Hello everyone!
August has been a busy month behind the scenes as we've continued going through everything we learned from Playtest 3.
The feedback, statistics, run data, and even the ways players approached individual encounters have given us a much clearer picture of where we want to take Desert Revenant 2 next.
And some of the changes we're working on go considerably further than simply adjusting numbers.
Taking Another Look at Combat
One of our biggest focuses right now is combat.
We've been revisiting enemy design, encounter structure, combat readability, and most importantly, the decisions we're asking players to make every turn.
Playtest 3 reinforced something we already strongly believed: difficulty alone doesn't necessarily create strategy.
An enemy dealing more damage, having more health, or simply requiring a stronger deck can make an encounter harder, but it doesn't automatically make that encounter more interesting.
We want more of the difficulty in Desert Revenant 2 to come from having several reasonable options and deciding which one is worth committing to.
That means we're currently experimenting with substantial changes to how enemies interact with the player and with the tactical layer surrounding combat.
We're deliberately keeping the details under wraps for now because these systems are still being developed, tested, thrown away, rebuilt, and iterated on.
But this isn't intended to be a small balance pass.
The goal is to make individual turns more expressive, make enemies demand different responses, and give players more opportunities to plan around what is coming rather than simply finding the highest-value card in their hand.
Enemies Are Changing Too
This also means taking a much closer look at our enemies.
We're working on making enemy behavior more distinct, more readable, and more important to the decisions you make.
An encounter should change how you play.
Different combinations of enemies should create different problems, and understanding what the enemy is preparing should matter just as much as understanding what your own deck can do.
We're currently exploring changes across enemy actions, targeting, encounter compositions, visual communication, and the information presented to the player during combat.
Some of that work is already producing very different encounters internally.
What Playtest 3 Changed
One of the advantages of running these playtests relatively early is that we're still able to question fundamental parts of the game.
Playtest feedback isn't only useful for determining whether a card should deal 8 damage instead of 10.
Sometimes the more valuable question is:
"Why is the player making this decision in the first place?"
That is something we've been asking ourselves a lot recently.
There are parts of Desert Revenant 2 that worked well during Playtest 3, parts that need refinement, and parts where we believe there is an opportunity to push the game much further.
So rather than treating the current combat system as something finished that simply needs more content added on top of it, we're using what we learned to continue evolving its foundations.
Building Something Distinct
Roguelike deckbuilders are a genre we love, but they're also a genre filled with great games.
Our goal is to build a game that is approachable enough to understand quickly, while still giving players systems they can spend a long time learning, exploiting, combining, and eventually mastering.
A lot of our work this month has been about moving further in that direction.
There is still a lot to test before we're ready to show what we've been working on, but we're excited about where combat is heading.
And when we're ready, we'll have quite a bit more to talk about.
Thank you again to everyone who participated in Playtest 3, sent us feedback, reported issues, experimented with builds, or simply spent time playing the game.
You're helping us shape what Desert Revenant 2 becomes.
See you in the next update!
The Kreationware Team