Wildermyth News

Hi guys! We've just released a huge update to our beta, which includes our first Villain, Ulstryx, as well as a whole weapons rework and a ton of other stuff. If you're into betas, check it out here.



This is part 2 of a series where I'll teach you how to write and implement your own "main story" for Wildermyth.

See Part 1 here (Note - if you completed Part 1 in an earlier patch, you might need to run through those steps again, since the tool chain has improved and the data structure has changed a bit. This stuff will stabilize over time! Contact me if you need help.)

Wildermyth is a mythmaking tactical RPG currently in beta. Our philosophy is to put as much storytelling power into your hands as possible, and part of that is exposing our tools so that you can craft your own stories inside the game.



That's our goal, anyway. The tools I'm going to show you today are under active development, but they work right now and they're only getting better. Some of this stuff is documented on the wiki, and some needs to be. If you decide to give this a shot, find me on Discord. We have a tools-and-modding channel just for this, and I'll be thrilled to answer your questions and help however I can.



You'll Need:
* Wildermyth Beta - get it here.
* Java (64 bit) in order to run the dev tools



For this article I'll be continuing to work on the Heart of the Forest campaign I sketched out in Part 1. Here's the outline again:

Introduction

• Intro Event: a rumor reaches town of strange beasts in the woods. Three friends decide to investigate.
  
• Fight: You find a shrine, and you're attacked by Thrixl. You learn they've been disrupting shrines.

Chapter 1

• Goal: Clear all hostile sites to unlock chapter one boss
  
• Fight: A forest guardian is slain, but you kill the thrixl responsible.
  
• Interval ~10 years pass
  

Chapter 2

• Omen: the woods are growing wilder and more angry, and the thrixl have returned in greater force. The heartseed has been stolen from the fallen guardian.
  
• Goal: Track the thrixl to a poisoned stream.
  
• Fight: The seed has been corrupted and planted at the source of the stream, poisoning the water. Kill thrixl and corrupted guardians.
  
• Victory: Over time the forest heals, yay!
  

We'll be working on the first fight, where the heroes are scouting in the woods and find a shrine desecrated by some weird creatures. Here's a little sketch of how I think I want the map to look:



For this fight, I want the heroes to approach the shrine in the center, and then get ambushed by Thrixl from the two sides. We'll create three comics, an arriveAtSite to set the scene, a midMission event to announce the ambush, and a victory to wrap it up.



Run scratchpad, go to Site Lab.



This is where we'll be spending most of our time. Site Lab is all about previewing and editing combat maps. Find the New Fight button in the upper-right hand corner.



And press it! Fill it in something like this. Keep all the checkboxes checked! They'll save us some legwork.



Go for it.

So, that created a whole bunch of stuff, here's the breakdown:

Mission Map: This is the map itself, it's always created, and it defines the terrain, visuals, and where to sprinkle random scenery, as well as defining spawn points and stuff for the plot to use. You can view the map in SiteLab.
Scenario: This is how we will test drive the fight from the main menu, without having to embed it into a campaign. You can take a look in the Scenarios Editor (Content Editor, Control+4)
Plot: The plot controls how the fight is run, when things spawn, what the objectives are, and little things like defeat and victory. You can view it in the PlotView but normally we'll work on it in SiteLab where it's displayed right below the Mission Plan.
Arrive Event: This is a comic event that can be called from the campaign, that will kick off this fight. You can view it in the Comics tab or Effects tab.
Mid-Mission Event: If we want something to happen in the middle of the mission, like an ambush, a discovery, whatever, it's fun to have the heroes talk about it with a mid mission event. It's optional but we'll be using it here.
Victory Event: The comic that will be played on victory. We generally don't bother making defeat comics to be honest, but you can, if you want mission defeat to be a viable story path. Usually it makes more sense to end the game if the player wipes on a plot mission.



This fight should actually work, just as it is, so let's take a look! To convince the game to show you the dev tools, you'll need to add a file called devMode.txt to your install folder, like this:



There doesn't have to be anything in the file, the name is all that matters. Now when you launch the game you should see an option called "New Battle." This is how we're gonna test our fight.



