We're happy to annouce that this next Dec 14th we'll be launching our game Cosplay Club on Early Access, here on Steam.
A couple of weeks ago, our Kickstarter backers received access to the first chapter of the game and have been enjoying it so far. Because of that immediate good response, we decided to let you all be envolved with its development through the Early Access program.
We've chosen to release Cosplay Club through Early Access to involve our community in the game's development journey. We aim to gather valuable feedback, insights, and suggestions that will help us refine and enhance the gaming experience. This collaborative approach allows us to build a game that resonates with the preferences and expectations of you all. It all started during the Kickstarter in 2022, and we want to continue exploring this path.
The duration of the Early Access phase will depend on the feedback and input we receive from you all. We are committed to delivering a polished and engaging experience, and the Early Access period will continue until we feel that the game has reached a level of quality and completeness that aligns with our vision. It will be mostly around 9 to 12 months, and even after that, we plan to continue to integrate new content.
The Early Access version serves as a foundation, offering players the core mechanics and features of Cosplay Club. Throughout the Early Access phase, we plan to introduce new content, refine gameplay elements based on player feedback, and address any identified issues.
New game's name
From now on, we'll be refering to our game as Cosplay Club. We wanted a more friendly and catchy name, and funny enough everyone was already calling it by this name. So it makes even more sense to change it permanentely. But we all know how important the Mahou Senshi part is to us and to the game's theme, so it will be forever on our history.
We're here because of you!
Let's not forget how important is your collaboration in this project. Because of you we manage to get where we are, and we are finally able to make this game available to everyone else. Thank you very much for being part of our community!
Join our Discord
More than ever, our discord server will serve as a hub for everyone in the community. We'll be talking about the early access builds, patch updates, the content milestones, and everything else. Let's share some costumes over there!
A lot of people were asking for a Kickstarter relaunch since we didn't get the 100% goal on the first try. And we hear you. We did some changes to the campaign and we're trying it again!
But we want to break the algorithm and fund it on the first 24 hours so the platform promotes our campaign even more, creating an amazing snow ball effect. And we might get all the stretch goals! Why not?
To achieve this, we need you to pledge on the first 24 hours of the campaign, starting tomorrow morning, 9am EST.
Mahou Senshi Cosplay Club is a turn-based RPG about a magical girl that gets her powers from cosplaying. You'll get to design and craft your cosplays and live the life of a cosplayer! Suuuuuper fun!
Heavily inspired by Chroma Squad, that we all know that you loved! <3
Are you a creative person? Try out our Cosplay creator and share your creations to the world. We will send a special T-SHIRT and STICKERS for the best design! But you need to follow the rules below:
Follow at least one of our pages on: Twitter (@beholdstudios), TikTok (@beholdstudios) or Instagram (@beholdstudios_)
Post an image or video, on one of those social medias, of your cosplay design with the following hashtags and mention our page:
#NowOnKickstarter #CosplayContest #MahouSenshiCosplayClub
Remember to mention our page so we can get a notification of your post!
Post before midnight October 31st, in your local time.
If you want to discuss your design ideas with other community members, join our discord server meanwhile: discord.gg/beholdstudios
Stream the demo and Share
We still have a week to go in our Kickstarter campaign! Let's make some noise. If you want to stream the demo, feel free to do so, but please, make sure you're mentioning our page and our Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/saulocamarotti/mahou-senshi-cosplay-club
HOTFIX v1.2.4b13
- Fixed the issue that caused aliens to "stack mutations", like a flying swimmer that was invulnerable to pretty much everything haha. - Fixed the bug causing the game to keep the challenge rules on regular matches if you've had just played a challenge.
Thank you all for the continued support and we hope you keep having fun with the game!
Challenges Overhaul v1.2.4
Welcome to our 1.2.4 patch! We are very happy to see how many of you are constantly coming back to test your skills on the weekly challenges and we’ve definitely heard you ask for ways to play more than one challenge a week. This update is meant to address that and improve your overall control and “late game” replayability.
