Successor News

Hello, future Successors!

We are thrilled to share some exciting updates as we make great progress on Successor. Most of our core features are nearing completion, and after a long journey, we’re finally seeing everything come together.

However, game development is full of surprises, and reality doesn’t always align with our expectations. That’s where you, our players and community, come in!

Join the Playtest: We’re opening up a few more playtesting sessions in the coming weeks, and we hope some of you will dive into the latest build, have some fun, and provide valuable feedback to help us make a better game.

Here’s what you can expect in the upcoming playtest:

Betrayal: Craig’s Story Intro
This campaign introduces core gameplay features with approximately 10 minutes of playtime.

Gwenn’s Gambit:
Play as Lady Gwenn, a skilled archer, on her journey through the shallow marshes corrupted by the monstrous Dreggs. This campaign introduces the kingdom maps in 3 layers, allowing you to upgrade your Heroes’ abilities. Expect around 40 minutes of playtime.

We will cover her and her unique abilities in an upcoming Dev Log.

If you’ve already signed up for the Playtest on our Steam page, watch out for the invitation! If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. Participants are randomly selected from the signup pool when we start the playtest.

[h2][h3]Patch Highlights 0.7.34.0:[/h3][/h2]

Increased Difficulty Stages:
We’ve expanded the difficulty stages from 6 to 15, allowing for more progressive and visual development of each encounter’s difficulty.

New Character: Shieldmaiden:
A powerful new character, the Shieldmaiden, has been added! We’ll bring her into the spotlight in an upcoming update.

Encounter Distribution Rework:
A profound rework of our encounter distribution system allows us to create regions with quest lines. Questlines can now function as a win condition for regions, introducing different challenges tied to the game’s story.

Menu System Overhaul:
We’re currently reworking all menu systems, including adding a player book to manage Lords & Heroes. Most 2D menus are now integrated into the world as a mix of 2D and 3D elements.

New Challenges and Unlockable Content:
We’ve added challenges that allow players to unlock new content, which is added to the reward pool and will be available in future runs

UI Improvements:
We continue to refine our UI elements to align with the game’s art style and ensure players have easy access to all necessary information.

You are welcome to join us on Discord to follow us during development or provide feedback about your experience with Successor.

Best regards
The Playwood Project Dev Team

Greetings

As time passes, we delight in crafting the universe of Successor, filling its landscape with mysterious creatures and noble houses, each vying for their place in the realm. Today, we're excited to introduce you to a new character: the Lancer.



Once the loyal bodyguard of the Nisut of the Sunlands, the Lancer was discharged in dishonor and cast out to the meadows to atone for his past failures. Despite this fall from grace, he remains a formidable warrior, eager to prove his worth on the battlefield.

Abilities and Skills:

Damage Dealer: Armed with a powerful lance, the Lancer deals immense damage across two tiles, making him a formidable damage dealer when paired with more resilient allies.

Tactical Expert: The Lancer’s strategic prowess shines as he can hurl his lance across the board, disrupting key enemies and breaking their concentration. By setting up well-placed roadblocks, he can manipulate the battlefield to gain the upper hand.



Counter-Stab: His years of training have honed his reflexes, allowing him to counter-stab any foe that comes within range of his lance.



Strategic Considerations:
Every Lord would find the Lancer a valuable asset to their party. However, caution is necessary—his lightly armored attire makes him a vulnerable target. Strategic positioning and careful management are key to leveraging his strengths while mitigating his weaknesses.

Join the Steam Playtest:
Many of you have already signed up for the Steam Playtest and waited patiently. We're thrilled to announce that we plan to run another session in the coming weeks! If you're interested in trying out Successor at its current stage and are ready to share your experience with us, you can sign up from the Steam store.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284730/Successor/


Best regards,
The Playwood Project Dev Team

We’re back with more stories and rumors from the cursed swamps.

Today, we bring you a tale of terror about a creature that haunts our worst nightmares. This rare abomination lurks in the murky depths, blending seamlessly with the muddy waters, waiting for unsuspecting prey. Conjured by malevolent magic, it binds itself to the swamp's roots, dirt, and rot, forming a body fueled by pure hatred and evil.