Find it in the list...



You should see the mid mission event play, and then the fight will start. The default roster is just one farmer, who probably definitely won't win this fight, so... When you're done let's head back to scratchpad and make some changes!

(Note - the Arrive event is not played when using the Battle menu, but it will be useful when we integrate our fight into the campaign later.)



Head back over to Site Lab, and use the Scenario dropdown in the upper right of the screen to find our map, like so:



Ok now this is the fun part! But Also I'm gonna be honest with you: this tool is maybe not what you were expecting.



So yeah. The way it works is, there's a grid of text that controls the individual tiles. Here's the (default) meanings of the characters:



Characters _not_ on this list can be used for spawn points or other purposes, as we'll see in a bit. Based on my sketch from earlier, I'm going to enter some data. I want the heroes to spawn at the bottom, so I'll put the '1' there, and I want the monsters to spawn in on the wings, so I'll put a '2' at each wing, like so:



(You can press New Seeds over on the right (Control+R) to see what it looks like and adjust as you go.)

Let's take a moment to fix the other problems with our fight - the monsters are the wrong group, and there's only one farmer on our side. Head over to the Scenarios tab (Control+4) and find our scenario in the second list:



We'll set the foe to Thrixl instead of Gorgons (Inhabitants -> 0 -> threat -> flavor), and we'll set calamities to 0 there as well.



Then expand the scenarioInfo at the top and define a roster for the scenario, like we did in part 1 for the campaign:



Save your changes (Control+S), and then head back to the Map view (Control+8) and refresh the map (New Seeds -> Control+R). If you don't save the scenario, the map view might not pick up your changes. Now you should see a warrior, hunter, and mystic, and thrixl spawning in the corners. Great!

Let's also set the biome to the forest, by setting the environment, like so:



Now, I want a focal point in the middle that they have to approach, and I also want to clear away some of the excess furniture, so I'll put some more marks on the map, like so:



The lowercase 'o' character just means "don't put scenery here," and you can find it in the legend to make sure. The 'ssss' is where we want the shrine to be, and the '3' is where we want the heroes to approach to investigate. You don't have to use 's' or '3', just check the legend, and use the same character in the next step, where we tell the map what to do with those locations.

First let's define the focal point. We'll create a piece of scenery where the ssss is, by adding a Map Detail. Click the New Detail button and choose MapDetail_SingleExactScenery.



for the location select New... TilesFromMap and set the mapInputCharacters to "s" (because we put some ssss on the map where we want the shrine to appear.) For the sceneryId, enter "shrineTreeTeal". (You can browse the sceneries in SceneryLab to learn what your other options are.) That should get your shrine spawning:



Hot! For my maps, I like to go a bit further, messing around with floor layers to create the impression of a path on the forest floor. You can see how this is done if you load some of the Ulstryx maps and poke around, there's a variety of different techniques available for map crafting. But for now let's get back to making it functional.



We want the mission to start out without any monsters, to give the player a chance to look around and get spooked out a bit. Then, once the player approaches the shrine, we want to play the midMission comic and spawn the monsters! To do that, we're going to add an objective to step in a certain region, and tell the plot to wait until that objective is complete, before playing the comic, etc..

Scroll down to the "Plot" section, and we'll add new Objective called Objective_EndTurnInRegion



Set the "region" to TilesFromMap and set the mapInputCharacters to "3" because we put some 3333 on the map for where we want the player to approach to investigate.

Now we need to add the objective, and we want to wait for it to complete before firing the event and spawning the monsters. We can do all of this by adding a new step, Step_WaitForObjectives. Add the "endTurnInRegion" objective to the list to wait for, and move the step upward so that it's just after Spawn Heroes. Make the mid mission event next, and the monster spawn after that, and leave the AddObjectives step last. Your plot should look like this:



Because steps operate in-order, the mission should go like this: set up, spawn the heroes, then wait for the heroes to approach the shrine. When they do, show a comic. Then spawn the monsters, and lastly, add an objective to kill them all. If the heroes succeed, play the victory event. Feel free to give it a spin in-game!



