No Place For Bravery
Temporary Support Hiatus
In recent months, we have been tirelessly working and investing all our energy and resources into bringing new projects to life.
We know many of you are eagerly awaiting news, updates, and ongoing support for No Place for Bravery, and we want to assure you that we are doing our best to meet your expectations. However, it's important to share with you that we are facing some challenges. As some of you may know, we are an independent studio with a small team and rely heavily on funding to keep moving forward. Currently, we are working hard to secure the next investment that will allow us to expand our team.
Exciting things are coming! However, we need a little more time to address our financial and structural issues, and we would like to ask for your understanding and support.
Therefore, we want to inform you that we will be temporarily stepping away from supporting No Place for Bravery until at least June. This decision has been made so we can fully focus on seeking investment and developing new projects and No Place for Bravery itself.
We want to express our deepest gratitude to each and every one of you for your ongoing support. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this challenging period.
Best regards,
Glitch Factory
Guardian Edition free demo
Guardian Edition Free Demo
Guardian Edition Free Demo
Hello, fearless warriors!
We're here with thrilling news in honor of the incredible reception the Guardian Edition of No Place for Bravery has received.
To ensure that our epic journey is experienced by a larger audience, we're delighted to unveil a Free Demo for everyone to enjoy. But that's not the end of our tale – prepare yourselves for an exclusive 35% Discount event that will sweep across our lands from October 30 to November 6!
Gather your companions and embark on this heroic quest with us, as there truly is No Place for Bravery.
Language Update
Hello Brave ones!
As you already know, the Guardian Edition of No Place for Bravery is now online. With it, several improvements have been added to the project. Now, we need to discuss the game's languages.
We have also previously mentioned the size of our team and the challenges we faced during our launch in the text about the Roadmap of updates.
Regarding the languages:
We are a small team from Brazil, and the possibility of having a game in multiple languages was like a dream come true. What we didn't know at the time was that it came with some limitations.
Bravery is a game with a lot of text; everything has a story to tell, and everything adds in some way to the construction of the world. We weren't so experienced in terms of scope, and various text changes were needed during the project's development. All of this incurred a cost - localizing for various languages. After a while, we finalized the treatment of the game's text, and nothing more could be written because we didn't have the financial resources for it. Of course, many things still needed to be said, but we tried to do that in the best way possible without text.
For the Guardian Edition, since we have been without funding for a while, we decided to overlook this limitation a bit and go for a more independent approach, working with the community. We decided to include all the texts that we deemed necessary for the project to become a better game, including new tutorials and tips, new interactions and items, and all of this ended up making the game more interesting. Everything was written in Portuguese and translated into English, which was used for all the other languages.
From time to time, we receive emails from members of the community offering to localize the game's text into a language that hasn't been localized yet. So we thought, let's be indies! Let's use our community and ask for help in this regard.
This text is about that - the Guardian Edition has already been released, and with it, several improvements and various new texts that need to be localized. How do you, brave members of the community, think we can work on this with community creation tools? Should we release a spreadsheet with comments, for example?
We are a team of three people working to improve a project that is currently without funding. In addition, we are also working on new ideas to keep the studio alive. Things are happening slowly, but with the help of the community, we know we can change this story.
Guardain Edition Launch Discount
Hello brave warriors.
To celebrate the launch of the new version of the game we are giving a 35% discount.
Don't waste time, swords in fists and eyes wide open.
Don't forget to check out all changes made in the project for the new version.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1039100/view/3675553409359158173?l=brazilian
Guardian Edition - Free Update!
Hello dear community.
The time has come, there is no place for bravery! Only the fastest swords will survive there is an amazing new version of our beloved game.
We heard everything you had to say and we're happy to bring you so much news! It took months of work to improve the combat experience, game design, visual feedback from enemies and a less punishing game. (but without losing the challenge!)
In the first moment of this publication we will talk about the general aspects of this new version, for those who are interested, we will mention everything that is contemplated in the patch and deal with the main points that we have learned in the meantime.
