Soulstone Survivors News

Hello everyone!

It's been now 8 days since our last update, which for us feels like a lot of time, so we thought it would be a good idea to take a moment and share a little bit about our future plans and the content we are working on for the next major update. We want to be as transparent with you as we can (while trying to not spoil too much the content that is coming =P), and while this is a bit of a wall of text haha I hope it brings some clarity into what is coming in the future.

[h2]Release schedule[/h2]
First, while we like to do frequent and small updates to make sure that the experience is as smooth as possible, now that we are working on new content, it makes more sense to have a longer release schedule so we can work on more expressive features to make more of an impact in the game.

Our current plan is to release the next major update around the second week of December, and from that point on, release content updates monthly, which gives us enough time to work on cool stuff, make sure it all works well, and release quality content frequently. In between those major updates, we will continue making hotfixes, balance and smaller improvement patches whenever necessary.

[h2]General improvements in our radar[/h2]
With the last patch, we addressed a lot of the most pressing issues with the game, including hundreds of bugs large and small, refactoring game modes, making sure the game is more resilient and that the initial Early Access experience was as smooth as we could make it. However, there are still quite a few quality of life and fixes pending for the next version.

We are still evaluating which fixes and improvements we will be able to get done in time, but very high in our priority list are some controller navigation improvements, accessibility options which include mouse-only control schemes and color-blind options, more UI improvements, and of course quite a few bugs reported by the community are in our radar as well. I don't think we will be able to finish all of these in time, but know that these are important issues to fix for us and they are definitely coming sooner rather than later.

[h2]Balance changes[/h2]
For the beginning of Early Access, our focus was on making sure that all classes and play styles were fun to experiment with and were viable to play with. The game offers quite a few tools that make it so certain builds will always be superior or even broken depending a bit on your luck, however, we are well aware that certain classes and play styles have a hard time in the more challenging content in the game, such as high Curse levels.

For next update, we want to take a close look at skills and play styles that are struggling to keep up. We will never be able to make all builds of all characters with all runes be equally strong, but that is not the intention really. Some classes will always be more challenging in certain scenarios, and we believe that this variety is good for the game, given this is a single player experience (so far, who knows =P), however, we want as much variety as possible, and for that, we need to make sure that ALL skills can be viable one way or another. This will be a constant effort, and we will make sure to take it one step at a time with each update coming in the future.

[h2]New weapons and skills[/h2]
Probably the part of the game that has received the least attention so far, are the weapons. We currently have a total of 20 weapons including the basic ones, but that is only a fraction of our goal. Our plan is to continuously add new weapons until each character has at least 5 weapons to choose from, and we are very far from that goal at the moment.

With that said, we are already working on a lot of new skills and weapons, and while I still won't reveal what those look like just now, rest assured you will get quite a few new ones with the next update!

[h2]Map differentiation[/h2]
Another big shortcoming of the current version of the game for us is that all maps play pretty much the same. The resources offer some incentive to play on different maps, but, our goal is to have enough enemy diversity and different challenges per map that it actually feels different to play on different scenarios.

This is a big endeavour and will likely take multiple updates to get where we want it to be, as it will involve creating lots of new enemies, new skills for those enemies and making sure that they lead to interesting gameplay scenarios that actually feel different from each other (we don't want to just make green goblins in the Whispering Grove and blue goblins in the Frozen Wasteland), but it is something that is already in the works in the background. It will take some testing, but its a very high priority for us.

[h2]New challenges[/h2]
In addition to the above, one of the areas we want to continue expanding the game for a long time still, is in creating new challenges. Those will come in multiple shapes and forms, with new bosses, new game modes, and quite a few... secret encounters to find along the way. I wont go into too much detail at this time, but what I will say is that we have one of those planned for the next update, and we are developing these in a way that will make future content easier and faster to develop as well.

[h2]Interesting ways to spend your resources[/h2]
While new weapons and characters will require materials and soulstones to be crafted, those are finite and we don't want them to feel grindy or to take too long to unlock. We have other features planned such as expanding the skill tree, giving more meaning to prestige levels and so on, so there is still a lot coming that will consume resources, however, we are currently planning another major feature that should offer nearly endless ways to spend resources, in exchange for cool bonuses and variations to your gameplay and classes.

This is a major feature that will not come with the next update which is still in the drawing board, and it is a challenging feature to design because we want it to feel rewarding and impactful, but not mandatory and grindy, which is a hard balance to strike. However, we thought it was important to communicate that we recognise this as yet another big shortcoming with the current version of the game, and it will definitely be addressed in the updates to come.

[h2]Future content and goals[/h2]
Our number one goal with Soulstone Survivors, is to make sure that there were hundreds, thousands of ways you could play the game and have fun with. We feel like we currently have a really good start, but there are still many more features coming that will expand your choices and overall power level in different ways moving forward.