Let's hop over to to comics view and embellish our stories a bit. I'm going to move fast here because making comics isn't the point of this article, but you can read more about it here on the wiki.

I'll do a quick little arrive:



And a scene at the shrine:



And a victory scene:



One thing about the victory is, because any of the heroes might die in the fight, you might want to make most of the roles optional, or write a separate fallback event with fewer required roles, if you prefer. It shouldn't break the game if you don't, but it's nice to have stories that react to the actual in-game situation.



Now let's integrate our fight into the larger "Heart of the Forest" campaign we started in Part 1. In the Plots view (Control+0), find C_heartOfTheForest, and add a new Objective, Objective_AssaultJob.

Set the site to "otherSite", and set the arriveEvent to the arrive event we generated, something like "plot_hotf_1_1_shrine_arrive".

[24_assaultJob]

(If you're wondering where otherSite came from, check the MapConfig for chapter 0 to see how it's specified. You can specify whatever sites you want that way, and give them whatever roles you like.)

Then, create a Step_WaitForObjectives to wait for the Assault. Put it right before the start of chapter 1, like so:





Scout the tile, and assault it. You should see your Arrive event:



It worked!

So, now we've got a custom fight in our campaign, and honestly, stringing together custom fights is most of the work that goes into a villain (aside from writing comics, of course!) These are the core tools we use to build game content. Maybe next time we'll talk about building your own monster, or we can go into more depth on another topic if I get feedback in that direction. Thanks, and happy writing!

We call Wildermyth a "mythmaking RPG" because or philosophy is to put as much storytelling power into your hands as possible. Part of that is exposing our tools so that players can craft their own stories inside the game. Right now, we're in the middle of adding a rather large feature to the game, that we call "Villains." It's still a work in progress, but when it's complete, each time you start a new story, you'll select a "villain," which really just means a "main story" for that playthrough.

This means that on top of the regular procedural content, there will be a single story that connects the whole campaign together, that gives it meaning, that ties all the action together and punctuates it with stories and designed fights. (See this previous article for background on the what and why of Villains.)

Sound fun? I'm gonna teach you how to create your own "main story" for Wildermyth. If you can DM a game of Dungeons and Dragons, you can write your own Villain for Wildermyth.

That's our goal. The tools I'm going to show you today are under active development, but they work right now and they're only getting better. Some of this stuff is documented on the wiki, and some needs to be. If you decide to give this a shot, find me on Discord - I'll be thrilled to answer your questions and help however I can.

Ok let's get to it!





You'll Need:

• Wildermyth Beta - get it here
• Java (64 bit) in order to run the dev tools
  
• An idea for the story you want to tell!
  

Make a quick outline of what you want to happen in your story. We've learned that it's much easier if you have some idea of this upfront!

Wildermyth campaigns take place in a chapter structure, with intervals (years of peace) in between. Start by breaking your story down into a series of chapters, where each chapter has one (or two) big goal for the heroes. Then break it down further, event by event. Try to map out how many events you'll need to write.

For this series, I'll use a very simple 2-chapter story I'm calling "Heart of the Forest". Here's the outline:

Introduction
Intro Event: a rumor reaches town of strange beasts in the woods. Three friends decide to investigate.
Fight: You find a shrine, and you're attacked by Thrixl. You learn they've been disrupting shrines.
Chapter 1
Goal: Clear all hostile sites to unlock chapter one boss
Fight: A forest guardian is slain, but you kill the thrixl responsible.
Interval ~10 years pass
Omen: the woods are growing wilder and more angry, and the thrixl have returned in greater force. The heartseed has been stolen from the fallen guardian.
Chapter 2
Goal: Track the thrixl to a poisoned stream.
Fight: The seed has been corrupted and planted at the source of the stream, poisoning the water. Kill thrixl and corrupted guardians.
Victory: Over time the forest heals, yay!

