I wanted to offer some quick updates on the release for the project and what to expect. Yesterday, I finished a full playthrough of the main story mode on Nightmare difficulty so progress is being made. The goal is to get it released in the next couple of weeks, though there are some complications I'll mention at the end.
Since NextFest we've made some sizable changes based on the feedback, player experience and playstesting.
Updated Tutorial Structure: During NextFest players often ran all the tutorials at once and overwhelmed themselves. I've further broken up the tutorials to try and make it clear when to stop and practice.
Added Basic Strategy Tutorials: I've added a series of tutorials focused on specific playstyles. (Safe growth, agressive offense, intellegent defending etc.) If you're overwhelmed, just follow one of these plans.
Rebalanced the combat based on Multiplayer Testing:
BOOST has been made less powerful so that other strategies can still compete on monetary terms. This makes rapid wealth victories harder to achieve.
ATTACKs have been made far faster by default making combat more chaotic and unpredictable.
HEDGE now blocks more damage and can prevent the loss of boost, even on partial defense.
An option EXPERT MODE has been added that hides the opponent's METER charges making for more unpredictable combat.
Rebalanced Challenges (In Progress): The above changes slow profits, so we want to ensure that the challenges are rebalanced to match the new rates. The duels were less impacted because both players are effected in the same ways.
Bug Fixes / Typos / Etc: We've continued to fix things as we've come across them.
As mentioned, I'm targeting the 21st for release. But there have been a series of family emergencies that have slowed progress and likely will continue to do so.
We're absolutely close to ready for final release but I want to take the time to make sure it's ready to stand on its own.
McTeddy