Abalon News

In anticipation of our upcoming public demo for Abalon Arena, I've created a free map editor available to anyone interested in creating and testing their own custom battle maps.

Download the standalone Abalon Map Editor for Windows:
https://d20studios.com/abalon/downloads/mapEditor.zip

Watch this tutorial video to learn how to install and use the tool:
[previewyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arU0evsnPy4[/previewyoutube]

Share your custom maps here in our Steam community on our Discord or email your map data to me directly at [email protected] for consideration to be included in the game.

Have fun creating!

~Ross

It's a 3 vs. 3 goblin snowball fight, but no-one said building a snowman was against the rules! Hope this playful piece from our concept artist, Marvin, brings you a smile :)



2023 was an exciting year with the 1.0 release of Abalon and several major updates, too! I'm looking forward to delivering even more next year, including our mobile build of Abalon and our multiplayer title, Abalon Arena.

I'll be continuing to support Abalon with new features and updates such as:

1. Ability to use satchel cards during battle in adventure mode.
   
2. Persistent artifacts on guardians when defeated/removed from party.
   
3. Equip/dequip feature to customize heroes
   
4. New Game Mode - Fast Adventure
   
5. Addressing more player requests
   

I'm also looking into how I can address player feedback regarding the "cards as stamina" mechanic, which is one of Abalon's signature features. It's intended to provide an element of resource management and put focus on maximizing the tactical position and abilities of your units. A lot of players love it and some do not.

During early access, I introduced artifacts as a way to modify the rules (for example, allowing you to recover cards after battle, increase your max hand size, etc.). While this helped some, it didn't fully solve the feedback. And, interestingly, some players now want to see challenge modifiers to eliminate these artifacts and bring Abalon back to it's survivalist beginning.

Since Abalon is all about fueling player creativity and satisfying lots of different play-styles, I'm thinking some alternate play modes might be the way to go. Pure survivalist route for some. And a more deckbuilding focused route for others. The key is to find ways to balance these changes so the game remains challenging. Maybe a more traditional deckbuilder mode has tougher enemies or you can't take guardians? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this :)


If you're a current Abalon owner and can't wait to try out our upcoming mobile launch and/or multiplayer features and would like to shape the development by contributing feedback, we're running a closed-beta test. Information available in our Discord in the #multiplayer channel: https://discord.gg/d20studios


You can also Wishlist Abalon Arena here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2352400/Abalon_Arena/


Thank you so much for being a valued player and supporting our games' development. I can't express enough how much I appreciate our community and all of your insightful feedback that has helped us grow and improve.

I'll be working through the holiday season, though expect my availability to be more limited than usual as I take some time to spend with my family. If you have issues with the game or want to share feedback, I'll have Discord and Steam alerts running and do my best to respond. You can also report feedback in game using Settings -> Shared Feedback which will provide me with a gamestate I can use to quickly repro and fix any issues.

~Ross

1. More Starting Character Choices: Added additional starting character choices for players to choose from. For the demo, this includes the Druid, Pyromancer and Battle Mage. For the full game, this includes (in addition) the Fighter Mage, Ice Queen and Liche King.
   
2. Fixed Bug with language support by adding support for Steam to auto start with selected game language for German and Brazilian Portuguese without having to select it in the language menu when starting the game.
   
3. Fixed Bug where the Brazilian version of Portuguese was not listed in Steam language menu.
   
4. Fixed Bug where the orc shaman was not healing closest ally after inflicting damage with its attack.(Thanks Co0kieL0rd)
   
5. Balance Changed the behavior of Inflict Freeze, Inflict Vulnerable and Inflict Daze so they no longer require melee attacks. This means, if you equip a bow and arrow on an ice golem like Frostilicus, it will now freeze when shooting enemies in addition to freezing with its melee attack. (Thanks Co0kieL0rd)
   
6. Fixed Exploit: If you have a guardian with regeneration you can enter and retreat from a fight over and over again and bring them to full health. The new rules make it so that if you retreat as your first move (without rolling a dice) the life recovered from the first turn regeneration is lost. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
   
7. Fixed Bug where it was possible to use the Hero Doll card to obtain a copy of a guardian already in your party. Since only 1 guardian of each type can be included in a team/deck, this card has been changed to exclude guardians already encountered in your adventure. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
   
8. Balance: Increased damage Frog Demon Heart deals from 1 to 2. Increased its gold cost by 100. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
   

1. Fixed Bug where units revived by Scroll of Resurrection or Raise Dead might vanish after being revived (Thanks PorkDiesel and Dustbunney)
   
2. Fixed Bug where loading a Horde Survival game after having played equipment based satchel cards could result in having a negative mana balance. (Thanks Dustbunney)
   