Without further ado, here we go.
Basic combat changes.
One of the big points we got from you is that Bravery's combat was harsh and often felt truncated, as well as feeling punishing in an unfair way. We understand this and decided to change some combat dynamics to make things more interesting:
The combat restructuring was very deep, thanks to the feedback we could see that there was a fundamental problem in our approach to the battle design: we believed that the game was a Souls/Sekiro like and we made several decisions in that sense, but the truth is that we got too attached to references that made sense in the initial context of the project, but over time the game had already become something else and we could only realize that after the launch and feedback from the community.
We changed our design approach and instead of keeping a very locked game focused exclusively on parrying we made the character faster with cancellation frames and more immediate responses, we made the side step more responsive and with an invulnerability frame, we also separated the stance damage from the character's base damage so that enemies' posture breaking was always intentional. With that, we opened the possibility for more styles of gameplay and breaking, we managed to make the game more fluid and responsive.
No Place for Bravery is a narrative-driven Action Game and we believe that all these changes will bring a much more interesting combat flow to Bravery as in the example below.
In addition, several other changes have been made that affect how you will face your enemies in Bravery.
We get better visual feedback in combat and more clarity on enemy behavior.
Difficulty level fix.
We'd like to bring a really challenging experience to our players, however, thanks to your feedback that the game was punishing and unfair to our brave warriors, several of the tweaks we've made in regards to combat are already intended to address issues in the game as well. difficulty of the game, but we did a more complete study on the balance in a broader way, taking into account the amount of health, posture and resistance of Thorn and his mortal enemies.
Level design rework
In order to make a better experience, we also made changes to how the game develops, inserting new moments and tutorials that help in learning the mechanics of the game and that generate a better sense of progression.
How to bring the situation of the platforms?
The game's platforming mechanic was something that really wasn't satisfying, in fact it's a remnant of the project's various restructurings. In this first moment, we are transforming several of these sequences into moments in which the player must explore the combat, which is our core mechanic, in a different way: with the possibility of using elements of the scenario in your favor or having to deal with limitations that it generates, as is the case with the new Guardian Base challenges.
Old Design:
New Design:
Usability experience improvements
In addition to all the improvements in the way of playing, we have brought some features that will allow for a usability experience such as:
<*> Fix Screen Resize;
<*> Pause on Menus;
<*> Cloud Save;
<*> Linux Native Build
One last consideration
We will be continuously working on Bravery to get to the game that we always dreamed of delivering to the community, the goal of this version is to understand how you will feel the game and we hope that you can rate Bravery, so we can understand if the game is better and we can still evolve, after that we intend to take these improvements to other platforms like the Switch.
For the most enthusiastic players, below we will have a complete list with all the changes
Feedbacks and reading, confusion during combat
- What was done?
Visual feedbacks in the UI have been added to improve movement readability of all ranged attacks, breaker and special enemy skills
- Why was that?
In our initial approach, taking reference from Souls games, we understood that reading enemy movements through their animations alone was enough for the player to anticipate their actions, react and generate strategies.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
the game seems unfair to the player, punishing him for mistakes he didn't have a chance to react to.
The way we balance the game's combats with several enemies, it is impossible for the player to be aware of the movement of the various enemies on the screen, he often faces more than 5 enemies on the screen, between melee and ranged enemies, with fast and slow projectiles, so in these situations reading the movements and feedbacks of a single enemy are practically useless, while the player focuses on the closest enemies, several other actions are happening and have consequences on him, but they were not in his field of vision which generates this feeling of injustice , because unlike a Souls, the player is being punished for something that he didn't even have the chance to react to.
Stance damage and strong attack
- What was done?
Thorn's base damage has been split into two, now with the sword he no longer deals posture damage, nor with bow basic attacks. Charged basic attack is now a strong attack that also deals stance damage.
- Why was that?
