Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Indie, Arcade
Castle of Alchemists
vEA_0.4 Hotfix
Gameplay Changes
All items' base default values has been adjusted, such as damage, cooldown etc.
Initially we had designed this items in a way that different types were chance based abilities.
But with recent revamp, you can now select types instead of relying on RNG gods. This made some items as obvious choices. As an example, explosive flask's stunning type is far superior to regular type, since it deals same damage and stuns on the top of that.
As a result, we changed those base stats for each type. Explosive flask base type received a huge damage buff and cooldown buff, while stunning type's damage is reduced and cooldown increased.
This balancing updates will continue with your feedback.
This update *may* cause some differences in some stats on old items. All your newly crafted items will have no problem though.
Bug Fixes
Central Chamber enemy spawn internal has been fixed. Previously there was a bug at the end of 4th wave, where enemies spawn with 5 seconds intervals.
Visual Updates
All pellets visual has been updated with new shaders. They glow nicely now.
Stay tuned for further updates! Cheers!
vEA_0.4c Update
NEW TRAPS
Two new variations for Ceiling Dart Trap has been added: Mini Cannons Trap and Ceiling Electric Trap.
You can unlock them by playing Warehouse Floors and Snake Bridge levels.
If you already finished those levels this traps will be already unlocked.
ITEM REBALANCES
All items have gone through rebalancing in their base stats, such as damage, crit chance etc. This includes variants as well, meaning a Marking Greatsword have different base stats than Frost Greatsword.
This is the first step for item rebalances, and we require your feedback for further improvements.
Melee weapons received buffs across board in terms of damage, crit chance and stamina consumption. Ranged weapons will be reworked in upcoming updates and their balancing will be done at that time.
ENEMY REBALANCE
Royal Guards no longer teleport when they take damage. They only teleport when they see you first time and they teleport onto you. Their teleport ability replenishes only when you lose their agro.
All waves have been rebalanced. There was a bug which caused more enemies to spawn than intended. This also fixes infamous bug on 3-1 , Central Chamber where we spawn thousands of enemies in mere seconds. (see bug fixes)
QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES
New feedback has been added for equipping new items in Arma.
Quality indicators added for melee weapons and ranged weapons in Arma.
Traps' sell buttons visuals has been updated with smaller versions.
You can now see the area of effect of traps when you hover over their sell buttons. You can enter sell mode via holding Left Shift (default key).
Holding Left Shift(or Sell Mode button if you rebinded it) now shows the cooldown of the traps when you are in combat.
For towers, quality of life updates will come with next update as soon as possible.
BUG FIXES
Central Chamber enemy spawn bug has been resolved.
Royal Guard AI has been adjusted to fix a potential bug.
Several visuals bugs has been resolved.
A possible fix for Winter Shaman has been deployed. They were stuck in attack motion when you left their agro range, we deployed a fix and did not encounter the problem. If it continues let us know.
NEW UPDATE - TEST YOUR METTLE!
Hello people!
This year we will be attending Gamescom with our game Castle of Alchemists. You can find us at the Hall 10.2 F030 ! And to celebrate that we are releasing a banger soundtrack and a huge updateto go along with it!
Unleash the Power of Metal at Gamescom with "Castle of Alchemists" Soundtrack Pack! Get ready to rock your gaming world with 16 electrifying metal tracks that'll set the stage for epic battles and adrenaline-pumping action. Dive into the pixelated tough vibe and feel the energy of every riff and rhythm.
And for the patch here are the notes:
ENDLESS MODE
We have brought in the Endless Mode with 3 map, one for each scroll!
These are maps that already exist in the game. As we gather feedback from you people in feature updates Endless Mode maps will be unique.
Each map starts with a set amount of resources. As you survive, you will get a break each 5 waves and a small amount of resource. After awhile, no resources will be given for extra traps, however in endless mode you can sell your traps from full price in any moment.
Goal is not to win but to survive against ever escalating odds.
With endless mode, you can easily farm resources for crafting materials.
CRAFT REVAMP
Previously, from a given recipe, you had a chance to get a different type of the said item, such getting an Electric Hammer from Blast Hammer recipe.
Now with the revamp, you can select which item type you want to craft from that recipe with a button located under the item visual in the crafting menu.
We are aware this makes some items less favourable, such as Explosive Bomb, when you can outright select the better Blinding Bomb version since it is no longer tied to chance. We are working on editing items on a greater depth, and will bring balancing in the upcoming updates.
QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES
Small Info Boxes
In Craft Menu and Arma Menu, you can see the abilities of your experimental warfare in small info boxes now.
