ZpellCatz News

Hey there, fellow Catz! A new version of the demo / prologue is ready to be played and the ZpellCatz closed beta starts soon.

"Ready for Beta" Update (0.97.0) August '23

*** General ***
- Fixed a "Load Game" menu selection issue
- Adjusted class combination names
- Minor dialogue adjustments
- Added clouds to the main menu screen

*** Gameplay Changes ***
- Equipment can no longer be changed while there are enemies nearby

*** Input ***
- Mouse buttons (middle, right, mb4, mb5, scroll up, scroll down) can now be used to cast skills (and other input if you want to)
- Gamepad button "B" now also closes ingame menus

*** UI ***
- Replaced the "requirements too high" graphic with a simple X
- Quest menu texts now show important words in yellow color
- Adjusted shop NPC UIs (merchant, blacksmith)
- Notifications are now hidden when the desired action is taken

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Closed Beta Start

The closed beta starts on September 1, 2023 at 16:00 CEST.

More info about the upcoming beta can be found in the previous news post.

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to announce the start of ZpellCatz' closed beta. Want to know more about the beta or join the playtest yourself? Read on.

Closed Beta Start

The closed beta starts on September 1, 2023 at 16:00 CEST.

Living in another time zone? This might help: http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/event?lid=12%2C8%2C4673353&h=12&sts=28225320&sln=16-17&a=show (I'm not affiliated with worldtimebuddy).



How to Join?

It's important to request beta access before September if you want to have a chance to play on Sept 1. Visit ZpellCatz' Steam page and click "Request Access". Feeling lost? Check out this screenshot:



Note: About 50% of the requesters will get access right away, the rest has to wait for the next beta patch.
Why? Because playtesters are a very, very valuable resource. The beta will grow over the next few months and I would be really glad to receive feedback from fresh players every patch. Always grating access to about 50% of the requesters should result in a constant stream of new players (and hopefully new feedback ^^ ). Let's see if the plan works. So, if you weren't lucky on Sept 1, chances are good that you'll be able to join the beta with the next version.

What to Expect?

ZpellCatz isn't 100% finished yet, but there's enough content to play for some hours. Overview:

Available content:

• All hero classes (Mage, Druid, Shaman)
  
• All path classes (Fury, Tranquility, Twilight)
  
• Acts 1 - 3 (main quests, side quests, story, NPC dialogues)
  
• All craftable tier 1 and tier 2 epic items (about 120)
  
• 2 Familiars (Bashu & Loki - AI controlled only at the moment)
  

Currently missing (or locked) content:

• Acts 4 - 6 (story, NPC dialogues)
  
• A special dungeon + boss for the final main quest
  
• "End Game" system implementation (after the story / main quests)
  
• 3 Familiars (unlocked in later acts)
  
• Two player coop (Familiars can't be controlled by players yet)
  
• "Hardcore" (perma death) mode
  
• Stash / shared stash
  
• Digital Deluxe version content
  

Please Give Feedback!

I spend quite a bit of time playing ARPGs and I'm trying to add some of the interesting ideas to ZpellCatz. However, I'm just a solo game developer with a single perception and a single set of opinions. To be able to make ZpellCatz a great game, I need your perceptions of things and your opinions.
So, please give feedback!
:-)

Ways to give feedback:

• Join my Discord server: https://discord.gg/D6CkrUu
• ZpellCatz playtest Steam discussions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2423250/discussions/
• There's a "Feedback" button ingame (main menu & pause menu beneath "System")
  

Thanks in advance!

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about the progress of the last months and the changes of the new version (prologue / demo).

AI Upgrade

Last time, I talked about Familiars in ZpellCatz. Familiars can be controlled by a friend in local multiplayer or by an AI for moments when there are no friends sitting next to you. ^^
In order to be able to switch back and forth between those two control schemes, I had to upgrade the AI systems for better pathfinding.

The cool bonus: The enemy controlling AI also benefited from it! Enemies get stuck in corners less often and multiple melee enemies that hunt your cat hero do a better job at cooperating as a group.



Kudos to Cory Koseck (7ark) for their Unity-Passfinding repo. I used that one as a starting point and adjusted it to my needs. The red nodes on the image above show blocked paths, the blue nodes with green connections show possible paths.

Floor Visuals

One of the reasons that I started a crowdfunding campaign for ZpellCatz last October was to collect money in order to be able to polish the art a little bit. Thanks to the support it was possible to add some assets from matching "low poly / polygon" asset packs. One of these new additions are floor visuals!





The floor tiles are intentionally kept plain and monochromatic so as not to take the focus away from the combat action. But they look a lot better than the simple flat ground before.