In the previous version Thorn dealt damage both to enemies' health and posture, it was a design decision because we didn't want weak and strong attack, so that the possibility of breaking posture was not absolute for hammer or parry, so that players could also break posture playing looser.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
Here it solves a confusion also generated by the design, we have a feedback that plays a slowdown of a few seconds every time an enemy resets the posture bar, what was happening is that during sword combat on many occasions the player broke posture of several enemies in a row, once again giving the impression that the game is too slow. With the separation of posture damage from the basic attack, in addition to combat becoming more agile, the satisfaction with the posture break has become better, as now the effect happens after an intentional action by the player.
Player Attribute Feedback
- What was done?
Added feedback when the player is low on Health, Stance and Stamina.
- Why was that?
We considered that only with the indicators on the screen the player would be able to check his resources.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
In the heat of combat, feedback is extremely necessary to give the player tips on what is happening, he ends up not looking at his attributes when he is surrounded by enemies, and this generates the feeling that he died, or lost a resource suddenly, that it was unfair.
Side Step & parry
- What was done?
Actions now have absolute priority, they are immediate and cancel any other action that is being executed, even overlapping with each other.
Final Side Step's recovery frames can be canceled with another action, except with the side step itself, evolving the side step decreases the recovery.
Frames of invulnerability added to the basic Side Step. Now, Thorn flashes blue, which is the defense color in the game, every time it's invulnerable during a Side Step.
- Why was that?
By design we wanted the player to feel that every attack was costly for Thron, so actions were not cancelable with others, he would have to commit to every action as the combat was supposed to be extremely technical, it wasn't just about positioning yourself right, but also take actions at the right time and be punished when you make a mistake.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
We wanted to ignore the conventions of the genre a bit in this approach, but some standards are already well ingrained in players and many have reported that combat felt sluggish and unresponsive, in part because of the lack of canceling actions.
Animation cancel:
Side Step - Invulnerability feedback
- What was done?
invulnerability frames added to basic Side Step.
Thorn now flashes blue, which is the defense color in the game, every time he is invulnerable during a Side Step.
- Why was that?
We believed that the player would master this mechanic without needing clues.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
It gives more agency to the player and makes using Side Step a more viable and less punishing game strategy, as players were already trying to go to the dash side like in the souls games.
Difficulty levels
- What was done?
Thorn's health, stance, and stamina have been balanced across all difficulty levels. The amount of health, posture and damage resistance of all enemies has also been revised.
- Why was that?
Our intention was to make a game that at the base level was difficult and that the player had to be very aware of his actions.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The game was too hard in all modes and extremely unfairly punishing. the player couldn't enjoy the game if he didn't play the specific way that the game was satisfying, focused on using parry, but the convention of the genre actually makes the players play more inclined to Dash/Side Step than to parry, therefore the previous game design it was not working in several situations.
Rework Level design
- What was done?
Prologue and ActI (Guardian Base) - change in the level design and combat design from the beginning of the game to improve the learning of the mechanics with new tutorials and generate more interesting combat situations and that generate a better sense of progression in the player.
- Why was that?
We had less experience in that part and we put a lot of the game's combat in the prologue and ActI out of fear and as a solution to make the design more interesting.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The feeling that the game doesn't change much over the course of the adventure and the sense of variety in combat
PS: we still need to take these improvements to other scenarios in the game. The level design we're currently working on for a patch is the Prison of ActIV, to make better use of the crossbow improves in a true bullet hell sequence for the game.
Pausing in-game menus
- What was done?
game now pauses when in-game menus are opened.
- Why was that?
We wanted a constant sense of urgency.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The player was very overloaded during the fights and was not using enough items or messing with the inventory, maybe this change improves and makes him use more items during the fight, create more strategies.
Self-consumable item
- What was done?
Enemies now have a chance to drop items that automatically heal, health.
- Why was that?
Enemies just dropped items that the player would need to enter the inventory to equip or use, once again thinking about the extremely technical and intentional combat we wanted.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
Makes combat fairer and removes the need for player pauses in combat.
PS: We're currently working on item drops for Stance and Stamina, but it will also involve a full balance of the item drop percentages of the game.