Example: If your hammer has Crushing Blow Chance and Extra Core Capacity, small info boxes will appear on the sides to explain what is Crushing Blow and Core Capacity.
An important note is that this will only work for newly crafted items. Your existing items before this update will not show any info boxes.
You can go into compare mode by holding Alt key on keyboard or L3 key on controller. This is not arranged for a keybinding right now but will be as soon as possible.
Remaining Enemy Strength
There is now an indicator of remaining enemy strength on the right of the screen now. This will bar fill at the beginning of the of the wave and will deplete as you kill enemies. Exact number of enemies will still be unknown.
Updated Minimap Visuals
Enemy spawn points now flash when they enter and exit point flash if they managed to escape.
Bannerman type of enemies have different icons and they flash on minimap as they start casting. (Check enemy updates below for further details on Bannerman)
Enemy Health Bars
Enemy health bars appear for 1.5 second on enemies when they take damage from Bellator melee or ranged attacks.
We are still working on controller support to give a better reading on enemies health bar without locking.
Damage Feedback
A small visual feedback has been added when Bellator takes damage
NEW ENEMIES
4 new enemies have been added to the Flame group, Armored Elites, Bannerman and a Spellcaster. These new enemies have been added to the existing maps.
Bannerman casting behaviour has been changed. Now as they spawn, after a certain amount of time, they will stop and start casting for around 12 seconds, applying their buff, approximately 10 times.
This means, if unchecked a single banner man can buff almost an entire sub-wave.
Number of Bannerman enemies have been reduced across boards.
SFX AND MUSIC CHANGES
Placement scene now has a subtle soundtrack.
Various SFX has been buffed up to be heard better. Previously, some of the crucial SFX was difficult to hear among all other sounds and music.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
Repeated application of Chill condition now freezes enemies.
We eagerly await your feedback. We will rebalance and update as quickly as possible from now now, especially on the numerical part of the game.
What's going on in the Castle?
Hello people !!
We wanted to inform you about what we are working on and our progress, as well as changes incoming!
Endless Waves
First of all, we started on endless map actively right now. Initial testing is started, we can spawn endless waves, based on a "Pointbuy Difficutly System" with a highly customizable (on our end) spawn system. We are adding necessary back end stuff to it.
As beginners, we will use existing maps for Endless mode. Each Scroll will have one endless level for starters. As time progress, we will add custom endless maps. These maps will be a place where you can farm crafting resources indefinitely.
You can expect the Endless Wave update soon, with extra goodies, new enemies and new traps.
Crafting System
It came to our attention that majority of the items in the crafting are still undiscovered by most people, due to RNG.
So, we are gonna revamp the crafting system to be more robust.
You will be able to choose which type of that recipe you want to craft from the crafting menu. As an example; from the Blast Hammer recipe, you can choose between Blast Hammer, Furnace Hammer and Electric Hammer.
We will also add several more randomized properties you can get on your weapons (Extra damage against bleeding targets, Life Steal, effects on reload or charge activation such as temporary shields etc.).
We already made progress for the revamp, just making sure it does not break anything existing and preparing necessary UI elements for it.
Crafting Revamp will come after Endless Waves update, as soon as possible.
Better Readability
Speaking of conditions and abilities of the items, we are aware that they are not easy to read and confusing. Getting "Crushing Blow" on your weapon, but not knowing what it does, is frustrating. We already added these abilities into library, but they are obscured for the majority and do not include all the things we have, such as Health Burst.
To solve this we will add small info screens near the equipment or in the craft screen.
As an example, if you craft a weapon that has crushing blow chance, health burst and stun chance, each of this conditions, how they work and what they do will be given in small info boxes right next to them. We are preparing UI elements for those and will share results as soon as possible.
Synergy Revamp
As an addition to that, we are gonna revamp some of the synergies and how they work as well. We are aware no-one gets Ice Kills right now (Wet+Chill condition required). These will be more accessible with more synergies introduced and the changes to the current ones right now.
UI/UX and Synergy Revamps will roll with Crafting Revamp update.
Stay tuned and feel free to add any suggestions you have into the discussions.
Have a blasting week!
Team Machiavelli
vEA_02a Patch is Online
CONTROLLER SUPPORT
Controller support has been added.
Controller support buttons only show XBox Controller buttons as shortcuts right now, we will add PS Controller buttons in the future as an option.
Some of the localization for the controller is not complete yet, so they will not change to your chosen language. We will fix this as soon as possible.
