Greetings fellow wizardkin,
Daan & Jonas here with an announcement we're pretty excited about! We had been working on the accessibility & polish update for quite some time before we realized that Next Fest is around the corner. This is the Next Fest we wanted to launch or Demo on! So we decided to roll a couple of updates into one, which meant we had to re-prioritize some stuff.
So here it is: our first Demo candidate for upcoming Next Fest. All our lovely playtesters obviously get first dibs on trying it out! In fact, we have to ask y'all to help us out and please report any problems you find. Especially technical ones! We want this version to be representative of the game.
What actually changed in this version, though? Well first and foremost, we added a bunch of polish: visual effects, sounds, improved art and finally... music! It took a long time to hone in on a style that we both enjoyed and isn't too distracting from the game, but we believe we've finally found something.
We also added controller support. It's not perfect yet... it can get a little unwieldy in some situations, and not all information is as readily available as it is with mouse. There's also no remapping yet, which is pretty essential for accessibility purposes. Nonetheless, it's functional and ready to be improved.
Skymap Rework
Other than that, we also reworked the Skymap. We've found that people weren't really engaging with the quest system, and most unlocked felt a little random. It was also hard for us developers to properly pace progression: some players unlocked 10 quests on their first run and some hardly unlocked anything at all.
For now, the Skymap works with the new currency, Stardust, that you collect by playing the game and getting as far as possible. It's pretty basic, but checking out the Skymap and spending Stardust is very satisfying, and gives way more agency for player to pursuit the unlocks they want.
In the future, we'll probably bring back the quest system in some form or another. We don't know exactly how that would look at this point though.
All Changes
🪄 New Features
Reworked Skymap to use a currency instead of a quest system.
Completely overhauled Boss 3 to be more challenging and intimidating.
Music!
Partial controller support. This is an ongoing progress, but the game should be playable with any basic controller right now, without remapping.
👨🎨 Art
Finished rendering on backgrounds.
Finished rendering monster art.
More juicy and satisfying visual effects.
Reworked run progress bar.
New and improved sound effects.
🍹 Quality of Life
Better feedback on icon changes
Locked content previews.
Toggle dithering effect in graphics settings.
Cards that use a resource as Force (Hokus) now show an icon.
🌲 Evergreen improvements like rebalancing & bug fixes.
Conclusion
Thanks to all who followed our journey, participated in the playtest and giving your honest opinions. It's really helped us get the game to a point where it feels like what it's supposed to be! After this Demo, we'll have to decide what to do with the playtest. We're considering moving to a private beta and invite everyone who has been active so far, but we'll see.
Happy casting and see you at Next Fest,
Daan & Jonas