Soulstone Survivors News

Hello everyone!

We have just completed our second full day of Early Access and to celebrate we bring to you our second patch, version v0.9.027h! The focus for this version has been on reviewing and reworking the Endless Mode. I will talk a little bit more about it at the end of this post but first, here is the full list of changes for this version:

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.027h:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- Endless Mode rework:
-- Entirely changed the scaling progression. You will level up slower, and enemies will have considerably less health, but be more dangerous;
-- Extra Lords of the Void will join the battle, which will pose a much bigger challenge than before;
-- Enemies are now more and more resistant to slowing effects, so you will have to stay alert;
-- Reduced quantity of enemies needed per objective, but more time for you to fight the Lords;
-- Overall we expect the new design to be more challenging, shorter, and a million times more performant;
- Adjusted Achievements to reflect the change in difficulty of Endless Mode, requiring less Cycles for the same rewards;
- Added slider in Graphics settings to control the FPS limit of the game;
- Changed Player Area indicators (blue circles) to be a lot less intrusive, but still help you identify where your skills are landing;
- Fixed issue where arrows pointing to towers or any other object would point in the wrong direction in certain cases;
- Fixed an issue where the Blacksmith was very generous and would not verify for achievement completion before crafting weapons;
- Fixed issue with Legionnaire and the Dogs becoming invisible in the menu;
- Fixed an issue where Totem skills were not adjusting their tooltips according to Buff Duration power-ups;
- Fixed issue where enemies would walk around destroyed objects in The Dungeon of Despair;
- Fixed (fore real this time) the visibility of Demolish not being affected by Effect opacity setting;
- Fixed issue where Piercing Shout would not appear as a skill for the Barbarian;
- Fixed error with certain projectiles when you replace the skill, causing an error;
- Fixed an issue where if you replaced Ice Vortex with another skill at certain point in time, its visual effect would stay forever;
- Fixed an issue where locked character names would show up in the Blacksmith;
- Small performance optimisations;

[h3]Balance changes:[/h3]
- Aelfraed will now use Bladestorm from further away from you, and move slightly faster;
- Reduced damage of Call Lightning from 120 to 80;
- Reduced initial damage of Chromatic Bolt from 70 to 50;
- Reduced damage of Ricochet Shot from 150 to 100;
- Reduced damage of Storm of Arrows from 300 to 200;
- Reduced damage of Chaos Golem from about 400 to about 250;
- Holy Fire now fires 3 light waves in the direction you are aiming, instead of one;

[h3]About Endless Mode:[/h3]
When you have a chance to try this new update, you will notice that it is very different from before, and I wanted to touch on what is our thought process for these changes.

First, the performance issues. The game certainly started getting extremely slow at higher Endless Cycle levels, but unfortunately there are no optimisations in the world that would fix the problem. The problem is that with you being able to reach extremely high levels, 200, 400, 600... you scale your powers SO SO much, that you are firing hundreds if not thousands of skills and projectiles every second, that are as large as the map itself. In practice, this means millions of calculations for physics effects hits damage and everything else every second. There ARE optimisations to do in the game and we will get to them very soon, however, nothing we could do would make this level of craziness scale correctly, it is just too much.

Second, while at first it is very cool to scale absurdly like before, seeing your skills covering the whole planet and all that haha, it leads to a stale gameplay loop. In the previous iteration it was very easy to become immortal, to hit the entire planet with every skill and then you are left watching as the numbers pop-up as in an idle game. It definitely has its charm (if it ran at a decent FPS), but it gets old really fast. Our intention for endless is that you eventually die from a very challenging scenario where YOU are pushed to the max together with your build, and not just your computer while you go have dinner and wait for the level to be over. We believe that with these changes and a more challenging gameplay, we are getting there.

Third, we don't like Endless being extremely long matches. Since the challenge was basically non-existant, you could push endless until your computer exploded, which is not great. We want endless to finish in any amount of time between 20 and 40 minutes. It can go longer than that, but now that is an actual show of skill, not of patience. At times, if your build is not very good, we expect you will have a very hard time defeating the Lords of the Void and may end earlier than that, but that is ok, you can always try a new setup, new skills, new runes, and see how that works out for you.

Finally, we are always open to change. We still want to make more adjustments to Endless mode and will continue working on it and all other features of the game, and hearing your opinion is critical for us. So please, do share what you think! Remember this is still Day 2 of Early Access haha (officially 3 I could say), so the road is just beginning, and we will continue working as hard as we ever have to make sure that the game continues getting better and better.

[h3]Whats next:[/h3]
Having said all that, the work is far from done! We got a lot of other fixes to make and the next big one are the Steam Achievements not syncing. This is an error on our side and will require an update, but we are working on it, alongside many other smaller fixes that will be coming shortly.

