We launched Early Access two weeks ago, so it's a good moment to look back.
Initial few days after the launch were a bit frantic - sleep became a distant memory as we fixed bugs and interacted with players on the forums. We addressed most of the urgent issues in the first week and although we are still fixing occasional bugs, we moved on to implementing planned features and stuff suggested by the community.
The community
Which brings us to the community. The community is awesome, we got tons of feedback and many great ideas for new features and improvements.
Some player suggested features we already implemented:
- ALT key loot highlighting
- WASD movement - it was a bit tricky to marry our path system with keyboard controls but initial response from players is very positive
- Quick travel - once the level is cleared the marker pointing to stairs down becomes active and exits the level when clicked
- Many other small improvements like the option to skip animated sequences when fusing runes and upgrading cards, the boss bar that disappears on mouse over, a system that prevents rune starvation by using runes from the higher stack when upgrading and so on.
And others are still in the oven or scheduled after we release remaining two hero classes:
- Iron Man mode
- Permadeath mode
- Mappable controls
- Trophy room
Bottom line
It was our first launch on Steam and we never expected such a positive response from players. Considering this is an Early Access and we have yet to add lots of content this bodes well for the future. Some players clocked over 30 hours in the game three days after the launch and keep playing. Obviously, we are already planning how to make freeplay mode engaging for much longer.
We got so much feedback and data that our data-analyzing tool choked and crashed when we first tried processing it all ːsteamfacepalmː
Thank you all for your support. Last two weeks were great (even if a bit tiring). We will continue to add features and everything is on the track to meet our Roadmap.
Here is the complete list of patch notes since the launch (we are not posting every patch here to avoid clutter).
Version 0.71.10353+ - 12 Aug 2016
- Cursed chests now give better loot (and no crap)
- Fixed a rare crash caused by monsters calling other monsters
- Miscellaneous fixes in dungeon generation
- changelog window: highlight text is now supported for extra important changes!
- boss fight cinematic sequence: fix for possible problem causing boss’ incorrect state
- barmaid window->cauldron: fixed incorrect button’s label
- barmaid window->cauldron: improved collecting prizes animations
- Minor corrections in game’s string tables.
Version 0.71.10323+ - 10 Aug 2016
- Experimental WASD controls are active (keyboard player movement). Because of that Character Window is now opened with [ U ] key (used to be [ S ]).
- Hopefully final fix for all “level clear” problems and for mystery monsters on the crosscut screen
- Fixed a bug where monsters and objects could spawn outside of map in the maze
- Added a smart cap to number of monsters summoning
- Fixed a bug when (sometimes) after loading a game spiders/ghosts were just standing there staring at the player
- Monsters will now wait a bit before they start casting when you enter a level
- Stairs compass now indicates level clear and becomes a clickable button that allows to leave level, no more running!
- Added a stronger visual cue for tilted cards
- Auto hiding boss bar when mouse is over or close to it
- Major tweak of destroyed sarcophagi in Maze.
- Fixed a bug where Antidote card on cooldown would override Helmet’s stun protection
- Removed bug in Avatars window occasionally leading to crash
- Fixed a bug where objects (such as barrels) would be spawned where they shouldn’t be
- Press any key during card upgrade or rune fusion animation to skip it
- Fixed incorrect tooltips’ translation in Stats window
- Fixed a hilarious bug where player’s charge wouldn’t end if cinematic sequence started after activating charge, which caused hero to keep running around the map while dramatic events unfolded.
- Player will no longer become invisible when using doors in Antipope’s lair.
- Fixed incorrect door sprite in Antipope’s lair.
- Added limits to how many and how often each sound effect can be played.
Version 0.71.10279+ - 05 Aug 2016
- Hopefully fixed level clear and monsters staying on crosscut screen bug
- Hidden monsters cannot get poisoned anymore
- Another resolution selection fix has been applied
Version 0.71.10267+ - 04 Aug 2016
- Due to the popular demand ALT key now highlights loot, displays monster names and enables “hover to pick up” on all loot types when held down.