Our next goal, is to offer enough variety of challenges, and activities to do in the game, to give you incentives to explore all of those ways to play the game. We believe we have a good basis right now, but there is still A LOT we can do in this sense, with enemy variety, unlockable challenges and so on.

And our third and final goal with every feature we think for the game, is to create content that feels well connected with the rest of the game, and that offers very high replay value. Once again I think we are going in the right direction, and this is a pillar for all of the features that are still to come.

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
With this announcement, we wanted to shed some light into our vision for the game moving forward. As mentioned many times before, we see the Early Access as just the beginning of this journey, and with all of the above, we hope it shows you a little glimpse of the ideas we have in mind. Even when all of the above is implemented, there are still loads of different types of content we can explore in the game, and we have no intention of slowing down.

We continue hard at work on our side, we continue reading feedback everywhere we can, we really appreciate all of the amazing ideas that you guys have shared with us and I'm sure many of them will find their way into the game at some point in time, and we are also looking into different ways we can interact with the community.

Thank you very much for the amazing support, and we hope to have you along with us for the journey!

Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hi everyone!

We have just released minor update v0.9.028e, which above everything else, comes to fix the Steam Achievements! With this update, most of your existing in-game achievements will be automatically replicated onto Steam when you start the game, however, there is one thing to note: at this time, we are limited to creating only 100 Steam Achievements, therefore, not all achievements exist on Steam yet!

This is a Steam limitation to avoid shady games creating tons of fake achievements just to boost profiles up. We expect that as the days and weeks go by, we will be allowed to create more achievements and will continue expanding this list untill all of the existing (and future!) achievements exist both in-game and on Steam!

This patch also brings some other fixes to annoying problems, as you can see in the full list of changes below!

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.028e:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- Steam Achievements working as intended, existing achievements and stats will be uploaded to Steam on the first time you load the game;
- Fixed the visibility of attacks of all enemy Void Hunters, which are now mostly unaffected by visual effect opacity setting;
- Fixed an issue where the enemy Paladin would not attack you with all of his skills;
- Fixed an issue with multiple enemy Void Hunter skills, which were possibly firing skills in the wrong direction;
- Increased the size of the area indicator for a few more boss skills which were slightly undersized;
- Made the Void Presence attack not be affected by effect opacity settings;
- Made it so the elite Troll shockwave skill is affected only partially by effect opacity;
- Small change so that achievement percentages avoid being rounded up from 99.9999% to 100% in very specific cases;
- Added Area tag to Arcane Power to be inline with other buffs;
- Changed totem skills and ballista to no longer have Duration power ups, but instead have Damage power ups, which are more beneficial given the recently introduced summon limit;
- To access Overlord Mode (the red portal) you now need to finish the match in less then 13 minutes, up from 12 (which was the intended value);
- Added code to prevent a few seemingly harmless exceptions in the game;
- Minor UI adjustments that could cause problems in a few languages;

We hope that this patch will be welcome by those of you that love a little achievement hunting, and as mentioned above, rest assured that as soon as we are allowed to, we will create the remaining achievements on Steam.

I also want to add that updates are not going to be just fixes and improvements! We are working in the background on new content that will be landing very very soon! We still have a little bit more to do, but we continue working day and night to create new stuff! We really appreciate the patience, and we hope that at least for now, these past updates have made the game experience smoother and more enjoyable for everyone!

And as always, we would like to thank you all very much for all the help, support, testing and feedback! It is incredible to be able to count on this amazing community be it on Steam forums, Twitter, Discord... it really does make all the difference in the world!

We hope you enjoy this little update,
Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hello everyone!

We have just yesterday completed a week of Early Access, and today we are coming to our third, and this time MAJOR update! Patch v0.9.028c brings with it tons of fixes all around the game, but most importantly, it is all about performance and Endless mode which is now split into two, Endless and Overlord modes!

Before talking in more detail about those, let's jump right into the list of changes for this patch, and as always we will talk a bit more about what is going on in the game down below!

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.028c:[/h2]
[h3]Main changes:[/h3]
- Endless Mode is now split into two separate game modes, both of which have been extensively reworked in their functionality:
-- Endless Mode: Level up quickly and fight across multiple scenarios with increasing difficulty with every cycle. Enemies will become tougher and more resistant and you can go on for as long as you manage!
-- Overlord Mode: Face an increasing number of powerful Lords of the Void, which require less and less enemies per cycle until you are facing Lords all day long! Difficulty increases with every cycle, and so does the number of bosses.
- Achievements that required Endless Cycles are now split between both modes. If you completed the achievements previously, they will still be completed (this may cause a small glitch with the switched achievement rewards);
- Major performance improvements in all areas of the game, especially in very high intensity scenarios;
- Overhead combat text has been changed to be incremental, so multiple hits on the same target will refresh and increase the number instead of generating a new text. You can switch between the previous and new styles in the General Settings, however, the previous style will lead to performance issues in high-intensity scenarios;
- If Special effect visibility slider is all the way down, some visual effects will not be used at all which should improve performance considerably in certain scenarios;