3. AI Improvement: Fixed reported bug where AI was casting Flash Bomb on its own units instead of enemy cluster. I added a special trait for AOE related actions to improve how the AI uses this heuristic (Thanks Pork Diesel)
   
4. Fixed Bug where player found another copy of unique satchel artifact after having already discovered it in Horde Survival. This unique satchel bug is actually caused by the fact that the space on which the satchel is dropped is storing a shop, so it reuses the same card choices as earlier in the level. The solution is not to store shop property on spaces. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
   
5. Fixed Bug where attacking and killing a Skeleton Captain with a Vampire Lord could result in increasing the remaining health of the enemies’ skeletons. This occurred because the unit was temporarily mind control before death, so I added an additional check not to mind control units with 0 or less life remaining. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
   
6. Fixed Bug where Dreamstealer would cast spells at the closest space (relative to the clockwise order) but not the closest space faced. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
   
7. Fixed Bug where losing on a wave would still count as having survived up to that wave number. (Thanks Dustbunney)
   
8. Balance Increased Death’s power and life stats.
   

Thanks so much to all of our players for continuing to share your feedback and positive support. I take all of your input very seriously, and I want to do the best I can to continue improving Abalon.

This week I'm pleased to announce we've added support for two additional languages: German and Brazilian Portuguese. Additionally, I've added another 5 waves to endless survival mode, new NPCs that should keep quite challenged this round, more balance changes, and addressed a number of other player requests.

Enjoy!


She's well known for her delightful Minecraft Youtube videos, but did you know she also enjoys roguelike deckbuilders? MacNcheese was also the wonderful host of the SIX Online earlier this month.

I'm excited to announce Twitch streamer MacNcheese will be playing Abalon today starting at 12PM (noon) today (just a few minutes after this update went live).

Tune in here: https://www.twitch.tv/macncheesep1z



We've got a special event planned for tomorrow with Twitch streamer, AlchemistJoker! We met at the Seattle Indie Expos where I'd showcased Abalon, and Alchemist also covered the SIX Online feature earlier this month. He's super energetic, charismatic and brings a lot of positive energy that reminds us all of the joy video games bring to our lives.

Tune in to his Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/alchemistjoker


When: Tomorrow - Tuesday, November 21s from 6PM-8PM (PT) where he'll playing Abalon. I'll also be on the stream (voice only) to answer his viewers burning questions about the development of the game and provide morale support as he explores Abalon and pits his wits against the monstrous hordes that await in his journey. Maybe we'll even play a PvP battle to showcase our upcoming game, Abalon Arena...

1. New Language Support: German
   
2. New Language Support: Portuguese
   
3. New Language Support: Updated translations for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian. Korean and French updates will be added soon.
   
4. Horde Survival: Added 5 additional waves to Horde Survival and new achievement.
   
5. New NPC Unit: Flesh Giant
   
6. New NPC Unit: Golden Death Reaper
   
7. QoL: Added “Rest at camp to shuffle discarded cards back into your deck” to the Cards tip prompt. Additionally, made the Cards tip prompt act as a regular tooltip so that it will now surface whenever drawing a card (regardless of whether or not you play the tutorial) provided that you have not selected the “Got it” button or “Complete all Tips” in the settings menu. (Thanks TART Raisin)
   
8. Demo: Changed the demo so that instead of ending at the start of the boss fight, playtime is unlimited but the portal to next chapter cannot be used until the full game is purchased. (Thanks TART Raisin)
   
9. Balance: The status effect applied from Polymorph is now considered a Debuff rather than a buff. This is so that units like the Fairy Queen will not remove the Polymorph applied when attacking. It also makes it easier for victims of Polymorph to remove the spell and change their unit back to its original form. The ideal combo is to polymorph and then immediately defeat the squirrel to remove the enemy unit (similar to how Smite requires damage before it can defeat a unit). (Thanks mr.kitty)
   
10. Balance: Units that have been created as the result of morphing into something else are no longer considered as added to the defeated unit stack. When a unit that has been morphed (ex: into a squirrel or into a copy of another unit) is defeated, it will revert back to its original form upon defeat. This means, if you defeat a polymoprhed Barbarian, then use a Raise Dead spell, you will now raise the Barbarian instead of a squirrel.
    
