Halls of Torment News

Unfortunately, we didn’t have update notes on last week’s update. But we didn’t have many visible changes either. This week we have some more exciting changes that play big parts in the preparation for the PRELUDE version.

An important note: Today’s update will reset your progress and remove the Shield Maiden character for now. Hopefully, we won’t need another save game reset, since we’ve sorted out the meta progression for the PRELUDE and don’t want to entirely redo it again.




[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Gamepad support! It’s almost complete and all essential menus should be usable.
  
• Auto-aim setting for the main attack
  
• A powerup item that will collect all XP on the current stage
  
• New unlockable traits for each ability
  
• New boss: “FlameDancer” in Ember Grounds
  
• New enemy: exploding imps
  

[h2]BALANCING[/h2]

• Unlocking the Wellkeeper will now add start items to the chest
  
• Torment rank build-up is now a bit faster
  
• Haunted Caverns progression is now a bit easier
  
• Ember Grounds now unlock by defeating the Imp Chieftain boss
  

[h2]OTHER CHANGES[/h2]

• Quests can now be bound to specific stages
  
• Quests have been recreated with a new progression in mind
  
• Added many Icons for items & traits
  
• Added final assets for Ring Blades and Arcane Splinter
  

[h2]POLISH & QOL[/h2]

• Additional sounds
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed all those nasty crashes that happened by taking damage from stuff on the ground (like slime puddles and fire patches)
  
• Putting the well back on the Haunted Cavern once unlocked
  
• Initial shooting directions are set so that bullets won’t get stuck when entering a stage
  
• Abilities won’t continue to fire anymore in the revive screen.
  
• Radiant Aura trait description had negative values printed in green instead of red
  

[h2]PERFORMANCE[/h2]

• Major changes to reduce CPU load
  
• Changed processing of physics and movement behaviours for better performance
  
• The general performance on all devices, especially in later waves should improve - please send us feedback about this!
  

Finalization of the PRELUDE! This means getting a proper Ember Grounds progression and some polish and finishing on different things. We will very likely keep the demo and playtest version updated once the PRELUDE is released until the Early Access launch. The PRELUDE will have limited content, but the playtest will not. But improvements, balancing, and finishing some content and changes based on feedback will go into the PRELUDE as well.


We’re looking forward to your feedback!
- Chasing Carrots

Today we’re bringing great news! On 9th March the prelude of Halls of Torment will be released.
You will be able to play the first part of the game for free yourself.

Wishlist the PRELUDE to not miss its release:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2316660

The PRELUDE will include following content:

• 2 stages with dynamic progression
  
• 3+ unique bosses
  
• 15+ unique monsters
  
• 3+ playable characters
  
• 6+ different and upgradable abilities
  
• 8+ blessings making you stronger for each attempt
  
• 30+ different items to unlock and retrieve
  
• 100+ traits that upgrade characters and abilities
  
• 30+ quests to complete
  

The PRELUDE is fully compatible with the main game that will release into Early Access in Q2 2023



Your feedback is important. Currently we are working with our lovely community that volunteered to test the early version of Halls of Torment to make the game fun. We are taking their suggestions and feedback seriously and are updating the game based on it.

You can help as well! The PRELUDE is far from being final and we would love to hear your thoughts. And you can also help us a lot by spreading the word! We want to get a lot of the game nailed down before Early Access so this is your chance to influence the direction we are heading.

As developers we are mainly active on our Discord server or in the Steam forums.




If you are eager to learn more and follow the development, visit us:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Chasing_Carrots
Discord: https://discord.gg/chasingcarrots
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/chasingcarrots

Cheers and demonic wishes
- Chasing Carrots

We have another development week behind us and we made quite some progress this week on some technical parts in regards to performance but also a lot of balancing. With big steps we getting closer to where we want to be for the first public version of the game and we might have some news in that regard next week.


___________________


[h2]Change Log 2023-02-17[/h2]

FEATURES

• Each completed quest increases the experience gain by 1%
  
• You can now find abilities and items on the stage
  
• Added more Gamepad support, some menus are still missing
  

BALANCING

• General monster health has been increased
  
• General monster damage has been increased
  
• Lowered the speed for Hellhounds
  
• Increased speed of Elites and Boss Monsters
  
• Difficulty through the waves of monsters increases faster
  
• Lowered the effect of the torment rank
  
• Torment rank no longer increases monster damage and monster speed
  
• Monster speed increases over time now
  
• Level ups require significant more experience through later levels
  
• Increased the damage of all abilities (exception: transfixion -> view bug fixes)
  
• Ember Grounds boxes now drop more gold and potions than
  
• Reduced potions drops in Haunted Halls
  
• Increased Effect of “Receptive Mind” (6% -> 10%)
  
• All fire damage have increase Burn Chance
  
• Burn damage ticks faster now for lower damage
  

OTHER CHANGES

• Ember Grounds unlocks now by surviving until the Skeleton Lord appears
  

POLISH & QOL

• Elites now have a blue outline while bosses have red outlines
  
• Added several UI Sounds
  
• Regeneration values are now shown in “per Second” values
  
• Added button prompts when entering the halls (can be deactivated)
  
• Added character selection prompt when the game started
  

BUG FIXES

• The damage of arcane splinters did not decline over time
  
• Transfixion dealt 5 times the damage it should
  
• Quest “Flaming Passion” was fixed
  
• Quest “Shield Training” was fixed
  
• Health would sometimes not properly displayed when picking up potions
  

PERFORMANCE

• Putting physics into a different process to spread load between CPUs
  
• Reduced the damage numbers that can pop up (also added a setting to toggle them off)
  
• Reduce logging load
  
• Stages should load faster through better resource loading
  

___________________


[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
The Gamepad support has not yet fully implemented, but we certainly made some progress and it will be ready for the first public version. Also since we feel more confident with the base balancing we want to set the meta progression for the early game in stone.
We received a lot of feedback from our lovely community and we will use it to sort around some quests and unlocks. This will also mean that we need to reset the save games with the next patch.
Also outstanding is the balancing of items and creating more assets for our abilities, traits and items.

We decided to not touch the shield maiden for now, even with the feedback received that she differs too little from the swordsman as we wish to focus on the first three characters for now. But we have some ideas how to bring some variance to her!


[h3]Have a nice weekend![/h3]
- Chasing Carrots

[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