[h3]General changes and fixes:[/h3]
- Multiple fixes related to the error where you would not be able to pick any skill when levelling up. This is a rare issue and we have made multiple changes that should prevent it entirely, but let us know if you still see this error;
- Implemented some changes to the saving system to try and make the system more resistant to corrupted files;
- Added visual improvements to the Runes screen so it is easier to locate/remember where runes are placed;
- Fixed issue where the Curse Intensity tooltip could stay on screen indefinitely;
- Fixed issue where the currently selected rune would persist as selected even when you switched characters;
- Fixed multiple minor localization issues;
- Fixed minor visual issues on ultra-wide monitors;
- Fixed issue where Prestige Stars would show incorrectly from level 100 to 110 (and other higher levels);
- In any endless mode, certain visual effects will not play to help with performance;
- When a target takes damage and is immune to damage, a Immune label will appear;
- Objective notifications now will only show the latest notification, instead of building an endless queue;
- Fixed an issue where FPS limit was resetting to the screen refresh rate with every start-up;
- FPS limit slider is now capped at 120% of your monitor refresh rate;
- Fixed issue where enemies would eventually have blue health bars if you had enough summons;
- Removed "invisible pillars" in the Dungeon of Despair;
- Fixed multiple "invisible exceptions" that would consume performance;
- Fixed Overlord Mode tooltip displaying "5% extra bosses" instead of "5" extra bosses;
- Fixed Curse Intensity tooltip showing big decimal numbers;

[h3]Enemy changes:[/h3]
- Extended the damage area indicator of a few boss skills to better reflect the range of their skills;
- Fixed issue where the Paladin Void Hunter (enemy) would not be targetable by minions;
- Snake's poison bomb is no longer affected by Opacity settings;
- Reduced health of Pillars of Despair by 30%;
- Increased the cooldown of the Pillars of Despair skills by 100%;
- Removed Stun effects from the attacks of all enemies;
- Fixed an issue where enemies that should be immune to pushback were not immune;
- Endless cycles now also reduce the effectiveness of Absorption shields (Arcane Shield);
- Small spider attacks are now not affected by Effect Opacity options;
- Fixed issue where the Void Presence would receive negative effects;

[h3]Skills and Runes changes:[/h3]
- Fixed issue where the skill Disengage would not appear for the Sentinel's second bow;
- Changed the tag from Spread Shot from Blast to Projectile;
- Pending skill points during a match will now be kept if you go through an endless portal;
- Fixed an issue where Call Lightning was applying Disoriented instead of Dazed;
- Chromatic Bolt now fires in the direction you are aiming, as stated in the tooltip;
- Holy Fire now has the Frontal tag;
- Exorcism tooltip will now show 0.5 correctly instead of rounding up to 1;
- Fixed issue where certain skills such as Mine Field and Explosive trap may not remove the objects from the world when the skill is removed;
- Totems and Ballistas now have a proper summon quantity limit, but have had their damage increased;
- Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas were not dealing the intended damage when they caused a critical strike;
- Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas would block the movement of your minions;
- Fixed issue where Totems and Ballistas would not apply on-hit effects;
- Fixed issue where Purity rune would use the incorrect value to determine how many effects are in the target, yielding inconsistent results;
- Fixed issue where Bladestorm and Flurry would not be used if there were no enemies nearby;
- Fixed an issue where Shadow Nova would apply Exposed, which was not intended;
- Shadow Step now grants 0.5 seconds of immunity after a teleport;
- Surefooted rune now reduces the damage you take by 15% to replace the Stun immunity bonus;


Now, with that huge list out of the way, to mention a little about the differences between Endless and Overlord modes, while they share a lot of similarities, Endless is more relaxed and allows for more free experimentation and scaling, while Overlord mode is intended as a more challenging mode so you can test your skills to see how far you will go. Both modes are different from the current implementation of Endless and have tons of tweaks in multiple areas, so we recommend you give them both a try and see what you think.

To talk a little bit about performance, the changes in this update should be noticeable all around the game and involve major refactoring and changes in all major areas of the game. There are still a few places where we can squeeze in some more performance, but those will come in the following weeks.

And speaking of the next steps, as expected, this first week was focused on fixes, improvements and adjustments, and not on new content. There is one major bug that is getting addressed next which is the link with Steam Achievements, which is not currently working. We expect to have a new patch shortly addressing that, and in the background, we have already started work on some new content that we expect will be coming to the game very soon as well which we hope you will enjoy!

And with all of that said, I just wanted to once again thank you all for the amazing support so far! We have been working day and night to make sure that the game is as good as it can be, and a lot of the fixes in this update come from reports from the community! So thank you for helping us improve the game and for all the feedback so far! As mentioned before, this is just the beginning, we literally just completed the first week of Early Access, and there is still A LOT to come, both in terms of improvements AND new content!

Best wishes,
- The dev team