[h3]New Enemy:[/h3] The Unnamed Abomination

Habitat and Behavior: Unbothered by the swamp’s murky waters, this creature rarely walks. Instead, it extends its reach to snatch prey from a distance, pulling them into melee range. This ability can disrupt even the most experienced adventurers, leaving them isolated and vulnerable.
Combat Challenge: Beware of its cunning tactics. When cornered, the abomination can submerge itself underwater and resurface fully healed, cursing nearby enemies with a severe concussion. Few survive such encounters, and fewer still live to tell the tale.

Despite its fearsome reputation, this abomination remains nameless in our official records. Known only by various monikers such as Treant, The Tank, The Branch & Meat Dweller, we seek your help. If you have encountered this monster or hold any knowledge about it, please help us name it so we can document its existence and warn those who venture into the swamps.

Have a great weekend, and sweet dreams
The Playwood Project Dev Team

Hello everyone,

We're excited to bring you today's update on the enigmatic Dregg faction, known for their zombie-infested swamps deep within the kingdom. This update introduces a new unit type to the faction: the Spore Sprouts. These disease-spreading monsters are a terrifying addition to the Dregg ranks. Covered entirely in fungus, Spore Sprouts mindlessly seek to infect new hosts with their mind-controlling spores that fill the air around them.

[h3]New Unit: Spore Sprouts[/h3]

Description: Spore Sprouts are relentless in their pursuit of spreading their fungal infection. Beware if you find yourself within melee range of these creatures—quickly create distance or stun-lock them before they release their spores into your nostrils, turning you into a mind-controlled zombie for a significant duration.
Challenge: Avoiding their "personal space" is tricky, as they leave behind a trail of poisonous mushrooms. This further limits your movement, especially on smaller boards, making strategic planning and loadout selection crucial when facing the Dreggs on higher difficulty levels.

Our team has dedicated much effort to diversifying the enemies within each faction. This not only varies your challenges but also ensures that more complex and formidable foes emerge as you face factions at greater difficulties.


Coming Next: The Dregg Treant
Stay tuned for our next update, in which we'll delve into the Dregg "treant"—a formidable entity that needs a fitting name.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback.

Best regards,
The Playwood Project Dev Team

[h2]Hi everyone[/h2]

As we continue to develop Successor, we've realized that our traditional method of unregular, content-heavy updates isn't keeping up with our development pace. This, combined with our intense focus on development, means that lots of this content hasn’t reached you yet, and we want to fix that.

Moving forward, we’re shifting our focus. Instead of large monthly updates, we’ll start sharing smaller, more frequent insights directly from the heart of our development process. You’ll get a closer look at what we're currently working on, from gameplay mechanics to visual style, all shared in a more relaxed, informal tone.

Our ambition is to keep you more informed about how Successor is shaping up and to involve you in our journey every step of the way. We believe this will give you a better understanding of our work and allow us to incorporate your feedback more seamlessly as we go.
Prime Sites

We treat Successor as a miniature world coming to life and build many systems as if they were a “live “ board game. Each battle board is assembled using a few random elements, one of which is the Sites.
Sites pose a strategic challenge or offer unique opportunities for the ongoing battle. Randomly placed yet faction and biome-specific, these sites can be tactically destroyed or activated, adding new layers of tactical depth to each encounter.

[h3]Here are a few we have just added. [/h3]

The graveyard, a forbidding domain of the Grimm Legion, now harbors a sinister threat as they spawn “fresh” graves that function as proximity mines. Unwary Heroes or Lords who venture too close will awaken the slumbering dead.

The priest's Holy Strike, imbued with divine power, can dispel the unholy magic that binds the undead to their graves.

Deep within the heart of the shadowy woods ruled by the Darkmoon Fanatics, a malevolent presence festers – the Raventree, a gnarled sentinel of darkness. Beneath its twisted branches, blood ravens gather in droves. Like a ravenous vortex, they circle the Raventree, their hunger insatiable for the flesh of any living soul that dares venture too close.

The Raventree's malevolent influence extends beyond its immediate surroundings, drawing the Darkmoon fanatics to its dark embrace, their devotion fueled by its power as they nourish its roots with the blood of their sacrifices.

It will be some time before we can host another play session, as the new content we’re implementing needs several iterations to ensure it integrates seamlessly into the game.

We ask for a bit of patience, but we promise to make it worth the wait by showing and telling you much more about what’s happening behind the scenes.

Best regards
The Playwood Project Dev Team