With Controller support, while not officially verified yet, Castle of Alchemists became more Steam Deck friendly than ever.
If you are playing with a controller or on deck, don't forget to change your controller layout to Gamepad from Steam settings.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
You can now farm previously finished levels at any level.
This means that regardless of your victory degree, you can replay a level and get some farm out of it, depending on your success level.
Matching your previous level success or below, grants the half of the farm of that degree. Getting a better result gives you the full amount for the next degree of victories.
Previously, you needed to finish the level at Flawless to be able to farm it.
Challenges now provide extra resources when finished (8 / 2 / 1).
Vial skills now ignore barricade collision.
Almost all the levels have gone through balancing with the current enemies.
We are aware of the issue while earlier levels being way too hard for the new players, which do not allow a proper muscle memory build for the game, later stages ( especially 3rd scroll ) becomes way too easy.
We made the first couple of levels easier with waves, especially till you open the crafting mechanics, and adjusted the waves for further levels at 3rd scroll to be more challenging.
This balance change aims to improve the quality of the levels by the existing factors for now and we are aware some of these maps require fundamental changes, with map updates.
We are working on those map updates, bringing balance changes to existing traps, items and enemies, as well as bringing new content.
BACKEND CHANGES
We deployed a possible fix for screen blur on high hz monitors (such as 144hz).
Situation seems to be fixed in our initial testing, but please notify us if the issue continues.
CRT options have been added to the main menu.
Next Stop, Endless Maps and more ways to farm resources!
vEA_01b Patch is Online
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
Added an option to respec. You can respec your skills from the Mutation Screen for a cost now. You can also see your total Hit Points and Stamina there.
Getting a type chance has been altered. Now, you can get different types of the items, such as Electric Hammer for Blast Hammer or Frost Greatsword for Alchemical Greatsword, much more frequently.
NEW OPTIONS ADDED
We added several new options in the options menu:
Keybinding has been added. You can rebind your keys now. If you are using a non-english keyboards, some of the key names may show their corresponding name on English keyboard, but key still works.
You cannot rebind mouse left and right click to some of the shortcuts, like skill use 1 or place trap 5, to prevent some unintended occasions.
Screen Shake option has been added. Now you can change the amount of screen shake via a slider. Some of the UI shakes are not effected by this option since they are animations, but the other gameplay shakes, like at jumps or bomb explosions, are all adjustable.
Windowed Mode option has been added. We made some adjustments to keep the game ratio at 16:9 even in windowed mode.
Music and SFX options are re-balanced. Previously they worked in an unintended way, now sliders shows a more appropriate level of the sound intended.
BACKEND CHANGES
We adjusted how the leaderboards communicate with servers, and moved all the necessary functions to the leaderboards button, rather than sending the info at the end of each level. This means you stats are kept internally and not updated till you click on leaderboards.
This should also fix the crash issue experienced in some parts of the Asian region.
BUG FIXES
Booby Trap Training, Advanced Training at level 5 has been fixed, now you can deploy your booby traps in range, up to 13 units away. Horizontal value of the screen is 30 units for reference.
Crank-gun movement speed bug has been fixed. Previously you could move at higher speeds than intended with crank-gun while shooting and reloading, unless you leveled your Lung Capacity to 5. Now speed works as intended.
Crank-gun shooting bug has been fixed. Holding down both reload and shoot at the same time now works as intended.
Crank-gun now fully reloads. Previously it was reloaded only till around 90%.
The issue that where the weapons kept firing when you teleport to base after finishing has been fixed.
Sprinkler Trap - Burnable Oil bug where the oil catches fire before spilling and kept burning has been fixed.
vEA_01a Patch is Online
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
Enemy visuals while making an attack has been updated. Now a yellow exclamation mark appears above when they are attacking. Ranged projectile visuals are also updated to be more visible.
Frozen Corner's & Lava Passage's first waves has been adjusted for an easier difficulty with increased starting resources.
If you finish the level as Flawless you can earn extra bonus when you finished the level again any victory type. We will look into other ways, such as more side missions, to farm extra resources as the EA progress.
UI / UX UPDATES
When your skill goes off cooldown, now they flash white. Cooldown counters and charge numbers are added to the skill bar.
BUG & CRASH FIXES
We have deployed a possible fix for Frozen Corner Level Completion Screen crash. If you are still having the problem please share it with us.
The issue that some usernames are not showing up on the Leaderboards has been fixed.
CrankGun shoot effect bug has been resolved.
Enemies no longer stuck in walls.
LOCALIZATION
We've made some adjustments in Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese - Brazil languages.
