Dev Diary 4: D Day minus 2 weeks
Hello all!
Welcome to our 4th Dev Diary. We've been really busy, so sorry it's been too long! But we have so much cool stuff to share today.
We’re very happy to announce we just wrapped our Release Candidate build. This means all team members now shift to pure testing, no more changes are allowed to code, art, animation or design except to fix bugs.
As a consequence, we can give you guys a sneak peek at what’s included and not included exactly on our Early Access build coming on the 16th. It’s looking like a terrific release, can’t wait to share with you what we have prepared. Here we go:
Day one, your squad will consist of Cass, Zero, Kosmo and Troy, as you’ve seen them on all our videos and tutorials. All of them come with their full skill tree, ultimates, and so on. As you’ve seen, they play very differently. I for example almost always play as Troy. Which means I’ve played with him for 4 weeks now, and still haven’t touched the other 3 heroes, so we feel there’s quite a bit for me to discover here in terms of skills, styles of play, etc.
For each of the four heroes, we’re giving you 2 skins. Skin packs will come later, but we wanted to give you 2 skins of each right away, just in case there’s two of the same hero on your team.
We’re working on new squad members, but those will arrive later of course ;-) Stay tuned!
Heroes from Killsquad hate to share their weapons. As a result, weapons in the Killsquad universe are owned by a specific hero, and each one is unique. Cass has her weapons, and so does Troy, etc. Day one, each hero will have 12 weapon models in their personal arsenal. Of course, each hero comes with a default weapon, and you can buy new ones by beating contracts and spending their hard earned cash on them.
Weapons are not just more or less powerful: each one has specific passive abilities, which define its personality. Take Kosmo, for example. Will he just use his basic Tool, a massive hammer which increases Kosmo’s overshield capacity, or does he feel extravagant today, and prefers to bring along his Exorcist hammer, which causes wildfires that slow down and roast enemies?
Each weapon exists in three variants:
The difference is price and, of course, configurability. By default, all weapons have one initial characteristic or perk.
Commons, being the cheapest of them all, offer you one additional slot for a perk. Thus, common weapons can only be perked up or configured once. They’re great, but what you see is what you get, mostly.
Rares and Epics is what pro players will buy later on. These have 2 and 3 perk slots, so you can upgrade them and invest to make them fit your fight style. Maybe the weapon gives you a passive regen. And then you unlock a perk to increase damage against bosses. We’ll let you guys discover that for yourself.
To perk up weapons, you need to gather resources, which are found on specific areas of the planets. And some materials are harder to find… so you’ll have fun for hours to come.
So, all in all, roughly 50 weapons, configurable, are waiting for you to come claim them.
And we’re already working on new weapons and a Legendary weapon tier, but that’s something we’ll talk about next week when we unveil our roadmap.
Weapon manufacturers of the Outer Reach are always thinking of better ways to sell new toys to warriors like us. That’s why they invented gears: gears are the ultimate in survival and letality.
Gears are body-mounted devices that grant special powers to the wearer. Maybe you have a life extender. Maybe you can summon turrets on the level. Maybe you get better prices at merchants. That’s what gears are all about.
Each hero can carry up to 2 gears: one Support gear and one Prototype gear. Supports are usually all about survival: shields, regens, life extenders, and so on. Prototypes are… well, we’ll let you figure them out for yourself. But get ready to feel like a super hero.
All in all, there are around 25 gears on the release day of Killsquad. Gears, unlike Weapons, can be used by any squad member. We did this on purpose. We love this idea of players having to decide which hero they care more about, and so who gets what perk. Besides, some gears have specific perks for specific heroes. You didn’t think we’d let you guys decide so easily, didn’t you?
Gears, as weapons, come in Common, Rare and Epic versions. So again, if you want to have your Cass tuned up to the max, you’ll need to go on resource hunting sprees, and then decide which of your weapons and gears you care more about.
