Keeper's Toll News

Hi Everyone,

Summer is upon us and we want to start it off with a contest! Among many things, we are currently designing the next world to be added to the game: Usvit Castle. We have a clear direction we are headed, but we are looking for some fresh ideas for Elite Enemies and thought it would be fun to get the community involved and see what you all come up with. We are running a contest throughout the month of June, which we are accepting ideas/submission for Elite Enemies for Usvit Castle.

Below is a sketch of Usvit Castle. It all begins with a sketch!



Here's a few character sprites we’ve created that will be coming to this location of the game, to give you an idea of where things are headed:



RULES FOR ENTRY

1. Provide a description of an Elite Enemy and include what its special attack will be. All elite mobs will have special attacks. For instance, our Pinwheel character in Usvit Depths has its charge/roll attack. The Troll in Linden Forest flings a mud pile at the player, which, if hit, slows movement temporarily.

2. Art/Sketches are not needed and are not required, but if you can visualize and present your idea, we are more than happy to take a look.

3. Entries can be submitted as a comment in this thread or in our Discord under the public Contest Channel.

4. You can provide as many enemy ideas as you like, but this doesn’t necessarily guarantee you will win. Quality over Quantity.

5. All entries must be submitted by July 1, 2023 to be considered

6. In the event multiple entries are created with very similar character designs, the earliest of all entries will be considered based on the time stamp of creation.

PRIZES

The Top 2 selected entries will receive the following:
1. $20 Steam Gift Card
2. Your Elite Enemy will be created by us and added to the game
3. Your name will be listed in the game credits

The top 3 runner ups will receive the following:
1. $20 Steam Gift Card

HOW TO WIN

1. The enemy must fit within a castle environment and dark fantasy theme

2. Creativity from both enemy design and the special attack of the enemy. Please keep in mind the characters in Soul Survivors are all hand drawn animated sprites, so if you want a triple backflip, forward lunge spin attack which spawns a poison burst on collision and then the enemy backflips back out: well it’s unlikely we would select this due to the massive workload this entails. Simple, but unique attacks is what we are looking for.

3. How much we like something. If it’s cool and you love it, we probably will too!

Winners will be announced by July 3, 2023. In the event a participant fails to respond or collect their reward, we will issue a reward to another participant until all prizes have been collected.

By participating in this contest, you are not being given any rights to Soul Survivors, our IP, of or relating to the character you design or the game as a whole. You will not be entitled to any revenue shares or additional compensation outside of what is listed in our Prizes above. Winners will be required to E-Sign a simple form that states these terms when claiming their reward.

We are running this contest because we believe it is a fun way to involve players in the creation and development of Soul Survivors.We look forward to seeing what players come up with!

We will not respond to any entries, but we will read them all. We will, however, respond to any questions you have as soon as possible.

Thank you!

Stingbot Games

Hi Everyone,

We've been working hard on the Ranger update, but still have more coming to improve existing content. Here's what's new in our latest build:

- Added a save data check to verify all save files are properly working when first loading the game. If a file is determined to be missing or corrupted the game will now notify you and direct you to a support page



If you see this screen when loading the game, do not worry. This is expected if your save data is corrupt or not being read properly. If you follow the instructions or get in contact with us, we'll get you sorted. We added a check at the beginning of the game so players can't access the game and experience weird bugs from data not loading properly. This is just the better route to go.

- Separated current gold and total gold collected in the game's UI, improving clarity

- Modified Necromancer's Soul Rip passive. Reduced HP reduction by 2% and increased flail damage output by 5%

- Modified Bogatyr's Quake passive. Iron Smash and Iron Strike Attack Range increased from 5 to 10% per rank

- Fixed a bug where Warden Grainloch's Druids would sometimes spin out of control far away from the Warden

- Improved the AI targeting of Ally Lord Cerveris

- Tree Stump Turret hitboxes will no longer remain active for a few seconds when the stump is destroyed

- Improved spawn logic for Environment props and destructables

- Reduced the AOE radius of the Flammable Goods curse explosions

- Fixed a bug with sacrifice altar that was allowing rank 5 skills to be upgraded

- Modified the Necromancer's Fulmination skulls AOE, slightly boosting performance

- Modified Bogatyr's Iron Strike AOE attack, slightly boosting performance

- Modified the Cooldown effect of Bogatyr's War Cry. Rank 1 is now a 30% CDR and Ranks 2-5 Add 5% CDR for duration of the effect

- Fixed a sorting order issue with some props in Usvit Depths

- Structural changes to AI initialization and reference code, offering slight performance boosts

- Various Bug Fixes

- Code refactoring

We will likely release 1-2 more builds and then the Ranger will be live in the game. There's lots to come. Thanks for all the feedback. It means a lot and we enjoy chatting with you all.

Stingbot

It's been a busy few weeks since the game launched in Early Access. We've been listening to everyone's feedback, so thank you to everyone who reported a bug, requested a change, or provided us with any feedback. The game has improved because of you!



