Looking Ahead 2022
Hello everyone! We are currently working on our next update that we hope to have ready by the end of January of next year. Among the features that will be added are:
- Divine and Nature Cults
- A new monster
- (Rare Landmark) Hallowed Grounds
- (Rare Landmark) Legendary Forge
- (Rare Event) Villager Beast Pens
- (Rare Event) Villager Arrow and Lightning Towers
- (Rare Event) Wyvern Tamers
- (Rare Event) Obsession
- Enhanced Stalker Class
- Mages can Polymorph
We'll give out more details about the update when it arrives.
As we go into the new year we'd like to provide some general idea of our major plans for the upcoming year. Keep in mind that things may change over the course of development but at this point in time, here are some of what we intend to do in 2022:
Our biggest priority before exiting Early Access is to make each session as engaging as possible. We feel this would be done best by introducing many more interesting events that the player can influence and varied challenges that the player must overcome. Thus, the bulk of next updates will introduce more content that will shake things up a bit.
We still have some uninteresting Spells (Brimstones, Locust Swarm, etc) that could be tweaked a bit to make them more fun and useful. We will also start balancing and tweaking player progression while introducing a few more player Powers to round out the Archetypes further. Expect more dangerous Villager Traits as well to balance things out. Ex: Villagers that lock Powers used on them until you kill them, Villagers that cannot be Seized or Snatched, etc.
Currently, there aren't a lot of exciting Villager reactions to Intel. We want to improve on this. It is a tough issue to resolve because there should be different reactions to a single piece of Intel depending on the Villager's relationships, traits and status. It's not very efficient to manually handcraft reactions for each possible situation but making a holistic system that would tell Villagers to make major and logical reactions is a really big challenge. This is still something we're trying to figure out how best to approach.
We intend to make the game have more roguelike aspects by tweaking our progression. Instead of getting permanent Powers only from your chosen Archetypes, we are considering also giving limited access to Powers from other Archetypes. Let's say you're a Puppetmaster and you unlock Portal Level 2. You will then learn 2 random Tier 2 Puppetmaster Powers, and then you will be given a choice to unlock one from 3 choices: a random Tier 2 Puppetmaster Power, a random Tier 2 Lich Power, a random Tier 2 Ravager Power. You will have this choice probably 3 times. It's still a rough idea that requires internal playtesting first but the intention is to allow players to adapt to the current game situation and also to make each playthrough more different.
We're already slowly working on this in the background. Once available, this should allow players to share seeds of interesting game worlds.
One of the game's aspects that we have severely lagged behind. We are currently in early talks with a Sound Designer to address this but he will only be available around Feb so this may take some time before it gets improved.
Another aspect we're already prepping for. We're still waiting to include more content before actually passing the language files over to translators to reduce revisions. We expect this to start around May 2022 and will all be ready by the time we exit Early Access.
We are targeting August or September 2022 for our V1.0! This isn't the complete end of development though. Please note that this simply means that we are confident that it is in a really playable, fun and stable state. We will still continue to release free updates the game for awhile even after V1.0. At this point, we've decided that we do not intend to release any DLCs.
We actually do not have any experience implementing modding but the devs are starting to study it. We still have a lot of things we intend to introduce before our target V1.0 launch period so we expect to introduce Modding as an update right after V1.0. We hope this is acceptable timetable for everyone.
It's tough to think of how to bring back scenarios given that we would want the main sandbox game to also be able to generate any interesting scenarios we think of. But if it can be encountered in the main game, then it's usually just a matter of sharing the Seed - rendering handcrafted scenarios redundant. Perhaps we will go along a sort-of special challenge route where there is a specific goal you have to accomplish in a limited time using limited resources.
- Divine and Nature Cults
- A new monster
- (Rare Landmark) Hallowed Grounds
- (Rare Landmark) Legendary Forge
- (Rare Event) Villager Beast Pens
- (Rare Event) Villager Arrow and Lightning Towers
- (Rare Event) Wyvern Tamers
- (Rare Event) Obsession
- Enhanced Stalker Class
- Mages can Polymorph
We'll give out more details about the update when it arrives.
As we go into the new year we'd like to provide some general idea of our major plans for the upcoming year. Keep in mind that things may change over the course of development but at this point in time, here are some of what we intend to do in 2022:
More Random Events
Our biggest priority before exiting Early Access is to make each session as engaging as possible. We feel this would be done best by introducing many more interesting events that the player can influence and varied challenges that the player must overcome. Thus, the bulk of next updates will introduce more content that will shake things up a bit.
Player Abilities
We still have some uninteresting Spells (Brimstones, Locust Swarm, etc) that could be tweaked a bit to make them more fun and useful. We will also start balancing and tweaking player progression while introducing a few more player Powers to round out the Archetypes further. Expect more dangerous Villager Traits as well to balance things out. Ex: Villagers that lock Powers used on them until you kill them, Villagers that cannot be Seized or Snatched, etc.
Improved Intel
Currently, there aren't a lot of exciting Villager reactions to Intel. We want to improve on this. It is a tough issue to resolve because there should be different reactions to a single piece of Intel depending on the Villager's relationships, traits and status. It's not very efficient to manually handcraft reactions for each possible situation but making a holistic system that would tell Villagers to make major and logical reactions is a really big challenge. This is still something we're trying to figure out how best to approach.
Archetype Tweaks
We intend to make the game have more roguelike aspects by tweaking our progression. Instead of getting permanent Powers only from your chosen Archetypes, we are considering also giving limited access to Powers from other Archetypes. Let's say you're a Puppetmaster and you unlock Portal Level 2. You will then learn 2 random Tier 2 Puppetmaster Powers, and then you will be given a choice to unlock one from 3 choices: a random Tier 2 Puppetmaster Power, a random Tier 2 Lich Power, a random Tier 2 Ravager Power. You will have this choice probably 3 times. It's still a rough idea that requires internal playtesting first but the intention is to allow players to adapt to the current game situation and also to make each playthrough more different.
World Seed
We're already slowly working on this in the background. Once available, this should allow players to share seeds of interesting game worlds.
Sound Effects
One of the game's aspects that we have severely lagged behind. We are currently in early talks with a Sound Designer to address this but he will only be available around Feb so this may take some time before it gets improved.
Localization
Another aspect we're already prepping for. We're still waiting to include more content before actually passing the language files over to translators to reduce revisions. We expect this to start around May 2022 and will all be ready by the time we exit Early Access.
V1.0
We are targeting August or September 2022 for our V1.0! This isn't the complete end of development though. Please note that this simply means that we are confident that it is in a really playable, fun and stable state. We will still continue to release free updates the game for awhile even after V1.0. At this point, we've decided that we do not intend to release any DLCs.
Modding
We actually do not have any experience implementing modding but the devs are starting to study it. We still have a lot of things we intend to introduce before our target V1.0 launch period so we expect to introduce Modding as an update right after V1.0. We hope this is acceptable timetable for everyone.
About Scenarios
It's tough to think of how to bring back scenarios given that we would want the main sandbox game to also be able to generate any interesting scenarios we think of. But if it can be encountered in the main game, then it's usually just a matter of sharing the Seed - rendering handcrafted scenarios redundant. Perhaps we will go along a sort-of special challenge route where there is a specific goal you have to accomplish in a limited time using limited resources.