Halls of Torment News

[h2]Greetings adventurers![/h2]

Mara here with some insight into how the stages work!
Our goal is to have several stages, with each having its own environment, enemies, and bosses. Right now we have one level ready and a second one in the making.


[h3]Stage 1: Haunted Caverns[/h3]

Being the first stage in the game this one has a slow start. It’s mostly dominated by skeletons and you’ll encounter mainly skeleton themed bosses. But there are also other enemies waiting for you such as imps, slimes, and hell hounds.


[h3]Stage 2: Ember Grounds[/h3]

Scorched souls and flame demons are roaming the Ember Grounds. Similar to the Haunted Caverns it is a rather open space but it starts out faster into the action. Enemies are evolving and where cute little imps used to poke you with forks they now show up with more vicious arms.

For the future we are planning to bring more stages with interesting geometry. Those stages will include more constraints on player movement and introduce some more diverse gameplay. We already have planned two or three stages that are bigger than those already in the game. We also plan to have different twists within stages and maybe smaller substages.



[h2]Main Stage Progression[/h2]


In the main stages time ticks down from 30 minutes to your certain doom. Your task is to survive as long as you can. Most commonly you will encounter swarms of enemies trying to surround you and devour both your flesh and soul. Among those hordes you will encounter elite enemies and bosses.

Elite enemies are stronger versions of regular enemies, highlighted with glowing outlines. Defeating them will reward you with abilities that will help you to face stronger foes.

But above the Elites are the Bosses. They are the true hazards and they will try their best to crush you. Not only do they have significantly more health, they also have unique attack patterns that require good evasion skills on your part, while monsters keep swarming you!
Defeating bosses will reward you with a selection of equipment that can be recovered later on and reused in all future runs.

While collecting abilities and items you also level up your character as you might be familiar with in this type of game. On each level up you can pick one character trait. All those traits you earn are passive upgrades that will increase your main weapons, abilities, character stats, or general parameters.



[h2]Additional Features[/h2]
Besides the obvious progression we have some additional features to make slaying your way through stages more interesting:

• Unlockables through events
  
• Torment Rank
  
• Quests (Achievements)
  
• Torment Level (to be implemented)
  
• Items freely spread over the stage (to be implemented)
  
• Different types of shrines (to be implemented)
  

[h2]Next Stream - Thursday[/h2]
While developing Halls of Torment we are also streaming quite regularly.
Follow us on https://www.twitch.tv/chasingcarrots

The next stream will be this week on Thursday at 18:00 CET / 5pm UTC
But don’t worry if you can’t make it, we will upload the VOD on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/@ChasingCarrots/featured



Thanks for supporting us!
Join our Discord to stay in contact.
Leave a comment to tell us what you would like to learn more about!
- Mara, Producer & Game Designer

The first week of the playtest has passed and we have the first updates for you. We are still looking for more testers and you can register here to get a key sent within the coming days and weeks.
We’ll send out more keys later today.

We want to thank you for your feedback so far. Besides the usual progress we do, we also added and improved on points you told us should get some love!


___________________


[h2]Change Log 2023-02-10[/h2]

CONTENT

• Adding a new ability: Arcane Splinters (Name TBD)
  Attacks automatically vertically in short range spreading splinters that stick to the ground and deal damage to any enemy running over them. Damage decreases over time.
  ( ℹ️ ) Six upgrade traits have been added as well.
  ( ℹ️ ) Name and assets are place holders for now.
  
  
• Adding a new ability: Ringblades (Name TBD)
  Attacks automatically horizontally alternating between both sides. The blades will accelerate backwards and come back to the throwing location and then travel outwards the screen mowing down all enemies in the path.
  ( ℹ️ ) Six upgrade traits have been added as well.
  ( ℹ️ ) Name and assets are place holders for now.

FEATURES

• Adding a function to refund all blessings
  
• Improving gamepad support enabling character selection in the start menu and using certain UIs with the game. Gamepad support is not yet complete and more updates to come.
  

BALANCING

• Player damage and monster health have been increased by a factor of 5 for more fine tuned balancing changes
  
• Changing an upgrade for the archer from piercing to an additional arrow
  
• Increasing the starting range of the Swordsman
  

POLISH & QOL

• Increases the sound of collected XP
  
• Added that the pitch of XP collection increases the closer you are to the next level up
  
• Improving the mouse visibility
  
• Updating the slime death animation
  
• Adding a small fade when unpausing the game
  

BUG FIXES

• The final boss should now always appear when the time hits 0
  
• Characters that appear in the overworld should not run in circles anymore
  
• Kills and damage from Phantom Needles, Transfixion and Breath of Fire arenot accounted for.
  

___________________


[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

We are working on completing the gamepad support. We want to get work on the second stage done so we can properly implement it with a proper progression. And we are on further QoL Features and bug fixes.