CHALLENGES AND SEEDS
The weekly challenge is no longer only a checkbox. Now it is one of three ways of playing challenge matches. Choosing the weekly option will send you to the same once-a-week challenge that you are used to. You know, the same rules for everyone and all that. It is good to mention that this is still the only challenge that will unlock the golden appliances achievements.
The first new option we added is “random”. That will allow you to randomize the modifiers and get a new set of rules each time you click the button that pops beneath it. You can randomize once to just have a new challenge to play or do it multiple times to choose the set of rules that seems more interesting for you.
The second one is the seed mode. In it, you can write down a seed of a specific challenge and play it. That may come in hand, if a friend of yours or a streamer played a random match that you want to try or if you want to store a fun weekly challenge seed to play it again later. You can find a match’s seed in the pause and the end screen, may it be after a victory or defeat.
NEW MODIFIERS
Since we are giving you all more chances to play challenges, it would be great to increase the amount and variety of modifiers available in the game, so that is what we did! With the help of our discord community members and digging up our old challenge ideas files, we’ve added 32 new challenge modifiers that can now be used on challenges. Here is the complete list:
Just Keep Swimming: All aliens mutate to Swimmers;
Sleeping Beauty: All aliens mutate to Snoozers;
It Hurts!: All aliens mutate to Spikeys;
I Believe I Can Fly!: All aliens mutate to Spitters;
Bring the Artillery: All aliens mutate to Bulkies;
Game of Thrones: All aliens mutate to Leaders;
Mutation Madness: Every type of alien can spawn;
Natural Selection: Aliens hatch from their eggs with mutations;
So Fast?: Aliens skip their hatching phase when they mutate;
Power Inversion: Appliances that needed energy no longer need it and vice-versa;
No Energy Needed: No appliances need energy;
Bring Batteries: Every appliances need energy;
Overcharged: Robots are faster and never need to recharge;
No Ozone Layer: Sprays last longer and are applied faster;
Bigger and Shinier: Mops are more efficient at cleaning;
Old Mop: Mops are less efficient at cleaning;
Heavy Bucket: Carrying buckets full of water makes you slow;
Dog Shelter: You can adopt up to 3 dogs at once;
Limited Stock: Non-consumable items on the shop can only be bought once;
Direct Delivery: Items are delivered on your head;
Random Delivery: Items bought will be delivered to a random player;
Crazy Delivery: Items bought will appear in a random room;
Keep it cold: Items bought will go directly to a fridge;
Meditation: Standing still will make you slowly recover hunger and fatigue;
Keep Moving!: Standing still will make you even more tired than walking around;
Delivery Delay: Shop items take much more time to arrive;
Life gave you lemons: Limited shop, but spaceship starts with lots of drops;
Leaking bucket: Buckets will run out of water after a short time;
Action-Reaction Law: Normal aliens mutate instantly when they are stunned;
Adaptive Mutations: Aliens will adapt to be immune to the way they were stunned;
Reroll: Mutated aliens will change their mutation randomly when stunned;
Half Second Rule: Food will spoil as soon as they reach the floor. Don't drop it!
Unstable Energy: Batteries will spoil if left on the ground for five seconds;
Time bomb trash: Trash bags will explode after a short time on the floor
MATCHMAKING CHANGES
We’ve released a warning a little more than a month ago saying that we’d remove the matchmaking feature from the game. If you didn’t have a chance to read the original post, you can find it here. During the past weeks we’ve had the opportunity to talk to some of you about this feature and it changed our perception of how many of you managed to find matches through it.
We decided to, instead of removing the feature, only change the way we present it to you and to give more information regarding its popularity and waiting times. Here is what we’ve done:
Changed the “matchmaking” term to “make game public”
Added the information on how many players are online at that moment (including those in a match);
Added the estimated waiting time based on how many matches started recently (wich is, admittedly, not the best way to estimate this, but we hope it still helps);
We hope these changes will help players manage their expectations better and have a clearer idea of how to use it and whether they want to wait for other players or not.
