REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM News

Greetings Followers of Remore!​
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The time has finally come for us to make the BIG announcement... REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM will be entering Early Access on Oct 30!​

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[h3]Why Early Access?​[/h3]
​The Community has spoken! After our Steam Next Fest Demo debuted, we received numerous feedback asking for an Early Access version. ​
We believe that player feedback is an important part of our game development principles. Therefore, we decided to launch Remore: Infested Kingdom Early Access to share what we have developed so far and ask for player feedback during our road to Full Release. We want our finished product to reflect the best of both the player and developer’s dreams and passions.​
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We want to thank everyone who have supported us and come to cheer for us as we walked together side by side during our game development. ​
We hope this upcoming Early Access version will live up to your expectations and more. ​

We also want to thank the community all for your contributions to the making of REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM. ​

Finally, don’t' forget to join our Discord and Social Media platforms to get up to date information from our development!​

Wishlist us now and share the exciting news!​

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Hello again, Survivors and greetings from our next Dev Note!

Up to now, the Dev Notes have focused mainly on bigger topics, introducing related content. However, today, I want to showcase some newly added convenience features and gameplay elements.

Addition of Weapon Quick Slots
Currently, changing weapons does not consume WP/TP. This allows players to freely use weapons that fit the situation during combat.

However, previously it was a bit inconvenient as players had to repeatedly open and close the inventory to change weapons. To encourage use of this feature, we’ve added a quick slot UI.

During combat, clicking the equipped weapon button or pressing the shortcut key [Q] displays a list of all owned weapons. From here, players can click on the desired weapon or press the corresponding number key to immediately switch to the selected weapon.

Addition of Enemy Luring (Pulling)
One of the most important features in the combat system is the “Alarm” mechanism, where enemies swarm in when they detect a player. This system pushes players to set up a “favorable formation in advance” before engaging in combat.

However, during playtesting, we observed that players exploited certain advantages, such as “1-tile-wide entrances,” where they simply waited endlessly as enemies approached, maintaining their formation. We felt that if this method was the most effective play, the game would become tedious.

To address this, we have introduced the “Pebble Pouch” tool, which allows players to inflict light damage from a distance and lure enemies towards the player's direction.

This addition enables players to be more actively engaged in the game by luring enemies immediately after establishing a favorable formation. Furthermore, players can creatively use this tool, such as redirecting the enemy's line of sight or dealing with enemies with only 1 HP remaining.

Addition of the Pursuit System
Even with the addition of luring, the problem persisted where players “waited endlessly until enemies approached”' as it was still an “efficient” choice due to the limitations in TP consumption, without additional items.

To solve this, we implemented a system where new enemies appear and pursue the player party after a certain number of turns have passed.

In the early stages, players will encounter a manageable number of chasing enemies. However, as the game progresses to later stages, more enemies will appear, pressuring the Survivors at a much faster pace.

Engaging the chasing enemies consumes Turns, and players could suffer significant losses if they get caught by newly spawned enemies again. Therefore, it is necessary to efficiently utilize the given TP/WP resources, achieve the stage objectives, and escape.

We carefully considered the implementation of the Pursuit system, as it could add excessive pressure to players unfamiliar with the game. Through extensive testing and thoughtful balancing, we managed to maintain a level of tension without making the game impossible, as long as players do not intentionally prolong their turns excessively.

Improvement and Diversification of Rechargeable Tools
The “Grappling Hook,” obtainable at the beginning of the Monastery stage, serves as an important tool, offering a wide range of tactical options beyond simply pulling and attacking enemies. In addition to pulling enemies, it can create “collisions” to defeat “'Blisters” or rescue Allies trapped and unable to move, introducing a variety of tactical variables.

Originally, players could use the grappling hook up to three times in a single stage, and it was designed as a “Rechargeable Tool,” allowing players to replenish its uses without additional resource consumption in the next stage, encouraging active usage.

However, due to the limited number of uses in a single stage, players often refrained from using the grappling hook, saving it for a “more opportune moment,” which frequently led to situations where they couldn't utilize it effectively before the stage ended.

To address this, we significantly increased the Grappling Hook's usage limit to 20 times per stage while changing the cost to 4 TP per use. This adjustment allows players to treat the grappling hook tool like a basic skill, similar to “Shoulder Bash (costs 5 TP, pushes one tile)”, leading to a more engaging gameplay experience, as concluded from our testing results.



Based on these test results, we decided to actively incorporate Rechargeable Tools that can lead to various tactical situations.

