1. Hellish Quart
  2. News

Hellish Quart News

Community Update

Community Update

Hello fencers!

We'd like to provide you with an update on the current state of Hellish Quart.

The game is still in Early Access, and we are making slow but steady progress towards an alpha version. By alpha, we mean that the Story mode of Hellish Quart should be finishable, and all main characters should be playable. Following this milestone, our focus will shift towards the beta version. This entails having all content and features in place and locked, allowing us to concentrate on testing, bug fixing, and balancing. Once we believe the game is ready, we'll release it as the final product.

At present, we are finalizing a short supporting story for one of our main characters, Jacek. This roughly 30-minute episode (duration may vary based on your fighting skill!) will introduce a new form of adventure game-like gameplay in Hellish Quart. It will showcase the style of in-game cutscenes, set the pacing of the story mode, and establish the tone of the entire game.

In a deliberate decision, we have chosen to feature the voiceovers for the story in Polish rather than English. While we understand this may pose a challenge for non-Polish speakers, there are several reasons behind this choice. Our writer crafted the game's story in Polish, we, the developers, are Polish, and the story unfolds in Poland. The characters in the narrative would naturally speak Polish, reflecting the rich variety of accents present here. Having been inspired by films like "Potop" or "With Fire and Sword," we, as developers, can authentically gauge if the dialogues fit the setting. This authenticity might be compromised if we worked with English-speaking actors attempting to mimic the 17th-century Polish and Ruthenian way of speaking. However, subtitles will be localized to other languages.

Mechanically, Jacek's story is now playable from start to finish. We are currently working on finalizing the remaining cutscenes, ensuring they are polished and visually appealing. Additionally, we are developing the second boss fight of the game against Maryne Ludzicka, which will conclude this episode.

Following the release of Jacek's short story, we plan to transition the game to a newer version of the Unity engine. This upgrade will significantly enhance the graphics and, simultaneously, by incorporating DLSS and FSR, improve performance on lower-end machines.

NOTE: You can already use FSR or Nvidia Image Scaling from outside the game by configuring it in your graphics card driver app, such as NVIDIA GeForce Experience or AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition. Steam Deck users can also utilize it as it is built into the console.

Thank you for being a part of the Early Access journey. We greatly appreciate your contribution to shaping this game and your patience!













How to Play - The Basic Controls and Best Tactics

If you are thinking about getting Hellish Quart, but want to know about the controls and the gameplay first, then this video is for you!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Update 2023.12.15.1 (Hotfix)

FIX:
- Fixed a bug where unlocking Barabasz Skin 3 also unlocked Jan Skin 3 and vice versa. Sorry, my mistake!

Update 2023.12.15.0

Hellish Quart pre-alpha v. 2023.12.15.0

NEW:
- Arcade Mode: New difficulty level to choose, where the Boss doesn't play hit reactions when you hit his armor
- Added a Coat of Arms icon in the Fight Tab, which improves with each successful boss run. Levels 10 and higher require beating the boss on higher difficulty.
- Added a Player's Title in the Coat of arms, which improves with each ducat you ever earned (spending or losing ducats doesn't influence this)
- Jan: New custom skin to unlock
- Taunts: when you do a taunt it triggers the opponent's high or low guard. Unless the opponent presses Back, the assumed guard will remain for 0.6 seconds, which creates an opening for a follow-up attack after the Taunt.


TWEAK:
- The maximum penalty for losing is now capped at 100 ducats
- Beating the boss counts more towards your Rank than victories over normal opponents
- Beating the boss on higher difficulties counts more than beating the boss on lower difficulties
- Some general Physics tweaks

Update 2023.12.05.0

Hellish Quart pre-alpha v. 2023.12.05.0

TWEAK:
- All the skins that predate the skin unlocking system update are pre-unlocked, instead of super cheap and affordable with the default amount of ducats
- Building mode button is now Y instead of X to avoid conflicts with LMB clicks

NEW:
- Added a Lifetime Wins and Losses counter (against the AI)
- Added Ranks. Your score rank will increase as you win more fights against the AI. Currently, PvP matches are not ranked.

- Added an option in Gameplay Options to turn off any progression type of gameplay. It allows to opt out from earning ducats and "unhide" every unlockable in the game, as if it was already unlocked. When this option is on, the ducat earning system will be completely off and you will have access to all the skins, arena upgrades, etc. You also won't win or lose any ducats, your won and lost fights will not be counted and your Rank will not increase.

Note, that this option doesn't overwrite your saves, so if you decide that you want to unlock the content the intended way, you can just turn it off, and everything will be back to the state from before turning this option on.

- In Character Selection menu, when you choose a character with the character customization button, you can now press B (the UI Cancel button) to cancel browsing character skins on a chosen character and go back to character selecting