Hey, guys!! There's less than a month for our upcoming major update & revamp of Hell Warders, and I am excited just as you are! What have we been doing last week?
Firstly, the development process has been delayed a bit due to our original company Ares Games' rebranding. Now, we are officially called Anti Gravity Game Studios!! Lots of souvenirs designs, hoodies, and merchandise, etc., we hope Anti Gravity will give you a fresh feeling and show you our passion for game development!
Our website: www.antigravitygame.com
Secondly, Hell Warders is undergoing a rapid development on scenes!! We are determined to give players more maps to play. Our art director has a deadline of 10 maps within two weeks, which is a very challenging task, but we promise players to bring the best experience, therefore we will try our best to satisfy every one of you!!
Thirdly, the gameplay is nearly finalized; we are now working on game balancing for tower's attack damage, monsters HP/damage, and resource allocation.
Fourthly, we will be setting up a booth from 10-13 July in a Retro Game Expo in Hong Kong, we hope if anyone of you happens to be in town, come visit us!!!
Dev Blog: Week 9 - Back to Classic TD
HELLLLLLLO! It is me Godboy again!! After last week's discussion and development, we have some adjustment made and going down a straight road.
Draft concept of resource generator - Harvestor?
Firstly, light source building restriction mentioned last week's dev blog. We have tried this building restriction but the overall feeling is a bit tedious and not that suitable for a 3D action game, we are pretty sure it will work if it is a top-down tower defense game.
Secondly, removing blockades & reducing the smartness of monsters. We have been trying to balance between TD & Action game, but the conclusion we had was, it is impossible to make a two sided sword, action + TD game, not saying they are mutually exclusive, just that it is impossible to make a perfect action & perfect TD game at the same time. We are planning to make it similar to Dungeon Defenders' TD, plus improved action elements plus Plant VS Zombie's resource management. We hope this combination will challenge classic-TD players and action-game players as well!
Thirdly, R&D!! It is critical for the game to have enough depth and freedom to level-up, research, improve the towers. We are still discussing what the best way to provide sufficient depth for players to enjoy and still within the production scope is. We are proposing a Tech-tree upgrade where you unlock the tech-tree (new units) through leveling and research the upgrade through research points / how many missions it requires to complete. Additionally, upgrading existing units (damage/attack interval), through in-game currency.
We hope to show you more next week!!
Dev Blog: Week 8 - Light source building?
Hello hello!! It's me again with the week 8 development blog, this week we spent some time relocating our studio and discuss the future changes of the game.
Firstly, we have tried unit-count system which may not be the best resource management for our game, as unit-count may hinder and difficult to balance during progressing character level. On the other hand, we tried a new method of resource management which is a traditional "Mana Crystal" which you gain over-time and killing monsters.
This resource system will come with another feature "Light Source building", which players will only be able to build within the Light Source area. Our team thinks this system will increase the depth of gameplay and challenges player to solve it with their solution. These Light Source Building will also generate "mana crystal" and there will be mana crystal boosting upgrades.
We are building a prototype for this system, and if it is fun, we will implement into our next patch!
Dev Blog: Week 7 - Tower & Quest drafted
Thank you for reading this week's development blog! After a long week of development, the first draft of tower loadout and quest system are finally complete!! I can tell you that both systems complement each other very well, I am excited to show this system to every one of you!!! Now we have to start balancing the both system and improve UI & UX of them.
Buying towers & personalize your own tower loadout. There will be a specific amount of resource per quest (starting resource + drop from monsters); therefore you will only be able to summon a specific number of towers. The tower leveling progression is also one of the fun parts, where you spend resources you gain after completing each quest to level up them.
There will also be at least 4 new towers, 6 new monsters and 1 playable character added into the game after the next patch! I look forward to bring this patch to live, but there are still tons of balancing and new content require testing.
These are just placeholder.
Recruitment
Upgrade
Loadout
Quest
Dev Blog: Week 6 - Tower Loadout (10/7/2017)
Welcome again to the weekly development blog of Hell Warders. This blog will be about the progress of Tower Loadout system. We have finished the Quest and Missions system previous week and continue to create various kinds of quests.
Tower loadout system is a total revamp of our game-core, which will replace the picking of Spirit Orb. This tower loadout system in-game will be similar to Dungeon Defenders or Orc Must Die. Additionally, we provide a way more depth about it.
