Leap of Fate
Designing Leap of Fate's controls
If you're curious about how we managed to port a game such as Leap of Fate to Mobile, here's an in-depth article we wrote on the topic for Gamasutra.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MattieuBegin/20161003/282581/The_Challenges_of_Developing_for_PC_and_Mobile_Part_1_Controls.php
This Part 1 is focused on the controls, and Part 2, which will appear soon, is about graphical optimization.
Hope you find it interesting.
Matt
Leap of Fate on the App Store
Are you looking for a good hardcore game to play on your iPhone or iPad? If so, look no further than Leap of Fate, now available on the App Store worldwide.
Content-wise, it's the same game as on PC. The only difference lies in the controls and camera. And let me tell you that we are quite proud of these touch controls. Most playtesters were very impressed by the fluidity and intuitiveness of the controls, and agreed that the skill-based and fast-paced core of the game was perfectly preserved. Try it, and tell us what you think!
So far, Leap of Fate has left its mark on mobile:
- Featured on the App Store in 154 countries
- Touch Arcade's app of the week
So if you're into gaming on the go, hopefully you make Leap of Fate one of your choices. Happy gaming!
Matt, and the Leap of Fate team
Bug fix patch 3
Today, we bring you this patch aimed at improving your experience playing Leap of Fate. Thanks to all who helped us identify problems on the forums. Your help is much appreciated!
Significant improvements:
- Save system improvement: On the previous patch, we introduced a save system which allowed you to quit the game and then resume it next time you played. This time, we added a nifty little panel that tells you which character you were playing and in which level, and if you want to resume that game or not. It's just nicer that way.
- Loving Mother: This infamous achievement was very hard to obtain, for a variety of reasons. In addition to a bug fix, we increased the radius substantially and we reduced the required duration to 10 seconds. The achievement may be given to you automatically when you launch the game in some cases.
- Black screen: One substantial bug has been plaguing us for a while now; the one where the screen goes black after clicking on the glyph button right after picking up a new glyph in a shop. We have never been able to reproduce this bug in the studio, so it's been very hard to understand what causes the problem. Although we don't know for sure this problem is now fixed, we have created two fail-safes that should, in theory, prevent the problem from occurring. Please report if the problem still persists.
- OP Guardian: The Hitman elite in level 5 was doing double damage, which made it quite hard to beat. In addition to removing this undesirable property, we also reduced slightly the duration of its reflective aura.
Minor fixes:
- After upgrading the Levitation skill, characters would sometimes lose their levitation animations following a shadow walk.
- The Stalker elite in level 1 (the one that becomes invisible) had a very strong vulnerability to the basic attack's pushback.
- When dying in an acidic puddle in level 2, the acid sound would sometimes loop infinitely in the result screen after death.
- When applying a slow effect on the Hanging Mummy enemy in level 3, the Slow icons did not appear over the creature's head (well ... over its feet, since the thing is upside down), but rather was shifted far to the side
- In level 3, the explosive head of the Pinhead Mages sometimes exploded in mid air, before touching the ground.
- The Fireball Skeleton and its elite in level 6 were particularly susceptible to becoming permanently stunned.
- Sometimes, when a treasure chest spawned too close to the side of a map, the loot, such as a clockwork key or a glyph, could fall off the map.
- Rarely, basic attack impact FXs appeared in semi-random locations on the map, instead of on the surface that was being hit.
- When playing in smaller screen resolutions, the FX for upgrading a skill at the bottom of the page was below its icon.
- During the tutorial, it was possible to revert back to your original glyph after acquiring the new one, which made the card interface explode.
Leap of Fate is 40% off this week
See why Kotaku recommends LoF : Review
Soundtrack + Patch #2
And second, here's a patch for the game, based on your comments, requests and bug reports.
Happy gaming!
New features:
- Visuals on the sides of the screen. You can now opt to display visual patterns instead of black bars on the sides of the screen during combat. You'll find this option in the Video options menu.
- Save system. When you quit the game, your current progress is now automatically saved and the next time you play, you'll start directly where you left off.
Notable bug fixes:
- When more than one controller is connected, the game is now able to figure out which one the player is using. This will fix most issues where a controller was completely unresponsive when something else on the computer was detected as a controller.
- The achievement Only a Man is now fixed.