This is a real simple story, but even so for this article we're not going to get into most of it. If you don't have a story in mind, just play along with this one! Once you've made a few comics you'll have a better understanding of what you can do with the medium.



Villains are intended to work as mods, so let's make a mod to put our files in. Then we can easily share it! Run scratchpad, go to the content Editor,



and click on the mods button in the upper-left corner.



The Mod Config dialog shows you which mods the Editor is loading.



In order to see your content, you need to create a mod and make sure it's selected. So, click New Mod and fill it in with your details.



That will create a folder inside your install directory, like this:



Everything for your villain should live inside here, so that you can give this folder to someone else and they can play. Make sure your mod is selected in the Mod Config dialog, and we should be ready to start!



Head over to the Scenarios view by using the editor dropdown or pressing Control+4.



Press the New Campaign Button in the upper left corner.



And fill in the details.



This creates the campaign scenario. The scenario will be accessible from the main menu under New Story. Take a look at the Map Config -- this object defines how the world map is generated. You can mess around with it a bit. We also checked the box to create a villain plot, so one was made for us. We'll take a look at that later.



The introduction to Heart of the Forest needs 3 events. The intro event sets the stage. Then the party scouts a tile and assaults it. The arrive event needs to establish the situation, and the victory event will wrap up the introduction. Writing events isn't the main focus of this post so I'm going to move a bit fast here, and just focus on the very first event.

From the Effects View (Control+2), press the New... button.

This opens up the new event dialog. We want a generic plot event, and go ahead and name it.

Alright. Press "Create" and take a look at what it made. This can be confusing, because there's a lot going on here. You might want to read up about creating comics on the wiki, but basically "targets" are individual entities that must be found in order of the event to work, and "outcomes" are what to do when the event happens.

I want the first intro event to have no choices, and just be the three friends deciding to go for a walk in the woods. So I'll delete the choiceTarget and create a new Description outcome, so it looks like this:



Then we can go over to Comics View (Control+1) to write the story.

I'll press New Story Role button to create a leader,



And then make 2 more story roles for greedy and bookish. Then I'll make a quick little intro story like this:



Ok... the comic tool is pretty sophisticated but I'm not going to get into it right now. You can check out the documentation and ask questions on discord. Please write a better story than this one ;-)

But first let's finish up here so we can make it show up in-game! Save all your work! (Control+S)



Over in Plots View (Control+0), you should be able to find your campaign plot. It will be called C_heartOfTheForest or something and should be listed under your mod. Click on it. There's nothing here yet, so let's add a New Step.



Pick StepC_BeginChapter. Set the chapter to Introduction.

Make one more step, this time a StepC_Event. Add our new plot event to the eventId list. (It's a list in case you need to define several fallback events.) You can search using the suggestions box, and when you have it, it should look like this:



Whoa, some error messages! That's super cool!

The error messages tell us that we need to inject roles in order for the event to work, so let's set that up. In the injectRoles list, click New Entry a couple times. We'll map from town to site, and from party to party. That should look like this:



What's going on here is that Plots keep track of a number of different roles, which can be defined or used in the steps and objectives. You can use those roles to fire events (here is some reference on how events use roles). There is validation to help with this, but the tooling and documentation is still a bit thin here, so for now let me just explain these particular roles.

The town roles is defined by the BeginChapter step, because there's a town added to the map in the introduction. Our event calls for a "site," so we map "town" to "site" and that's fine. The party role is from the roster that you'll roll when you start a new story....

Hmmm.... I forgot to set up the roster. Let's go back over to the scenario view, find our scenario, and expand the ScenarioInfo object. This object controls how the new game dialog shows the scenario. Let's define some roster slots. For simplicity I'll start with a greenhorn warrior, greenhorn hunter, and greenhorn mystic, like this:



Then I'll head back to Plots View and add StepC_Victory to the end of our plot.



This is a pretty simple plot. All it does is start the chapter, play a story, and then you win. Let's see if it works. Save your work (Control+S)!



Load up the game and hit New Story.



