Heat Death
Bugfix: Enemies sometimes targetting the Planet when they shouldn't
Quick design changes and bugfixes
- The tech "Explosive Supplement" has been removed from the reward pool, because its effect is now redundant.
- fire attacks, dark attacks and Plasma attacks are now affected by Mystery. This will cause more ticks of Burning, more Shieldpower reduction, and more max health reduction when combined.
- the "Coating" buff should now correctly reduce the damage of Burning.
- Other minor improvements and bugfixes
ABLAZE
This planet features a super-aggressive playstyle, setting itself and its surroundings on fire, and defending itself by building up a thick coat of ash.
There are also some new enemy types, including one new bossfight which can appear in the 1st cluster. There's also two new brutal difficulty options.
All the new cards can be viewed in the Encyclopaedia. There's also a new section which shows some plots of the exact probabilities you get from Luck.
Graphics + encyclopaedia update
All planets have a new appearance, and you can also see a preview of what the 4th one will look like.
The 4th planet is likely to be ready some time in September.
An 'Ideas' section has been added to the encyclopaedia. This section demonstrates some interesting combinations. Hopefully, this section can help players to better understand how to make the most out of the crafting system.
Hotfix: Enemy variety, scroll sensitivity, more
- Scroll sensitivity setting should now no longer reset to 1 when you restart the game.
- On turn start, your energy will now refill before your status effects activate. afaik this only affects combinations similar to cae+drone swarm.
- you can now right-click to deselect cards.
The Encyclopaedia is Open! Also, new cards + Devlog
In the encyclopaedia, you can browse all the cards currently in the game.
In the future, the encyclopaedia may be updated with more content such as info about enemies, alerts about recent balance changes. It might also include some sneak peeks, and lore... If I get around to writing down some lore.
There's a couple of new cards added to the game as well this patch! In the encyclopaedia under the "incomplete" category, you'll find a few spicy new ideas.
Also, there are some cards under the "Default" category which belong to the planet not yet added to the game. Please ignore these, they are forbidden knowledge.
Devlog
As per usual, this patch comes with various bugfixes and tweaks. It has taken longer usual, in part because I've been very busy recently - and also because I've been working on an unusual new feature for the 4th planet. I've had to change some of the core functionality in the game in order to make room for it, and I wanted to make sure that this was working properly.
The 4th planet is coming along nicely. I made the decision to just buy some stock assets to act has placeholders for the artwork. This has helped speed up development significantly, and to be honest it kinda looks better. I might be able to have this planet ready in just a few weeks.
I've also worked on a 2nd bossfight for the 1st cluster. It didn't make it into this patch because I decided it looks too ugly still. You'll probably see it next week.
Answers
By the way, I'm sorry about not being very active in the community the past couple of weeks. Like I said, I've been fairly busy, and I tend to prioritize working on content over working on community management + marketing. Still, I appreciate all your kind words. It's also really cool to see that the game is still at 100% positive reviews - that's pretty amazing!
There's a couple of questions I didn't take the time to answer last week, so I'll put 'em here.
- Q: Is this your first game? A: This is the first game I'm releasing. I've worked on another project before, but I decided to cancel it because it was really bad. Think like Hades, except significantly worse in every way. lol
- Q: Are you planning on adding a shop/currency? A: I'm concidering it, but I'm not really sure what I would put in there. I want to focus the game's theme around experimentation, and I think this is the game's strong point. With the combination system, there are a huge number of different ways you could win. Shops don't really help with that theme. Shops tend to give lots of options, which means you are more likely to find a familiar old strategy that you know works.
New enemy types, roadmap, and more
The demo will not get this update for a few days still.
Two new bossfights (located in the 2nd and 3rd cluster) have been added. There is a 50/50 chance of either an old or a new boss spawning at the end of the cluster.
There's also 5 new small-to-medium size enemies.
UI change
Enemies will now show their total intended damage first, then the (projectile damage) x (volley count) after. In the case where a satellite has multiple attacks with different projectile damage, this can be displayed as, for example, "Atk: 14 (5 + 9)". Examples:
Deal 8 damage twice -> "Atk: 16 (8x2)"
Deal 7 damage, then 8 damage twice -> "Atk: 23 (7 + 8x2)"
You can now also view the total damage of all allied satellites and of all enemies by hovering over the "end turn" button. These numbers are calculated by just summing up all visible damage numbers, they do not account for any other effects. It would of course be impossible to predict exactly how much damage things will deal, because they might die before they have the chance to attack...
Other changes:
- support for Mystery (+x ?) has been added to some effects that didn't have it already, such as Magnitude, Radioactivity, and more.
- Fixed an issue where the card Fallout would not activate when radioactivity decreases at the start of your turn
Future plans
The following items are my currently highest priorities for development.
- Adding even more enemy types into the game would obviously be nice. Eventually, there might be enough so that each cluster can have a unique set of enemies.
- Each planet has lots of cards now, something like 70+ for all of them. I would like to add more neutral cards/upgrades too, and maybe some planet-specific upgrade/insert type cards.
- A while back, I started working on a 4th planet. This one will likely be themed around fire/burning damage, and maybe other forms of elemental effects as well. This will likely take at least two months before it is ready for early access.
- I've been thinking about an "endless"-style mode. Multiple users have requested it, and I think I might be able to make something that fits with the theme of heat death.
- I've been thinking about hiring a proper artist to redo a lot of the artwork that is on cards, and do artwork for the new cards I'm adding.
- UI/UX continues to get little improvements here and there. I know that the starmap is especially clunky still.
- It would be nice to have some sort of "Encyclopaedia" in the game, where you can view all the cards and tech types. Run history would also be cool.
some quick fixes
- Fixed a crash that could happen if you give the card "bolster" as an ability to a satellite.
- Alacrity's tooltip should now correctly say that it decreases by 1 per turn.
Update: Artillery
Winning a battle will earn you 1 artillery, and 5 artilleries can be used to activate an ability during combat. For now, this ability will simply give you some shields and damage. In the future I might change this ability to be unique and interesting for each character. I think it might also be interesting to have cards/tech which interact with Artillery in various ways.
Other changes:
- The last boss has been made easier on lower difficulties
- Enemies are selected more randomly now
- A few new cards have been added for Storm. Some of these are still missing an artwork. Some minor balance changes are also made.
- A "Reset" button has been added. This button will remove all game progress, and make it as though you are starting up the game for the first time. It can be used if you want to delete a corrupt save file, or if you just want to start over. The Reset button replaces the "Browse local data" button.
- For low difficulties, there is now an improved visualization of the planet's travel range. Keep in mind that on the low difficulties, you still can't travel to consumed stars.
- It used to be that enemies' attack values could not change immediately after you press "end turn". This mechanic was intended to make the game more approachable. Unfortunately, with the introduction of stuff like Weakener, this mechanic is becoming harder to maintain in a reasonable way. Therefore, I'm removing this feature for now.
- Of course there are other minor changes, such as bugfixes and steady UI improvements.
New music track, other minor improvements
- The new menu and deck view should now work correctly in the dialogue scenes.
- Other minor improvements and bugfixes.