Yo peeps!
Christmas break is looming ahead. We’re busy adding all the things to the game. Encounters for Marca Hispanica (zone 2) are being added at a break-neck speed, enemy AI is being worked on to make them move around in a smarter looking fashion, we’re getting new music and sfx, most enemies have their skills made and ready for use, levels are being produced like maaaad, and the topic of today: moar spells.
We’ve expanded the set of spells to tier 2, meaning there should now be 6 spells available in any future build of the game. Some spells were reshuffled in tiers, and 3 more spells are added. Mat is taking his sweet time with adding spells because they have to fulfill a specific role in the game, making some of the harder fights possible instead of easier.
I’m not sure if everyone who played the game found how to unlock spells, so here’s the rundown. Every time you reach a node, we pick a random encounter from a pool for that specific node. Arcane nodes, and by extension, arcane encounters, have a chance to feature another guardian character, the same race as Merlin. Each time you meet one, he provides one core essence, which is a currency item used to unlock spells in the guardian core you currently have active. Once you unlock at least one tier 1 spell, tier 2 spells become available. We have plans for the third tier as well, but those will come at a later point.
One of the spells Mat made is Warp. It applies a ground-based aura that affects all units, but in different ways. It applies Positive Warp to all allies and Negative Warp to all enemies. The effects of both buffs are similar but opposite: allies get +4 movement and enemies -4 movement. For some of the slower units, this effectively means they cannot move at all if they got caught in the area. Any enemy units that end their movement in the area will become afflicted as well. (note that everything is subject to balance changes)
It also looks pretty nice, so here’s a visual of it.
One of the spells we’ve had for a while now is Thunderbolt. It deals a lot of damage to one unit, and I’ve somehow managed to talk people into making it look like a laser. In one of our Steam discussion threads, I said I would try sneaking one in the game, so here it is.
Thanks for reading! If you want sneak peeks into the development process, join our Discord server and ask questions, we’ll be happy to answer each and every one of them.
MarkoP
https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/