Hello, Reapers!
We’re happy to announce a major DEMO update to Grimslair (v158)! This update changes almost everything from the previous DEMO, and we feel we’re finally heading in the right direction.
WHAT’S NEW
New main character! You are now a grim reaper — not some random dude who falls through a portal.
New NPCs! You’ll meet important characters you’ll visit often, each with cool new features.
Cutscenes shortened and improved across the board — focusing on maintaining the story while also respecting your time.
A ton of varied dialogue that now ties into the lore of the world.
New Soulword mechanic! All battle cards are fully modular, meaning you can choose different ways to play. 115+ mods to place on cards. Want a deck full of cards that do nothing? You can! Want a deck that obliterates everything quickly? Yup!
3 new starter classes! We now have 3 starter decks with different playstyles.
New level-up system! Killing enemies and collecting souls is one thing, but spending those souls to truly feel like you’re leveling up is a whole different experience.
New stat upgrade system! Many more options to upgrade your character throughout the game.
New time travel mechanic! Travel back and forth through time to recover lost health from previous battles, traps, or mishaps (or use health potions for a quick fix). Use Time Warp cards to control what timeframe you want to be in for the best run.
New location manipulator mechanic! Use a scout to change the way each location card works. Don’t like how many trap cards you’re getting? Use Blood Money to change the odds of what appears.
New vendor system! A full overhaul, with options like purchasing health potions, battle cards, and Soulwords for your collection. Remove cards from your deck or level them up — for a cost.
Reroll system! Reroll certain aspects of gameplay — for a cost.
New enemies and battle system! Combat has been completely overhauled. Grim no longer uses Agility points to spend on his cards. Instead, he uses a conveyor-belt-style system that plays the rightmost card, including cards that can chain together for a dynamic and varied flow. Enemies now have their own sets of cards with special abilities to overcome.
Updated weather system! Weather now changes many aspects of gameplay: cards can behave differently in battle, systems that feel normal on a sunny day can flip on their head when it’s raining, storms can properly hit both enemies and you, and a new Fog system changes how you search cards and start battles.
New elemental powers! Some soul cards allow you to roll dice during battle to hit enemies with elemental effects and unique abilities.
New controller support - Plug and Play controller support has now been added and fully utilized for all aspects of the game. Use the D-pad to snap to cards, buttons/UI, making it very quick and easy during battles. Use the left stick on your controller for manual control (like you are using a mouse) and has an integrated virtual keyboard for when you need to type something
New location balancing - All locations will have 25 cards to find and choose from and depletion of location gives you a reward
Lots of Bug Fixes - Fixed many bugs that included UI issues not working properly, Location cards drawing too many cards at once on occasion, flickering UI, there's too many to mention here.
Location Manipulator Update - Updated visuals to convey what you can do better here. Also you can preview the location you are looking at instead of memorizing the last location card you chose.
Location Card Chance Preview - You may now hover / click on the Current Location card to preview all the cards that you haven't unlcoked yet and also see the cards you have found and the chances of those cards
Better tutorial for Soulwords - We made sure to do a complete overhaul on the soulword tutorial so that it is very clear and precise on what these do to your cards
There’s so much more, but we don’t want to spoil everything!
QUALITY-OF-LIFE + WHAT WE’D LOVE YOU TO TEST IN v157
Rapid coin pickup: Clicking multiple gold / Blood Money cards quickly (does the hand/coin animation ever desync?).
Multi-dice rolls: Sneak/elemental dice behavior when multiple dice are active at once (collisions, bouncing off-table, etc.).
Soulword selection flow: The new slider/progression flow before the 3 Soulword choices appear (does it feel clear and consistent?).
Reroll clarity: Cost progression, UI messaging, and whether spending Blood Money feels fair.
Fog + storms reliability: Fog activation and storm strikes behaving consistently across runs (and any edge cases you notice).
Keyword effects in battle: Any keywords that don’t seem to apply correctly (example: effects that should increase Soul Respite, etc.)
OTHER
- No longer can you click on cards that are permanently locked and travel to (Cliffside, Deep River, etc)
- Smonkey no longer gives you a Soulword at start and only gives you the Starter Deck choices (too overwhelming)
- Better tutorials on how cards work
- Updated UI so that it wont break when "Esc" or Main menu button is clicked
- SoulConsume card is now "Soul Split" card and is a Hybrid Attack and Utility Card. Use for basic attacks or use it for instant kill at 5 Hp or lower. Card also now levels up. Agility Cost is now "2" instead of "0" to keep it fair
REMOVED SINCE THE LAST PLAYTEST
To keep laser focus, we removed certain aspects of the previous build to support this new main character and the parts that were actually the most fun in prior playtests.
Crafting system
Resource cards (wood, stone, etc.)
Traveling is now more limited (less open-world), and has a progression system
Building mode
Items like swords, shields, armor, etc. Since the main character wields a signature scythe, we wanted to keep his look consistent throughout the game.
NOTE
Because this is such a major overhaul, we recommend starting a fresh save for this playtest.
Please let us know what you think of the new update!
Thank you so much for playing the demo! :D