BattleJuice Alchemist News

Hey everyone,

I usually post patches for the Steam playtest on Fridays, but 0.21801 is already done, so here it comes a day early!

As announced in the last devlog, you can now choose if you want to play the Bold, the Swift or the Sly Alchemist. They all come with their own unique way of handling flasks and their own perks.



The Sly Alchemist for example hurls flasks into the air and hits targets on the ground with a certain delay.



This patch also comes with a seemingly small, but in my eyes significant feature allowing players to choose the way they prefer to play: You are not forced into close combat anymore, but can opt out of it.



Last but not least, we have a little teaser for what is coming in the more distant future: A second game mode called Survivor Mode. I'll talk more about it in the future when it is closer to be done.



These are the big changes for this patch. As always, the full list can be found on our Discord. If any of this stuff sounds interesting to you and you decide to try it out, I'd love to get your feedback!

Cheers,

Alain

Hey everyone,

when I started working on BattleJuice Alchemist, I was sure that you would play an alchemist. But the game is also an RPG and different classes are expected. So how do we handle that? Let me present to you our all-alchemists-class-system (TM)!



When creating your character, you can now select between the Bold Alchemist, the Swift Alchemist and the Sly Alchemist. In non-alchemy terms, you have a melee class, a ranged class and a mage class. These three have different ways of using their flasks: for the Bold Alchemist they explode right in his hands, the Swift Alchemist throws them at a target point and the Sly Alchemist drops them to the ground where they explode after a delay.

When leveling up, every class gets access to exclusive perks that enhance their special abilities. Additionally, there are perks available to all classes.



This allows for interesting character progression and builds. Want to play a teleporting melee character? You won't be a master teleporter, but you can pull it off. Here are some special abilities in action:



You won't have to wait too long to try out the classes and perks in the Steam playtest, they will be in the next patch coming in two weeks. I now have some testing and balancing to do. Until then, don't forget to join our Discord if you want to follow the development more closely.

See you there!

Alain

Hey everyone,

in the last devlog I already talked in depth about the upcoming UI overhaul. It is now completed and live on the public branch of the alpha playtest. So you might have already seen bits of the new UI and I'll only show you the local map here (because working on it is an evergreen for me) as well as the overhauled HUD tooltips:





I also took a close look at the combat behavior of our companion Plato. His freeze attack was quite unpredictable, which should now be fixed. Plato should now freeze your opponents like a champ. He is just such a good boy.



As always, there are a lot more minor changes. The full list of them can be found on our Discord as usual. I'm currently working on a quite big addition to the game that I will hopefully be able to talk about next time.

Cheers,

Alain

Hey everyone,

let's dive right into what I have been up to recently. Everything presented here will be within the next patch, which will be published in a couple of weeks. So, less talking, more moving images!

I overhauled the visual effect of interactive objects like the workbench when vision onto them is blocked. This (optional!) feature is not entirely new, but the old version did not support readability that much. Here is an example:



As you can see, the workbench (as well as the fire on the right) have a slight outline and transparent color when occluded. The same also goes for enemies.



The second and a lot more work-intensive task was working on the game's UI. When I initially designed it, I wanted it to be vivid and colorful. But it turned out that when everything is colorful, it is hard to see what is important. So I stripped away a lot of color and ironed out a new design guideline. So here is the new inventory as an example:



I could not bring myself strip away all the visual fluff, which is why there are still decorative elements, e.g. in the character sheet and quest log:



I would really appreciate some feedback on whether I should streamline these elements even more. I'm looking forward to hear your thoughts and hope you have a nice weekend!

Alain

Hey everyone,

this fine Friday I have a mixed bag of devlog-worthy goodies for you, so let's dive right into it.

I had to talk to a lot of people in the wake of Gamescom, which was fun, but also time-consuming. Afterwards I also got around to recording me playing BattleJuice Alchemist a bit. I skipped the tutorial level to showcase what the gameplay will actually be like. You can watch it over on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3gsKwSA0o

I actually enjoyed doing this quite a bit, maybe I can do it more often in the future.

The second video I want to share with you is an interview I gave for Fear Fest '22 this week, a games festival celebrating horror games of all sorts. Check it out if you really can't get enough of me rambling about BattleJuice Alchemist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXLlxgroTpk

Last but definitely not least, I have some wonderful personal news: I'm a dad now! Two weeks ago our little son was born. He and his mom are well and we are simply over the moon.



That's all for now, enjoy your weekend everybody!

Alain