Breaker Attack on enemies
- What was done?
The base posture damage that enemies do to Thorn has been lowered and an attack variation called Breaker has been created for all enemies, the Breaker attack consumes half of Thorn's posture bar if the attack connects.
- Why was that?
Enemies followed the same pattern as Thorn for health and stance damage.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
At various times the player was confused when he lost his resources, this solution was created to solve the damage in the posture, but it ended up generating a completely new and interesting dynamic for combat situations.
Full Screen behavior
- What was done?
tweak so that the player could play the game in Windowed mode and in different resolutions.
- Why was that?
It was a bug.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
Several players complaining about not being able to change the project's video and resolution settings, in addition to not being able to play in windowed mode because the game forced fullscreen all the time.
Crossbow rework
- What was done?
The player no longer needs to worry about aiming with the crossbow when shooting directly with the attack button as he will always hit the nearest enemy, but he can still enter aiming mode to choose the enemy he wants to hit.
When the amount of arrows reaches zero Thorn automatically reloads the weapon, this action can be canceled with Side Step or Parry.
- Why was that?
Again by design we understood that it was important to aim and allow the player to miss their actions.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
In fact, the most important thing is the player's concern to position himself and be in the right place to perform the actions in order to be punished, he does not also need to be punished with the possibility of missing arrows when playing without aiming.
PS: The aim assist was improved for the controller, keyboard and mouse still demands precision.
(Enemy) Heblin Dasher
- What was done?
Creation of a variation of basic Heblin that gives a Dash attack.
- Why was that?
Before this enemy did not exist because the design and amount of life of the enemies allowed longer combats.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
After adjusting the life and posture of all enemies and Thorn's Damage, it was necessary to create a basic enemy that attacks the player before he is in range of his attack, because as the enemies now only resist two attacks and the player has a lot of posture the dynamics of combat have changed drastically and we need to get the player to move more defensively instead of just charging at enemies smashing buttons.
(Enemy) New Order Area Cancel behavior fix
- What was done?
Now the enemy fires his skill in a cadenced and predictable way serving its purpose of making the player not stand still.
- Why was that?
He played two different skills with different amounts of projectiles, I believe to keep the player away from him as well.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
The character's various skills made him very chaotic and not predictable, in addition to polluting the combat a lot.
(Enemy) Archers and ranged attacks in general
- What was done?
We removed the update of the enemy's aim from the moment of the attack and left it in the moment of anticipation of the attack.
- Why was that?
It felt more accurate for the type of game where we wanted enemies to update their aim when releasing the attack.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
This generated many unfair situations where the player at a short distance felt the impossibility of dodging attacks, now with the aiming feedbacks the feeling of evading attacks beyond anticipation is much more satisfying.
(enemy) New Order Bullet Hell Rework
- What was done?
Instead of him shooting 12 arrows in a semi circle, he now targets the player and shoots arrows in a rhythmic sequence in their direction.
- Why was that?
Design decision.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
It makes bullet hell combat less confusing and gives the enemy a purpose, to make the player move while being targeted by their attacks.
(enemy) Heblin Tank
- What was done?
Behavior tweaked to become a game miniboss.
- Why was that?
The enemy was a generic tank that was in several combats.
- What problem Problem does it solve?
With the new design tweaks the need to have more interesting enemies for key combat moments became necessary, the tank is one of those enemies that has been reworked to be more challenging as a miniboss.
Bravery Roadmap
Hello, dear Bravery community!
We have some thrilling updates to share with you and would like to take this opportunity to have a more profound conversation about the game's development. We recognize that our communication hasn't been the best, but we're committed to improving and keeping you informed about the challenges we face as a small indie team. While we may still make mistakes along the way, we believe that being open with you will foster a better understanding of our journey.
Our publisher's funding unfortunately ran out in June 2022, and due to these financial constraints, we had to make the tough decision to release our employees and part ways with some of our partners. It was a heartbreaking moment as we went from a team of nine, all working fervently towards the release, to just the two of us. The studio atmosphere turned somber, but we were determined to give Bravery the chance it deserved, even with our reduced manpower. It was a challenging and emotional period, but we held onto hope that our efforts would resonate with the gaming community and find an audience.