Day One, you’ll be able to explore and scavenge three massive game worlds, our planets. These are Kemmekh, Wasteland07, and the Palace of Pain. Each of them comes with specific flora, fauna, resources and events.
Kemmekh is a massive open-air mine, where the crystals of Kem were once mined. These crystals are extremely valuable, as they are the material from which the lenses of directed-energy weapons are manufactured. The miners of Kemmekh dug deep fueled by greed. They opened galleries which connected with creatures that should never have been unearthed.
Wasteland07 is one of the hundreds of planets of the Outer Reach that fell due to nuclear war. Radiation levels are off the charts, and fauna mutated into creatures of nightmare. Explore Wasteland07, its cities and barren landscapes, and try to get out of there before the next meteor storm strikes.
The Palace of Pain used to be a huge space prison where only the worst of the worst were sent on a one-ticket to hell. Decades ago, a very special inmate led a revolt, killed everyone, and turned the prison into his own special lair, the Palace of Pain.
Killsquad will contain around 40 contracts on release day. These come in different shapes and forms, as we feel our contract engine is the core of the game. First, contracts come in two tiers: Recruit and Veteran. These don’t need much explanation. We’ll add the Special Ops tier later, but that will be post-launch.
In terms of the contracts themselves, these cover a lot of different activities, from boss battles, escort missions, and so on. Some contracts may have secrets for you guys to find out, others may have special events. All of them end up in a reward, which you can bring to our game vendors to acquire new weapons & gears for you to buy.
As we’ve explained before, you can undertake contracts with any team size, from 1 to 4 players, so Killsquad can be played fully solo if you so wish.
Contracts is the area we plan to expand the most, but rest assured, day one you’ll have plenty of missions to enjoy!
Next week, we’ll post another update with our 2019 roadmap, so you get a vision of where we will be focusing our efforts once we release our Early Access version. We’re designing new heroes. Monsters. Missions. Weapons. There’s a whole universe we just can’t wait to create with all of you!
Welcome to our 4th Dev Diary. We've been really busy, so sorry it's been too long! But we have so much cool stuff to share today.
We’re very happy to announce we just wrapped our Release Candidate build. This means all team members now shift to pure testing, no more changes are allowed to code, art, animation or design except to fix bugs.
As a consequence, we can give you guys a sneak peek at what’s included and not included exactly on our Early Access build coming on the 16th. It’s looking like a terrific release, can’t wait to share with you what we have prepared. Here we go:
The Squad
Day one, your squad will consist of Cass, Zero, Kosmo and Troy, as you’ve seen them on all our videos and tutorials. All of them come with their full skill tree, ultimates, and so on. As you’ve seen, they play very differently. I for example almost always play as Troy. Which means I’ve played with him for 4 weeks now, and still haven’t touched the other 3 heroes, so we feel there’s quite a bit for me to discover here in terms of skills, styles of play, etc.
For each of the four heroes, we’re giving you 2 skins. Skin packs will come later, but we wanted to give you 2 skins of each right away, just in case there’s two of the same hero on your team.
We’re working on new squad members, but those will arrive later of course ;-) Stay tuned!
The Weaponry
Heroes from Killsquad hate to share their weapons. As a result, weapons in the Killsquad universe are owned by a specific hero, and each one is unique. Cass has her weapons, and so does Troy, etc. Day one, each hero will have 12 weapon models in their personal arsenal. Of course, each hero comes with a default weapon, and you can buy new ones by beating contracts and spending their hard earned cash on them.
Weapons are not just more or less powerful: each one has specific passive abilities, which define its personality. Take Kosmo, for example. Will he just use his basic Tool, a massive hammer which increases Kosmo’s overshield capacity, or does he feel extravagant today, and prefers to bring along his Exorcist hammer, which causes wildfires that slow down and roast enemies?
Each weapon exists in three variants:
- Common
- Rare
- Epic
The difference is price and, of course, configurability. By default, all weapons have one initial characteristic or perk.