For example, the “Barricade” which players encounter as a deployable object in the Monastery Chapel area, becomes a Rechargeable Tool that players can actually acquire and utilize after clearing the stage.

When deployed, it consumes 4 TP, and players can carry up to two of them. It can be used for defensive purposes, blocking enemy attack routes. Alternatively, players can strategically place them in front of allies before luring enemies with pebbles, allowing them to engage the enemy without being caught.

Additionally, a Rechargeable tool, the “Coin Pouch” has been added. Players can use this tool to divert enemy attention, allowing additional abilities of weapons that require “out-of-sight attacks,” or quickly advancing towards quest locations without being detected.

With these tactical tools transitioning from “Consumables” to “Rechargeable Tools,” players can now use them more actively in each stage, significantly enhancing the enjoyment of the game.

Addition of Research and Tool Crafting System
Once rescued from the Monastery, the NPC “Aldris” joins the camp and unlocks the “Research” system which allows further enhancement of these Tools.

Various research is available, such as enhancing the Grappling Hook to pull targets directly in front of the user instead of just 1 tile, reducing the TP cost for deploying barricades from 4 to 2, or increasing the amount of times the “Coin Pouch” can be used.

In addition to upgrading existing tools, research can also lead to acquiring new tools. For example, researching “High Barricades” that can obscure the enemies' line of sight or studying advanced Infested like “Blister” and “Skulker” to create tools utilizing their abilities.

Also, Consumables like Bandages and Equipment Repair Ttools, unlike Rechargeable Tools, can now be crafted directly using materials like “Cloth” or “Rope.”

There are many more new things I could talk about, but I think it’s more fun if you discover them yourself during gameplay!

Thank you, Survivors!
Stay tuned for more updates and one big news coming soon!

Greetings Followers of Remore!

We are honored to announce that REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM has been nominated for Game Connection Europe 2023 People’s Choice Award! Thank you so much for this great opportunity! Please support us by voting for REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM! The Infestation Cometh!

Click to Vote for REMORE

What is Game Connection you ask?



Game Connection is an international event that draws over 1,500 developers, publishers, distributors, and service providers, all seeking new partners or clients.

The Game Connection Game Development Awards have a history of recognizing and promoting game projects in any stage of development. For the past 16 years, they have been the place for studios to showcase their creativity and originality and to be recognized by their peers.

The award ceremony of the Indie Game Development Awards is expected to be held in Paris on November 2.

Support us by voting for Remore: Infested Kingdom for the Game Connection Europe 2023 People’s Choice Award!

REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM has been nominated in three categories, Best Hardcore Game, Grand Award and People’s Choice Award.

Thank you,
REMORE Staff

Hello again, Survivors! It's been about two months now since we took part in STEAM NEXT FEST.

During this time, we've been trying out new systems and content based on your feedback, in preparation for the next build. Through trial and error, we’ve reached some new ground that we feel is the right way to go!

Today, I'd like to talk about something that received the most feedback, which is “Combat Damage and how it’s managed.”



To capture the apocalyptic theme of the game and increase tension, we intentionally set the enemies' attack power quite high. Even the most defensively skilled player character, Willam, could be killed after about three attacks from the weakest enemy, the Knawer.

Furthermore, damage taken did not recover once the battle was over and could only be healed by eating or using special items like bandages. Our intention was to make players strive to find ways to minimize taking damage as much as possible, to the point of making desperate decisions.

However, tests showed that more players than we anticipated expressed concern about this system. Specifically, it wasn't so much the "high and dangerous enemy attack power" that was the issue, but rather that "damage taken does not recover” before they could even understand the game’s logic.

Players only really understood the game after clearing the first stage, Blackthorn Village, but many felt discouraged because even if they now understood how damage functioned, the damage they had already taken did not recover.




Meanwhile, in order to maintain our design approach, we were designing enemy skills and levels so that very skilled players could "clear the game without taking a hit." However, as the game progressed into the mid to late stages and higher difficulty levels, we found that this was making it harder to maintain the game's uniqueness.

If “not taking a single attack” is considered normal gameplay, it becomes impossible to create enemies whose most significant feature is their unique attack patterns, as we diversify the types of enemies.

In response, we have made the following changes to the design approach.

• All player characters now have a separate stat called "Armor" in addition to their "Health”.
  
• "Armor" is deducted before "Health" when taking damage.
  
• "Armor" is fully restored at the end of a battle (Health damage accumulates permanently, as before).
  

With these changes, enemy attacks are still considered "dangerous." For example, the Knawer has an attack power of “5-7,” while Edwin has an “Armor” of 6 and “Health” of 9. This means that they will still be in critical condition after receiving about 3 attacks, just as before.