Super cool! If you're worried about the unlocalized text, we'll get to that in a later article. Right now the tooling is a bit awkward for it, but we'll get it fixed up some day. Roll a party and start the game. This is what I see:



And then Victory, and the credits roll. Rad!



We'll go just a bit farther today, so that we have a game and not just a tech demo. Back in the content editor, in the Plots View, let's delete the StepC_Victory and instead start chapter 1. Then we'll add some objectives.



Objectives can show up to the player, and they're also how we update things over time, test victory/defeat conditions, etc.. Choose Objective_ClearAllHostileSites. This objective is completed when the player clears all hostile sites (that aren't locked.) You may also want Objective_CampaignDefeat (which ends the game if all the heroes die or all towns or destroyed.) Finally, Objective_CampaignUpkeep manages things like hook quests, RP, and burying fallen heroes.

Just defining an objective doesn't activate it though, that's done in a Step. Use Step_AddObjectives to activate all three objectives after the start of chapter 1. This will start checking the objectives after chapter one is begun. Then add a Step_WaitForObjectives and specify to wait for Objective_ClearAllHostileSites. This will pause the plot script until all objectives are complete or failed.

Finally, add the StepC_Victory back in. It should look like this:





Save your work and check it out in-game. You should now have a story with an intro, three fights, and one wilderness event, that's backed up by all the regular procedural content. From here, you can add a victory event, embellish the story, or start exploring what else the plots can do!

Next time, we'll add an interval and maybe a custom fight! What would you like to see? Find me on Discord and let me know :-)

Hi guys, it's Annie, the Wildermyth artist! It's also summer. Which means in Texas (where Nate and I are), the heat is slowly getting heavier...



the kids are around more...



and development hours become scattered and precious.

But we're plugging along with some stuff that we're pretty excited about, and we hope other people will be too! Eventually. When we release it. Which—some of it will be soonish, some of it will be later this summer, and some of it might be a little closer to fall. But in lieu of actually being able to release the content, lemme post a check-in on how things are going!


While Nate and I are a little more constrained by our summer hours, others on the team have become whirling game-design dervishes (shout-out to our man Patrick here)! We've got a lot of combat clarity work happening, which means things like:

• New VFX for interfusion, hopefully making the process a lot more visually clear.
  
• A rework to "stunting," which used to be hard to understand and not satisfying. We've got some base changes to it, and more coming later (see below).
  
• Increasing visibility of threats & stuff on the overland map, so that you can become more accurately terrified of what your enemies are up to.
  
• More VFX/audio for things like flanking and shredding, upping that crunchy satisfaction factor.
  
• Remember that stat called "wield" on weapons? And you're like, "What is that anyway?" It's gonna be simpler and make more sense soon.
  
• Better balancing when it comes to getting recruits in events.
  

I've been in the Photoshop mines, crafting a bunch of new weapons for y'all. Like, a bunch. Like, I realized after doing all the math that I signed up for over 200 weapons, and what the hell is wrong with me.

This is my life now.

What we want to accomplish with Weapon Rework™ is this:

When you take a weapon up a tier, it feels like the same weapon, but cooler, as opposed to a totally different weapon.

But! And! Also!

We want room for fun weapon variation too, and that's where New And Improved Enchantments™ come in. Instead of giving you buffs against very specific monsters, enchantments are going to give a weapon a different visual "flavor" and a special effect on stunt (not just damage, but exciting other things like splash damage, refunding action points, and temporary HPs). So those all needed tiers too (multiplication is a harsh mistress).

The end result is that you get to feel like your weapon is more a part of your hero, since it can "scale up" with them, and you can customize the look of it more. Hopefully this also means that weapons can follow Legacy heroes a bit more than they currently do.

We're also thinking of a different way that you acquire (dare I say the word... "unlock?") these enchantments as well. Maybe creating some interesting incentives during missions!

I don't want to ruin the element of surprise here though. That wouldn't be in the spirit of the thing.