We also found some hiccups in the performance, especially if one hits large crowds of enemies.
Please continue to report to us your impressions. We are eager to make a game for fans of this genre and not only for us!


Farewell and until next week!
~ Mara

Welcome, Adventurers!

We are thrilled to announce that we’ll be starting a closed playtest for Halls of Torment soon. We are opening registration for the playtest now and will invite the first players later this week. If you’re excited for the game and want to help us with valuable feedback, head over to the playtest registration (link below, please read it carefully!) and join us.

We are planning to invite new players in waves to get a good coverage, so please be patient after filling out the form.

We are looking forward to hearing your feedback!

--> Register here! (Google Form)
Cheers,
Chasing Carrots 🥕

Greetings, adventurers!

Only the most courageous or wicked have travelled to the Ashen Cliffsides where the gates to the Halls of Torment are looming over the desolate landscape. Some came in pursuit of riches, some in search of glory. Others believe great sources of wisdom lie shrouded beneath the Halls waiting to be revealed. Others again are sensitive to the great powers emanating from the depths; powers they cannot leave untapped, or worse, squandered on others.

Today we want to introduce the first four player characters in the Halls of Torment roster. There will be many more in the future, but these were the first ones to arrive at the gates and set up camp.

[h3]The Swordsman[/h3]

There are only a few things that can withstand a good swing with a Zweihander. With this in mind a well trained sword-wielder dares to enter the Halls with only light armour. Of all mortals who gathered before the gates the Swordsman impresses with the nimble yet vigorous simplicity of his combat style. All in all he’s a well balanced pick when it comes to overcoming the horrors down below.

[h3]The Archer[/h3]

The best defence against a raging horde of unholy creatures is a well-maintained distance. Meanwhile, from a good vantage point a couple of well aimed arrows can do a lot of damage. The Archer is a dexterous ranged fighter who has accomplished mastery in both of these principles. Her creed: Spray death from afar and nothing will get to you. We’ll see how well this works out for her as the Halls get increasingly crowded.

[h3]The Exterminator[/h3]

The hunt for vermin and pests is the Exterminator’s daily routine. Equipped with a brazen flame caster they hunt for malicious creatures in cellars and catacombs. Whatever abomination compromises a customer’s estate, they kill it with fire. A lot of nobles and city councils are paying them good coin for their services. When word spread out about the Halls of Torment, it felt like a natural fit for them to join the camp.

[h3]The Shield Maiden[/h3]

As a member of the Sorority of the Protector the Shield Maiden is an expert in personal defence. Armour-clad and equipped with a warhammer and shield no one in their right mind would dare to assault her head-on. Luckily, prudence is a rare commodity down in the Halls. The Maiden regards the cleansing of those accursed depths as her holy duty, as any hellspawn escaping the Halls of Torment may become a threat to the innocent.

Welcome to the Halls of Torment!

What’s this, a new game? Indeed it is! And before I get into any details of what it exactly is and how it’s made, I think it’s important to explain how we got here in the first place. During the past five years we’ve made our previous game Good Company. Although it did find its wonderful audience and is still maintained, we felt a certain fatigue setting in. This journey towards the first 1.0 release was a taxing one and it had an immediate impact on how we thought about future projects. We want to learn from our past mistakes and achievements and so, long story short, we decided to do the following three things with our next game:

1. Don’t commit to a project until we have the core mechanics running AND said mechanics are fun on their own.
   
2. Know exactly where the game design is going as early as possible. We want to be able to describe a play session from start to finish in our own words as concretely as possible.
   
3. Limit the projected development time to a minimum and adjust the scope appropriately. “In the ballpark of six months” became our rule of thumb for a manageable project length.
   

We’ve made many rounds of internal game concept pitching and prototyping. Many of our ideas could not satisfy the constraints outlined above.

And then Vampire Survivors came along and demonstrated how it’s done. Naturally, such a successful game would give rise to plenty of imitators. At first we hesitated. We didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon. But the more time we spent with this newly hatched genre, the more it seemed like a very good fit for us. And so, we sat down, we made a plan, and we made sure it’s in line with our three goals mentioned above.

So … *clears throat*



As you might’ve guessed already, Halls of Torment is a reverse bullet hell roguelite in the vein of Vampire Survivors and similar games with light RPG elements. However, we wanted to put our own spin on the genre. We are big fans of old school action RPGs and CRPGs. Those games from the late 90s with their specific pre rendered aesthetic evoke warm feelings of nostalgia in us, and we’re sure that many players feel similarly. We wanted to capture those vibes and include them in Halls of Torment. Our goal is to make a game you can play casually while still enjoying the rich atmosphere of these grandiose role playing games that used to consume a large chunk of our free time during our youths.

I hope that we succeed, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

All the best!
Paul