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Skul: The Hero Slayer News

Not Just Another Skull

[h3]Look who’s dropping soon...[/h3]





The Beheaded is on its way, so get ready to meet our most ambitious skull yet!

Unfortunately, when it comes to the major update we teased last week (level design, reward system & balancing changes), it still needs a little more time in the oven before it’s ready to go. We’re trying our best to make this update as fun and rewarding as possible, so we hope that you can understand the slight delay. Just know that we’re working extra hard to release it as soon as we can and that it should be out by the end of June at the latest.

Upcoming Update Preview!

Hello, SouthPAW Games here!

Our next update is planned to be released next week! That being said, the update contains a lot of experimental design elements and pretty big changes to our game.
We want you to know that we’re always listening to your feedback and making this game together as gamers. With this experimental update, we’re trying to implement all the things that we think that will make the game more fun to play.

“We think this will make the game more fun, what do you think?”

Here’s a teaser of what will change with next week’s update.

1. Balance Changes

We’ve made balance changes to all Skulls, Items and Quintessences.
As always we’ll be open to feedback and insights you can provide us. Here are the changes:
- Skills changed to be more powerful. Cooltime on skills reduced.
- Increased the efficiency of swapping skulls. Users will be rewarded for being able to masterfully swap between skulls.
- Overall buffs to items across the board.
- Increased the usefulness of the Active element of Quintessences compared to their Passive stats.



2. Level Design Changes

We’ve received many feedback from our users saying that our game could benefit from having a faster gameplay pace. We’ve been looking into how to make the game have a faster pace while also making it fun.
In our next patch, you’ll be able to play our new level design that hopefully makes the game both more fun and feel fast-paced.


3.New Reward Mechanism

We thought that having an entire map dedicated to having one Grave or Treasure Chest prop disrupted the flow of the run.
So we’ve created a new reward mechanism that will allow you to pick up your skulls, items or gold after clearing each map without having to enter a whole different map.
With the new update, there will be 2 doors instead of just 1 that you can choose to proceed to after clearing a map. Different doors will grant you different rewards, (skull door, item door, gold door) so you can choose which door you want to enter depending on what you need at that given moment in your run.
We’re planning to further develop this method of placing rewards and also add more variety of rewards so that each of your runs feels unique.



4. Simplifying in-game Stats

We have a lot of different stats right now. (Damage, Basic Damage, Skill Damage, Melee Damage, Ranged Damage, Projectile Damage, Item Damage, Quintessence Damage… we have 10+ stats related to just the damage aspect of our game!)
We know that most of you have felt that the sheer number of stats to be confusing, and with good reason.
Now we’ve narrowed damage related stats to just 2 types of stats: Physical Damage and Magical Damage
WIth the new update, most basic attacks will deal Physical Damage and most skill attacks will be considered Magical Damage.
There are some exceptions, a few skulls will have basic attacks that will have magical damage and have skills that deal physical damage.
Items and Quintessences will now clearly display which of the 2 damage that they’ll increase or deal.
We hope with these new changes, you’ll be able to more clearly be able to stack synergies between different items, quintessences and skulls and have fun testing out creative strategies each run.


5. Item Slot Increase

We’ve decided to increase the amount of items you can equip from 6 to 9!
We want you to have more fun trying out different item combinations and continue to feel more and more powerful as you obtain better items.




As always, thank you so much for having fun playing our game. Keep those wonderful feedback coming. We’ll be posting the full detail of the update once the patch is live!

Development update & addressing user feedback

Hey guys, SouthPAW Games here!

Since our ‘Development Roadmap’ post in late April, we’ve been receiving a lot of user feedback regarding our game.
We appreciate all of you who have played our game and those that went the extra mile to send us feedback.


Based on some of your great feedback, we’re improving the current state of our Early Access build. Of course, we’re also simultaneously developing our planned contents for official launch.

Please understand that we weren’t able to address each and every one of your feedback. So if your feedback didn’t make it onto the list today, maybe we can talk about them at a later date!
We hope that through this post, we can address your curiosities, concerns, and excitement for our game.

For our next patch, we’re looking to make balance and level design changes. We’re trying to take the time we need before implementing this to our live client, but please do stay tuned for our next update!