Familiar Skill Trees

Next to the AI update mentioned before, I've also continued to work on the Familiars themselves. Today, lets have a look at the skill tree of them.

Each Familiar has a set of 4 active skills that unlock one by one over the first few levels. In addition to this, Familiars have passive skills called talents. Most talents affect the Familiar as well as your cat hero. Talents come in a "select A or B" fashion and can be respected for free in the village.

The first two available Familiars are Loki and Bashu. Loki uses high damage ranged spells (fire and nature element). The active skill "Heat Nova" also reduces the resistances of all enemies hit.



Loki's talents provide offensive stats like critical chance, spell power or faster cast.



In contrast, Bashu uses melee spells (lux and storm) and it is able to take a lot more damage than Loki. Two of Bashu's four active skills scale with max HP as well as spell power, so it's able to deal some damage even if you build it very defensively.



Bashu's talents provide defensive stats like block chance, life on hit or hit points.



Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

"Down to Earth" Update (0.96.0) February '23

*** General ***
- Fixed ingame texts
- Adjusted AI pathfinding to get stuck less often
- Minor pause menu UI adjustments
- Fixed strange tooltip positions near screen edges
- Added floor visuals

*** Quality of Life ***
- Double clicking a cat's save file now starts the game with that cat

*** Balance ***
- Fixed wolf and fox AI to feel more like "hit & run"
- Flathead enemies (zombies) now have increased defense / HP
- Early enemy types (stars, ducks, urchins) now use more interesting spells

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about Familiars and local multiplayer in ZpellCatz. Since both features are early in development at the moment, there's a high chance that some things change over time. But lets take a look at the current implementation.

Familiar Park

There's a Familiar Breeder NPC called Drac who has a small park in Greencat Village. When you visit the Familiar park early in the game, you see eggs lying around. Familiar eggs hatch when you make progress with the main quests of the story.



After finishing the first dungeon, the first two Familiars become available.



But what exactly do Familiars do? They are companions that support your cat hero on its adventure. Besides their own set of combat spells, they also have passive auras that increase your cat's stats.

The two early Familiars are Loki (the red one) and Bashu (yellow). Loki uses high damage ranged spells and grants an aura that increases the spell power of your cat. In contrast, Bashu uses melee spells and it is able to take a lot more damage than Loki. Bashu's aura grants some life on hit, so it's easier for your cat to survive. You can also choose to take no Familiar at all, if you want to.



Local Multiplayer

By default, Familiars are controlled by an AI. However, you have the option to let another person control it in local multiplayer. You can switch between AI control and human control of your Familiar whenever you want to (or have to).

The AI tries its best to support the player, but a second human controlling the Familiar will most likely be more efficient. So, there might be situations where inviting a friend to help with that one powerful boss can be a good idea. :-)

Will there be local multiplayer that supports loading two save files to play together with two cat heroes? There are no plans to support this at the moment. Only a handful of players actually use the local multiplayer functionality, that's the conclusion from observations of my last game, Legends of Pixelia. But thinking about game classics like Secret of Mana, I really wanted to support some kind of local co-op for ZpellCatz.

The problem with multiple save files is, that the game needs to be able to handle different quest states and would need to balance the game for cat heroes of vastly different power levels. For example, a level 3 cat playing together with a level 46 cat (with tons of epic items) - it would be extremely hard to balance the game so that both players would actually enjoy playing it... :-D

So, the compromise is to have a Familiar that's always the same level as your cat and to make it easy to switch between AI and human controls. A friend wants to join you on your adventure? Great, let them pick a Familiar of their choice and they can right away play together with you. Your friend notices that they don't like low poly style indie games in the middle of dungeon? No problem, switch the Familiar controls back to AI in order to be able to finish the dungeon (and let your friend continue to play sh**ty rip-off mobile games with AAA graphics, *cough* Immortal *cough*).

Anyway, let's see what it looks like playing cat and Familiar at the same time.



So, do you like having a Familiar as companion? What do you think about the idea for local multiplayer? Feel free to leave a comment here. I'd really love to hear your opinion.

Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about one of the NPCs in ZpellCatz: The Blacksmith.

Last time, I talked about the Merchant NPC. In contrast to the Merchant where you can acquire new items, the Blacksmith in ZpellCatz can't create new items. Instead, they are able to enhance or transform a given item. Lets have a look at the Blacksmith's services.

Sell Item

Get rid of items you no longer need and gain some Thalers (or other currencies). There's no difference whether you sell your items to the Merchant or to the Blacksmith.

