Halls of Torment News

In time for the PRELUDE we have more exciting changes to share with you.


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-09[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• Level 2 (Ember Grounds) now has a proper progression with its own elites and bosses. Some bosses are substitutes for now and are slightly different versions from the first stage.
  
• Additional enemies with ballistic projectiles (Vulcano Slime Elite)
  
• Additional exploding enemies (Bomber Imps and Unstable Magma Slimes)
  
• Many more additional enemies for Ember Grounds
  

[h3]BALANCING[/h3]

• Ember Grounds now has a steeper XP curve in the beginning
  
• Traits are now available based on your level
  
• Additional level 4 & 5 traits have been added for most general traits
  
• Effect of traits have been adjusted (up and down, overall values increased)
  
• Movement speed mods have been decreased as well as enemy speed
  
• Adjusted drop rates of Hand of Greed and Potions
  

[h3]OTHER CHANGES[/h3]

• Wishlist and discord buttons in the top right of the overworld UI
  

[h3]POLISH & QOL[/h3]

• Several assets for items have been added
  
• Descriptions of traits, abilities and modifiers have been updated
  
• XPGain and Pickup range are now displayed in the stats
  

[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]

• Several quests were bugged. While some were removed, most have been fixed
  
• Fixed the quests that should have been visible where hidden
  
• Fixed a bug where revive blessings would crash the game
  
• Fixed a bug where monster speed would increase during pause
  

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
Bug fixes and improvements! For the next week we haven’t planned anything specific. We will probably prepare more content and see what problems arise. From the next update on, there might be different patches for our Playtest version and the PRELUDE.
If you are interested in the Playtest, visit us on our Discord to learn more. We keep on developing the game with our community, and feedback from playtesters is essential for us when it comes to new features and content.

[h3]Have a nice week![/h3]
Chasing Carrots

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

The PRELUDE to Halls of Torment has been released and we invite everyone to play!
This is a stand-alone
Demo version of Halls of Torment and can be played for free.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2316660/Halls_of_Torment_Prelude/

We hope you’ll join us on our adventure making the game by giving it a try and if possible leave some feedback along the way. The PRELUDE savegame will be fully compatible with the main version of the game and can be played on Windows and any Linux device, including the Steam Deck.

Since the development of the game is in full swing, many parts of the game are still not fully fleshed out, yet. This includes bits that you can find in the PRELUDE. While development continues, we intend to update the demo version with bug fixes, QoL updates, and other changes that affect the content including the demo.

[h3]What can you play in the Demo?[/h3]

• 3 Characters
  
• 2 Stages
  
• 20+ unique enemies
  
• 7 Abilities
  
• 100+ Traits
  
• 50+ Quests
  
• 30+ Items
  

Halls of Torment will have full gamepad support. You can already play it with a gamepad but we are aware of some limitations in certain UIs. This will be fixed in the upcoming weeks.

If you enjoy the game, please spread the word, wishlist the main game and join our Discord to be part of our community.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/

Cheers!
- Chasing Carrots

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