Hello everyone!
We are super excited to share with you the new update of the "Journey to the Void" demo! We have carefully read all your feedback, and we can proudly say that this update is the result of your contribution!
We are a small indie studio, and we really care about making you feel part of the project. So, get ready, because we have listened to your requests and worked hard to implement them!
Here's a short list for those who don't want to go into detail:
- New Card Art
- Difficulty Selection
- Card Rewards Rework
- QOL Updates
- Intention Icons
- Tutorial Skip
- Deck-specific Fights
- Long Press for Controller
- Deck Inspector after a Fight
- Colored stats in Traits
- Game Balancing
- Bug Fixes
If you want to leave feedback, suggest other changes, report a bug, or just engage with the community, pop into our official discord!
New Card Art!
This is the most visible change made to the demo: we updated all card art, and now each card has its unique artwork! We've heard your feedback, and now cards will be recognizable even from the art alone, without needing to read the name or effects.
Here are a few examples, but many more can be found in the demo!
New Feature: Difficulty Selection!
We gathered a lot of data and listened to all player feedback regarding the demo difficulty. We realized that the game was targeted at a very expert playerbase: the hardcore nature of the game left little to no space for mistakes or distraction, and even one single wrong turn could result in the end of the run.
On one hand, that was the challenging experience we wanted to provide, on the other hand, some players just wanted to enjoy a cute game and the difficulty spike of the first battles was a bit too steep for them. Since we didn’t want to compromise, we decided to do some extra work and implement a difficulty system. From this version of the demo, when creating a new save slot (or starting from scratch), players will be able to select between three difficulties: beginner, normal, and hardcore.
The beginner difficulty is for those who just want to relax and enjoy the game without worrying too much about strategy and mistakes, the normal difficulty is for players who want a challenge but are not already familiar with the deckbuilding roguelike genre: this mode can be a little more forgiving and allows the player to experiment without being punished. The last difficulty is hardcore: we wanted to preserve the original experience, but now, under this new label, players are warned and will know what they're getting into.
Here is a little preview of how it will be presented in game:
System Rework: Card Rewards!
In previous versions of the demo, at the end of each battle, the player was presented with three individual cards from their card pool. Those cards were always random, and while they did a good job of showcasing the various deckbuilding possibilities, we came up with a more specific method for cards to appear, since we wanted to increase player agency in what they could build in a run.
The most notable improvement is that we have increased the number of slots from 3 to 4, and each slot has specific characteristics on the type of cards that can appear in it. This will allow the player to always have a very wide and varied range of possibilities to choose from.
Each slot will have a specific and varied pool of cards that can appear, so that players are always presented with a meaningful choice.
QOL
In this section, we will show you some improvements we have made to the game in terms of quality of life:
Intention Icons
Following strong requests from many players, we have decided to implement a small icon that displays the monsters' intentions at all times.
This intention represents what the enemy plans to do if nothing changes. However, if during the player's or enemies' turn, the conditions that led to that plan are no longer valid — for example, another enemy moves onto the tile they intended to reach — the intention will be updated accordingly.
For the more experienced players who want a cleaner gaming experience, it is possible to disable the display of this icon in the settings.
Tutorial Skip
When a new profile is created, if there is already at least one in the save files that has completed the tutorial, the option to skip the tutorial and avoid repeating all the explanations will appear, allowing the player to be thrown directly into the first real run.
Deck-specific Fights
We noticed that some early fights presented specific difficulties if the player used a particular deck. We decided to make some fights exclusive to certain decks, so that if a player chooses a particular deck at the beginning of the run, they are not penalized in the early fights by a series of challenging enemies to handle.
Long Press for Controller
We noticed that some players, while using the controller, would occasionally pass their turn accidentally. To solve this problem, we have implemented a light hold on the button to confirm the turn, in order to avoid unintentional presses.
Deck Inspector after a Fight
Some players felt the need to check their deck before choosing a card at the end of a battle. So we added a quick-access system to view the deck more easily.
Colored stats in Traits
When choosing a new character for a run, the traits will have colored text that matches the primary stats color, so that players can easily visualize the stats affected by traits.
Game Balancing
While we have created various difficulties to allow players to experience the game in the way they want, we have still adjusted some values to make the game experience as balanced as possible.
Here is a list of all the changes compared to the previous version of the demo:
- Enemies Balancing:
- Ghost HP: 5 → 3
- Strange Mountain Yeti HP: 25 → 38
- Strange Gritty Embermander HP: 21 → 32
- Damage potions are now more effective
- Minor Strength Potion: +1 PD → +3 PD
- Medium Strength Potion: +2 PD → + 5 PD
- Powerful Strength Potion: +3 PD → + 7 PD
- Minor Resonance Potion: +1 ED → +3 ED
- Medium Resonance Potion: +2 ED → + 5 ED
- Powerful Resonance Potion: +3 ED → + 7 ED
- Cards Balancing:
- Minor Heal → can now be obtained with all three targets.
- Full Restore: 30 → 99 (added Not Scalable effect)
- Energy Boost → can now be obtained with all three targets.
- Clear Mind targets: ⬛⬛⬛ → ⬜⬛⬜ (added Not Scalable effect)
- Blizzard effect: Freeze, Not Scalable → Ice Hinder
- Blizzard cost: 5 → 4
- Blizzard base power: 0 → 6
- Ice Wall effect: Ice Hinder → Freeze, Not Scalable
- Ice Wall cost: 3 → 5
- Ice Wall base power: 2 → 0
- Flame Cone effect: Flaming → Flaming, Double Damage
Bugfix
We took the opportunity to fix some bugs: here is a list of the bugs we fixed in this version of the demo:
- Energy and Skill Points usage statistics were wrongly tracked
- Some texts were missing for the ice shopper
- Fix the wrong card selection with the mouse
- The training event appears only for the Villager deck
- The postcard stamps now appear only on Boss's death
- More readable graphics for wait intention
- Fix Italian localization errors
- Fix a particular behaviour, quitting the game after the dead scene
- Fixed card discard in the tutorial phase
- Fixes cards appear on the screen when quitting the run
- Fixed the fire boss attack icon
- Fixed the wrong Italian enemy description for a monster