Without further ado, let’s talk about some of the most requested feedback that you’ve sent us.


Q: There seems to be lots of different stats that affect my character during gameplay but this is not very clear during my play at the moment. Can we have some way to show what items are affecting which of my character’s stats?

A: We agree that this needs to be addressed. We’re planning to make it so that it’s intuitively clear which stats affect your attacks and skills by using color.
We’re also planning to simplify the stats in the game by removing many unclear stats.


Q: Can we be able to sell Quintessences like we can with items?

A: Of course, we'll look into having this function implemented after checking that this doesn’t cause unforeseen issues with the game.


Q: Can we have a ‘Save’ function? I would like to be able to save and return to my game.

A: We didn’t think about implementing this feature during our early stages of development, but we’ve received so many requests for this function that we’re recently feeling the need to. However we’re going to have to develop this from the ground-up, which is a massive task, so we’re going to need a lot of time for this.


Q: Can we have more upgrades available through the Witch NPC?

A: Yes, in fact, we’ve mentioned this on our roadmap. We feel that permanent upgrades are a big fun factor when it comes to rogue-lite games. We already made some progress with new upgrades to come and we think they’re really fun. Hope you guys will feel the same way!


Q: Can we have more NPC related in-game events?

A: This is a great idea! We could definitely give the world of Harmonia some depth through NPC interactions and events. But until our official launch, we’re going to focus on making the core game. We’ll keep this idea in mind for updates to come after launch though.


Q: Can we have more map diversity?

A: Yes, creating new maps is a priority task for us. We’re also trying to find a better way to make each of your runs feel exciting and fresh.


Q: Any plans for a hard mode?

A: We’re thinking that this feedback came from one of our more dedicated players looking for an extra challenge. If you are one of those players, we would like to extend our greatest gratitude to you for playing our game to this extent. However, until our official launch, we’re trying to focus our development effort on the overall experience of the game: from starting the game to finishing the game and reaching our game’s ending.


Q: Can you revert the color of the Rider Skull back to its fiery color? (Orange, not green)

A: We were very surprised to see this much feedback about this. We’ll make sure that the Rider Skull will have its original fiery orange color back by our official launch date. On top of this, a handful of other skulls will be receiving visual upgrades so look out for those!

Q: We need MORE skulls!

A: Yes we do. We’re hoping to have 50 skulls by our official launch. This is double the amount we started out with in Early Access. We strongly believe that the amount of skulls directly affects how fun our game is as a rogue-lite game. Stay tuned for more skulls to come, and keep all those cool skull ideas/suggestions coming!


Q: Any plans for local co-op?

A: Local co-op is a feature that we would definitely like to develop later down the road. We’re expecting to add this feature after our official launch so that you’ll be able to take on the Imperial Army with a buddy!


Q: Can we be able to control how high my character jumps with the jump input? (hold to jump higher, release to descend)

A: We think that this comes down to user preference. We’ve designed our game so that the game doesn’t require you to use this function. Also, there are nifty ways that you can cancel your jumps mid-air so there’s also the matter of rewarding skilled gameplay that we want to keep. So for right now, we’re going to leave the jump mechanism as it is!


Q: “I think it would be cool if the Carleon Recruit that appears with Carleon Recruit skull’s [Comrade: Recruit] skill had something marking him as a traitor like a red scarf or something” (@Heyo)

A: That’s a fun idea, we’ll make it happen!


Q: Anybody else thinks that Skeleton - Spear skull’s [Rush Forward!] skill is a bit OP?

A: We’re always attempting to create new fun skills, but in this case it seems like most of you thought that this particular skill was a bit overpowered. We’ll try to balance this out while still keeping the fun aspect alive.


Q: Can we have randomized maps?

A: This is a huge development task and doesn’t align with the gaming experience we want to deliver with our game. That being said, we don’t have any plans of adding this feature at the moment.


Q: Can we have ‘finished’ items that can be made with certain item recipes?

A: Another great opinion! We’ll look into having powerful items that can be made with combining certain items together.


Q: Any plans for achievements?

A: No worries, we’re going to have achievements!


Q: Can we have a UI that tells me how far along I am with my run?

A: We’re thinking of clever ways of showing users their level progression during their run. We’ll make sure to think of one and implement it by our official launch.