I know we've talked about our villains/over-arcing campaign stories before, and we're still chipping away at them. They're by far the biggest feature we've added to the game in the last couple years, so we're trying to take the time to get them right while making the whole system robust enough to be easily edited later (including support for players to eventually craft their own villains and campaign stories!!). We'd like to release two or three campaigns together initially, with more to come for the different monster groups, but we'll see what makes sense as we get closer to fall.

Doug has finished the writing/comics for a gripping tale of Gorgon menace, and is currently working on a mind-bending foray into the world of Thrixl. And I'm working on the script for a Morthagi mystery of muddled morality, though that's going a bit slower from down in the Photoshop mines these days.

Nate's implementing this Gorgon menace, and he's got some sweet map editor tools in a prototype-ish state, which means we can have more individually designed boss battles! (That's something we've really been feeling the lack of lately.) A lot of his programming infrastructure is done now, and it's a matter of just plugging everything in and crafting those custom encounters—including some exciting stuff we've never tried before with the Overland Map that will put additional time pressure on the heroes.


It kinda is! Our To-Do schedule boards are long. But it all happens one release at a time. We wish there were more hours in the day to do it all!

* * *

For those on Steam: You can get in on the Beta action over on itch.io, or if you prefer to wait for the Steam release later in the year, wishlist us for more updates as they come! We try to make them entertaining.

Hi! I'm Jackson, a designer and QA tester for Wildermyth. I'm gonna discuss how we've made some significant changes to help balance both individual battles and the campaign as a whole. I'll start by explaining the difficulties we were having and how fights weren't feeling challenging in the way we wanted.




So our difficulty settings are divided into two different categories. There's the Combat Difficulty, which affects base monster health, hero health, armor, and warding, among other things. Then there's Overland Difficulty. Overland Difficulty was having a much larger impact on Combat difficulty than we had anticipated. This was because the more infested tiles you had, the more cancleable calamities and incursions would occur. On the hardest difficulty, the number of enemies on calamities would start to increase exponentially. This meant that if you took too long playing a five chapter campaign, you could end up in these unwinnable scenarios where you're fighting six Gorgons at once.

Very Scary

Action Economy is one of the most important things to keep track of in a turn based RPG, and on the harder difficulties, the players would often see this economy being turned against them in the worst way. The player can only send 5 heroes at a time to a hostile site, while there's no real limit to how many enemies the player can face in a single encounter. As calamities increase, more monsters will be added to a single card and even though the same number of cards are being drawn every fight, there are just too many enemies to reasonably fight after a certain point.

The other issue with the way calamities were increasing in difficulty is that the real challenge of a particular fight all depended on where the fight took place. Some of the hardest fights in the game could be made trivial by doors and walls that the monsters couldn't bypass. Put the same number and type of monster in an a more open map and the heroes would have absolutely no chance.

The only way players could win these encounters was by using the monster's inability to destroy scenery against them. This led to combat being more about breaking the AI than tactical play, which isn't what we wanted.


So we had a bunch of ideas of how we could fix this, but we wanted to make sure the path we took would be what's best for the future of the game. We wanted to make changes that would not only fix the problem at hand, but give us more control over balance in the future.

Fewer Monsters per Card, More Cards per Combat
We didn't like how many campaigns could become extremely difficult even with a limited number of cards. We also didn't want certain monsters to be so prevalent in every fight. To solve this, we made it so most cards only have one monster on them. This means that a normal fight won't have the player coming up against a dozen Gheists at once. To keep difficulty up, we also decided to make it so a fight in Chapter 5 would draw more cards (creating more monsters to fight) than a fight in Chapter 1.

Even low level enemies can only have two or three units on one card now.

While solving the problem of overcrowding in fights, this also allows us a greater level of control when we balance difficulty levels. In the future we can have certain scenarios add more monster cards at the drop of a hat, and determine how many cards can be put into a single room. Another minor change we made keeps monsters from ever being alone in a room on a map like the tower. This is to keep heroes from burning through an otherwise difficult fight by picking off the monsters one by one.