I wanted to thank you all very much for your support so far once again, we are blown away by the response to the game so far and I really, really hope we can make it as cool as possible for everyone! We will continue listening, continue working, and we still have A LOT to add to the game! This week we are focusing on these release issues but soon, very soon!

Thank you all for the attention,
Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hi everyone!

Before anything else, I would just like to say a HUGE thank you, to all of you that are supporting our work one way or another, grabbing a copy of course but with feedback, bug reports, and in general just being awesome human beings! I cannot believe how lucky we are to have such a welcoming and supportive community behind the game! I really do hope that the game brings you a lot of fun for a very long time, we hope you are enjoying the new content and rest assured that it is still just the beginning, after all, this is day ONE of Early Access!

The path is long, but to take it with you will be an honor! Today we bring the first-ever Early Access update, it is not the most exciting for most of you haha, but will be very helpful to some of you that are facing some of the problems we just fixed! Without further ado:

[h2]Full change list for version v0.9.027g:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- Fixed issue where certain players are not able to unlock the Barbarian character;
- Fixed an issue where certain players would start the game with the Effect visibility slider all the way to 0;
- Fixed issue where the Cursor on Linux would go invisible after you started a match, and then went to any menu such as pause or level up;
- Fixed an issue where having lots of power-ups would go in front of the Options menu during gameplay;
- Fixed issue where characters can equip other character weapons;
- Increased the size of the Damage number in the ending screen to assist with the very small numbers;
- Fixed issue where Achievements that yield Runic Power were displaying the wrong information;
- Fixed Bloodlust cooldown calculation not working as intended, now Bloodlust properly no longer affects its own cooldown (or the cooldown of multiple instances of Bloodlust);
- Fixed issue where the Demolish skill would not be affected by the Effect Opacity setting;
- Fixed issue where Summon Ballista, when having its duration increased, would not show the increase in the tooltip;

We wanted to get this patch out as soon as possible to make sure that players are not affected by some of the critical problems that have been fixed, but will continue working on further updates over the next few days to address other critical issues, the two main ones being Steam Achievements and Endless Mode.

[h3]Steam Achievements[/h3]
We are currently working into addressing the issue that is preventing the sync between Steam and the game, but it is our mistake. This is our highest priority right now and we expect to have it fixed very very soon. At any rate, all the progress you have, WILL carry over, so you are not wasting any progression right now.

[h3]Endless Mode[/h3]
We know that when you go too deep into Endless Cycles, the game starts to slow down. This happens most of the time because of the CPU, which is having to make millions (literally) of physical collisions every frame to detect and push enemies around while calculating hundreds of thousands of negative effects being added every second. We still have a few big optimisation paths to work on which we will do over the course of Early Access, but I believe we were too generous in the Endless implementation.

To have as open a development as we can, here are our thoughts for an endless rework in the next couple of days:

- Today, when you go into a new endless cycle, we reset your experience but keep your levels. This means you level up very very quickly, and while cool, this is the root of all evil. We will likely reduce this quite a bit, which will make it harder to level up. You will still continue getting stronger, but at a more manageable rate;

- Due to the excessive scaling you get from the excessive levels, enemies end up with excessive amounts of health. We HATE how tanky enemies get now, when the only challenge is your patience. Endless is meant as a different experience to the Curses, which are quite demanding in their own ways, but we don't want them to be excessively long, and especially excessively tanky. You should feel like the challenge is scaling, and not the health bars.

- To build more interesting challenges, we are considering adding Random Curses with every endless level you progress into. This way, we can introduce challenges other than just scaling enemies, and making every tier of Endless different from the previous one. We will test how this feels to play, but we believe will make endless more interesting to play.

With those changes, what we expect will happen is a considerable reduction in the CPU load from the currently extreme levels of scaling, you will still be very strong (but more limited than now), and challenge level will be more varied with different curses every Endless cycle.

We will test those changes, and will likely make them public through the Alpha branch very soon as well, so if you'd like to give us more feedback and let us know what you think, the best place to to reach us out fast is to join our Discord! (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT)

At any rate, I would like to thank you all once again for the amazing support, and the patience to deal with the pesky bugs you are finding, and to read this wall of text! haha

Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hey everyone!

The day is finally here, and Early Access is now available!! You can finally try out all the new characters, skills, curses, achievements, endless... and create those game-breaking builds we love to see! We've prepared an Early Access release trailer to mark the occasion!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you tried the Demo, or the Prologue, or you are completely new to the game and decide to give it a go, we truly hope you will have a good time with all the changes and new content available! You can find the Early Access in the link below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/

We would like to thank you all once again for all the support, the game would definitely not be the same without the amazing community we have here on Steam and on Discord! All the feedback, support messages and even criticism all helped to shape the game so far, and rest assured: the Early Access is just the beginning!

And with all that said... we will see you in the void, Void Hunter!

Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hi everyone!

As we are getting closer and closer to the beginning of Early Access on November 7th, we wanted to do a little something in preparation for all that is coming. And with that in mind, we decided to run a small Pre-Release event where you have a chance of getting a Steam Key for Soulstone Survivors for free, in addition to a few other prizes!

Together with this update v0.8.025a for the Prologue version which we will get into in a second, we set up a small Speedrunning tournament over in our Discord, where the fastest players will be eligible to earn the following prizes:

• 6x Soulstone Survivors Steam Keys;
• $30 Steam Gift card courtesy of @VyvLiveGaming on Twitch;
• Unique Discord roles to show how awesome you are;

If speedrunning is not your thing, not to worry! All participants will have a chance of getting a Steam Key regardless of their score! If you want to learn more, the first step downloading the Prologue, which you can find here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/

And the second step, is to join our Discord:
https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT

Now, together with this event, we also released update v0.8.025a into the Prologue! This is a small update that focuses on fixing a few things while improving some skills that were in need of some love!

[h2]Full change list for version v0.8.025a:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- Community Event: Steam Key Giveaway and Speedrun Tournament, join our Discord to learn more!
- Fixed an issue where Tracking attacks (such as Alexi's Poison Volley or the Elite Snake Poison Spit) would have unreliable speeds. In general, you should feel those attacks slightly faster than before if you are far away from the target;
- Fixed an issue where bosses would cast their skills without looking at you;
- Fixed an issue where certain projectiles would remain forever in the game;
- Fixed issue where the Effect Opacity option was not affecting ground effects such as cracks and whatnot;
- Poison and Bleed now deal damage every second. Total damage and duration are still the same;
- Increased the damage of Smite from 450 to 630;
- Reduced the cooldown of Smite from 10 to 8 seconds;
- Increased the damage of Templars Verdict from 280 to 480;
- Increased the damage of Poison Bolt from 130 to 150 per bolt;
- Reduced the damage from Skeletal Archers from 240 to 200 per projectile;
- Increased the health of Skeletal Archers from 60 to 90;
- Increased the health of Skeletal Mages from 80 to 120;

We are super excited about all that is coming to the game in less than two weeks now, and we can't wait to know what you will all think of the new classes, skills and challenges you will find in the Early Access version, but until then, we hope you will have fun with the Prologue, and if you run into any issues, please do let us know!

Best wishes,
- The dev team

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since our last update, but rest assured that our silence is just because we are working extremely focused on ensuring that the Early Access will have a ton of content! Today we have made available version v0.8.024c, which brings with itself a lot of internal improvements for Early Access, including significant performance improvements, resolution fixes, the Prestige system which for now is very basic but is getting expanded very soon, multiple save files... and we have worked on SO much more in these last few weeks that we can't wait to share with you!

But, without further ado, here is what you can expect in this update:

[h2]Full change list for version v0.8.024c:[/h2]
[h3]General changes:[/h3]
- End of Demo: We are taking the demo offline for good on October 24th, if you'd like to keep playing until the Early Access release on November 7th, please download the Prologue, your progress will be kept!
- The Spellbreaker, Arcane Weaver and Sentinel are no longer available for play;
- New feature: Prestige system, your characters will now earn prestige from every match and will level up permanently across matches. For now, there is no bonus for levelling up a character, but future plans will allow you to use those levels for good!
- New feature: Multiple save files, now you can create multiple saves with different progression levels, or delete your saves if you so choose. Just please remember, deleting a save cannot be undone!
- Major performance improvements that should make the game a lot smoother;
- Remade Damage Numbers and Health Bars from the ground up to improve the performance of these systems;
- Remade the system to spawn enemies, which now should offer a more constant flow of enemies while ensuring performance does not suffer major spikes;
- Fixed multiple issues related to different resolutions which should offer a smoother experience, for example, on the Steam Deck;
- Power Ups that enhance skills "by tag" will highlight the skills they will be empowering;
- Enemies now become greyish when they die to help differentiate between alive and dead enemies;
- Tons of new sound effects all across the game;
- Fixed issue where certain tooltips could go outside of the screen;
- Multiple visual tweaks all across the game;
- Added Frontal tag to Frozen Warhammer;

Now, as mentioned above, this is but a fraction of everything new we have added to the game these last few weeks, and we are now in the final touches before the Early Access starts! There is still a lot of work to be done, and even though there is a LOT of new things to try, the Early Access is just the beginning =)

Please do let us know if you run into any issues with this latest version, we may be a bit quieter than usual, but we are here, we are listening, and we are working hard to make sure Soulstone Survivors will be the best it can be!

Thank you all for trying the game out and for all the support so far, and I hope it will all be worth the wait!
Best wishes,
- The dev team