Escape The Mad Empire News

Greetings, adventurers!

It's been a little bit since our last update, but we've got some good news for you: a new demo of Escape the Mad Empire is on the way!

Our first demo focused on the game's prologue, and was based on the curse of the Undead King. In addition to a tutorial, it contained three dungeons, each with their own variation on the Undead King boss fight!

This new demo centers around a new Escape Run game mode, which focuses on an intense, survival-run style of play. Your goal is to explore and survive a set of three dungeons; your success will unlock the next difficulty level for you to continue challenging yourself!

• This new mode does not have boss fights or an embedded story. It also contains no meta-game or campaign mode content; these will be introduced in future iterations on the demo!
  
• Each dungeon has a challenge room at the end, offering a bigger 'final battle' rather than a boss fight.
  
• The Escape Run mode has 5 unlockable levels of difficulty, ranging from 'Easy' to 'Hellish.'
• Characters will have a maximum level of about 3 on the lowest difficulty level. This will increase to a maximum of 4 on the second difficulty level, and up to 5 (for the first time!) on the third, which is where we feel the game mode really starts to open up!
  
• Players should start to encounter the hardest types of monsters currently available in the game during this third difficulty level, and even maybe discover some that have never been shown to the public before!
  

The new Escape Run game mode also introduces two new features for your adventuring!

• Party Composition: Rather than being locked into a pre-set party, players can now select which classes they'd like to take along for the adventure. Want to have a more rounded party? Great! Want to challenge yourself by filling every slot with one class in particular? Go for it!
• Skill Selection: Rather than be assigned a skill at random upon leveling up, players will now be able to select from a list of three skills or spells when a member of their party reaches the next level!

The new demo will be available for download tomorrow, May 8th around 1PM Eastern (10AM Pacific, and 7PM CEST)! We look forward to hearing your feedback—come join us on our community Discord or post here on the Steam discussion boards if you prefer!

You may have done it before... but can you Escape the Mad Empire this time?

Hello, everyone!

We'd like to thank all of you again for playing our demo; as mentioned in our last post, the feedback that you gave us was very helpful, and we've been hard at work putting it to good use and making changes!

In addition, some of you have been asking whether there would be any further playtests and when they might be happening... and we're excited to let you know that the answer is very soon—right now, in fact! If you're interested in taking a look and helping us gather some more feedback, press that big green "Request Access" button over on our store page to get started!

Once you're all set up and ready for adventure, make sure you're selecting the "Escape the Mad Empire Playtest" entry in your Steam Library—if our demo is still in your library, you'll have two copies of the game listed!

How long is the playtest running for?
We don't have a specific length in mind right now, but we are expecting this one to last for at least a couple weeks. We are also planning to host additional playtest periods, so if you can’t participate this time around, don’t fret!

Where should we post feedback?
You can post on our community Discord or here on Steam's discussion forums as suits your preference—we'll see it regardless!

Is there anything specific that you're looking for feedback on for this playtest?
We've made some changes to the game's difficulty curve and the length and pacing of the tutorial, and of course continued feedback on the game's UI and general quality-of-life matters is always welcome! There have been some other changes as well, so anything goes—we're hoping to hear that your experience has improved!

I wasn’t finished with the demo yet—will I have to start over with this build?
No! If you still have save data from playing the demo, you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off. That said, you should start a fresh game at some point to make sure you see some of the changes that were made to the earliest parts of the game!

We hope to hear back from you all! Get to adventuring!

Thank you for playing Escape the Mad Empire Demo this week!

Your feedback and data we gathered are very helpful. We’re already discussing how to use it to improve our game in the next stages of development!

We’ll leave the demo available to play until 1p.m. EST on February 20th. We’ll then take it down to focus on making and improving our game, until it’s time for some testing again!

Enjoy playing and feel free to leave us feedback until then and after! And if you had fun, Wishlist Escape the Mad Empire!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1823390/Escape_The_Mad_Empire/

Gustav from Paradox Interactive plays the Escape the Mad Empire demo

Exciting times are here!

We’re happy to announce that you can play Escape the Mad Empire demo *now*!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1823390/Escape_The_Mad_Empire/

The demo includes an interactive tutorial and mini-campaign “The Curse of the Undead King”. You’ll explore three dungeons full of threats we designed to hurt your party respectfully. A lot. The campaign will conclude with a challenging boss fight against the Undead King and some lore for you to dive into.

We’d love it if you could share your opinions on the demo! Any ideas, suggestions, and critique you might have, we want to hear, so leave a comment on Steam or Join our Discord community! We especially welcome suggestions on the game balance and general improvements. We plan to involve our community in Escape the Mad Empire’s development in the future, so let’s stay in touch!

Join our Discord community and leave your feedback!

You might have also noticed our new cool keyart and some new logos in our trailer! That’s because we have a publisher now! We’ve joined forces with Paradox ARC. A publisher of deep, replayable games, just like ours! Together with our players, we know we’ll achieve great things with Escape the Mad Empire!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
To wrap up, we wanted to thank you for your support! Whether you like the trailer, play the demo, share your feedback, or wishlist our game, all help is appreciated!

Enjoy the demo, and let’s see if you can Escape the Mad Empire!

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