Early Access Dev Log 01
Welcome to the first of the weekly development updates that we’ll be posting throughout the Early Access period. In these updates, we share our current plans for the game as well as preview work in progress.
[h3]THE GAME IS IN EARLY ACCESS – FINALLY![/h3]
After some challenging development episodes, Spire of Sorcery is finally in Early Access. We’ve got some backslash from people who still want us to go back in time to 2019 and develop a different kind of game, which is unpleasant but unsurprising. ːweatherː
Friends at one studio got bad reviews for changing the color of a character in one of their games, friends at another studio keep getting bad reviews for not supporting a specific language with localization, and we ourselves got a ton of bad reviews with our first game back in 2015 for lack of tutorial and lack of save game option. It happens! Our development focus is on making the people who like the game's concept happier, by further developing the strong parts of this project. ːloot_sackː
[h3]GREAT FEEDBACK![/h3]
Thanks to everyone who played the Early Access version game and left detailed comments as a review or a forum post already: this helps a lot. Reading these messages, we’re seeing the game from the outside, gaining a different insight into how it’s being played. This is very valuable in helping us improve the game. We mean it when we say that the few detailed comments and a few encouraging posts will play a major role in making Spire of Sorcery better and faster. ːmagic_sparklesː
[h3]MUCH LOVE TO THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE SUPPORTER DLC[/h3]
The Supporter DLC is really a way for players to send their encouragement to our team, directly to our hearts. When someone buys it, it gives us a clear message that we’re making someone happy – and it motivates us to improve the game more, and more. Thanks to nearly a hundred of new supporters, we feel loved ːhypnoheartː. And we already came up with the idea for another special item of the initial party that will ship with the next update: it will provide useful encounter effect, as well as affect the visual appearance of its owner.
[h3]NEXT UPDATE: WHEN?[/h3]
We fixed nearly all tech issues with the two post-release hotfixes already, and now the next update is going to happen around ːspellcastingː November 20 ːspellcastingː. The scope of that update is quite significant, and we’ll be keeping a very tight focus so that we deliver the most improvement where it matters the most.
[h3]GENERAL THOUGHTS ON PRIORITIES[/h3]
Here’s the list of things that we agree on:
ːalchemic_potionː More control at the Mulligan stage
We’ll give more insight into characters at the Mulligan stage. We’ll reveal all stats as well as all the traits, and the special power of each character. Which is related to the next topic.
ːalchemic_potionː Better balance for personal traits
A part of the reason for why some players wanted to re-roll the initial party is that a few traits are over-powered right now, including those related to cooking and concocting. We’ll be removing some of the traits completely (e.g. “concoct x2 substances”) and fine-tuning the rest with a formula that balances “good” and “bad”, to remove imbalanced options.
At this morning’s meeting we listed about 60 traits that we’ll roll in, and which won’t be too strong either positively or negatively. We’ll be working on replacing the current pool with this updated pool in time for the November update.
ːalchemic_potionː Mood traits to be replaced/complimented by special powers
Some of the current positive mood traits are way too strong, such as lower cost of action, and will be removed. And in general, we’ll be replacing the positive mood trait system with the system of special powers. The current design is that upon reaching positive mood state, each character will gain access to 1 extra action that can be activated (at a cost) during encounter, such as negating all environmental effects or during discard drawing the 3 specific elements that you want instead of the random ones.
As to negative mood traits, they will transition from 3 stages into 1 stage. Such as having, instead of 3 elements in hand, only 2 elements. We feel like 3 stages for positive and negative mood traits is too restrictive for what we can design there.
ːalchemic_potionː Fatigue and endurance to go away, mana to come in
The system of fatigue and endurance bordered on too complex, and when we watched new players try it, we understood that we need a more intuitive system. We already started to work on removing fatigue and endurance, which will be replaced by a mana pool that a mage spends on encounter actions. This will reduce the number of encounters as you’ll need to choose where to engage, and where not to. It will be a value (e.g. “120”) rather than a stat bar.
ːalchemic_potionː Preview of deck sequence
A small QoL feature that will enable longer tactical plans: we plan to preview the next 12-16 elements in everyone’s deck, in a sequence, during encounters. This will provide more context for which spells you can assemble faster, and which elements you can count on in the nearest future.
ːalchemic_potionː Replaynig with the same party: evacuation to the Spire
Currently, if you fail in one of the chapters, you will probably replay from an earlier save or restart the campaign with a new party.