Once again we thank you all so much for supporting us in the form of playtime and feedback, we’ll try our best to deliver a fun gaming experience by adding new contents and developing different features.

Cheers!

Early Access Patch Notes #10(Edited)

Hello,

The bug listed below was taken care of with this hotfix for Release Version 1.9d.

  1. Fixed an issue where the game did not launch on Mac.
  2. Fixed a bug where Ent Skull "Rapid Growth" skill gave abnormally high damage.


-------------------------------------

Hello Skul Squad,

We’re here with another update, bringing you 3 new skulls to help Skul on his quest to rescue his King from captivity.



[h3]New Skulls![/h3]

Living Armor
  • Tier: Unique
  • Type: Power
Sword and armor with the spirit of a knight that is no more.



Alchemist

  • Tier: Rare
  • Type: Balance
When did it start to go downhill...



Ent Skull

  • Tier: Common
  • Type: Power
A skeleton that has received nutrients from the giant trees of the Forest of Harmony.



Here are the detailed patch notes:


Fixed a bug where item effects that trigger by jumping would not disappear even after the item has been sold/destroyed.
Fixed a bug where the player’s death sound effect would not trigger properly.



Added UI sound effects.
Improved skill sounds for a handful of Skulls.


New playable Skulls
  • Living Armor
  • Alchemist
  • Ent Skull


Carleon Recruit
  • New skill added: [Comrade: Archer]


Minotaur
  • Fixed a jumping animation bug




Kobold
  • Fixed a bug where the ‘Mining’ gold coin drop effect would not trigger.



  • Fixed a bug where arrows fired by the Archer adventurer would appear inverted.

Early Access Patch Notes #09 (Edited)

Hey Skul Squad,
You may have seen this listed on our ‘Development Roadmap’, but this patch includes a major update of the skills for a bunch of different skulls (Common~Rare grade).

The list of additions is pretty extensive, but we think one really stands out from the rest.

Behold the new and improved Gargoyle equipped with Laser Eyes. Bet you didn’t see that coming! (Neither did the soldiers though to be fair....)

The new set of skills should really liven up the gameplay for the skulls involved and make clearing maps even more fun. And as always, let us know what you think of the changes on our Discord! Your feedback is very important to us.
We also fixed some bugs, sound effects and balancing issues. Please see below for the deets~

[h3]System[/h3]
  • Fixed bug where some projectiles passed through walls.
  • Fixed problem where a Lion Statue in Chapter 2 hit the player for an abnormally high amount of damage.
  • Fixed sound issue related to a trap on a certain map in Chapter 2.

[h3]Skulls[/h3]
  • Skeleton-Spear
    - Added skill [Rush Forward!]
  • Carleon Recruit
    - Added skill [Comrade: Recruit]
  • Sneak
    - Damage is now dealt to nearby enemies when using [Back Roll]
  • Werewolf
    - Damage is now dealt to enemies when using [Beast Leap]
    - Added skill [Hunt]
    - Added skill [Predator]
  • Warrior
    - Added skill [Mighty Strike]
    - Added skill [Suppress]
  • Minotaur
    - Added skill [Pulverize]
    - Added skill [Bludgeon]
  • Jinn
    - Added skill [Giant]
    - Added skill [Genie Lamp]
  • Mummy
    - Changed effect of skill [Mummy Poison]
    - Added skill [Mummy Ball]
    - Added skill [Claw]
  • Gargoyle
    - Added skill [Gargoyle Eyes]
    - Added skill [Twister]
  • Glacial Skull
    - Added skill [Ice Field]
  • Hunter
    - Added skill [Siege Shot]
    - Added skill [Steady Shot]
    - Improved sound effect of projectiles when hitting enemies or walls
  • Aqua Skull
    - Added skill [Waterspout]
    - Removed water sound effect when dashing
  • Rider
    - Raised Max Passive Attack Increase from 30% to 50%
    - Added skill [Flame Boots]
    - Added skill [Flame Chain]
  • Clown
    - Added skill [Jack-in-the-box]

[h3]Enemies[/h3]
  • Raised volume of enemy characters’ death sound effect
  • Fixed issue where the Chapter 2 Gold Mane Infantryman’s ax attack visual effect didn’t match up with the actual hit box