BattleJuice Alchemist News

Hey there!

I am a firm believer that getting feedback from you, the players, is the key to make a fun game. That's why I decided not to wait until all environmental effects are implemented before pushing an update. So here we go: 0.19402 brings you the ability to freeze any environment that contains a body of water. Just use a Juicified Freeze flask or wait for your icy companion Plato to do it for you.



I already talked about this mechanic in the last devlog in detail. Now you can freeze and slide around to your heart's content in the Steam playtest version.

Beside that, cooldowns of the Frog Hop, Smoke and Freeze flask were reduced, items were tweaked and bugs were fixed.

If you are interested in more details, you can find the full patch notes on our Discord server or in the usual text file within your installation folder.

Thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to hear what you think!

Alain

Hey everyone,

to be honest, I did not have the greatest week after catching covid. I had to lay low for a couple of days but now I am back at my computer where I belong.

What I managed to work on is making you a more powerful alchemist. Juice is not a tough person splitting their foes' heads with a Claymore. But you are supposed to have a strong feeling of agency nevertheless. I want your actions to have an impact on the world that surrounds you, which is why I started implementing environmental effects. If you use a damage type in an environment receptive to it, something big happens.



The first effect I want to share with you is the freeze effect. If you use a Juicified Freeze flask in any tile that has a body of water in it, that area freezes. This does not slow Juice down, but lets the player move faster by sliding over the ice. Furthermore, ice crystals are spawned. You can utilize these crystals by pushing or pulling your enemies into them for some ouch.

Last but not least you can use the freeze effect to traverse bigger bodies of water quickly: Just freeze the surface and walk over it instead of swimming.



Environmental effects will be there right when you start the game. They are not some kind of ultimate power and can even be triggered by enemies or your companion Plato. I have just started on the fire environmental effect and am very excited to see if it turns out as fun as the ice effect.

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!


Alain

Hey there!

Those of you following the BattleJuice Alchemist devlogs might have heard me talking about this for quite some time. Now it is finally here, our new beginning for the game, the big new tutorial level, "The Mountain Pass". We got some great internal feedback and now want to share it with the alpha playtesters on Steam. So let's dive into the content of the update.



[h3]General Notes[/h3]
Update 0.19202 includes all changes from 0.18604 and above. Your settings will be reset upon updating to this version, but you can still play your old characters as always. To experience the new start of the game in the intended way, creating a new character might be a good choice though. By the way, we overhauled the character creation options as well, so you can create characters now that look a bit less weird. But just a bit.


[h3]Content[/h3]
We usually split these patch notes into various categories like mechanics / items / enemies and so on. This time, let us just say we completely overhauled the start of the game. The experience is quite a new one, you get the chance to easily understand what the game and its quirky mechanics are all about. You get to experiment with various flasks from the beginning on, try the different types of combat and solve riddles before you start the actual story of the game.



After completing the new tutorial level you will continue your journey to play the first quests in Caribou Creek.

Those of you who are interested in more details can read the full patch notes on our Discord server or in the usual text file within your installation folder.

If you want to support us, please provide us feedback on Discord or anywhere else.

Have a great rest of the week and I hope you enjoy the new level!

Alain

Hey everyone,

those of you following along might already know that I have been working on a new tutorial level for some time. As I explained in my last devlog video, I had to build a system that allowed me to "quickly" create levels that are not fully procedural. It worked out great and the tutorial level is done now. Here is a sneak peek of the "Mountain Pass" tutorial map:







BattleJuice Alchemist had tutorials before. It was quite basic stuff: windows popped up and explained some aspect of the game or asked you to do something. Watching people play I often saw them closing the windows instinctively in the way you close an ad popping up in your browser. I could not remove 100% of the pop-up tutorials, but drastically reduced their number and got rid of them for the whole Mountain Pass level completely. The level takes about 20 minutes for a new player to complete and mainly uses two new elements to teach the game's mechanics:

1. Tutorial Scrolls



You find scrolls scattered around the level that you can pick up and read. I found this a lot more satisfying, because who does not like to pick up loot, right? In the GIF above you can also see a little magic swirl that spawns in front of the player and points towards tutorial scrolls and other quest items.

To make the process of learning more fun, I made pictograms for every scroll to teach gameplay elements in a more visual and riddle-like way than plain text. This for example is one of the first scrolls that teaches you to equip and use a flask that replenishes your mana (called "Liquid" in our world):



There is also a written version for every tutorial scroll in your quest log if you can't figure out the meaning of a pictogram.


2. Tutorial Shrines



These shrines are text messages left for you to make sure you can make your way through the Mountain Pass. Nothing to ground-breaking here, but I think it is a good thing the players activate these themselves instead of getting pesky pop-ups and also that the shrines are rooted in the game's narrative.

I will test the Mountain Pass level with a few more players and it then should go live on the public branch of the Steam playtest pretty soon.

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!


Alain

Hey everyone,

there is a lot of hustling and bustling going on in the BattleJuice Alchemist factory. The new tutorial level is taking shape and business opportunities are on the horizon. Patrick is cracking away on the texture overhaul and I also set aside some time to work on some eye candy.



In the gif above you see that Juice now carries a candle on the top of his barrel backpack. This gave us the chance to add a light source low above the ground that results in neat shadows from the flora he passes.

A second visual improvement was adding some physics to breakable objects. Destroying stuff feels a lot more satisfying now:



I will talk a bit more about the mechanics of the new tutorial level soon, here is a little sneak peek of the shrines that will guide your way through it:



Three moving images could only be spoiled by adding more text, so all that's left for me is to thank you for reading and wish you a good start into the weekend!

Alain