Our Tower Loadout system will allow players to
1) Level-up quality and quantity of these towers
2) Select which towers to bring into specific quests
3) Have own combination of towers
In details, players will get currency from completing missions, then spend them onto whether leveling the towers stats or quantity, to be able to summon more in a mission. Players also can choose any combination they like, for example, if players want to do 6 catapult towers or 20 blockades, it is entirely up to the player's choice.
More news about the Tower Loadout system as we further develop it!
Dev Blog Week 5 - Quest & missions (3/7/2017)
Thank you for reading the weekly development blog of Hell Warders. This week we brought you an update on quest & missions
Currently, we nearly finish the quest and mission system and developing different types of quest. It will be similar to the game Monster Hunter where you accept a quest and head out and fight. Although we do not have their "semi-open" world, it is still tower defense with a similar feeling.
There will be different tiers of quests which players can progress, earning a Hell Warders Rank (account bound), which unlocks cosmetics in future. Each quest will have its own star level as difficulty indicator. These quests will act as a campaign for players to advance in the Hell Warders World. Clearing each quest will award experience points for the Hero & items. These items will have a game-changing effect on the hero, for example, Ash's equipping a fire sword will increase the radius of his skill etc.
We hope this campaign system will bring users a better experience in this game, also do not forget about the tower loadout system we will be developing in coming weeks! They both complement each other very much!
Patch 0.4 "Gentle Giants" (23/6)
Welcome to the 0.4 Gentle Giant patch note released on 23/6/2017
Patch 0.4 "Gentle Giants" is one of our milestone in Hell Warders. We have been working hard to bring you better action experience in Hell Warders and this patch targets on improving movement and stability. Additionally, a few towers and maps were added to enrich the content.
The patch originally should also contain a tower upgrade system, but postponed to upcoming 0.5 content patch. It will be a very massive re-work of Hell Warders including Defensive Unit loadout, quest & mission system and much more!
Towers:
Added White Mage: Healer unit
Added Dark Mage: Curse / Debuff unit
Added Swordsman: Strong melee unit
Removed Net-launcher and Cannoneer
New Maps:
Added Red Terrace (1-2players)
Added Desert Ruins (1-2 players)
Netcode improvement:
We have implemented Client-Side prediction which tackles players with average to high latency situation. The experience will improve vastly compare to previous versions.
System Stability:
Improved character movement (jumping, walking) with less delay
Added Feature:
Private game (invite only)
Hell Warders Roadmap
Thank you for joining us on the Hell Warder's Early Access development. We try our best to be transparent and letting players know our upcoming changes and progress.
Up-coming phase: 0.4 "Gentle Giants" (Release by 23/6/2017)
In this patch, we have improved our net-code and game engine by a large magnitude, by implementing client-side prediction, it has improved game stability and performance. Users should experience a large improvement on movements & latency.
Originally, this patch should consist of tower upgrade system, which we have already finished (by feeding spirit orbs onto towers), but we find it very tedious. We should not be heading this direction which makes users keep running around. In the end, we are going to have a COMPLETE re-work of tower placement to create more fun in the towers aspects. This re-work will implement in the next phase 0.5.
Additionally, we have removed the Net Launcher & Cannoneer to make the tower system clear. On the other hand, we have added three new units, Swordman, White Mage and Dark Mage.
Next Phase: 0.5 "Invasion" (Release by 31/8/2017)
This patch will be a large re-work of our game; we hope these changes will give a better experience in Hell Warders.
Mission System: Currently, players have no incentive to progress apart from leveling up. We would like to increase the depth of progression with a quest & mission system where players will venture on a series of quests with different difficulty, proceed further on the Warder's Rank to unlock more challenging quests. These quests have different and unique encounters where the monsters do not repeat like the current setup. Players will also gain reward (Gold) from these quests and able to purchase and upgrade towers.
Re-work Defensive unit system: Defensive Unit Loadout will replace Spirit Orb system. Players will be able to choose what type of defensive unit to bring onto the quests. Furthermore, players can nurture and upgrade these defensive units. At the moment, our plan is that you have five slots, and each unit will have a quality & quantity system, which both you can upgrade.
