Hey folks! The official Sova Playtest 2 is live!
This is a big one. The update touches nearly every system in the game - narrative, combat, progression and UI have all been significantly expanded or overhauled. It will most definitely kill your previous saves. Sorry. 🤷🏻♂️
We hope there’s something here for newcomers and returning players alike. We'd love your feedback on how it all comes together.
Hit us with your thoughts either using the in-game feedback tool (F8), the online survey, or, if you wanna chat with us directly, our Discord.
Changelog
Narrative
Added the Hive location - Sova’s home and a central hub filled with characters, interactions and little world lore tidbits. It’s accessible after the first run.
Added a bunch of new characters, each with their own dialogue, opinions and problems to solve. Most of these inhabit the Hive, but some can be found wandering around.
Added new interactions and dialogue for the existing characters. The game’s mechanical progression is tied to narrative, so the new dialogue is there to support that.
Characters now have barks! Woof. Even when they don’t have something important to say, people throughout Conjecture can still offer fun little rants, opinions and insults.
Enemies can bark too! Woof woof. When fighting Sova, enemies will react to combat situations and loudly protest bullets and fire.
UI
Overhauled every single UI screen and element in the game.
Dialogue screen now has a log and features beautiful, larger than life character portraits.
Armory now offers a compact Ability selection screen with better overviews and explainer videos.
Added tutorial hint panels with videos for major gameplay mechanics.
Added about a hundred new icons and graphic elements to support our new visual style.
Redesigned HUD with a bunch of new animations and hints for cooldowns and resources.
Lore, Character info and quests are now available through Findings, Pursuits and Mind Map screens. New nodes and entries are revealed to reflect player’s discoveries and choices.
Added a direct Feedback tool: hit F8 and sends us your thoughts and screenshots. Go wild.
Combat
Added around 30 new skills. There’s A LOT more variety in constructing builds - and several new effects like Fire, Shadows or Dust Devils.
Overhauled Bleed and Terrify. Bleed was just a more immediate version of Poison and Terrify was too passive to be interesting. They’re both more involved and interesting to build around.
Added new enemies: Vessels believe they’re divine conduits of life, bringing into the world their monstrous children Lurkers, Spitters and Burrowers.
Overhauled difficulty. The last time around, Sova was fast and deadly, and had many implements of violence at her disposal. This is still true, but it has to be earned. Most of the abilities are locked behind permanent progression (talk to people and have them teach you their tricks). Not every run is going to be successful.
Enemies are fewer in number - especially on early stages - but hit harder and are more difficult to kill. Later stages are still relatively chaotic (in a good way) and Sova’s expanded kit scales her power in a meaningful way.
Progression
Sova now starts with two basic Abilities: Edge and Iron, and a single Dash token. Everything else has to be learned through solving quests and talking with people, or via the Attunements feature.
Once learned, Abilities can be slotted at the start of each run. In total, there’s 12 unique Abilities over 5 Ability slots.
Added Forms, specializations that are automatically assigned when certain combinations of Abilities are slotted. Forms complement specialized playstyles.
Overhauled Attunements (permanent progression) and greatly increased Dust gain in the runs. This should allow players to almost always be able to purchase Attune upgrades after their runs, even when unsuccessful.
Have fun!
The Entropic Island team.