildkeepers Rising a better game.
The Road So Far
From the beginning, our intention was to advance the bullet heaven genre with innovative gameplay. Besides covering the basics with a large variety of upgrades and enemies, we added many ingredients to the formula, such as autonomous Guardians, large and complex maps, custom missions, equippable powers (Sigils) and a bit of narrative.
Both the most successful and the one we feel most passionate about is the Guardians. We worked hard to provide a large collection of creature looks as well as gameplay styles and personalities, so playing with the Guardians would feel unique and rewarding.
A big emphasis during Early Access has been to reinforce the meta-game. We added a brand new mission type, Endless Mode, that removes the power cap and allows you to grow super-strong - but only if you can master the ever increasing challenge from the enemies. And in our latest release we also added gear, providing an incredible amount of possible configurations for your characters, and many choices on how to invest your hard-earned meta-currency.
What's New in 1.0
The Early Access release shipped with three full environments, each with five new Guardians to unlock and a new Wildkeeper (the Chief and Milo), plus 10+ different enemy types and a boss. We've been consistently hearing from streamers and players that the game is much bigger than they expected, and we're very proud of having accomplished that (there's only two of us!)
In 1.0 we've added a full new environment: Frostpyre Peak. Half lava volcano, half frozen mountain, the enemies there will either freeze you or make you catch fire, so you'll have to be extra careful. As before, there are five new Guardians to unlock and you'll get a new Wildkeeper (Ivy) at the beginning. Plus you'll end up playing the biggest and hardest boss fights we've ever designed!
I won't spoil the surprise for what the new Guardians are, but they're pretty crazy! (you may spot some of them in the new trailer above...)
Besides the new environment, we've continued to polish, adjust balance and fix bugs. Here's a more comprehensive list:
Massive performance improvements to both CPU and GPU. Framerate is faster and more stable and ever before, reaching a solid 60fps on a Steam Deck.
Fix bug that was causing the game to save more frequently than necessary, causing performance issues.
Polish the look of the Map Screen. Now you can see the Guardians and the bosses associated to the missions.
You can now have 3 different save slots, no need to lose your progress if you want to start from the beginning.
Manual Attacks have been disabled. We felt this feature was not adding to the game, as it's best played in auto-attack mode.
Fix bug with enhancing Team Upgrades
New Achievements!
Buff some sigils, including Landminer, Dragon's Breath, Toxic Trail and Floating Wither, that were underpowered. Nerf others, including Vampire
And some Guardian tweaks:
Kifoo will now track the damage done by hypnotized enemies and update his DPS.
Wally's super is now limited to an area (depending on his aggro).
Reeza now has a separate indicator for hatchlings and eggs.
Volcoy's gauge for calling a pack member can go to 3 - numbers changed to roman numerals
Increase the value for freeze upgrades
Many other little polish items, bug fixes and balance tweaks
And One More Thing...
We couldn't be more excited to reach this point with all of you, after a long but rewarding journey.
But a lot of the work that we did to improve performance and fix a lot of the bugs has also allowed us to prepare console ports. They are currently in certification and we hope to release them as soon as they are ready, so if you prefer to play Wildkeepers Rising on console you'll be able to do that very soon.
In the meantime, let us know on Discord what you think of this release. We hope to see you there!
Sergio