Next Fest is over, and we wanted to give a big thank you to everyone for all your support! Our demo was downloaded over 12,000 times during the event, and with that came a lot of great feedback and encouragement! Your support means so much to our small team :)
Although the event is over, we are planning to leave the demo up for a while longer to ensure that everyone has a chance to play it.
If you have played the demo, we would love to hear from you! We've created a short survey (no more than a few minutes) to help us gauge the general consensus on the game's difficulty and a few of its mechanics. It would mean a lot of you could take the time to fill it out! You can find the form here.
Over the last week, we've made quite a number of changes to the game on our end, some of which we were already planning to do, some of which were based on user suggestions. The change-log is as follows:
- Improved descriptions for ability tooltips: Many of our tooltips were not finalized and admittedly quite rough. We've re-written many of them, and they should now be more clear.
- Level 1 characters now begin with 2 abilities from their class: We had always intended for it to work this way, but hadn't gotten around to it until now. As a character levels up, they will gain access to the other 4 abilities for their class (levels 3,5,7 and 10). This will give the player a better sense of progression with their mercenaries, making their deaths much more meaningful as well.
- Changed the way 'Ability Charges' are displayed: As you can see above, we've changed the way we display an ability's remaining charges. It's a bit more intuitive this way, and a little easier to see compared to the number that used to be displayed there.
- Channeled abilities previewed in the turn order: When hovering or selecting a channeled ability, you will now see an indicator in the turn order that lets you know where the ability will finish channeling. Hopefully this clears up any confusion about how channeling works!
- Channeled ability danger zones: Some channeled abilities that targeted multiple cells could be hard to keep track of or anticipate if you weren't already aware of what the ability did. Channeled abilities from enemies will now show which cells will be affected, using the same graphic that currently indicates 'danger' from environmental hazards like falling rocks.
- Tweaked the Stormcaller's Cyclone ability: We felt this ability was extremely situational, and its outcome too unpredictable. It now functions as more of an escape ability that allows the Stormcaller to "ride the lightning" (sorry I couldn't resist!) to the target cell. Any targets along the path are pushed aside, and you're now able to control which side they get pushed to.
- Other minor ability tweaks: We won't list them all, but a few other abilities have been slightly tweaked (some nerfs, some buffs, some bugfixes). The Pyrolancer's Wildfire now spreads instantly across 3 cells (instead of staggered over multiple turns), and the Huntress' Overwatch ability can now hit up to 2 targets before the channel breaks.
- Changes to Flanking: In addition to Flanked targets receiving more damage, they are now unable to Evade. This makes flanking more important when trying to finish off enemies with basic attacks (an important tactic to conserve charges), and gives the player more strategic control over Evasion RNG.
- Damage Previews on Healthbars: When targeting enemies, you can now get a better idea of how much damage they will take. You won't need to do math to see if a killing blow will occur :)
- Bug fixes!: The majority of bugs that were reported here and on our Discord have been fixed on our end - thank you all for your reports! Quick note that these changes are not live in the demo build (as it's a bit complicated to go back and update), though we may try to push one update before release.
There's still more balance, UI and Quality of Life changes we plan to do between now and release, but we wanted to share the improvements we've made this past week while the demo is still fresh in your minds. Hopefully you all like the changes!
What's next?
Our release date announcement trailer is just around the corner, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, we invite you to join our growing Discord server where we are almost always available to answer your questions and discuss the game in general. Thank you, and see you next time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/699330/The_Iron_Oath/