Admittedly, nearly this entire year hasn't really gone to plan. We've made some stumbles, changed some core design, and ran into several things we weren't really expecting.
I'm going to talk a bit about some of the problems we've run into and the decisions we've made. Its a little bit of reflection as well as lessons learned.
Also some of these screenshots will include old/temp art and definitely not final.
Core Changes
We were originally aiming for an Early Access release much earlier in the year, as well as a split screen only demo. Several things changed this, the art change being a big one, but this resulted in several changes being made across the entire design.
Most of these changes are good, but as we quickly learned, once you change one mechanic, you're going to end up tweaking/changing the rest.
Magic
Magic was originally a little odd: You consumed an item (like a potion) and would gain temporary magic abilities. Some were powerful, others were fairly mild and nearly passive.
While this worked, it made you reliant on items and was too temporary to make a long term difference. You could also only really have one magic 'active' at a time, which felt weak considering you're supposed to be part-mage.
The new system is much simpler: Aim at an object, and press the magic key. You draw the element of whatever you're looking at and can now hurl it at foes. (Or other players)
Even better, if you hold the magic key down, you'll manipulate that material in some way:
Cover all wood objects in spikey wooden branches? Sure, then maybe kick someone into them.
Launch another player into a lake? Absolutely.
Balancing
Which leads us to the next problem: Balancing.
The game was originally balanced from what we saw at the Expo last year. With the magic changes and more flexibility designed with the grapple hook, most enemies are now pretty much pushovers in difficulty, even more so in co-op. Unfortunately this is the impact of making significant core changes but its something we can overcome.
Right now we'll probably leave the enemies as is and keep them in the early game, but make some more advanced enemies for have some better mobility to combat the player.
Levels
This has influenced many of the levels we have built out, unfortunately causing many to be reworked entirely.
The combination of magic and the grapplehook caused a lot of sections to be easily bypassed. Combined with now much more powerful players, and you could beat levels quick.
We also felt a lot of levels didn't utilize gameplay strengths, or focused on an unusual aspect of the game that didn't quite work out well as an entire level. (Looking at you, desert ghosts)
On the plus side, a lot of the online play is mostly working, aside from a few obvious issues. I don't want to call it out too soon but I'm hoping we can have something out there sooner than later. Well we'll see.
Anyways that's all the notes for now. Until then, here is a picture of Morrison and his (to be filled) item shop:
