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  3. Announcing an Experimental Beta Branch - Dev Diary #03

Announcing an Experimental Beta Branch - Dev Diary #03



Greetings, Ravens!

As you already know, the team at Passtech Games has been working hard on the second Chapter of Ravenswatch! Our Summer update is going along great but we still have a lot of things to do to bring the experience of Chapter Two to the same level as Chapter One. Here are some insights into the development of the Early Access of Ravenswatch!

[h2]Where we're at[/h2]
We are happy with the game's current experience in Early Access. Sure, there are some balancing tweaks to be made, and content is scarce once you’ve reached Nightmare 9 and tried all the seven available heroes. With the arrival of Chapter Two, we hope to double your fun as we understand how frustrating it is to reach Level 5 and not be able to enjoy it at the end of a run.

Launching the Geppetto Update a few months ago has enabled us to add a new and atypical character to the mix. You should have understood by now that we place great emphasis on Heroes and their diversity of playstyles; Geppetto is just an example of how crazy we can get with designs! This previous update was also a good way of making the community wait for Chapter Two, Storm Island being our biggest and most ambitious update looking forward (more on that down below).



We were also able to fix long-time issues such as the random crash that occurred in co-op while defeating the Master Nightmare (whoops), and DX12 issues. Read our previous patch notes here. We are actively working on improving the online experience of Ravenswatch and eradicating remaining bugs and issues.

[h2]Experimental Beta branch[/h2]
Now we understand that the wait between Chapters can be long. We truly are trying our best to respect our timeframe and bring the most polished experience possible to the players. ⚡ Shores of Storm Island ⚡ (the official name of the update) will be massive with a new Chapter to explore, new enemies, a brand new quest to complete, new Bosses, and more Upgrades for all Heroes (as per requested by the community, they have been renamed ‘Talents’).

The Storm Island Update isn’t quite ready to release live, but with that said, we are contemplating the idea of releasing an experimental beta version of it to gather players’ feedback and share our progress with the community. Keep in mind that the beta version will be pretty advanced but not polished at all. You can expect most of the planned content to be there but there will be bugs and things that don’t make total sense (visual or audio feedback may be missing, and behaviors may be buggy…). It’s also full of spoilers for the new content, so if you’re afraid of that you may want to wait for the official release of the update.

With your help, we will be able to take a step back on all of the work we’ve accomplished so far and see how we can improve the game loop with those two Chapters to complete in one run.

What about a sneaky gif of Aladdin in Storm Island?



We will open this experimental branch in the upcoming weeks, stay tuned for that!

⚠ Warning: Your saves may be at risk with the experimental beta branch. We recommend making a copy of it and storing it somewhere safe on your computer if you do decide to partake in this experiment.
[h2]What we’re working on[/h2]
Chapter Two is only one part of our next Major update. You read it right! More content is planned for Shores of Storm Island, here’s a quick look into it:

[h3]Levelling-up heroes even further 📈[/h3]
Reaching Chapter 2 will allow you to keep levelling-up your heroes in your runs! That means you won’t be stuck at level 5 anymore, but you’ll be able to reach level 8 and get new Talents on the way! For that matter, we decided to add about 3 Talents per hero, +20 Talents in total that you’ll get to unlock in the Book.

Here are Scarlet’s new Talents icons, can you try to guess what they do?

[h3]Run length ⏱[/h3]
Previously, with a solo Chapter to play, there were 4 cycles of day and night before the final encounter. With the addition of the second Chapter, we had to adapt this so the overall playtime fits the dense and intense experience we are looking for. Runs are now longer, as the two Chapters will be played over 6 cycles. It means you’ll spend less time on the first Chapter (3 cycles), that’s why we made different adjustments to smooth it up and adapt some things related to the fact that you now play on two Chapters.

[h3]The Snow Queen 👑[/h3]
We chose to make more in-depth changes to the Snow Queen after carefully taking into account the various feedback we received about her, as well as our own perception of the character. Though this hero was very appreciated overall, some of her core mechanics were not satisfying enough ( especially at night, with the removal of most of her immediate damage). We took some time to think about the core aspects of the character, keep what was satisfying with her, adapt the rest, or even rework some aspects to fit better with the vision of a mage/combo character we have. We hope you’ll enjoy it and we are eager to hear your feedback about the changes!

Without getting in too much detail, her ‘Shatter’ move becomes Snow Queen’s Trait as it really is her signature movement. The ‘Ice Skating’ move is now her Defense ability, a perfect way to evade and chill enemies on the way! We added way more changes that you will be able to read in our patch note when we launch the Experimental Beta branch.

[h2]Community Questions[/h2]
Now let’s take some time to answer 3 questions from the community:
  • Will you be adding a Matchmaking or Quick match system?
YES. The game is currently lacking a way to play with non-friends people, and it became one of our priorities to add this feature in the upcoming months. We’re hoping to release it (or at least a first working prototype) for our Fall Update.
  • Will you improve the Mini-map readability?
YES. We heard you! We will continuously try to improve the game’s HUD and UI, but the Mini-map and Map in the Inventory became a priority with all the reports we got in the first months of the Early Access. We made many improvements, from new icons to a more detailed layout… Here’s a peek:

  • Will you add a Reroll mechanic?
MAYBE. We read some good ideas about this suggestion, and we’re thinking about it. We’ll have to see how it could fit into the current game loop. But if you’ve been here since the Early Access of Curse of the Dead Gods (our previous game), you know we ended up adding this community-requested feature into the game by popular demand 😛

[h2]Fun stat[/h2]
To conclude this never-ending post, here’s a fun stat: Someone in the player’s base (we have an idea who, but manifest yourself!) beat the game in Nightmare 9: 597 times! That’s a crazy number and it deserved to be celebrated 🥳



Thank you for reading, we hope you were able to have a good look at our we apprehend things and what’s coming soon! We are also participating in the Future Game Show on August 23rd for Gamescom 2023! Watch the event live to have even more details about Shores of Storm Island!

Our team is also getting ready to move into new and bigger offices in August, so that’s an eventful month at Passtech Games! In the meantime, cheers!

The team enjoying a well-deserved drink after work, in Lyon, France

- The Passtech Team 🍉

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