Upgrade Rarity

There are normal, special, rare and epic items in ZpellCatz. The Blacksmith is able to upgrade a normal item to special rarity and also to upgrade a special item to a rare one. One of the design pillars of ZpellCatz is "Randomization vs. Reliability". That's why upgrading does not reroll stats. It keeps the old ones (reliability) and adds new random ones (randomization). Also, the level requirements stay the same. So, rarity upgrades are a riskless way to increase an item's overall power.



Craft Epic Items

Epic items are very powerful but they rarely drop. If you've had bad luck for a few dungeons, don't despair: The Blacksmith can help by crafting epics. In order to do so, they need an existing item to consume. The item type consumed defines the crafted epic item. For example, if you select to craft a tier 1 epic item and use a "Wizard Hat" as target item, the Blacksmith will always create the epic item "Black Magic". The stats of every epic item are always the same (reliability) but the rolled values vary (randomization).



Not every epic item in ZpellCatz can be crafted, but there are more than enough craftable ones to support any build possible. The Blacksmith can craft tier 1 (level 1-20) and tier 2 (level 20-44) epic items. Tier 3 (level 45) epic items can only be found, but these are late game items that you don't need at all for a normal playthrough.

Oh, one important thing: It's cheaper to craft epic items providing normal rarity items. So, don't mindlessly sell every white item. It might be a good base item for crafting.

Enchant Item

You may be wondering where to put your rare currencies if tier 3 epic items can't be crafted. That's where the late game services come into play. Enchant item is one of them. It adds a powerful stat to the given item randomly selected from a pool defined by its type (e.g. helms can roll hit points, weapons can roll dark damage, etc). You can reroll your enchantment stat by enchanting the item again (feel free to repeat the process until you are satisfied or completely broke :-D ).



Polish Item

Another way to spent your late game currencies is the "Polish Item" service. Polished items do not gain new stats, instead all existing (and future) stats are increased. Any item can only be polished once.



Chaos Enchantment

"Chaos Enchantment" is a very expensive service that has the potential to greatly increase the power of an item. Regarding the "Randomization vs. Reliability" design pillar, randomization clearly wins here. There are 5 types of chaos enchantments.

The dark grey type is the most common one. You get +7 to a stat picked from a special pool. +7 HP is an unlucky roll, whereas +7% HP is a lot better.



Another type of chaos enchantment is "Might of Enchantment". This type doubles the value of the stat gained from the regular "Enchant Item" service.



Next up is the "Strength of Origin" chaos enchantment. It randomly picks one of the base stats of an item (the white colored ones on the top) and doubles it.



The blue type is called "Force of Balance". It increases the values of all of the item's bonus stats (the ones displayed in blue, yellow or orange) by about 20%. This chaos enchantment is especially powerful for epic items since they tend to have lots of bonus stats.

The rarest chaos enchantment type is the red one. The item receives a bonus stat picked from a list of extremely powerful stats. A lucky roll can upgrade your crafted tier 2 epic to the point where it can easily compete with tier 3 epic items.

Crafting a Late Game Tier 2 Epic

Okay, now that we know how the Blacksmith's services work, lets create a completely overpowered item. :-D

We pick the tier 2 epic item "Cruel Priest". Firstly, we need to find the appropriate base item. In order to create our picked item, we need a normal / special / rare "Silk Robe". The outcome is not affected by the rarity of the provided item. However, nearly all services are cheaper when we use a normal (white) base item. In contrast, most services are more expensive when the provided item is of epic rarity. That's why we want to use the "Craft Epic" service last.

To make the item really powerful, we want to find a normal "Silk Robe" with as high as possible base stats. Lets pick the one with the highest defense. 2 points of defense are more valuable than 3 points of spell power.



There are multiple possible enchantment rolls that would work on "Cruel Priest". I'd say the best match is the skill bonus for "Suffering".



Since we're not limited on rare currencies in this article, we want one of the very powerful red chaos enchantments. ^^

Stats like crit chance, curse duration or damage vs. cursed would be great. Lets pick crit chance. (Note: Since chaos enchantments are very expensive, you shouldn't reroll a chaos enchant at all. It'll be difficult enough to even have a chaos enchant on most of your items...)

Time to polish the item. This won't increase the power of the item a lot now, but the future stats from epic item craft will be increased, too!

Finally, lets craft the epic item itself! Unlike with the enchantments, we're not able to reroll the outcome. So we have to live with the result.



Now you see why the mentioned enchantments are good choices. In order to trigger the nice epic effect, we need to crit enemies cursed by "Suffering".

So, that's all the cool stuff the Blacksmith has to offer. If you've missed it, I already wrote an article about the Merchant NPC and there'll be another one soon covering the Jeweler. Want to get notified when new articles are released? Join my Discord and don't forget to follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.