We’d like to change this to allow you to evacuate your party to the Spire, heal the wounded / resurrect the dead, and return to the same chapter for another try.
ːalchemic_potionː Arenas
We’ll explore the idea of adding now, rather than later, a few arenas that would be small maps, with a central drop/extraction point (cairn), that will be generated with a high degree of randomness, and will be full of resources, opponents, and locations. These will become available for repeated visits to harvest resources and improve skills, along the line of new chapters becoming available.
ːalchemic_potionː Blindness and Entanglement active states
A small thing, but it matters: we currently show active blindness and entanglement with a small icon on character portrait, and it’s easy to miss that. We’ll change visually the whole action area of a character to make sure it’s obvious that the mage is affected.
ːalchemic_potionː More music, more animations
We’ve got at least 2 new tracks in the works, and a dozen of new sound effects. We’ll be also working on animations for more spells, and creatures.
ːalchemic_potionː Updated introduction texts
In the rush to polish the core loop, we didn’t pay much attention to the introduction texts. We’re editing them now, and creating custom illustrations for the early story.
ːalchemic_potionː Skip animation/compressed timing
We'll be also working on streamlining the flow of animations for complex scenarios, e.g. cast a spell – see it fly – see token animation – see outcome animation – see essences and loot issued. There are certain gaps in the timing that can be compressed, to show the same thing faster. Plus we'll look into the option to have a "skip animations" setting.
[h3]WHAT NOW?[/h3]
We’ll keep posting development updates weekly, and next Thursday we’ll report on the specific issues that the team’s working on. About 1 week prior to November 20, we’ll make the beta version of the updated build available on the special branch on Steam.
[h3]PLAYTHROUGHS FOR CHAPTERS 1 AND 2[/h3]
If you’re curious about what the regular playthrough of the game looks like, below is Chapter 1 (English) and Chapter 2 (Russian) for your viewing pleasure:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]ONE MORE THING[/h3]
Today we updated the DEMO of the game to the latest version. It now includes all the recent changes, including the Spire itself – which is available at the end of Chapter 1. If you haven’t heard the music track that plays at the Spire, we think a re-play is worth it alone.
---
That’s it for now. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement, and we look forward to more comments and discussions as we present more details of the changes that the November update will introduce.
And if you haven’t reviewed the game, please consider writing a few words that summarize your experience – it helps a lot! ːnotebookː
/ Team CO /
[h3]THE GAME IS IN EARLY ACCESS – FINALLY![/h3]
After some challenging development episodes, Spire of Sorcery is finally in Early Access. We’ve got some backslash from people who still want us to go back in time to 2019 and develop a different kind of game, which is unpleasant but unsurprising. ːweatherː
Friends at one studio got bad reviews for changing the color of a character in one of their games, friends at another studio keep getting bad reviews for not supporting a specific language with localization, and we ourselves got a ton of bad reviews with our first game back in 2015 for lack of tutorial and lack of save game option. It happens! Our development focus is on making the people who like the game's concept happier, by further developing the strong parts of this project. ːloot_sackː
[h3]GREAT FEEDBACK![/h3]
Thanks to everyone who played the Early Access version game and left detailed comments as a review or a forum post already: this helps a lot. Reading these messages, we’re seeing the game from the outside, gaining a different insight into how it’s being played. This is very valuable in helping us improve the game. We mean it when we say that the few detailed comments and a few encouraging posts will play a major role in making Spire of Sorcery better and faster. ːmagic_sparklesː
[h3]MUCH LOVE TO THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE SUPPORTER DLC[/h3]
The Supporter DLC is really a way for players to send their encouragement to our team, directly to our hearts. When someone buys it, it gives us a clear message that we’re making someone happy – and it motivates us to improve the game more, and more. Thanks to nearly a hundred of new supporters, we feel loved ːhypnoheartː. And we already came up with the idea for another special item of the initial party that will ship with the next update: it will provide useful encounter effect, as well as affect the visual appearance of its owner.
[h3]NEXT UPDATE: WHEN?[/h3]
We fixed nearly all tech issues with the two post-release hotfixes already, and now the next update is going to happen around ːspellcastingː November 20 ːspellcastingː. The scope of that update is quite significant, and we’ll be keeping a very tight focus so that we deliver the most improvement where it matters the most.
[h3]GENERAL THOUGHTS ON PRIORITIES[/h3]
Here’s the list of things that we agree on:
ːalchemic_potionː More control at the Mulligan stage
We’ll give more insight into characters at the Mulligan stage. We’ll reveal all stats as well as all the traits, and the special power of each character. Which is related to the next topic.