11. Fixed Bug: where mutating a unit polymorphed into a squirrel with Animal Growth would remove the polymorph instead of changing the squirrel into a squirrel mutant. The squirrel will now become a mutant with a permanent status applied, meaning that the mutant cannot be transformed back into its original form until it is defeated. (Thanks mr.kitty)
    
12. Fixed Bug: where a battle could lock up after winning if a unit had been polymorphed into a squirrel. What was happening was that, after the battle ended, the polymorphed squirrel would run away, but the enchantment would be removed, recreating the original enemy that was transformed and initiating an unplayable battle. With the additional changes to the morph mechanics, units of defeated players will not revert to their original form upon status removal when the battle ends. (Thanks Lord Cameron)
    
13. Fixed Bug: where Barbarian would attack nearby brambles summoned via a spell after defeating an enemy instead of moving and attacking the closest enemy as indicated by his ability. (Thanks dieszy)
    
14. Fixed Bug: in Russian translation where canceling a biome choice acted the same as confirming the biome choice. (Thanks Chopper Dave)
    
15. Fixed Bug: where two Frog Demons stacked on a single character were only dealing 1 damage back to enemies instead of 2. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
16. Fixed Bug: where Fairy Wings could be removed by the Auramancer or Fairy Queen’s ability to remove buffs. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
17. Fixed Bug: where Guardian Heart removed friendly buffs. The artifact now correctly removes “Enemy Buffs” such as Mind Control. (Thanks PorkDiesel).
    
18. Fixed Bug: where the Metamorph would lose base health each time it transformed into another Magiscale type unit while ally Graviton Warriors are on the board. This was caused by the SetAttributeValueCommand not properly calculating the attribute change for base modified attributes. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
19. Fixed Bug: where Metamorph would recover health when changing back into a Metamorph while Graviton Warriors are present.
    
20. Fixed Bug: where Cyclops ending its move facing a neutral object didn't pick up satchel cards in its path because the game had considered him as "charging with intent to use his bull charge ability" even though a neutral obstacle is not a valid target for bull charge. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
21. Balance: Changed Bloom so it can only target neutral plants (ex: trees/brambles/etc.) if they were summoned and not those already present on the board. Fixes bug where AI might Bloom on indestructible trees (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
22. Fixed Bug: where Sir Cheezles was not removing debuffs with his send ally to the future ability. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
23. Fixed Bug: where the Fennec Fox was triggering a “combo” VFX/SFX when using it’s special ability. The Fennec Fox attacks at full strength after using its support ability. As this is attack is triggered, it cannot be counter attacked like a regular attack.
    
24. Fixed Bug: where a unit protected by Celestial Shield that is attacked by a unit with Pierce would remain “pierce vulnerable” to the next enemy attack, even if they didn’t have pierce. Also made it so that units with shields will not lose lose their block (have their shield go down) as a result of the initial attack since it dealt no damage. (Thanks PorkDiesel)
    
25. Balance: Improved Reflect Damage so that it triggers preemptively upon damage that would be taken. (Previously, it would trigger only when actual life was lost, now it will trigger to prevent damage against damage as well).
    
26. Fixed Bug: where Marauder Warlord would turn to face the direction of a new marauder being deployed when his Rally ability activated.
    
27. Fixed Bug: where Satyr Champion was not giving +1/+1 to enemy animals summoned after he was summoned, despite saying in his card text “All other animals +1/+1”.
    
28. Balance: Hellhound puppy is now a unique unit. Its life reduced from 5 to 3.
    
29. Balance: Reduced Bard’s life from 12 to 11
    
30. Balance: Reduced Ice Golem’s life from 6 to 5
    
31. Balance: Gravomancer no longer pulls as a counter attack against ranged units.
    
32. Balance: Reduced the dice roll difficulty for all hostile weather events and added an additional outcome to clear hostile weather before incurring penalties. (Thanks 杠精混凝土卡比)
    
33. Balance: Changed the Traveling Highrollers event so that it will always reward locked/missing cards from the player’s collection (if there are locked cards for their played summoner available) OR satchel cards if there are not locked cards available. Lowered the gold cost for playing the Traveling High Rollers event from 400 initial gold to 250 initial gold and the gold cost increase from 100 gold to 50 gold. (Thanks Done25)
    
34. Balance: If your hand has less than 3 cards at the beginning of your turn (due to having cards stolen from demons or the Stolen Dreams spell, you’ll now draw back up to 3 at the start of your turn.
    
35. Balance: Increased Swift Strike’s bonus from +3/+0 to +5/+0.
    
36. Balance: Flesh Golem no longer turns to face the summoner when damage is redirected to it.

Some new features in the works for future updates include:

1. Ability to use satchel cards during battle in adventure mode.
   
2. Persistent artifacts on guardians when defeated/removed from party.
   
3. Potential for equip/dequip feature to customize heroes
   
4. Addressing more bugs and QoL requests
   
5. New Game Mode - Fast Adventure
   

Thanks you so much for the surge of reviews after last week's update! We're now just 15 reviews short of our end of year goal of 300 Steam reviews. If you haven’t yet written a Steam review, do please consider sharing your feedback. It means a lot to me (reviews are serious motivation) and it also helps other players discover what you like about the game.

That’s it for now. Thanks again for all of your kindness, feedback and support! I hope you’re enjoying playing these updates as much as I enjoy making them for you.

~Ross