Hi everyone! 

We wanted to take a moment to share what we’ve been working on since our initial demo launch. We’ve been hard at work polishing Hands of Hell in all areas, honing our visual presentation, user experience, writing, and of course, the gameplay.

We also wanted to extend a massive thank you to everyone who came out and saw us at the Battle of BC this past weekend. This public version of Hands of Hell now coincides with what you all got to experience.

Content and Balance changes

In previous versions, the card game could often be too punishing – losses and break-even scenarios were far too common. We have implemented some changes to make the card game easier and the prospect of consistently profiting more achievable.

• Cut the Ante and Pot mechanics.

This feature was initially intended to incentivize higher wagers. Given that higher wagers are disproportionally difficult to achieve, this added level of punishment was just unnecessary.

• Replaced the betting menu

Having the option to wager any number between 0 and the starting hand size allowed for too many ways to lose the game. Not to mention that wagering higher had a significantly lower chance of resulting in a round being won.

• Added Wager Cards

In place of the betting menu, up to 3 Wager Cards will spawn at the start of a round. Each wager card lists the number of tricks required to win the round, how many tricks the round will last for, and a reward for achieving this wager. The required wins are all low fairly low amounts, with the reward scaling exponentially with each additional required win. Wager cards now also allow for rounds that don't require the player to play their whole hand, allowing for some extra buffer room.

• Added viewable Discard Pile and Win Piles

Tricks that are lost will be discarded into a discard pile on the left side of the table. Tricks that are won will be discarded into separate piles for each trick won. Clicking on these piles will display their contained cards for easier card counting.

• Reworked Rounds and Tricks

A round will consist of as many tricks as the selected wager card states; it’s no longer dependent on how many cards the player is dealt at the start. If the player has no cards in hand before all of a round's tricks have been played, it will always count as a loss regardless of whether they've won the necessary tricks or not.

• Reworked Mammon's Gambit Cantrip 

Old: Doubled the ante for the remainder of the round → New: Discards the entire player hand. Creates a Devil Card.

Art

This is our latest push to a more cohesive UI space as well as more fleshed out environments.

• Added post processing effects to all exploration and card-game scenes.

• Added new Cards that can bend, dissolve, highlight themselves, and hover around.

• Improved Visual Novel Mode - reworked to include local scene lighting, vfx, and post processing.

• Added new sprite for the main menu front page.

User Interface and Experience

• Added custom font *JesseyNDrozSharp*, replacing 2 less cohesive fonts.

• Removed the Options and Save buttons from the View Deck menu.

• Pressing the escape key will now close the View Deck menu.

Writing

• Changes have been made to the script, especially in the tutorial, that accurately reflect the game’s balance changes. 

• Overall edits to some dialogue scenes, with more to come!