Seraph's Last Stand
Nintendo Switch release!
I guess the title is pretty straightforward: Seraph's Last Stand has been released today for the Nintendo Switch. The price is a little bit higher (Nintendo stuff...) and unfortunatelly there's no way for us to have the leaderboards on their system, since it was completely made over the Steam API, but the whole game is still there, all hats, staves, cards, ascencions, everything.
We'll hold it with a -30% discount for these first 2 weeks of the release, so grab your copy right now to carry the game everywhere with you.
And again, thank you guys for playing and ejoying Seraph's... as I've always said, the game was a way bigger hit than I expected, and I'm grateful everyday for the community that has been formed around it.
Cheers!
- André
Minor Fixes / Balancing
- Explosive projectiles (Boomstaff and Friction) are dealing area damage once again.
- Will-o-Wisp ascencion no longer shoots in the opposite direction when using a controler.
Changes:
- Cloak nerfed to 10% iframe time increase.
Minor fixes
- Fixed bug where Will-O-Wisps would shoot to the opposite side of the controller.
Controller Support! (+ minor changes and bug fixes)
But don't get too excited... it's just mainly small and specific bug fixes that you probably won't notice, and a new slightly cool feature: controller support! The controller port is not half bad, specially on higher levels where you don't rely that much on your aim. Also, it makes movement speed builds a lot easier to control. This controller support feature was implemented mainly because I've received a proposal to port the game into the Nintendo Switch, so expect to see it on the Nintendo Shop anytime soon (but not that soon).
About changes in balancing, there were not many:
- Fragmentation projectiles were nerfed by 30% damage.
- Enemies are now 30% stronger, but 30% fewer enemies spawn (better for less powerful machines).
- Enemies get stronger on later levels on a steeper progression.
- Bosses are stronger overall.
- Alopepetciamus now divides only 3 times (max 8 copies at all times), due to the division being prone to crashing the game.
- Some ascencions now need +1 or -1 stacks to reach, but I don't quite remember which ones (sorry about that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
- Wall jumping no longer working! Thought I'd make it a feature, but its too easy to cheese it.
For the few people who read the patches, I wan to clarify some stuff. A little bit of context: there are some people who recently started writing negative reviews for the game because I don't update it as often as they expect. It's fair, but kinda annoying to be honest, because most of those people have 20+ hours of gameplay, and I can sense that they're doing this because they enjoy the game, and they believe the game could be better! I'm really glad that people are playing the game so much, and as I said before, this game was a bigger hit than I would ever have imagined, but it still was a small study project, built on a rush by one single person (that's me) who works on multiple stuff at the same time. This is not actually a passion project, the code was not meant to be an ever growing system, and I acknowledged that by releasing it without the Early Access tag, with the $0.99 price tag. If the game one of these days gets a boom in visibility from somewhere, and starts selling 3 or 4 times more than the present, then I'll know it's time to employ a team, rebuild it from the ground up to accomodate new code, do PR, test new features, etc... but at this moment the money I make from the game is not enough to make a difference if I invest back into it. I really loved making this game, and I learned that creating the gameplay part is just 1/3 of the process, as everything else (opening a company, testing and retesting, fixing system-specific bugs, marketing, respoding the public) takes much more time than one would expect.
tl;dr - I don't really know if I'm adding new content to the game, but it may happen.
But, for the one master "bug" that everyone hates, which is the game performance on later levels and framerate drops, we're still working on refacturing the code on some places to try and get a smoother game. I say we, as I now have an actual programmer helping me with this. It's not for sure, but we'll keep trying to find a way to make the game run better on lower specs computers.
And again, thank you guys for playing and enjoying the game!
Cheers!
- André
OST? More like DONATE!
Some reviews from people that played the game for 20, 30 hours+ say they wish they could pay more for the game (check it for yourself, this really exists), so I decided to release the game's OST as an easy way to let people pay more if they wish to do so.
You can find the OST on the game's page, right here:
Now being serious, making the game $0.99 was a more like a marketing strategy, as people who had a few bucks on their steam wallets could purchase the game without spending any credit card money. I think that this helped the game to achieve more sales overall, and get to steam's first pages, which helped with visibility, that became sales, so on and so forth.
I still have that voice on the back of my head saying: "What if the game was $3, would I have made 3 times more?", but I don't think that's true. I think the game got exactly as far as it was "destined" to, maybe a little further than I expected for a 2 week project. Of course, since the game success I've been working on it almost everyday for the last months, but it's proven to be worth it.
Anyways, if you like the game and think it deserves a bonus, consider buying the OST and you'll be helping me to pursure my other game projects, which are 3 at moment, one of them being Gods of Sand, a gladiator manager in Early Access which you can already buy on steam.
