[h5]Hello Runners!
It’s been some time since our last update and a lot has happened. Let's take a moment to review the news.
Let’s go![/h5]
[h5]Based on our latest estimations, we adjusted some of our date ranges. The most relevant points are:
- New playtests happening around September.
- The demo releasing between October and November.
- The Early Access launch happening in Q1 2025, after February’s Steam Next Fest.
1️⃣ Playtest Round: UI Redesign (Sep)*
2️⃣ Playtest Round: Map Exploration (Sep)*
3️⃣ Demo Launch (Oct-Nov)
4️⃣ Steam Next Fest (Feb 2025)
5️⃣ Early Access Release (Feb-Mar 2025)
6️⃣ 2nd Character Release: The Maker (TBD)[/h5]
Events 1 & 2 may occur simultaneously or separately; this is yet to be determined.
[h5]This year’s Latin American Games Showcase was part of the Summer Game Fest’s official schedule. It was the biggest edition to date, co-broadcasted, and covered by all the main gaming media outlets.
We premiered our latest trailer during the show with a 2-minute deep-dive segment. This brought the game a ton of attention, and we saw a fantastic boost in our wishlist count, which injected us with renewed energy!
You can see the segment below 👇[/h5]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h5]As part of our work for the new trailer, we also decided to update our main game art. We believe the new image aligns better with how the game will look in its new iteration once we release the UI redesign update. Considering the full game will have 5 distinct characters, we decided to create a yet-undefined character for the main art instead of tying it to Ursa, our first character.
Below you can see part of the process of creating the new capsule, done by our extremely talented artist Joi.[/h5]
[h5]We are very proud to show you the new designs for the Combat and Decks screens! Let’s compare them and go over some details about the team's decisions.[/h5]
*The new image is missing the background + enemy, don’t worry, they will be there.[h5]
We dropped the “helmet” effect. It wasn’t adding that much to the immersion we were looking for and was generating visual artifacts, motion-illness, readability, and resolution issues. We decided to re-focus on our early ideas of retro-futuristic interfaces, brightness saturation, and grain filters.
We decided to go a lot more minimalistic regarding health and VIM bars. We also ditched the status effects icons in exchange for abbreviated and color-coded words to add to the “terminal/console” style.
We noticed that we were not giving enough spotlight to one of our most unique mechanics, the VIM and Commands system. By making it look so similar to the Integrity bar and putting the commands as small icons, they usually got overlooked.
Now, the VIM is a central piece of the UI (quite literally!), and the Commands now have a unique design with different states and animations depending on the context.
From dragging and dropping issues to the fact that it didn’t quite feel “hackery” enough, we decided to change the card fan to a straight display of the Runner’s hand of cards. We believe the new look aligns better with the overall linework of the UI and the responsiveness has been improved considerably.
We received a lot of feedback asking for a way to keep track of what happened during the enemy’s turn, a “Battle Log” of sorts. Well, we had that in the plans for quite some time, and now we believe we nailed the way to make it work.
We created a “Terminal” that will not only let you know what happened and show a historical log of actions but also contextual information about many other things happening during combat. It also allows us to trigger immersive and flavorful text fragments to add to the overall experience.
You will be able to trigger actions and discover Easter eggs and secrets directly by prompting the terminal. On top of all that, it also looks sleek and retro AF!
We made changes to how we show the enemy’s intention during your turn. Now, you’ll see a step-by-step breakdown of what the enemy will do during its turn.[/h5]
[h5]
The console is your best friend in The Grid, and as such, it will try to show you as much useful information as it can. Keeping that in mind, we added a new widget to the deck view that lets you quickly check the distribution of card types within the deck. This is essential when planning the turn sequencing and trying to foresee upcoming draws.
It also shows information about keywords on the currently selected/hovered card.
We made big improvements to how selecting and highlighting cards in the different deck views work. We also reworked how tooltips are shown on screens where the side widget is not used.
[/h5]
The redesign also covers the map screens, which we will be revealing soon in a separate post. What we can spoil for now is that it will not be a hexagonal grid!
Mechanically it will work as described in our
previous article.
[h5]As a studio, we are proud to implement user research and playtest methodologies to support decisions that can make our games their best possible versions.
Many of the decisions detailed above come from watching and surveying players, and we want to thank all of you who participated from the bottom of our hearts.
Knowing that there are people out there playing and devoting time to expressing their opinions about our game is a feeling that we can’t even describe, and it means the world to us!
During these tests, we received more than 300 survey replies from over 3000 unique players; we interviewed and reviewed recorded playthroughs of dozens of people, and more than 100 new members joined our Discord to chat with us live and share their thoughts.
It’s our commitment to keep working this way and to make you all part of this journey of creating the best game possible.
All these new things we mentioned in this update will be up for you all to test soon ;)[/h5]
[h5]In case you don’t know, every week, we release a new piece of lore about the universe where the game takes place.
It’s one of the many ways in which we show the passion we’re putting into this project and how we envision something much bigger than just a game.
We already have 20 entries you can read on
our website, split between
The Runners,
The Corporations, and
Into The Grid’s Short Stories.
Go give them a look; we think you will love them![/h5]
[h5]This covers pretty much everything that’s going on (at least what we can show!) behind the scenes.
As always, don’t forget to join our Discord to chat live with the team and other fellow Runners!
See you in The Grid!
[/h5]
WIP - Subject to change.