- Basic attack impacts (fx) are back, they had mysteriously disappeared ...
- The skills Quick Temper and Elite Privilege now trigger Death Cloud upon killing creatures.
- Gravity Vortex does not absorb your own projectiles anymore.
- We fixed the case where two Tarot Tokens could overlap on the side of the Deck of Fate, which prevented the use of the one underneath.
- Rasimov's last permanent upgrade, Skeleton Key, is now functional.
- We fixed a reset data bug that doubled the number of Fates in the Story menu.
- We fixed a bug where pausing during the scripted camera of a boss fight would cause the pause to malfunction, thus causing a walkthrough break.
- Big Mo's levitation animation is not lost anymore after shadow walking.
- Various text errors were fixed relative to missions.
- Missions that require killing creatures with a basic attack now also count kills made with Phoenix or Quetzal.
- When in the Game Over screen, the Continue requirements (100 karma cost, or once per game) are now correctly highlighted in red, depending on which one applies.
Patch coming up on the 20th of May
Since Leap of Fate launched, we've switched our focus to our next game project, which should keep us quite busy for many months. However, we're always keeping an eye out for what you guys have to say about Leap of Fate, and we recently took some time off our new project to fix a few thnings in Leap of Fate. By the way, we'd like to gratefully thank all of you who have taken the time to write comments or bug reports, we really appreciate it!
In this coming patch, available on May the 20th, we'll address some issues that came up frequently in the comments, in particular:
- We're adding the option to display art instead of black bars on the sides of the screen while in combat
- We're implementing a save system that allows you to quit the game, and resume it later
- We're fixing various bugs
In addition to this, the game's soundtrack, made by our friends at Vibe Avenue, will be made available for US$3.99, which I think is quite a good deal considering the quality of the music.
So I'll see you next week!
Matt, and the Leap of Fate team
Bug fix patch 1
Here's a few fixes for some of the problems reported so far since launch
- Fixed the bug that allowed to press on the Continue button when it was greyed out, which caused a black screen
- Mukai's camera shake after a regular kill was substantially reduced
- Fixed the error that occured when an explosive obstacle hit one hanging corpse in level 3. The damage stopped as soon as one of them got hit, which prevented damage from being normally applied to other creatures in the explosion radius
- Made a temporary patch for a specific video codec problem which made the game crash when a video started playing.
Leap of Fate is now launched!
This is it, we're very excited!! After 8 months in Early Access, Leap of Fate is now a full release!
The game has gone a long way since August 2015, and thanks to the invaluable comments and play data from our early players, we have improved it a LOT! The game now boasts a beautiful new art direction, has all of its cinematics and story elements, is very low on bugs, and plays very smoothly. I really hope you enjoy Leap of Fate, and that you can immerse yourself in its dark cyberpunk fantasy and frantic action.
Happy gaming :-)
Matt, and the Leap of Fate team
P.S. If you like the game, please leave a review on the Steam store page
UPDATE Release date is now March 30th
These few extra days will be very useful for us.
Original message:
The dev team and myself are extremely proud to announce the launch date for Leap of Fate : March 25th 30th 2016, at 9 am EDT.
After almost 8 months in Early Access, the game is finally ready. I hope you're ready for intense action and destiny altering stories.
Next update delayed
Dear players,
Today is the day we were supposed to push the last content update of our Early Access. And a few weeks of solid testing after that, we were planning a launch for early March. Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned. We underestimated the huge amount of work needed for our complete UI overhaul. We had to put the whole team on the task, and of course that means that we did not have the time to finish all of the planned features.
So that was the unfortunate news. The good news is that we're still going to release the same content, at the same level of quality, but it's going to be a bit later. I will not give a date today, but we're confident it should be in March or April.
And by the way, the fates (hand-drawn cinematics) are all in, and they are really cool! They explore each character's possible futures and they feature some very interesting and sometimes surprising events. For those of you that requested more narrative, I think you'll be happy. Lastly, I want to talk a bit about the UI. I really believe the game is now shaping up to be real pretty, and it really crystallizes our unique blend of cyberpunk, magic and modern urban world very well. I really think you'll like the result! In the meantime, you can look at the image above to give you a taste of the new direction :-)
So there we go. I'll see you in a few weeks with some updates and a more precise timeline.
Thanks and happy gaming
Matt, and the Leap of Fate team