Commons, being the cheapest of them all, offer you one additional slot for a perk. Thus, common weapons can only be perked up or configured once. They’re great, but what you see is what you get, mostly.
Rares and Epics is what pro players will buy later on. These have 2 and 3 perk slots, so you can upgrade them and invest to make them fit your fight style. Maybe the weapon gives you a passive regen. And then you unlock a perk to increase damage against bosses. We’ll let you guys discover that for yourself.
To perk up weapons, you need to gather resources, which are found on specific areas of the planets. And some materials are harder to find… so you’ll have fun for hours to come.
So, all in all, roughly 50 weapons, configurable, are waiting for you to come claim them.
And we’re already working on new weapons and a Legendary weapon tier, but that’s something we’ll talk about next week when we unveil our roadmap.
Gears
Weapon manufacturers of the Outer Reach are always thinking of better ways to sell new toys to warriors like us. That’s why they invented gears: gears are the ultimate in survival and letality.
Gears are body-mounted devices that grant special powers to the wearer. Maybe you have a life extender. Maybe you can summon turrets on the level. Maybe you get better prices at merchants. That’s what gears are all about.
Each hero can carry up to 2 gears: one Support gear and one Prototype gear. Supports are usually all about survival: shields, regens, life extenders, and so on. Prototypes are… well, we’ll let you figure them out for yourself. But get ready to feel like a super hero.
All in all, there are around 25 gears on the release day of Killsquad. Gears, unlike Weapons, can be used by any squad member. We did this on purpose. We love this idea of players having to decide which hero they care more about, and so who gets what perk. Besides, some gears have specific perks for specific heroes. You didn’t think we’d let you guys decide so easily, didn’t you?
Gears, as weapons, come in Common, Rare and Epic versions. So again, if you want to have your Cass tuned up to the max, you’ll need to go on resource hunting sprees, and then decide which of your weapons and gears you care more about.
Planets
Day One, you’ll be able to explore and scavenge three massive game worlds, our planets. These are Kemmekh, Wasteland07, and the Palace of Pain. Each of them comes with specific flora, fauna, resources and events.
Kemmekh is a massive open-air mine, where the crystals of Kem were once mined. These crystals are extremely valuable, as they are the material from which the lenses of directed-energy weapons are manufactured. The miners of Kemmekh dug deep fueled by greed. They opened galleries which connected with creatures that should never have been unearthed.
Wasteland07 is one of the hundreds of planets of the Outer Reach that fell due to nuclear war. Radiation levels are off the charts, and fauna mutated into creatures of nightmare. Explore Wasteland07, its cities and barren landscapes, and try to get out of there before the next meteor storm strikes.
The Palace of Pain used to be a huge space prison where only the worst of the worst were sent on a one-ticket to hell. Decades ago, a very special inmate led a revolt, killed everyone, and turned the prison into his own special lair, the Palace of Pain.
Contracts
Killsquad will contain around 40 contracts on release day. These come in different shapes and forms, as we feel our contract engine is the core of the game. First, contracts come in two tiers: Recruit and Veteran. These don’t need much explanation. We’ll add the Special Ops tier later, but that will be post-launch.
In terms of the contracts themselves, these cover a lot of different activities, from boss battles, escort missions, and so on. Some contracts may have secrets for you guys to find out, others may have special events. All of them end up in a reward, which you can bring to our game vendors to acquire new weapons & gears for you to buy.
As we’ve explained before, you can undertake contracts with any team size, from 1 to 4 players, so Killsquad can be played fully solo if you so wish.
Contracts is the area we plan to expand the most, but rest assured, day one you’ll have plenty of missions to enjoy!
Wrapping up
Next week, we’ll post another update with our 2019 roadmap, so you get a vision of where we will be focusing our efforts once we release our Early Access version. We’re designing new heroes. Monsters. Missions. Weapons. There’s a whole universe we just can’t wait to create with all of you!