Rogue Kingdoms News

Hi defenders!

We are approaching the release, expected for May 2025. We’ll also be participating in February’s Steam Next Fest.

Because of that, his update has been focused on quality of life. Not much more content but building up on what’s on there and polishing it.

[h3]Mastery Level / Unlocks[/h3]

• Every time you finish a run (win or lose), you'll gery Mastery Experience. With enough experience you'll level up. Every level up (up to 38) will unlock a relic, meaning you'll be able to encounter them during the run.
  
• The goal of the unlocks is to hide some of the more complex mechanics for advanced players. If you want to unlock everything right away, you'll be able to if you select the "Unlock All" toggle in settings.
  

[h3]Achievements[/h3]

• Created achievements: 13 for the demo, 38 for full release
  

[h3]Visuals[/h3]

• Game Over screen more clear and gamified.
  
• Maps 3, 4, 5 are now less bright, giving more importance to the character and towers.
  
• Also towers and heroes now have a shadow and a subtle brightness aura.
  
• Improved highlights when hovering on enemies or towers.
  
• When hovering on the hero, it will show the hero's area of attack.
  

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Wave Reward that gave resources over time now applies to the whole run instead of only the current map, and grants 5 resources / 6s.
  
• When you lose, you'll be able to repeat the same wave without starting over.
  
• Balanced probabilities of getting certain relics/skill upgrades.
  

[h3]Other[/h3]

• Steam Cloud Save enabled.
  
• Added credits page in main menu.
  

• We still have a roadmap ahead before the full release. Among others:
  
• Controller support
  
• Maps 4 and 5 fully balanced, including the 25 new enemies that can appear in there.
  
• More content: relics, skills,…
  
• Endless Mode
  
• Further polish and quality of life
  
• And more…
  

Hi defenders!

Last update of the year, featuring many quality of life improvements:

[h3]Maps:
[/h3]- More diverse, more crazy maps.
- New Curse added which adds 1-2 more paths to the map.

[h3]Towers:
[/h3]- New level 2 tower upgrade for all towers: Strong Projectile - damage x2. This gives more build versatility, so you can build pure damage not involving Status Effects applied.

[h3]Enemies Friendly Fire:
[/h3]- Enemies can now damage themselves or other enemies. Also some enemies like Shaman can heal other enemies of the same species if the attack hits them.
- Enemies in map 1-3 that can damage other enemies are: Ogre, Ogre Elite, Shaman.
- Updated enemy descriptions to reflect this

[h3]Quality of Life:
[/h3]- Now Relics and Skill Upgrades draw have rerolls.
- New mode during Character Select to select a random combination of Hero - Starting Relics.

[h3]Visuals:
[/h3]- Healing Tower only will show area when hovered
- When hover over Hero, the area of effect will show
- HP Bar is shown on top of the hero apart from the bottom HP bar.
- Improve highlighting of selected enemies or towers on hover.

[h3]Balance Changes:
[/h3]- Drops are now much more dependent on current build.
- Nerfed Archer's starting relic "Chaos Contagion". Before it added a random SE for each SE applied. Now it has a X% chance to do so.
- Nerfed Burst Mortar's Status Effect projectile. Before each projectile had 100 Status Effect Power. Now each will have 25.
- Boss has now more HP but there are less enemies to compensate for it.

[h3]Bosses:[/h3]
- 2 new bosses in map 3 replacing the previous ones: Dark Barbarian, Dark Archer.
- You'll get as a boss enemy the dark hero you are not playing.
- The boss will have a random weapon from the hero weapons pool
- The boss will have 2 skills: the 2 you don't pick when choosing skills in map 1 and map 2.

[h3]Difficulty and Map curses:[/h3]
- Removed previous Difficulty settings.
- Now you can choose 5 different difficulty modes. Depending on which one you choose, you'll get 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 curses in each map.
- If difficulty is higher than "Normal", every map will have curses. In the first map you'll not be able to choose what curses it has, but in the rest it will be a deciding factor for what map to defend.
- Existing Curses can be (for now):
- Enemies have more HP
- Enemies deal more damage
- Enemies have higher movement speed
- Waves spawn more Enemies
- Hero gets less HP Regeneration
- You get less building spots
- You get less drawing aid
- Reduced resources collected
- Shop prices are higher (next shop)
- Reroll prices are higher

[h3]Quality of Life / Miscellaneous[/h3]
- Now when choosing a map to defend there are 3 options.
- Enemies now are less cluttered, improving visuals and clarity
- Added many accessibility, graphics and quality of life settings
- Added speed time current times indicators.
- Added a mark to see where is the hero
- Changed wave rewards art
- Added a map and curses tutorial.