However, since “Armor” is fully restored at the end of a battle, unlike the previous system where even a single hit caused permanent damage, all characters can take damage equal to their “Armor” without any long-term consequences. In line with this change, the level design has also been adjusted so that in later stages, there is a higher likelihood of characters taking damage.

While watching play-testers after these changes were implemented, we noticed that they became more aware of how risky damage is, as they saw their “Armor” disappear in one go after the first attack. As a result, they adapted their play patterns by trying to eliminate all enemies or repositioning characters with the most “Armor” to take the hits.

Furthermore, a rule was implemented that critical hits do not occur if “Armor” is 1 or more, which applies to both enemies and allies. While enemy critical hits can sometimes feel unfair on the receiving end, you can now defend against taking them by ensuring someone with 1 or more “Armor” is the one defending the attack.



Reevaluating the core game systems was certainly challenging, but ultimately, it seems like we achieved both goals of "incorporating feedback as much as possible" while maintaining the intended gaming experience from the initial design.

There have been lots more changes and additions since STEAM NEXT FEST, and I look forward to telling you about them in future posts! Until then!

Thank you,
REMORE Staff

In our previous post, we introduced the revamped weapon modification system of Jorgn, the Blacksmith. The purpose of this system is to allow each character to use the same weapon in different ways according to their preferences and desired strategies.

Another element that can introduce further variables is the unique attribute system that was previously introduced in a Dev Note back in May.

Back then we only took a quick look, so today I would like to discuss in more detail how “unique attributes” and “modifications” come together to help create “unique distinctive weapons”, using some examples.



Unique attributes are closely linked to numerical values such as a weapon's durability, critical hit rate, damage range (min/max), and more. This increases the potential for a single weapon to have different modification trees and synergies.

For instance, the attribute "Blow for blow" increases the weapon's maximum damage by 1 for every 5 points of weapon durability consumed, providing an indirect damage boost effect to the "Increase Durability" modification. The attribute "Solid as a rock" increases the weapon's critical hit rate by 1% for every 1 point of durability, making it well-suited for modifications that enhance critical damage.

On the contrary, the attribute "No mercy" which increases the weapon's base damage by 2 when the current durability is less than 5, is significant when durability is low. Instead of reducing base damage and durability, it mitigates the penalty of the "Lightweight" modification which lowers the dual-wield weapon's WP cost from 2 to 1.

Alternatively, aiming for the "Indomitable Will" attribute that repairs durability by 3 with a 33% chance upon attacking when the weapon's durability is below 3, the goal could be to create a lightweight weapon with the ability to repair itself, allowing unrestricted use of lightweight weapons.

Additionally, there are also unique attributes to enhance synergy with specific character perk trees, separate from the weapon's modifications themselves.



“One step forward” restores Tactical Points (TP) by 2 with each attack when the weapon durability is 15 or more. When combined with Edwin's “Chain Support” (which eliminates the cooldown of “Support Attack” in exchange for consuming 5 TP) and “Controlled Breathing” (providing TP +2 with attacks while not moving), Edwin's ability to perform Support Attacks increases dramatically.

On the other hand, the “Caution” attribute decreases weapon critical hit rate by 40% and consumes 1 Weapon Point (WP) to automatically perform a basic weapon attack when caught. If this attribute is attached to a spear, Edwin can select the “Fancy Footwork” benefit (providing +1 maximum damage with each movement) and aim for spear charges against enemies.



By acquiring attributes like “Leech,” which causes bleeding on attack, or “Hornet sting,” which enhances damage when colliding with targets, unique play styles become possible. For instance, using a two-handed axe with “Hornet sting”, delivering “Horizontal Swing” to multiple enemies to inflict pain, then using a wooden rake or shovel to cause collision.

Moreover, you can choose synergies between unique attributes, such the “Tactical Action” attribute which consumes all Tactical Points instead of Weapon Points for attacks (TP), then recovering TP again with the “Take a breath” ability ('Restore TP by 4 when attacking if current WP is greater than current TP') after consuming all TP.

There are many, many synergies and combinations to discover but for now we will not spoil anymore and allow the player to discover them for themselves. After the game's release, we aim to expand these elements further to allow for emergent synergies that we may not have anticipated.

Currently we are busy organizing the collected feedback and preparing for the next version!
In upcoming posts, we will introduce new elements that have been added based on the feedback from STEAM NEXT FEST, in addition to the elements we were already preparing. See you then!

Thank you,
REMORE Staff