Explorers, Automators, and Spark-Petters
Now that there’s we're counting the days before our Early Access release (April 24th!!), let’s talk a bit about what has changed between the demo and the Early Access and also talk a little bit about the roadmap for the future! You know that we’re adding more content, but we’ve changed a lot more since the demo, and we want you to be updated so you know what to expect.
Something important to note is that
we will be taking down the demo when we release!
[h3]Spark Traffic[/h3]
Something really big and important is that
we’ve changed how Sparks interact with buildings. Instead of being able to interact with buildings on their left- and right-hand side, we’ve changed it so that
Sparks can now only interact with the right hand side of the path.
We’ve seen some of our players already talk about how to build The Perfect Base and this will change things a lot. The Spark Traffic system is not set in stone! We’ll continue balancing and figuring out what kind of late game builds we want to encourage and discourage.
With this change and other tools that you haven’t seen yet, we’re sure that it’ll change how you think about building. We can’t wait to see what you all come up with!
[h3]Send Feedback Directly From Game[/h3]
Previously, you could send us feedback via our Discord, the steam forums, or even by email at
[email protected]. We’ve added a new way, and now you can now
send us feedback and bugs directly from the game! You can open it via the in-game menu, or directly by pressing F8.
[h3]The Tutorial[/h3]
We’ve ripped out a lot of the tutorial and streamlined it. We want to try out something a little less intrusive than our previous tutorial setup, so that means
fewer tutorial quests and in general, leading you towards the
gameplay glossary.
[h3]World Generation[/h3]
We’ve been squashing world generation bugs and making it better. We’ve
changed how waypoints are placed so it should be always useful and there isn’t two that are too close to each other, and there’s
more ancient bases and now they spawn in a grid!
It might sound like a small change, but this will make a difference on how you look at the map and how you build your bases! The aim is to create something that you can replay a lot without giving you bad seeds, and still have lots of very interesting challenges each time you start a new save.
[h3]The Spark Keys[/h3]
The Spark Keys are out! So it was always a very temporary thing. We realized as we were finalizing the demo that the game wasn’t really telling you just how much future content we were thinking of having in the final game, or how we were planning to pace the game. That’s why we very quickly implemented the Spark Keys! We have a lot of content in mind and we wanted you to know that what you’ve seen in the demo is only a small amount of the game.
So now, they’ve been
replaced with a new feature, Monument Quests! The monument now handles a lot of things related to the player and related to the shrines. So for example, instead of unlocking the Spark shrines individually, you’ll be unlocking them in the Monument. With the villager quests and the monument quests, we hope to create a more
open ended progression that’s a lot of fun to go through and explore.
[h3]Build Mode[/h3]
Instead of opening the build menu every single time, we’ve
streamlined the build mode so that it’s much nicer to build the same type of building over and over. Basically, you now have a
history of the 5 previously built buildings that you can quick access, and you
open that history first before you open the buildings menu. It's not perfect, but it's better and we'll continue working on the UX to make sure it's as good as it can be.
The current changes are a bit hard to imagine via text, but we feel like
it’s a lot smoother now to build things repeatedly! You’ll thank us when you explore the mountains.
[h3]Mouse & Keyboard Inventory Shortcuts[/h3]
We heard that some of you find the mouse & keyboard inventory shortcuts annoying, so we went back to the drawing board. To be honest, designing the controls for this game has been pretty difficult. As a genre mix, we have different conventions pushing and pulling us towards different directions. It’s very clear to see which genre people like when they give us feedback!
We’ve made inventory management easier by adding two more shortcuts and overhauling the design. We’ve also made the shortcuts a bit more obvious, so you can get used to it a little faster.
[h3]Minimap, Map Marker & Controls[/h3]
You asked for a minimap and
we now have a minimap! We had a lot of internal discussions about it because we wanted navigating and exploring the world to be part of the game, but we ended up seeing that it was more annoying than we wanted it to be.
We also added a lot of quality of life features to the map itself. We changed the map controls to some player feedback and have made the map marker much better.
You can now mark important landmarks on the map!
[h3]Single Spark Callback[/h3]
The callback has gotten a round of improvement so
it’s easier to call back a single Spark. Maybe you accidentally threw a Crafty on a path when you didn’t mean to. Or you just want to micromanage combat more and call back a particular Stumpy before the Beelephant attacks it? Well, either way, it’s now much easier and smoother.
[h3]Better Button Remapping[/h3]
We’ve worked on the button remapping and have made more buttons available so you can play your own way. As we said before, juggling the genre mix of controls is not easy, so this way, you can set the controls to how you like it! This feature is definitely something that only gets better by player feedback, so if you have them, please reach out to us!
[h3]More Languages[/h3]
We already mentioned this, but yes,
Oddsparks is being translated! Our Early Access release will have
English, German, French, and Japanese. We’ll have all of our gameplay texts (e.g. Building and Item names, UI, quest instructions, tutorials) and our quest descriptions texts ready but likely
not all of the dialogues will be completed at release.
That means that
when you are playing in a language other than English, some quests will only have its description texts and no dialogue. We’ve tried to make sure that these are quests later in the game, so
you will have a smooth early game experience, whichever language you’re playing in.
If you want to see the English dialogues in places where there isn’t a translation, there will be an option made available in the settings menu!
[h3]And even more![/h3]
This list is getting too long! We’ve also worked on
balancing and quest progression and have done some big changes from the the demo. We’ve added
in-game achievements (no steam achievements until we’re 100% sure that the achievements are staying how they are) and a lot
more customization options, that are unlocked by the in-game achievements! A
multiplayer room code system for crossplay between Steam and Epic. We now have
UI Scaling!
Okay, that’s enough. Let’s talk about the future.
[h2]The Early Access Plan[/h2]
We're sorting out our roadmap and will reveal to you very soon. We want to keep things a bit more secret for now - after all, you have the whole Woodlands and Mountains to explore first!
We’re still planning to update you at least once a month with a devlog so you know what’s happening with the development.
In general, we're planning for lots of room to not just build what we want but to listen to feedback and work with the community to make the game the best it can be. We have a big list of features you've already requested, we're already sorting them by priority and figuring out where they fit into our production plan.
Of course, you can also get more frequent updates by joining us at
our Discord!
We’re all looking forward to you finally joining us on this Oddsparks journey properly with the Early Access release. We can’t wait to see your sprawling bases, your cool outfits, your surprise and joy at what the game holds.
So please tell your friends about us and we’ll see you for the Early Access Release on April 24th!