• Now SE can be stacked, and each stack will have the same intensity independently of the source. Stacks can go up to a maximum of 20.
  
• SE Power now only determines how many stacks to apply. Every 100 power will apply 1 stack, and the remaining is the chance for an extra stack. For example, 340 power will apply 3 stacks as a base, and 40% chance of being 4 stacks.
  
• Removed relics that allowed to stack SE from multiple sources
  
• Added many other relics related to SE. Some that provide extra effects/mechanics when reach 5-10-20 stacks of an element.
  

• The new hero is an Archer, specialised in ranged attacks. She has half the HP of the barbarian, but can keep the distance to enemies.
  
• The hero has 6 new weapons she can use: bow, crossbow, longbow, shield bow, throwing axes, throwing knives, all with different stats and purposes.
  
• Also 3 new starting relics
  

Created new skill: "Summon Valkyries". Very similar to Summon Barbarian, but now it's valkyries, yes. Valkyries have higher HP and armor but lower attack damage.

• Now Barbarians throw axes from a distance instead of melee attacking. Their HP has been reduced.
  
• Now skill upgrades for "Summon Valkyries" and "Summon Barbarian" only apply to summons from the corresponding skill. And any relic upgrade will apply to ALL summons unless specified.
  
• Introduced many other summon mechanics after events (eg when reach 10 Poison Stacks, when killing with a crit,...)
  

• More than 100 relics or skill upgrades introduced or reworked.
  
• Heal towers for now are free, making them more viable. In the future they might also grant boosts.
  
• Improved movement feel when moving and targeting with mouse click.
  

• Rework Boss map 3
  
• Quality of Life
  
• Add more options to personalise in Settings
  
• Reduce enemy cluttering and improve visuals
  
• New Hero Skills
  
• Lore, dialogues
  
• Quests, Achievements, Unlockable content
  
• And more.
  

Check our new trailer:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Balance & Progress Update:
[/h2]- Traits are no longer obtained on level up
- Traits are more difficult to obtain now but have x2 value
- Manu skill related Relics are now Skill Upgrades
- After beating a level you move to a transition map where you can visit the store (as many times as you want) and choose the next map.
- When choosing the next map to battle you get more information about enemies per wave and you can choose what reward you'll get for starting the battle.
- New weapon introduced: shield claws, which grant heavy armor. Now the spear doesn't grant armor, but gives high attack speed as well as the biggest range.
- Sword Beam has been massively reworked. Now it takes some time to charge but its damage is much more powerful.

[h2]QoL:[/h2]
- ESC now closes (almost?) all menus
- Added extra tooltips to explain key words introduced in a main tooltip.
- Wave progress % bar to see how many pending enemies to spawn.
- Castle symbol before the castle tile.
- Now you will see from where each enemy will spawn in the wave.
- Speed and slow time with a button.

[h2]Visual Effects:[/h2]
Skills and Upgrades:
- All skills base effect has been reworked.
- All skill upgrades now have a clear visual effect in gameplay

Towers:
- Changed design of lvl1 and lvl 2 Archer towers, now easier to differentiate. Lvl 2 you can choose from Dwarf Tower and Elf Tower.
- Lvl 2 mortars have unique attack patterns. Burst mortar shoots 4 stones.
- Lvl 3 towers have now unique elemental designs
- Lvl 4 berserker towers have improved aura
- Lvl 4 double cannon towers show unique designs
- Towers have now a unique projectile trail and curve.

Enemies:
- Necromancers have now improved summon animations
- Some enemies have now an attack indicator, to facilitate dodge: Ogre, Skeleton Brute, Demon Skeleton, Skeleton Archer, Kamikazes, Ogre Elite
- 2 new enemies introduced: Orc Shaman (casts AoE spells), Orc Archer (shoots 3 arrows in a cone)

[h2]Others:[/h2]
- Game has been optimised, weights less, loads faster and will run smoother.
- Many sounds added to the game. Sound volume balanced.

And many other, discover them yourself!