Hey folks!
The Cataclysm monsters that are invading the world Merlin is trying to save are weird creatures that came from the minds of our creative art team. Says a lot about their weird heads, eh?
So far, we’ve shown 4 monsters through either the blog posts or the demo itself. The first demo we put out was structured for a 5 world location journey across two paths, with a total of 3 fights against a combination of Mandrake, Behemoth, and Wyvern enemies. This was during the Steam Summer Games Festival.
After that, we decided to apply/be on more events during the year, like the PAX event that just finished or Gamescom a few weeks ago. Our current event participation means that the current demo will be available all the way until September 27th (27.09.2020), when it’ll take a break from being ravaged by all you players, and then return strong for the Steam Autumn Games Festival on October 7th (07.10.2020) for some 6 days. The later demo should receive some fixes as we make them, but no new content is planned (not planned doesn’t mean there won’t be any added if we decide it’s worth it).
The monsters you’ve seen in the current demo won’t change, and we will likely keep the same structure for them for the full game as well. Mandrake, Wyvern, and Redcap are monsters you’ll be seeing during your Albion travels, with a Behemoth at the end. In Marca Hispanica we’ll be introducing the Thorntoad, with a Cockatrice at the end. In Al-Andalus, the sandy zone, we add the Lindworm to round up the monster roster (heh it rhymes). The final battle in Jerusalem will remain a secret.
Here’s a short development story: In our old engine, we had a worm enemy as well, given life by yours truly, and i made sure to make it as annoying as possible. It had an attack that ignored all obstacles, essentially lobbed a projectile at you from behind cover at a large range. So naturally, the AI moved that enemy to a position that was fully shielded from ALL of your units and attacked you from there. It also didn’t help it had unlimited movement range, to facilitate the fantasy of it burrowing into the ground and emerging just about anywhere. This meant you had to spend at least 1 action point to get to a position from which you can attack it, and spend the other action point to deal damage.
And the best part?
Every time you hit it, it split into two, each copy having half health of the original, then both copies moved into a new position.
The team hated it (and me through proxy), but I found it hilarious!
Hopefully, the new Lindworm won’t be as annoying, eh? :)
As a final note, some abilities and relics will have effects that apply only to these monsters. For instance, there is a relic that reduces damage against humans and increases damage against aliens. Mat wanted a different name instead of “aliens”, so the writers have come up with the term “abominations”, which we’ll use in all ability tooltips that affect them specifically.
What are your thoughts on this name? Give us your opinion on our Discord server, or in the comments!
MarkoP
https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/