Thanks!
Cheers!
- André
This is almost my final form!
Now, here are all the patch notes for this version:
Buffs/Nerfs:
- The "Dealer" ascencion now needs 4 stacks of appraisal to be triggered.
- Resonance now gives +12% atk speed for each stack (from 15%).
- Invulnerability time from getting hit nerfed from 0.5 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
- Cloak now raises invulnerability time by only 20% instead of 50%. This was done because abusing this item was too easy.
- Revive removed from the game. Too cheesable.
New Stuff:
- New Item: Cold - Everytime an enemy receives damage, it gets 1% slower.
- New Ascencion: Comet - Unlocked by getting 5 stacks of Impulse.
- New Ascencion: Streamer - Unlocked by getting 8 stacks of Resonance.
- New Ascencion: Pac-man - Unlocked by getting 6 stacks of Stability.
- New Ascencion: Absorbent - Unlocked by getting 4 stacks of Cloak.
- New Ascencion: Plague Spreader - Unlocked by getting 5 stacks of Regrowth.
- New Ascencion: Speculator - Unlocked by getting 5 stacks of Precision.
- New Ascencion: Bunker - Unlocked by getting 3 stacks of Focus.
- New Ascencion: Desperate - Unlocked by picking Renew 5 times.
- New Ascencion: Enchanter - Unlocked by getting 4 stacks of Will-O-Wisp.
- New Ascencion: Avenger - Unlocked by getting 5 stacks of Rage.
- New Ascencion: Nerd - Unlocked by getting 4 stacks of Tome.
- New Ascencion: Tryhard - Unlocked by getting 20 stacks of Catalyst.
- New Ascencion: Bulldozer - Unlocked by getting 8 stacks of Swift.
- New Ascencion: Freezer - Unlocked by getting 3 stacks of Cold.
Other:
- Added two cheat codes. To activate them, write them on the main menu (without the quotation marks).
'EraserHead' - Deletes your save game, so you can start a new clean save.
'ButtFace' - Unlocks all staffs, hats and upgrades. Good for those who enjoy not having fun.
- Added an Idle and Jumping animation.
Shout out to the user RaccooN that made this awesome artwork I used as cover. I didn't ask for permission, but I hope is all cool :D
Also, I've been writing the word "ascension" as "ascencion" for a while, so, for me not to have to rewrite everything, from now on an ASCENCION is a thing in this game's universe. It was all thought out from the beginning ;)
Lastly, any bugs or suggestions, contact me at the email: oddgiantstudio@gmail.com
Cheers!
- André
New staffs, new hats and new ascencions!
It's been only a few days since the game has been released here on Steam, and I must admit that it went beyond my expectations! My true expectation was that the game would be a hit like Vampire Survivors lol but I know how lucky I'd have to be, and that Seraph's does not appeal to such a broad audience, but I'm really happy with how things got to be :)
Today I'm releasing a new patch, which icludes:
- New Staff: Frozen Tip - It's projectiles go through all enemies. Great to be used with bleeding.
- New Staff: Rainbow Staff - Shoots a random projectile every 1 second. It can shoot a weak projectile, like the homing, or a strong one, like the explosive, but that means you start with a faster attack speed than the staffs with strong projectiles.
- New Hat: Challenger's Hat - Doubles the amount of enemies that spawn, but you have 20% chance of getting double cards. I tried to make 100% chance of double cards, but it was EXTREMELY OP, so it's better this way. Also, I can think of a couple build that could benefit from more enemies on the map.
- New Hat: Fedora - Really stylish, but also really useful. This hat lets you reroll freely, but you can't enter the scoreboard in the end. I created this hat to make it easer for people to explore different builds and see how strong they can get.
- New Ascencion: Exorcist - Now with 6 stacks of Souls you unlock this trait. When you pick up a soul orb, a very powerful beam is launched up, damaging everything on it's way. I think it's kinda OP right now, so take advantage of it while it lasts.
- New Ascencion: Burning Man - With 3 stacks of Overheat you get this trait. It creates a halo around your character that deals body damage every 2 seconds. Now melee builds are getting a lot more viable.
And that's it for this patch.
Since this is a small project, I don't intend on working on this game forever, also because the game was so badly programmed that if I try to implement any new mechanics right now, it breaks everything lol But what I have in mind is creating an ascencion to each and every card, maybe throwing another 2 or 3 new cards, a couple hats and staffs and that's it. Well, the game is $0.99, so I think is fair enough :)
And thanks again for everyone that is playing and enjoying the game!!
Cheers!
- André