- Fountain refill time has been doubled (now 30 seconds).
- Flexi games longer than medium favor longer levels (side result is that all games should fit on crosscut screen)
- Fixed Summary Frame changing position in some aspect ratios.
- Fixed the possibility to skip Archdemon battle by clicking on stairs down. This time for good!
- Added multiple safeguards against writing to locked files, that could crash the game when an antivirus program (such as AVG or Kaspersky) was scanning savegame folder
- dungeon generation reliability improved
- Fixed some spelling errors reported by players
Version 0.71.10253+ - 03 Aug 2016
- Fixed a crash bug that happened when skeleton belt card was equipped and player was hit with missiles launched by since killed monster
- There is now a notification if a dungeon has been regenerated (due to a corrupt save or due to tileset changes from the latest update)
- If a level is regenerated and it previously contained your tombstone, the cards and gold are returned to you automatically.
- It is no longer possible to reset the tutorial game
- Further tweaks to The Cook tileset
- Updated descriptions of various Achievements
- Added VSync checkbox in Options menu
Version 0.71.10232+ - 02 Aug 2016
- Bosses should no longer throw themselves into lava in the form of a suicide missile
- It’s no longer possible to skip final Archdemon fight by clicking on stairs going down
- Spell bubbles have slightly bigger radius and block input, so stairs shouldn’t trigger
- Several bugs in save system have been fixed. This should result in fewer game crashes.
- Added temporary invulnerability after tombstone pickup and a shockwave that throws monsters away
- Player walk animation would sometimes stuck after using door
- Added much more debug information to game logs, so it should now be easier for us to track bugs
- Magic shields will no longer appear on monsters that are dying
- Throw card rebalanced and fixed (ranges were doubled, thanks Niebe for reporting!)
- Fixed cluster card - was unreliable and unstable if targeted monster died during cast.
- Added health and mana spawning barrels in The Cook quest.
- Removed supersized rooms from The Cook quest, modified other rooms
- Doors in Cook quest will now unlock when all barrels are destroyed (in case the key is hard to find on the floor)
- Lowered chance for new barrels to spawn in The Cook quest by 50%
- Monsters won’t trigger in cinematic mode
- Fixed unlocking trek achievement (game size)
- Enabled CTRL+V in feedback widget for easier screencap linking
- Fixed achievement and avatar progress loss after deleting another profile
- Fixed rare crash when card was identified (enabled button when no card selected)
- Fixed wrong avatar shared to facebook “unlocked avatar” window
- Now clicking on any rune slot will assign basic card from the larger stack to prevent sun rune starvation.
- Fixed a problem when sometimes the game would give you an unimaginable number of golden keys
- Cursed chest won’t open on load on rare occasions (also fixed linked mechanic serialization)
- Cluster card no longer deals dmg on level 1
- Expanded skeleton hitboxes.
- Fixed a bug that caused The Cook’s pots to have random hit zones.
Version 0.71.10201+ - 31 Jul 2016
- Added debug function to reset current flexi game (a small “X” button below current game). This should be used only when player is stuck or the game is somehow broken
- Fixed a bug with invisible player
- Fixed a bug with gold and exp calculation that could sometimes produce their huge amounts
- Boss won’t trigger during cinematic sequence.
- Fixed crash when identifying rune card with card pane open.
- Missing reward icons in the dungeon will no longer crash the game
- Fixed crash when you have a very large number of runes
Version 0.71.10190+ - 29 Jul 2016
- Icicles are now selectable with game pad
- Fixed a problem where player could get stuck after clicking on doors, exiting game before character entered doors and then loading the game.
- Fixed antipope tile, no weird unconnected corridor anymore
- Slithering mages no longer summon so many monsters with summon skill causing impressive horde of monsters
- Probably fixed occasionally incorrect initial gold amount in game creation window bug aka “An offer you can’t refuse”. Please report if that happens again.
- Fixed counting player’s deaths in stats window
- Fixed incorrect amount of score and badges in Awards window
- Dungeons should now generate more reliably