Hey all, it’s Fabular update time with the developments of the past few months.
New playable class Manticore is done
The Manticore is a faster, busier class than the Paladin and we can’t wait to get it into your hands. This ship can be equipped with daggers that have the highest attack speed and critical damage in the game, and glaives that are somewhat slower but cover a larger area in melee range. Both weapons can apply malfunctions to targets which is a damage over time effect that can be upgraded in interesting ways.
Its special equipment is Holo-decoy that gives you a short range dash move. When dash is executed perfectly (just before an enemy hit reaches you), it leaves behind a holographic image of your ship that attracts enemies for a short duration. You can also swap your position with an active decoy, so it’s a quite versatile tool of survival and engagement.
We’re planning to add an additional weapon type for the Manticore, but otherwise the class is finished, together with its upgrade tree.
Upgrade trees for both classes finalized
Speaking of upgrades, in addition to the completely new tree for the Manticore, we’ve revised and finished the full upgrade tree of the Paladin as well.
The Manticore’s governing main attribute is Speed, and most of the talents are clustered around that. You can specialize broadly in two directions; enhancing your holo-decoys or enhancing malfunctions in different ways.
The Paladin’s governing attribute is Power, providing talents that focus on blocking with the shield and being tanky in general.
The Paladin class also has more passive talents which is nice if you prefer a more methodical and slower playstyle, while the Manticore can be very flashy and rapid if you invest in the right upgrades.
Upgrades Beta test in progress
Now that the upgrades are in place we only have to find the right balance for them (how much do they cost, is any of them over- or underpowered, should they be an early- or late game pick and such). In order to properly test this we need more eyes and hands on the game, so we’ve started a Beta test that focuses on the upgrades.
We’ve started with a few select members of our Discord server, but in September we’d like to broaden the number of testers, expect more news about this later.
New realm, enemies and game content
The fourth realm of the game is coming along nicely. We’ve finished all regular enemies and one of the two battle scenes of the fire-themed Sky-high Mountains. Let’s check out some enemies in detail:
Iron Warrior
Since the Iron Brigade is the enemy faction in realm 4, to increase the difficulty, even their most basic warrior has an additional special attack that can stun the player if it hits. In addition to this, all enemies of the faction go out with a damaging fiery explosion when they die, posing a threat even after you’ve bested them.
Iron Archer
This faction’s archer enemy launches a projectile that spits out smaller firework-like sparks that makes dodging it much harder.
Iron Besieger
This larger enemy tries to stay in the background and launch globes of molten lava at the player from afar. The globes explode leaving an area of damaging fire behind for quite a while.
Iron Acolyte
Acolytes are the archetype of a mage or warlock that buffs other friendly units. The Iron Acolyte channels a lava-beam towards a fellow enemy ship which creates a fire aura around it that damages the player. The beam also enhances the speed of the ship it channels onto and can damage the player when crossed. Nasty!
Scorcher Automaton
These small automatons launch from acolytes in regular intervals. They periodically leave burning fire in their wake and try to circle around you and surround you with a wall of fire. They are quite nimble and hard to get to with melee weapons... real pesky ‘fire-flies’. :)
Royal Acolyte
The Hinterlands (realm 3) has also received their version of an Acolyte. This one has a healing beam that slowly replenishes the armour of a friendly unit and increases its attack speed.
The Royal Acolyte also has a short range ‘zap’ attack that activates when the player is in melee range.
New battle scenes
One of the two Realm 4 scenes is finished (Lava fields, top-left) and we’ve also made a new scene for the Marauder-filled Realm 2; the desolate Thornroot forest. You can see 3 variations of the latter below as well:
Additional stuff
There are lots of other small additions and tweaks we’ve made, here’s a few of them in no particular order:
Revamped player-bar with hit display (portion of bar turns white to indicate the damage of a recent hit):
Introduced variety to Royal and Marauder warrior type ships:
Starmap consumable items now have a visual effect when they’re used:
That’s it for now, have a pleasant end-of-summer everyone! Oh, and do check out this video that features Fabular as a ‘Top 10 BEST Upcoming Action Rogue-lite Indie Game’. :)