OTHER CHANGES
“Dirty Plumbing” modifier can no longer fill up more than 2 consecutive buckets with good. The “5 dirty buckets when you most need it” situation will no longer occur, and you are welcome :P
It is now possible to use the spray on yourself. Players just need to use it and, if they have no valid appliance nearby, the character will self apply the quarantine buff;
The “hyperinflation” modifier initial value was raised from 10 to 25 and the value increased each time something is bought was raised from 3 to 5;
The “Free Market” challenge is now considered positive, meaning it can now be mixed and played with other two negative challenges;
Thank you all for the continued support <3
HOTFIX v1.2.3
Zen mode now works both on online and offline games. If the host has Zen mode on, the alien infestation and the ship will have its rules, but players that connect to that game will only have more resistant characters if they also have the mode turned on in their machines.
The end match screen will now show if you’ve played on zen mode;
The character selection screen also shows if the match will be in Zen mode or not;
The warning that used to say the Zen mode would be deactivated on online matches have been removed;
You can now invite players that have more than one roommate at their local lobbies, meaning playing 2 local + 2 local no longer requires matchmaking to work;
Fixed remapping feature that stopped working after an earlier patch;
Fixed an issue that caused rooms to reactivate without anyone opening its doors;
Fixed issue causing navigation problems while using a controller on the settings screen;
“Fast Delivery” rule for Weekly Challenges no longer removes the flying robots and the pizza from the shop;
An attempt to fix the issue that happened when you finished a match and went back to the lobby (invisible housemates). Please tell us if it keeps happening with you, this one is particularly hard to test because it is very inconsistent;
Hope you are all having fun with the game and thanks for all the support and patience during these past weeks. All of these fixes were possible thanks to the help of many community members and players that took their time to give us detailed information about them. You all rock :D
HOTFIX v1.2.2
ACCESSIBILITY MODE CHANGES
Thanks to Steven Spohn (Spawn), we got a lot of constructive criticism regarding the way we described the former accessibility mode. We wanted to address those issues right away and apologise to anyone who felt offended by it. Here is what we did:
It is now called “Zen Mode”: It was pointed to us that accessibility could imply that everyone who needs accessibility options wants an easier game, and that is not true. We now call it Zen Mode because it is an overall more relaxing way to play the game and we think it is more descriptive that way.
It has a new description: This was the major offender in this issue and, again, we are sorry by the way that description was phrased. It read like the game was judging or punishing you for turning that on, and that was far from our intention. Here is the new version of the description:
“Zen Mode reduces the difficulty of the game by making you more resistant and tuning down time-related mechanics, allowing you to focus on having fun! Turn this on to have a less stressful experience or for any other reason you desire! Want to proceed?”
It will no longer block any achievements: We were initially afraid that people would exploit this option to get the achievements fast. By the end of the day we figured that if that was the cost for allowing everyone to experience the entire content, it was totally worth it. The game is at its best when it is challenging (not impossible) for you and your teammates, so have that always in mind before when deciding to use the Zen mode.
It can be turned on and off during matches: This was not possible because of the achievement limitations. Now they are gone, you are free to test them out on the fly! Note that this only works in local matches. We are studying ways to allow Zen Mode in online matches in the future, but it is not possible at the moment.
We’ve learned a lot today and we figured it would be interesting to share the reasons behind every change with you all. That way we can all keep working to have more accessible games in the future.
WORKAROUND FOR CHINESE PLAYERS
We added a warning to instruct players on how to deal with the “stuck at the menu” issue that is currently affecting players from China. This is sadly not a fix, because the issue is caused by corrupt data sent by Windows itself and the game needs that data in multiple moments to properly work. We’ll keep on searching for a more definitive fix, but in the meantime, we thought it would be better to instruct everyone facing this issue on how to work around it. If you missed the solution, you can find it at 可怕的秀逗's post:
- Fixed issue causes by the achievements file; - Updated Rewired plugin and Steamworks to the last release (we thought this would fix the Steam controller issue but it didn't);