For example, some people may prefer catapult army where they can bring five lv3 catapults with two unit quantity on each slot, a total of 10 catapults. The upgrade system will consume currency where you get from completing quests. They will have unique skill tree & inventory system which will be implemented in 0.6 patch
Hero Perk moved in-game: The current perk system takes a very long time to acquire which player cannot experience the progression of the Hero. The current talent system in-game gives player progression but feels dull. Therefore we are merging the perk system into in-game. We hope this will give player more option to choose in-game and have a lot more variation from game to game.
0.6 "Heavy Weight" (To Be Determined)
Hero weapon system: To increase the depth of champion, we will implement a weapon collection system where these equipment boosts Hero's ability and modify the playstyle.
Cosmetics & Hero customization: Nothing much to explain here, we all loves skins!
Patch 0.31 "Fearlessly Forward" Live
Patch 0.31 "Fearlessly Forward" is a weekly patch to Hell Warders. We have been working hard to bring you bug fixes and new features based on your feedback from the launch. We're adding some groundbreaking features like the Talent System which will set the foundation for future improvements to the game. You can expect more frequent updates like this one every week - we are truly embracing the Early Access development cycle.
New Lobby The Warders have a new headquarters, located in the heart of an forbidden church. Once a bustling center of worship, the forbidden church is now the center of the Hell Warder planning and command. We will be using this as the basis for a future player customizable headquarters. Over the upcoming weeks, we will be adding more NPCs to the Warder HQ to facilitate other game systems as well.
Talent system We are launching an in-game talent system where players can level-up during the battle phase, and choose what stats to increase, including attack damage, attack speed, movement speed, health and skill damage.
This talent system is just the tip of the iceberg, we're adding different talents and effects that will drastically change the game is played. We intend to add Hero Specializations into the talents system in the next patch.
New Map: Dark Alley Dark Alley is a 1-2 player map perfect for both solo and partnered play. Dark Alley has a more focused and tighter map design with only 1 Nexus. This means it's less busy and less tedious to run around. We will be releasing several more 1-2 player maps in the upcoming releases.
Gameplay balancing changes Moloch and Chaos Watcher projectile is easier to dodge.
Ash will now be able to action cancel between Attack and Block.
Deadeye damage reduced.
Other changes & fixes Local and Network Latency optimizations.
Improved game browser clarity and ping accuracy
Invert cursor Y-Axis option included.
Unlock framerate cap option included.
Pikemen rotation issue fixed.
Units spawned out of map issue fixed.
Incorrect character level displayed after leveling up issue fixed.
Hell Warders Launches on Early Access!
Hell Warders is part of a new sub-genre known as “action-defense.” You and your friends are tasked with defending the Nexus from unrelenting demon assaults. Play as Ash the Ember Knight, cannon-wielding specialist Dead Eye the Tainted or crafty hero explosives specialist Samson III in teams of four to scout for power-ups and create an effective (and deadly) defensive perimeter. Fight alone or alongside soldiers with distinct abilities to withstand the might of the demon horde across a number of thematic maps – each with its unique environmental twist. Set up archers, catapults, and mages – and carefully choose where to place them for maximum defensive cover. However, defending only goes so far: The demon army waits for no man and will ruthlessly attack from all angles! Vanquish demons with powerful weapons, unmatched hero skills, and giant gargoyles!
Key Features
Action tower defense meets hero tower defense: Heroes can unleash devastating abilities and deploy strategic towers in this new defense sub-genre.
4-player co-op: Combine forces and battle the legions of evil! Hell Warders supports cooperative play with friends or other fellow Warders online.
Multiple playable classes: Choose from a roster of diverse heroes – each with unique skills and abilities.
Upgradeable characters: Level up to upgrade skills and perks – and defeat monsters your way.
Dynamic maps: Dodge flowing lava or fly on a giant spinning fan! Every map in Hell Warders is dynamic and opens up a ton of different strategies.
Why Early Access?
Early Access is a great platform to create new and exciting gameplay with our players. Players will get to test out concepts and features that have never been seen before, from maps filled with lava or giant whirlwinds. During the Early Access we will test out concepts for a progression system and new characters. Player comments and suggestions will allow us to tune and shape the game.
What to expect from the Early Access
The game is stable and with 3 playable characters and 4 highly dynamic maps (and 1 tutorial map). Online multiplayer is playable and we support up to 4 player co-op play. We are intending at add content on a bi-weekly basis to the Early Access.