When we first released Bravery, we were a team of only two passionate individuals. Handling bug fixes for the PC version and working on porting the game to the Switch became overwhelming for just the two of us. Nevertheless, we maintained our optimism regarding the game's reception.
But now, for the exciting news!
After the game's release, we were selected as one of the ten Latin American companies to receive the inaugural Google Indie Fund. Originally intended to support the game's mobile port, we saw it as an opportunity to not only bring Bravery to mobile devices but also to make significant improvements. Your valuable feedback has been invaluable, allowing us to gain deeper insights into the project and rework various design decisions to enhance the overall gaming experience. Over the past six months, our team has been hard at work, and we're thrilled with the progress we've made.
We want to emphasize that we're still a small team, consisting of seven dedicated individuals. As we strive to make Bravery the best it can be, we must balance the business aspects while providing ongoing support for the game. Please bear with us as progress may be slower than what you're accustomed to, given our limited resources and budget constraints. We genuinely appreciate your patience and understanding throughout this journey.
This brings us to our future plans for No Place for Bravery. We're excited to present the roadmap for future updates, outlining our commitment to continuously improve the game and deliver the exceptional experience we know it can be. We invite you to share your feedback and ideas, as your input is vital in shaping the game's direction.
Thank you for being a part of our community and for your unwavering support. Together, let's make Bravery an unforgettable experience!
Stay tuned for more updates and exciting news.
Your Bravery Team
Balance and Bug fixes Patch Notes
Patch Notes:
- Fixed achievement system
- Fixed Thorn loaded position
- Thorn base stamina increased from 1000 to 1600
- Cover added to some obstacles of Helwyr fire factory
- Thorn dash attack invincibility decreased to 0.6 from 2.5
- Added delay to show save tip
Post-Launch Patch - October 2022
This patch contains various fixes and improvements to issues inspired and reported by our players. Thank you for your support as we try and make exploring Dewr the most epic and enjoyable experience possible!
Note: 📢 Indicates a change inspired by or reported by the community! Thank you!
Save system:
Rework write to file workflow:
🚨 To better improve performance and flow the game now will only save at battle memorials 🚨
Do not turn off the game while it is saving, it may corrupt your save file
BUG Fixes:
- 📢Hard lock - Player no longer gets stuck after the bridge at south of Westland.
- 📢Soft Lock - If thethe Player leaves the game after the battle before Leaf's kidnapping the item required to interact and proceed no longer disappears.
- Character no longer duplicates after the cutscene in Westland.
- 📢The player can no longer dash/walk through to the other side without ever needing to grab the hammer at the stones in the prologue.
- 📢Cursed forest ghost mages skill item no longer disappears after the cutscene.
- The hanged man no longer disappears after the cutscene.
Narrative:
📢Glossary entry for Leaf, Thorn, and Rosa removed from the prologue.
Enemies encounter:
📢Warlock Summoning clones :
The clone summoning behaviorwas removed to avoid a Hard Lock when the player respawns at the near battle memorial.
The Warlock encounter will be further reworked for further updates.
Westlands Ghost enemies:
Removed until the rework of the battle design of this area is done.
Level Design & Enviroment:
- 🚨 New Battle memorials were added to the Prison, Secret Base, Helwyr Fire Factory, Cursed Forest, and Tooth, following the Save System Change.
- Backtrack portal added to Secret base of the order after the Boss battle.
- Backtrack portal added to Helwyr fire factory after the Boss battle.
Miscellaneous:
- Information about the Save System added to the loading screen.
- 📢Item drop interaction time removed.
- 📢Other aspect ratios added:
4:3
5:4
16:10
Other
Battle Design & Gameplay:
- 📢 Cooldown of 1s added to freeze time feedback when the player is hit
We kept the damage of other attacks during the feedback cooldown, only the freeze of the camera will stop, but all other feed back are will still happen during the freeze time feedback cooldown window. - Invulnerability after successful parry increased from 0.3s to 0.5s.