We are still working on accesibility options, such as Keybinding, Windowed Mode and Screen Shake. You can visit our Discord server to check out what we are currently working on leave any feedback you wish!
Castle of Alchemists Now Available in Early Access! Unleash Your Inner Alchemist
🔥 Castle of Alchemists is out today as early access! Play now and embark on an epic journey through a mystical world filled with strength, danger, and endless possibilities! As the lead developer of our passionate studio, I couldn't be more thrilled to present our labor of love to you all. Let's dive into the exciting features that await you in this thrilling adventure!
📜 First and foremost, we're proud to present our meticulously crafted 15-item recipe system. Channel your inner alchemist and combine various ingredients to create powerful traps and enchanted weapons. With countless combinations to discover, your creativity knows no bounds!
⚔️ Are you a fan of close-quarters combat? Fear not! We've crafted two distinct melee weapons, each with its unique style and abilities. Whether you prefer the swift strikes of a sword or the brute force of a hammer, we have you covered. And for those who enjoy picking off enemies from a distance, we offer three exceptional ranged weapons. From precision crossbows to heavy crank gun, the choice is yours!
🏰 Prepare to explore the richly designed Castle of Alchemists with its 15 diverse and challenging levels. Each level offers a unique environment, filled with hidden treasures, treacherous traps, and formidable foes. Speaking of which, get ready to face off against 15 different enemy types, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and cunning tactics. It's a battle for survival like no other!
⛓️ As you traverse the castle's perilous halls, you can craft 13 cunningly traps designed to test your strategic thinking. From ceiling acid trap to wrecking ball, your strategy skills will be pushed to the limit. But fret not, for with every challenge overcome, you'll become a more formidable alchemist!
🗼 Defending your ground is crucial, and we offer four distinct tower types to aid you in your quest. Strategically place these towers to unleash devastating attacks on your enemies and turn the tides of battle in your favor. Choose wisely, upgrade diligently, and witness the might of your defenses!
🏆 Unlock your true potential by conquering our extensive list of 23 achievements. These badges of honor range from mastering specific combat techniques to discovering hidden secrets within the castle's walls. With each achievement, your status as a legendary alchemist will be further solidified!
🌍 Language should never be a barrier to adventure. That's why we've painstakingly localized Castle of Alchemists into 13 different languages. We want every player to feel at home in our vibrant world, no matter where they come from.
🎒 Prepare to equip yourself with a staggering array of 38 unique items. Your arsenal will be as diverse as the challenges you face.
🔥 Unlock your true potential with 15 distinct skills, each offering a new way to approach combat and overcome the castle's many trials. the choice is yours!
🚧 But wait, there's more! Our commitment to providing a captivating and ever-evolving experience means that regular updates are already on their way. We have a roadmap brimming with exciting content to enhance your adventure in the Castle of Alchemists:
For celebrating the early acces and surprise event join our Discord!
Castle of Alchemists has cooperated with IndieArk!
Exciting news everyone!
We are delighted to announce our collaboration with IndieArk, an indie game publisher hailing from China, to bring Castle of Alchemists to players across Asia.
IndieArk will strive to bring Castle of Alchemists to players in China, Japan, and Korea. They will work on localization, marketing, community management, and help the game attract a wider audience in a better state.
Please stay tuned for more updates on Castle of Alchemists!
Get Ready for Early Access: New Maps, Towers, Crafting, and More!
Hello everyone!
We're excited to announce that Castle of Alchemists is finally ready for Early Access, and we've got some exciting news to share with you!
Firstly, we're happy to announce that the Early Access release date for our game is set for May 17th 2023. We know it's been a long wait, but we're confident that the game is now at a stage where it's ready for players to jump in and start having fun.
In addition to the release date, we're also happy to reveal that our game will be launching with support for 11 different languages. We want to make sure that players all around the world can enjoy the game in their own language and feel fully immersed in the game's world.
During Early Access, players can expect to explore 12+ new maps, using 3 different towers and over 15+ unique traps to fights hordes of new enemies. We've also included a wide variety of weapons with different tiers, so players can choose the best weapons for their playstyle and take on enemies with ease.
One of the major new features we're introducing in Early Access is a brand-new crafting system. With this new system, players can craft powerful items and weapons, allowing them to become even more powerful and take on even greater challenges.
Overall, we believe that the Early Access version of the game is going to be a fantastic experience for players, and we're excited to hear what you think about it. We'll be monitoring the forums closely and listening to your feedback, so please don't hesitate to share your thoughts with us.
Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you in-game soon!