Parties of More Than 3 Heroes Cannot be Ambushed
Infestations just weren't acting in an interesting way and would tend to drag out campaigns in a way that felt frustrating. We've changed it so only parties of 3 or fewer heroes can be ambushed on a tile with an infestation. We adjusted it so having a tile with an infestation on it increases the difficulty of the hostile site on or near that infestation. Heroes in groups of 3 or more can now spend time patrolling in an area to clear the infestation and reduce the difficulty of the hostile site. This gives players more choice in how they want to deal with obstacles. It might be faster to just go straight for the hostile site with your group of five heroes, but that fight's going to be a good deal harder.



More Calamities on Higher Difficulties
Once we changed ambushes, we needed to see more calamities on higher difficulties, so we made each fight on the hardest overland difficulty give out two calamities and instead of choosing from two calamities to cancel, the player chooses between four calamities. This keeps the game difficult, but gives the player more control in how the enemy improves. This also makes Legacy Points more valuable, which is what we've wanted for a while.

Chapter 1 looks pretty mean if you don't use Legacy Points to cancel some of these.

Having Lots of Heroes Means Recruiting Becomes Expensive
Legacy Points were also losing their value because players were just able to recruit too many heroes. If you played your cards right and got the right events, you could end up with 10 heroes by chapter five and still have more Legacy Points than you'd ever be able to use. We wanted to keep heroes valuable, while also making it possible to come back from rough fights in the first and second chapter. To do this, we created a scale, so the more heroes you have in your party, the more expensive it is to recruit more. We also added Legacy Point costs to recruits that came from certain events. This means that if you have 3 heroes, you'll be able to recruit more, even if legacy points are scarce.



Monsters Can Break Doors and Scenery
One of the most important parts of creating emergent gameplay, is ensuring that the enemies are able to participate in some form of counterplay. If the heroes have one ability that monsters are unable to defend against, the player will begin to only use that ability, and the game will quickly become stale. Monsters were unable to open doors and destroy scenery. This meant that larger monsters would quickly become trapped in their spawn locations, and if they didn't have a ranged attack, the heroes could just whittle them down while incurring little to no damage. It also meant that fights in an enclosed space, like the tower, became trivial. Heroes could just go room by room, clearing them out one at a time, and never having to worry about monsters in the other rooms.

We've changed it so all monsters can get through doors, either by opening them or by breaking them down. All monsters can now attack and destroy scenery as well. This should prevent the player from breaking the game, while also closing the difficulty gap between open maps and tower maps.

Monsters Can Alert Allies and No Longer Spawn Alone
The second part of giving monsters a chance on these sectioned off maps is allowing them to call for help. We added in Alarm as a free action for all monsters. The ability lets them alert all monsters within a 10 tile range or the heroes. The monsters in other rooms will then begin moving towards the heroes and a real sense of urgency is created.

Overall, we just wanted to make the difficulties feel more consistent, give monsters the opportunity of counterplay, and increase the tools we have to adjust balance in the future.

Thanks for reading! Please let us know what you think!

We had a great time at Dreamhack Dallas!



My favorite thing about the show was the chance to meet a bunch of passionate indie devs. We're all in this to make the games we want to play, and there's something really infectious about that passion.

steam page

It's always great to meet another husband-wife team, especially one that's so friendly, open, and passionate. The game is a love-letter to Final Fantasy Tactics, so while you're waiting for Wildermyth, definitely check it out!



Here's a picture I took with the devs :-P



steam page

Another papercraft tactical RPG, this one with an emphasis on user-generated content. Awesome!



I'm thinking, maybe we'll make a character exporter for Popup Dungeon? We won't do the full square ones, but the cutouts will totally work.

steam page

If you take procedural storytelling core of Wildermyth, and boil away everything that gets in the way, you end up with Alluris. Alluris is a pure and simple choice-driven procedural RPG, and it's gorgeous. Another family-powered team!



website

I want this on my phone. A mobile-first turn based tactics game with a fun premise and a lovely art style. These guys are doing a lot of things right as far as I can tell, and were super friendly and open.



on facebook

This looks really cool. A throwback 2D in 3D JRPG, and you can tell instantly it's a passion project. It's still relatively early in development but there's a lot of love here.