The Hand of Merlin News

This post is written by Mat, our gameplay designer.

Hello there!

Quick one today - we just wanted to share some of the alternate maps we recently finished, to spice up your combat scenarios as you go back, run after run. We introduced a few of those in Z1 a few months ago, and now we finally finished the rest of the zones. Now, every single map “concept” we have should now have 4 versions: Default, Default Corrupted, Alternate, and Alternate Corrupted.

Here are some screenshots:













That’s a lot of maps! What do you think? Any favorites? Let us know on our Discord server, and good luck out there!

Mat

Hello, everyone!

Versus Evil is turning 8! Can you believe it? Well, believe it because to celebrate we're having a sale on our awesome catalog of games!

Over these past 8 years, we've had the opportunity to help put out many fun and creative games. This year saw the release of Jumpala, Hitchhiker - A Mystery Game, and Sockventure, as well as Early Access releases for First Class Trouble, Almighty: Kill Your Gods, and The Hand of Merlin. Tomorrow sees the release of our latest addition, UnMetal!

UnMetal is a 2D stealth action-adventure that pays homage to the classics with a healthy dose of humor and satire. You play as Jesse Fox, who is definitely NOT an elite commando, under arrest for a crime he didn't commit, and must escape a covert military base using his wits and fists.

Sounds like fun, right? Check out UnMetal and the rest of our catalog for anything that may interest you!

To close, some thanks are in order...

Thank you to our developers who really give it their all to bring these games to life.

Thank you to our Heralds who are the best ambassadors we could ever hope for.

And, of course, thank you to our players who are the reason we continue to strive to put out the best games we possibly can. This has been one long, crazy journey, and we're glad you're all on it with us.

From all of us at Versus Evil, thank you for making these past 8 years great. Now, go score some deals!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203710/UnMetal/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1206600/Almighty_Kill_Your_Gods/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222340/Sockventure/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/888530/Yaga/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/904400/Cardpocalypse/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1003120/Hitchhiker__A_Mystery_Game/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1278190/Jumpala/

This post is written by Mat, our gameplay designer.

Hi there! Quick one today: I want to introduce another aspect of Hardmode, Curses and Blessings.

We alluded to this before, but we are considering hardmode to be an “ascension” mode of sorts. As you master its challenges, you’ll gain more and more essence, and there must be a place to spend it!

Here’s where the Blessings come in. Whenever you pick Hardmode, you are able to spend Essences to gain temporary benefits to that run. Some examples are Leylines, which increases your maximum mana, and Wealthy Endeavour, which makes your gold rewards larger. We are also preparing some interesting ones about mana or messing with the Grail!

Now, when we were first talking about this model, the idea of spending enough essence to make hardmode too easy rubbed us the wrong way. So we doubled down on the “Ascension mode” theme and added the Curses - negative modifiers that you can pick for the run. All fun things, like No Witnesses making corrupted fights yield less rewards, and Grievous Wounds increasing healing costs. Pretty nasty stuff. Each one of these modifiers has a number associated with it, that we call Doom Value.

Here’s the thing: if you want to spend, say, 3 essences in Blessings? You gotta pick enough Curses to match the Doom value to the cost, in this case at least 3 Doom. So it’s always kind of balanced, but you can pick which benefits you want to use to take on an ever increasing challenge.

the current state of the modifier selection segment, not all modifiers are in yet

That’s not all. We want to reinforce people moving up in Doom Value as they play, so the higher the Doom Value of a run, the more Essence it’ll reward you based on how far you went.

So we leave it to the player, you see. If you got essence to spend, do you want to give hardmode + doom value 3 a go? Alright, pick 3 points in Blessings, and pay up. Now, every boss battle you defeat, you gain more essences at the end!

There you go! Mia, one of our designers, is hard at work creating interesting curses and blessings to change up your gameplay, and offer the more hardcore among you an ever increasing challenge to measure up to!

Want to participate in the design of those modifiers? Join our Discord server and let Mia know what you’re thinking!

Mat

General fixes:
• Fixed a crash with gamepads when using R1/RB.
• Fixed an issue with gamepad controls where moving from tile picking back to actionbar didn't reset back to the skill that initiated the tile picking.
• Fixed an issue where ending gamepad drag in the relic shop to purchase a relic didn't restore the hover target to the destination slot.
• Fixed a crash on the map state when all heroes are lost.
• Fixed a few issues with misbehaving tooltips in the relic shop and blacksmith book chapters.
• Fixed "Feats of Strength" encounter which could lead to a page with no options available, halting progress.
• Measured Shooter (Salim's passive) should no longer unintentionally increase Damage-Over-Time effects.
• Fixed an error in the Agile status effect (associated with some relics), so that now it consistently grants action points as described.
• Fixed an error with Expurger (associated with an upgrade of Mystic's Raise Totem skill), where the heroes could poison themselves if they had the Holy Grail.
• Fixed several typos.

Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Gamepad Y/triangle button can now be used to show formulas in skirmishes.

Gameplay balancing:
• Redcap's Horror ability now deals just 1 stack of Stunned.
• Adjusted minion spawning by Pylons to bring them all closer to the same power level.

This post is written by Mat, our gameplay designer.

Hello! Wanted to share a bit more about our hard mode plans.

One of the early concepts of the game’s difficulty curve was to introduce “powered-up” versions of each abomination. Larger and meaner, these units would serve as the center focus of a match. In fact, the older players among you might notice that we do have such a unit in the game, the current Dire Thorntoad - a 2x2 version of Thorntoad, introduced in Marca Hispanica.

It serves an interesting purpose. It takes the place of the Behemoths as a “Major abomination”, and it's important to have some variation there, especially since we don’t introduce Lindworm, another abomination in the same category, until Al-Andalus.

But we want to further the concept. We’ll change the large toad’s name, and introduce new versions of each abomination in the game, called Dires. They’ll be far stronger versions, having more action points, less cooldowns, and unique passive effects, changing the challenges that each enemy presents. And, just for good measure, a bit more health and armor.

These Dires are planned as a Hardmode-only treat. Our current plan is for each corrupted fight in Hardmode to pick one of the enemies and “upgrade” them to their dire version, offering a somewhat randomized challenge for you to solve. Due to their nature, we are expecting each Dire to be your focus for most of the match, making each skirmish just a tiny bit different, a useful trait for our target audience for hardmode - the player that already mastered the game.

The Dires are also retextured, and Kaz has been consistently delivering interesting visual variations so you can know at a glance which of the Mandrakes is about to ruin your day!

We’re excited to show you what Hardmode (and metaprogression) is shaping up to be, and this is just one of the pieces. What do you think? Any particular ideas for how each Dire should behave? Drop in to our Discord server and let us know!

Mat