Combat Improvements - Sword and Dash
📢 Improvements made to the dash to make it a more viable combat maneuver.
Sword movimentation improvement:
- The Animation cancels closer to the strike hit now.
- The time for Thorns combo to reset has been set at 0.5 seconds.
- A short delay has been added to the basic sword attack III of the combo.
Sword combo damage:
- strike 1 decreased to x0.5 from x1.
- strike 2 decreased to x1 from x1.
- strike 3 decreased to x1.5 from x2.
Dash + Attack:
- The Player can now cancel the last 2 frames of a dash with an attack.
Basic dash:
- Distance increased to 1.9.
- Duration increased to 0.25.
- Invulnerability of 0.1s added.
- Cooldown increased to 0.6.
- Stamina use increased to 100.
- Q.Duration decreased to 0.3
Improved Dash:
Click:
- Distance increased to 2.3.
- Duration increased to 0.6.
- Invulnerability increased to 0.3s.
- Cooldown decreased to 0.5.
- Stamina use increased to 100.
- Q.Duration increased to 0.4.
Hold:
- Distance increased to 2.6.
- Duration increased 0.6.
- Invulnerability increased to 0.6s.
- Cooldown decreased to 0.3s.
- Stamina use increased to 100.
Thorn Hammer improvements:
- The Animation cancels closer to the strike hit in the first two attacks.
- Hammer combo cooldown decreased to 0.4.
- Combo reset time increased to 2s.
- Strike 1 damage decreased to 1 from 1.25.
- strike 2 damage decreased to 1 from 1.25.
Hammer skill 360 spin attack update:
- invincibility decreased to 0.3.
- Damage decreased to 1.
- cooldown increased to 8.
Director's commentary
We're really happy and thankful for all feedback we're receiving, here I want to show our progress regarding making Bravery the cool experience we all know it can be.
Túlio Mendes
Director
An Update about Updates
We wanted to give you an update and some unoffical patch notes to provide some insight and gratitude regarding some trouble early reviews had with our game.
Some reviewers of our game had some problems and bugs come up in the versions that they played. Some of the folks got their versions as early at August 25th and we felt confident in the version we sent them. However, When people play your game, they will always find bugs you weren't aware of and that happened to us. While we regret that problem appeared for some of the reviewers we got to work right away solving those problems. While we couldn't solve all of the problems for folks who got the game early while they were playing the game, we are very grateful for all of them who wrote to us letting us know what issues they found.
We were blown away by the outreach. Folks didn't write to complain, most of them wanted to let us know about the issues because they enjoyed the game and wanted it to be the best it could be.
Which was very unexpected for us, but also a pleasant surprise that made us work with more energy for the release on the 22nd.
We will list here all the issues that were resolved in that period, as we know that some information and reported issues may have already been resolved.
New issues will arise, of course, but we will keep working to make Bravery the best possible experience it can be.
Bravery change log from 08/25 to 09/20:
System:
Thorn position fixed to avoid black screen:
- Prologue ending, ActI ending, ActII ending, ActIII ending.
- Crash when leaving the game during Leaf kidnapping cutscene.
- Quick slot input stuck after Thorn falling.
Warlock:
- Main behavior, summons behavior, hebling spawning.
- Warlock room missing after die and reload the game.
Gameplay:
- Dashing back to the ground from a platform.
- Dashing between platforms.
- Scrolling lore description.
- Prison enemies sprite spawning after death.
- Warlock persistent clone.
- Thorn getting stuck after the sword switch in the guardian base.
- Tooth Warlock wayblocker.
Code:
- World map navigation.
- Save the game when the player dies.
- Scene loading and activation.
- Player position on loading game.
- Save player position improvement.
- Improvements to avoid falling into holes.
- Discover map region after travel to it.
Thank you for the support!
Glitch Factory