Slaves of Magic News

Hello everyone!

I'm happy to announce that our new 1.1.0 content patch for the demo is out! It includes new mechanics, enemies, and balance changes, besides the usual bug fixes.



- Added goblins and orks to the enemy roster:



- Added utility items that can be funded from the smithy menu, for example, a stamina potion that restores half of the user's stamina.



- Added a new condition called "distracted" which reduces the unit initiative by 1 till the start of its next activation. Every melee attack (even missed!) applies 1 stack to the target. Every source of damage applies 2 stacks, and a crit applies 3 stacks. Now every action has the potential to change the unit activation order.

- Replaced the survival campaign objective with a more guided experience. The first objective will be to research the magic dust, then the player can choose from 3 random goals for the resistance to reach.

- Rebalanced ranged weapons. Starting hit chance has been lowered to 50. The bow got a bonus to hit chance for its second shot and set both equipment costs to 4.

- Increased HP across the board so that units can survive a bit longer

- Fixed line of sight errors that caused clearly seeable tiles to be useable and unforgettable.

- Fixed missing sound effects if more than 8 effect was active at the same time.

- Updated AI to be more proactive, especially ranged units which sometimes just waited for the player to move into range. Plus they prioritize the VIP on escort missions.

Important information that previously saved games are not compatible with this new version.

Hello everyone!

Firstly, let me thank everyone who tried out the demo and shared their thought about it! It's very important for us to hear this feedback to be able to improve the game. Sadly, as a 2 man team, we don't have the capacity to test the game as thoroughly as I would want, but we are listening, and squashing those bugs you report!

Now with this out of the way, let's talk about the upcoming content patch for the demo!






Those of you who already tried the game out might have noticed that the Smithy projects were rather empty, till the resistance built new bases to unlock new weapons. This will change with the next patch, as we have implemented utilities. These are usually small passive buffs for the units with equipment point costs, that can be unlocked in the projects tab. But there are things like consumables as well, for example, a stamina potion!





Another fraction of enemies will arrive in the patch, which will require a different kind of approach to beat. The orks will be an aggression-focused faction, with high health but nowhere near as well equipped as the dwarfs already present in the game. Plus they bring goblins with them as well. Individually weak, but they will fuel the ork battlefield rage by their deaths, plus are hard to hit.





To give a bit more guidance to the resistance, after researching magic dust, the player will be able to choose a long-term goal for the resistance to reach, from 3 randomly selected goals. Just to say some examples, gather up a specific number of scholars, or have a unit reach level 4. When the player reaches this goal then the plan is to unlock research which will be able to progress the main plot.



Besides these, a lot of other small quality-of-life changes and rebalances will come with the patch, listening to the feedback. For example, the tabs on the barracks and smiths and science scenes have been reworked to make it clearer which tab is active right now:





So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you have any questions feel free to drop by to our discord here!

Hello everyone!

Since the release of the demo, I have continuously patched the demo as bugs were identified. Thanks to everyone who notified us about the issues, reporting helps us a lot to improve the game! The most notable changes:

- Made the exe DPI aware so that the Windows DPI setting does not affect the scaling of the game. Before users with a higher than 100% setting would cause the game to appear too big for the monitor.
- Fixed crash if you selected a passive skill on the unit's skill bar with the keyboard shortcut.
- Added an X button for the party organizer scene. This caused an unintended consequence blocking the start of the mission. This has been fixed.
- Fixed a bug that made it possible to use ranged skills with any weapon, not just ranged.
- Fixed the problem that it was impossible to start the clock if there were no possible things to research.
- Fixed a crash that happened when an enemy army mission caused to make the loyalty of the territory to reach 0 while there is a resistance base there (this causes a base assault mission right after).

Hello everyone!

I'm happy to announce that our new trailer and demo are now available!

This new demo lets you play 3 months of in-game time, getting a feel for the early game. We are very excited to have reached this milestone!

Our plans for the next few months are to listen to your feedback about the demo (which by the way you can share on the Steam forums or our Discord here), iterate on it, plus add additional content to it.

Hello everyone!

This month, I'm here to talk about the heart of the resistance. The resistance fighters! They are the player's most important pieces as controlling them is the main way the player interacts with the tactical layer. But before we get to that, let's start with some eye candy!
Northern region

The northern region map generation has been completed. In the upcoming demo, the temperate and the northern region will be accessible for missions. A few examples of how it looks:







[h2]Recruiting units[/h2]

The resistance can recruit new units in the recruitment tab for gold. The available recruits will be cycled monthly, and the amount of them depends on the resistance monthly soldiers tab (top left on the next picture).



Not all soldiers are created equally. There are positive and negative traits a soldier can have, and that can affect their various statistics. Building training facilities in the resistance bases can improve the monthly soldier rate, giving the player a bigger pool of units to choose from, plus every facility increases the freshly recruited soldier level by one.

[h2]Leveling up[/h2]



All soldiers at level one will start with access to 1 skill slot and will gain one every level up till they reach the max skill slot number of 6. The skills will be freely swappable at any time outside combat. There are no classes so every soldier will be able to access any skill the resistance has access to, leading to a high amount of possible skill combinations. There are 2 restrictions though:

• Every skill belongs to an attribute, for example, sword-wielding. On any unit skill bar, there can be skills from 3 different attributes.
  
• There are very powerful elite skills, which have a golden border. Every unit skill bar can only have 1 elite skill.
  

Besides getting access to more skills, the level-up increases a unit's melee attack and melee defense of a unit by 5, making them more consistent.

Experience is earned on the battlefield. The amount of experience earned will depend on the invader's unit amount and level, plus there will be a bonus if the mission has been successful.

[h2]How to learn new skills[/h2]



The resistance has access to different attributes depending on their bases location. Every region has attributes that belong to that region. If the resistance wants to use skills of that attribute, they will need to build a base in a region that has that attribute. In practice, that means the player will going to have to consider this aspect as well when choosing base locations. Choosing one can mean losing access to another.

Research has a big impact on the availability of skills as well. There are 3 levels of understanding for a given attribute. Researching a higher level will unlock stronger skills belonging to a given attribute. Neglecting research will lead to slower skill accumulation.

The plan is to have 11 attributes in the game, 5 for the weapons, 3 non-magical, and 3 for magical late-game attributes with at-least 6 skills each. This should provide plenty of combinations for replayability.

[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]

So that's it for today's devlog! Some general information is that we are getting very close to our new demo. It is nearly feature complete, it just needs a bit more time for polish and general bug fixing. If you want to be among the first to know about its release, feel free to join our discord here.