Hello Guardians!
It’s now been a bit more than two months since we released the Winter Update and you might be wondering what we’ve been up to meanwhile.
So here we are with this twelfth devblog.
Today we’ll be having an overview of what’s to come in the 1.0.0 launch and we’ll follow up with monthly devblogs to give more details and juicy visuals about several of these additions.
Please note that we may or may not manage to include them, depending on the time frame. But we’re aiming for that and we’re trying to mini-maximize our schedules to include all of them.
We know a lot of you might be more curious about the “when” than the “what” though, so let’s talk about this real quick.
We can’t confirm any date yet, but we’re aiming for a release around Q3 2023. Obviously, this is subject to change and we will properly announce the release date once we’re certain of it and feel comfortable about the schedule.
As you probably all know by now we’re always aiming for quality over quantity or speed, and what we plan for 1.0.0 makes it our biggest update so far.
That being said, what will the 1.0.0 launch include exactly? The roadmap is well and good but… it isn’t that descriptive.
The 1.0.0 will include everything you can expect from a full-fledged game, noticeably things such as:
Achievements
One of the most asked features, we’ve been patiently waiting for the rest of the game to be in a more final state to include them, and they’re coming!
Compendium
Who doesn’t love collecting things? We certainly do! For now, we’re working on bringing Enemies, Weapons and a few other things to the compendium.
Research / Work in progress
Story implementation
We’re reworking all cinematics (and a bit of the storytelling within) with brand-new graphics. We’re implementing more Max’s dialogues and story bits to read in the data-logs. We’re giving Max a major graphic overhaul (and new animations!). In other words, we’re infusing the story and worldbuilding we’ve been working on since the very beginning of the development of Roboquest. We wanted to do that for a while now, but the gameplay was our primary focus during Early Access.
Complete localization
We’re still unsure of which languages will be available at launch, but those selected will be 100% completed (unlike most of our update releases so far).
We will also implement the remaining parts of the gameplay-loop:
Corrupted levels
We’ve been discussing this in several devblogs and it should have been included in our previous update (but it was postponed). We’re still hard at work to include those special levels. They will be directly tied to your game progression, your exploration of the world and will make choosing your run-path a more meaningful choice.
The final boss
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And necessarily, we will be cleaning up what’s still considered “wip” in the game:
Interface
A lot of user interface bits are still placeholder and we’re reworking / finalizing them.
Work in progress
Game textures
For a long time, lots of game textures were pretty “simple” and we’re in the process of injecting more details and personality in those.
Weapon names
While pretty anecdotal, we thought it’d be fun to mention that we worked hard to choose new weapon names that would sound less generic (while still keeping those we deemed emblematic or that would have a nostalgic feel to them). And we will also make them localizable.
We’ll also be reworking some older system:
Gadgets
For now, we’re planning to overhaul the gadget system to make you able to equip any and as many gadgets as you want. Yes, this has a huge impact on the balance of the game and we’re still thinking of the exact implementation of this system. That will also mean that some gadgets might get removed / replaced / reworked / transformed into other game elements (such as perks or items).
Basecamp upgrades
We will be adding / removing some upgrades and we will fine-tune the price of everything to reach the progression feeling that we deem pleasing for a game like Roboquest. We will also complete the visuals of the basecamp (polishing it and making its evolution clearer).
Wrenches flow
You will loot wrenches on destroyed enemies, it should feel more rewarding than simply gaining them at the end of a level. And we will obviously fine-tune the amount of wrenches you earn to make sure it’s not becoming too long to progress through the basecamp upgrades (and to follow the new progression feeling we’re aiming for, which would be a tad faster than the current implementation).
Elite system
As said in an older devblog, the elite enemies were quickly added to the game in their current form. The final form of its system should be better and be intricate with other systems in the game.
New game+
For those who don’t know, NewGame+ is the fact of restarting a game with a higher level of difficulty (it’s basically what Heroes+ difficulties are at the moment). We’re currently thinking of ways to improve this system and to create more differences between each difficulty level (more than just increasing the health and damage of enemies each time). For now one of the leads is to modify the enemy roster of the different levels based on your current difficulty.
Class perks
We’re always in the process of fine-tuning perks, whether that’d be removing / adding / reworking existing ones following our data and your feedback.
Tutorial
The current tutorial doesn’t include some important Roboquest features such as the powerslide (but not only), we will make sure to rework / complete that.
Items
While the system is already in a spot we deem good enough, we will probably clean up some of its aspects and include and tad more control over its random and rarity system.
But more importantly, we will be implementing several new systems you probably haven’t heard of yet:
Corruption Crystals
But what are those?! They are directly tied to corrupted levels, and we’re not ready to tell more about that just now.
NPCs
Bazaar Bob and Smithing Joe aren't the only friendly bot you will encounter...
Work in progress
Quests
What would RoboQUEST be without quests? We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And there will definitely be some questing involved!
Secrets
While there were some secrets in the past, they’ve been really scarce since we removed a few of them. But we definitely want to add a little bit more spice and mystery to the game, so look forward to the addition of secrets to the game.
End-run stats
Something many of us have been waiting for, end-game stats! That would make it more simple to share builds and simply to check out how well you’ve been performing.
And finally, we will continue to add more content to the game:
New class
We’re planning to add one more class to the game. Nothing more to say on the subject for now.
Enemies
We will be adding more enemies (and reworking existing ones) to continue fine-tuning each level’s enemy roster and tune down the level of annoyance of some of them.
Weapons
While it’s not our primary focus, we’re working on new weapons for the 1.0.0 launch (and all the ideas you’re posting in our community channels help us a ton on that side!).
Roboquest 40k
Items
We will be adding more items to the pool as they help each run feel fresh and different. We’ll be closely monitoring those aspects in order to avoid a situation where the pool of items is so vast that every “good item” is diluted in it.
Affixes / Alternative Fires
We’re continuing to think of new affixes and alternative fire to add to our weapons.
Obviously, there probably are several things that aren’t on that list and will end up being added / reworked, and others that are on this list that won’t make the cut.
But you should probably have a clearer idea of where we’re going with Roboquest.
You might be wondering why we’re not releasing all of this in different updates rather than all at once and we’d like to give you a little bit of context about this.
Preparing and releasing an update slows down the entire development process since we need a stable version of the game. This forces most of the team to stop implementing things in the game for a little while each time. Considering the sheer amount of content we’re working on, not stalling the development allows us to keep working on every new system at once and eventually to release the 1.0.0 faster.
In addition, most of the new systems are tied up with each other (the corrupted levels with the final boss, the elites and the NPCs/quests as well as the story elements) like we’ve discussed in other devblogs.
And we deemed necessary for the “1.0.0 update” (the launch of the game) to include those final systems in order to have a very impactful launch.
All of those reasons made us consider halting the release of updates to deliver the 1.0.0 version of Roboquest we’ve been envisioning for a long time now.
We know it’s a long road to the 1.0.0 launch and that you might be getting impatient. But bear with us, we’re hard at work to bring Roboquest in its FINAL FORM. Like we said early in this devblog, we’ll keep you in touch with monthly devblogs to give you insights and juicy visuals of the new features. Stay tuned for that!