CrossOver: Roll For Initiative

• Casual Mode has morphed into a general Campaign Difficulty Setting. This is now always active, and has a default setting of 8, which is a little easier than the previous normal mode (which was 10). Changing it acts the same as Casual Mode (enemy damage is reduced by a %), including a setting of zero where you take no damage at all and deterrents are disabled. It now also goes up to 11 (like all good Spinal Tap fans do), for a little extra difficulty than the previous max. Freely adjust at any time during a campaign to match your comfort level.
  
• Lowered the height of the fog effect that appears in some stages, as it obscured the dice a little too much for some people. Note these effects can be completely turned off in the Accessibility Settings, but it does destroy a lot of the atmosphere (and some effects are intended to make things more difficult for the player).
  

• Reduced the delay before a hint is given for an available dice match (the yellow circle and pulsing arrows above it) from 20 seconds to 12.
  
• Removed 3x Vampyric Serpents from Campaign 2 Stage 1 and extended spawn delays slightly. Also removed some Necrotic Scuttlers from Stage 2. [thanks Erasium for the feedback]
  
• Slightly reduced Vampyric Serpent's HP, Dmg, Resistance & Speed. They're still pretty evil with their regeneration though.
  
• Beefed up the sheet's HP defences in Stage 1 of each campaign by 25% and Stage 2 by 10%, to help make up for the lack of gear you may have at the start.
  
• Reduced qty of Slumber Bombs bought at merchant from 3 to 2. These were a little overpowered.
  

The demo contains:

• The Tutorial. This is just a simple introduction to CrossOver. Being an optional button on the front menu, a few people didn't notice it and were lost, so I've added a gentle prompt to try it first when starting the campaign.
  
  
• The first 3 stages from the first campaign of the fantasy game module. This campaign in the full game has 7 stages, so it will be cut somewhat short in the demo. There are also some random "fighting fantasy style" encounters between the stages.
  
  
• The first co-op scenario from the fantasy game module. You can host the game and control your character sheet's attacks, or join someone else's lobby as a client and control the dice tray. This way you can play the style you prefer and let the other player handle the rest!
  
  
• A secret mini-game ;)
  

The full game contains:

• Two entire game modules - these are the books on the top shelf. Included are a fantasy game and a sci-fi game. Future DLC might explore other genres such as Cthulhu, World War 2, or Weird West tableaus, for example. When you select a game you move to another shelf where all the campaign books reside for that game. Most campaigns are locked at first; you unlock them by reaching the minimum player level at least once in a previous campaign. Often by beating one campaign you'll unlock the next two campaigns.
  
  
  
  
• The fantasy game has 7 campaigns, each of which has 7 stages. Each campaign takes around an hour to complete, on average. Encounters between stages are random depending on the campaign - one campaign has none, for example, and in another they are rare.
  
  
  
  
• The sci-fi game also has 7 campaigns, each one containing 6 stages. Aside from having all new enemies and equipment, there are some balance changes to keep things interesting. As an example, you can have up to 6 Mercenaries in play instead of the fantasy game's maximum of 4.
  
  
  
  
• There are 14 co-op scenarios (7 for each game module). Some of these are very tough challenges!
  
  
  
  
• Endless Mode. This sees you facing infinite waves of enemies with a random character, finding random loot along the way. You earn rank points with each run and can gain starting bonuses by going up ranks. There is an Endless Mode for each of the game modules and they can be very addictive!
  
  
  
  
• Dice Defense. This is a special mode where you primarily match dice while your "dice towers" automatically attack enemies, consuming the stock of dice you've matched. There is some additional strategy in swapping towers around, changing their attack types and upgrading them with special abilities, but if you prefer you can simply match dice and ignore everything else. Like with Endless Mode, you can gain ranks with starting bonuses, and there is a version for each game module.
  
  
  
  
• Besides having the Tutorial and secret mini-game as in the demo, there's an unlockable art gallery with all of the gorgeous color art pieces from the game.
  

The Past

The Present

• Coding - functionally complete barring bugs and future tweaks or unplanned additions.
  
• UI - functionally complete apart from inevitable tweaking and a notable exception of the Coop Lobby, where I plan some improvements after I get feedback on the actual functionality (that’s a big part of what the Playest is for!).
  
• Fantasy Game Module - functionally complete, along with all artwork and content for all 7 campaigns and endless mode, however I’ll constantly be tweaking and balancing everything.
  
• Sci-fi Game Module - the campaigns have been designed, the weapons made, the sprites/animations are underway, and the music has been created by a BAFTA award winning composer - but here is where the bulk of the remaining effort is needed as everything else is yet to do. Tons of artwork to make, creating the levels, enemies, mercenaries and so on. Everything down to the character sheets, dice and tray is new for this module - only the desk remains the same. It’s like making a whole new game’s content, so it will take time.
  
• Localization - framework completed, but the actual translations won’t be done until near the end. The text is basically still a first draft so my wife, who is a much better writer, is likely to edit.
  
• QA - no formal QA has yet been performed, though plenty of informal playing by several people. It will undergo formal QA by a professional “test to destruction” team once everything is ready. The Playtest is not intended to be a QA session (I’ll explain what I’m hoping to get out of the Playtest later in this diary).
  

The Future

The Playtest

The Why?

1. Campaign Difficulty/Balance - “Spreadsheet” balancing can only go so far, sometimes you need a wide variety of skill levels to actually play the thing to work out if the difficulty is suitable, rises appropriately and everything is balanced sufficiently. It’s so hard to get this right in games…
   
2. Online Coop - Testing this has only been very limited so far as it’s the hardest thing for me to arrange personal testing, and testing by myself is, uh, not so helpful for difficulty/balance discovery. I’d also really love some feedback on the functionality of the Lobby. I tried to include helpful things such as friend invites, filtering lobbies by game module, setting and filtering lobbies by friends-only or public, voice and text chat… but full disclosure, I pretty much never play online games so I don’t really know what’s expected or desired.
   

The What?

• 3 x Full Campaigns (7 x stages in each) - it’s actually campaign #1 (Raise The Alarum), #3 (The Waiting Sands) and #5 (The Devouring Tides). You unlock #3 and #5 by reaching a certain XP level in previous campaigns, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to do this unless you have a very XP-handicapped character or monsters hack away at your XP too much (evil buggers!).
  
• All Coop Content - 7 x Coop Scenarios plus Coop Endless Mode, which has an online leaderboard.
  
• Tutorial - just the basics.
  
• Something Secret - It has its own hidden leaderboard so I’ll know how many find it ;) This is just for fun, it will be in the final game but no feedback is actually sought. Mysterious…
  

The How?