ːalchemic_potionː Better balance for personal traits
A part of the reason for why some players wanted to re-roll the initial party is that a few traits are over-powered right now, including those related to cooking and concocting. We’ll be removing some of the traits completely (e.g. “concoct x2 substances”) and fine-tuning the rest with a formula that balances “good” and “bad”, to remove imbalanced options.
At this morning’s meeting we listed about 60 traits that we’ll roll in, and which won’t be too strong either positively or negatively. We’ll be working on replacing the current pool with this updated pool in time for the November update.
ːalchemic_potionː Mood traits to be replaced/complimented by special powers
Some of the current positive mood traits are way too strong, such as lower cost of action, and will be removed. And in general, we’ll be replacing the positive mood trait system with the system of special powers. The current design is that upon reaching positive mood state, each character will gain access to 1 extra action that can be activated (at a cost) during encounter, such as negating all environmental effects or during discard drawing the 3 specific elements that you want instead of the random ones.
As to negative mood traits, they will transition from 3 stages into 1 stage. Such as having, instead of 3 elements in hand, only 2 elements. We feel like 3 stages for positive and negative mood traits is too restrictive for what we can design there.
ːalchemic_potionː Fatigue and endurance to go away, mana to come in
The system of fatigue and endurance bordered on too complex, and when we watched new players try it, we understood that we need a more intuitive system. We already started to work on removing fatigue and endurance, which will be replaced by a mana pool that a mage spends on encounter actions. This will reduce the number of encounters as you’ll need to choose where to engage, and where not to. It will be a value (e.g. “120”) rather than a stat bar.
ːalchemic_potionː Preview of deck sequence
A small QoL feature that will enable longer tactical plans: we plan to preview the next 12-16 elements in everyone’s deck, in a sequence, during encounters. This will provide more context for which spells you can assemble faster, and which elements you can count on in the nearest future.
ːalchemic_potionː Replaynig with the same party: evacuation to the Spire
Currently, if you fail in one of the chapters, you will probably replay from an earlier save or restart the campaign with a new party.
We’d like to change this to allow you to evacuate your party to the Spire, heal the wounded / resurrect the dead, and return to the same chapter for another try.
ːalchemic_potionː Arenas
We’ll explore the idea of adding now, rather than later, a few arenas that would be small maps, with a central drop/extraction point (cairn), that will be generated with a high degree of randomness, and will be full of resources, opponents, and locations. These will become available for repeated visits to harvest resources and improve skills, along the line of new chapters becoming available.
ːalchemic_potionː Blindness and Entanglement active states
A small thing, but it matters: we currently show active blindness and entanglement with a small icon on character portrait, and it’s easy to miss that. We’ll change visually the whole action area of a character to make sure it’s obvious that the mage is affected.
ːalchemic_potionː More music, more animations
We’ve got at least 2 new tracks in the works, and a dozen of new sound effects. We’ll be also working on animations for more spells, and creatures.
ːalchemic_potionː Updated introduction texts
In the rush to polish the core loop, we didn’t pay much attention to the introduction texts. We’re editing them now, and creating custom illustrations for the early story.
ːalchemic_potionː Skip animation/compressed timing
We'll be also working on streamlining the flow of animations for complex scenarios, e.g. cast a spell – see it fly – see token animation – see outcome animation – see essences and loot issued. There are certain gaps in the timing that can be compressed, to show the same thing faster. Plus we'll look into the option to have a "skip animations" setting.
[h3]WHAT NOW?[/h3]
We’ll keep posting development updates weekly, and next Thursday we’ll report on the specific issues that the team’s working on. About 1 week prior to November 20, we’ll make the beta version of the updated build available on the special branch on Steam.
[h3]PLAYTHROUGHS FOR CHAPTERS 1 AND 2[/h3]
If you’re curious about what the regular playthrough of the game looks like, below is Chapter 1 (English) and Chapter 2 (Russian) for your viewing pleasure:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]ONE MORE THING[/h3]
Today we updated the DEMO of the game to the latest version. It now includes all the recent changes, including the Spire itself – which is available at the end of Chapter 1. If you haven’t heard the music track that plays at the Spire, we think a re-play is worth it alone.
---
That’s it for now. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement, and we look forward to more comments and discussions as we present more details of the changes that the November update will introduce.
And if you haven’t reviewed the game, please consider writing a few words that summarize your experience – it helps a lot! ːnotebookː
/ Team CO /