With that said, we're also working on new content, and we are excited to show our first preview of the next class to be added to Soul Survivors: The Ranger. She's had an updated design since what has originally been shown of her:



She is the fastest character in the game, with a high fire rate and a unique playstyle. Below is a video we put together to show off some of what you can expect.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Though she's not a summoner, like the Necromancer, she does have a couple companions. Here's a preview (WIP):



We're still a couple weeks out from adding her to the game. We are wrapping up her final abilities and talents and then we need to spend a lot of time optimizing and balancing the class. As she plays nothing like the other 2 existing characters, balancing take some time. We've spent a lot of time developing this class and we are trying to step up our game in regards to skills, talents,, synergies, build types etc.



We're also planning to upload a few more builds pertaining to existing content. Stay posted for news on this.



As for what to expect following the addition of the Ranger: we are also designing a merchant/item system, which will make all that gold you're stacking become very valuable and important, especially if you try out our new Hard Mode, which we are planning to implement in a later update too. More on this later.

Once again, I would like to thank everyone for their feedback and support. It truly does mean a lot, and we look forward to adding the Ranger to the game in the coming weeks.

Stingbot

Hi Everyone,

We have a fun update today! We added a couple of new Curses to the game and added dozens of improvements/fixes. We have a big announcement coming soon, so stay posted on that too!

Here's what's new in the latest build:

- New Curse Added to Linden Forest: Grainloch's Minions

- New Curse Added to Usvit Depths: Bilee's Revenge

- Removed the Traitors Curse. Will likely revamp and return at some point

- Removed Bogatyr's passive ability: Hardy. Replaced it with a new ability called Guardian's Fury.
Increases DMG of shield attacks by 15% per rank + adds 10HP to base health

- Modified the save system to avoid potential simultaneous async calls

- Usvit Depths: Shield masters' shield colliders will no longer remain active when enemy dies. Caused unwanted invisible collisions

- When cycling between characters on the Talents menu, the correct talents will now display for each character in their Trees

- Necromancer's Auto Flail has been modified to have a slightly longer rotation before it deactivates

- A few minor performance optimizations for the Necromancer's Auto Flail

- Increased Gold Drop rate in Usvit Depths

- Scaled gold amounts to drop with player level, so the higher the player level the higher chance of larger quantities of gold will now drop

- Bug Fix: Damage bonus is now working correct for Passives: By the Sword, Earthen Might, Defiled Bones, Vital Force

- Fixed a collision bug with Bilee's blood circles

- Fixed a bug related to speed overrides w/ powerups and curses

- Fixed a crash in curse mode related to the curse count not matching the available count

- Reduced collider size of boulders for Catapult Curse

- Fixed the enemy worm sorting layer

- Bug Fix: rare issue where the level up panel would not load into place on level up

- Fixed an issue with collecting Boss Souls resulting in 2 collisions and 2 level ups

- Balancing

- Code refactoring

As always, feel free to share any feedback or suggestions. We welcome everything and will strive to constantly improve the game. Thank you for your support!

Stingbot

We are updating our save system to the game, and if you want to preserve your save file then please make sure you have the latest version of the save file stored on your computer.
If you play on multiple devices, just make sure you pull in the latest save from the Cloud onto whatever device you will be updating the game to. The game will automatically copy and merge your data into a new file with whatever it detects.
If no file exists, then the new system will automatically create a save file for you in the new format and there is nothing to worry about in this case.

If, for whatever reason you can't retrieve your existing data or the game simply makes a new file and you want to go back and get your old data, we can discuss ways to do this. Save data files are located in the Local Low directory in Windows under Stingbot Games/Soul Survivors. The old files are called "Data" and "Achievements."
We can always grab those files from you and modify them for the new format. The new files will be called "Data.Save" and "Achievement.Save" These will play much nicer with Steam Auto cloud in the future. and will allow us to easily work with multiple platforms going forward.

If your data is lost, for any reason whatsoever, do not worry. We can easily make a save file, send it to you and, within 30 seconds you can drop it into the directory and start up the game and all will work as you expected. We can go so far as to define the exact amount of gold per character you want in your file. Simply get in touch with us in your preferred way of contact, however Discord or email: [email protected] will be the fastest way to get a hold of us.

In most cases, the save files will migrate without issue and you will be up and running again without a hitch. However, in the case you are not, do not worry. Just reach out to us and we'll get you sorted.

Now, onto the other big ticket item in this build:
- We added a secondary control scheme for the Necromancer's Flail attack. You can choose between Classic (physics based movement) or Auto (simplified auto attack on a timer) when you select the Necro. We had a lot of requests for something more simple/automated, so here it is. We are an open book, so if you think it can be improved and you envision something different for the Auto Flail just reach out to us with your thoughts and ideas. This is Early Access after all, and we implemented this because of requests, so our idea for the auto version may not be the best it can be, but we do believe it's a good start.

Some other things in this build:
- Fixed the order of events after Autlaic is killed in the depths if you collected an amulet piece for Bilee
- Bloodsap will no longer take damage from an Effigy
- Fixed some collision issues when collecting boss souls
- Modified souls and flesh pile colliders/animators to boost performance
- Slight collision performance improvements
- Code refactoring
- Various Bug Fixes


As always, please reach out with any ideas, bugs discovered, feedback etc. We read everything and will do our best to respond to everyone. Thank you for your support.

Stingbot