Happy Steam Next Fest everyone. If you haven’t noticed, SpellRogue now has a demo out! It's been great to see all the new people playing and enjoying the game 😊.
There are only a few more things we want to get done before release, and we wanted to let you know what is to come, so we put this development roadmap together:
To explain the plan further we will periodically post “Dev blogs” that will delve deeper into game mechanics and exactly how we are working to improve the game (next up, we will explain what "Map Rework" entails, and why we believe it is important).
Please also keep in mind that we are developing the game together with the community, so we would love to hear your opinion about which features you want to see in the game (discord)!
May your dice roll true.
Tim and Thorbjørn
Demo out now!
Greetings Dice Slingers,
Surprise! Today we are releasing a Demo of SpellRogue! If you have been waiting for a chance to try out SpellRogue, the demo is a great way to get a taste of what the full game is like.
The demo features “Lapis” the Azure Seer and is limited to Act 1 & 2, but otherwise you will (almost) experience the full experience - even part of the "new game+" features is available!
For returning playtesters: We have made major improvements to the UI, completely overhauled sound effects, and improved/balanced a ton of enemy gameplay and water spells. Check out the overview for 0.8.9 below:
We’re back from Gamescom this week. We went there to showcase SpellRogue, and some of the first articles are now showing up in the wild. TechRadar Gaming for instance is very positive in their article about SpellRogue!
In other news, we are ending Playtest #2 on Monday the 4th, so this weekend is a great time to jump in and try it out. We want to thank everyone who participated already, and a big shout out to everyone discussing strategies and reporting bugs on Discord - we couldn’t make the game without you guys! ♥️
If you did not win the playtest lottery, fear not as we have some exciting news coming your way very soon!
That’s all for now, have a great weekend and may your dice roll true 🎲
Tim & Thorbjørn.
Playtest #2: Blood and Water.
Greetings dice slingers,
Today marks the day that Playtest #2 is beginning. As planned it will run from 17th to the 31st of August. We will start inviting randomly selected testers from the playtest signup pool to participate in batches over the next ~2 weeks. Previous playtesters will also continue to have access for this round.
We’re thrilled to see what you think of the improvements! The main changes are (partial-) controller support, major audio upgrades, redesigned UI, and improvements to spell graphics. We also added a bunch of content in the form of new wizard loadouts, spells, artifacts and mutators. The update also contains a ton of balance changes and a few redesigned effects.
Finally, we are introducing some new artwork for the Steam page, and we are super excited by how it's turning out! (A huge thanks to Ghostship Games for helping us out with this ♥️)
And one more thing! We (Tim & Thorbjørn) is going to Gamescom next week, so if you’re around and want to hang out or talk shop, hit us up on Discord and we can meet!
SpellRogue Playtest #2
Greetings dice slingers.
It has been a few weeks since we closed the previous playtest, but you will be happy to hear that Playtest #2 will be happening in August 2023.
The highlights for Playtest #2 is as follows:
New wizard loadouts, artifacts and spells
Added controller support
New & improved sound effects
Improved graphics for water spells
General balance tweaks
Playtest #2 will run from 17th of August to the 31st of August, so make sure you have signed up to the playtest on the SpellRogue storepage!
We’re excited to get a new batch of people playing to hear what you think of the current state of the game, and to also hang out with the wider community.
Note that if you have been a part of the previous playtests, you will have access during this one as well.
That is all for now, but stay tuned as we will be sharing more of the changes in the time leading up to Playtest #2!
- Tim & Thorbjørn
End of Playtest #1
Greetings diceslingers,
We are concluding the 2-week long playtest today, and we want to thank everyone who participated and provided invaluable feedback. With your help, we have identified a ton of bugs and gameplay aspects that we want to further tweak over the coming months.
Getting continuous player feedback is integral to the way we develop SpellRogue, so we are very happy with how this particular playtest has run. Be assured that we will run more playtests in the coming months, and plan to invite new batches of players. Players that already had playtest access will be able to play again, but we will let you know ahead of time.
Tim & Thorbjørn.
Sign up for the next SpellRogue playtest!
Greetings dice slingers!
We got some exciting news this week: We are going to run a Steam Playtest for 2 weeks and let people have a go at SpellRogue to give us general feedback on the state of the game. The playtest will run from 20.th of June to the 4.th of July.
To get a chance at participating, head on over to the SpellRogue steam page and click the “Request Access” button (if you haven’t already), and make sure to wishlist SpellRogue as well!
Have any questions? Read this FAQ:
When does the Playtest run? 20.th of June to the 4.th of July
How do I sign up? Go to SpellRogue on Steam and click the “Request Access” button.
I have already clicked the “Request Access” button previously, am I in the pool of candidates? Yes.
How do you select participants? Random players from the sign up pool are given access at the start of the playtest. We may invite more during the Playtest.
Where do I report my feedback and bugs? We are most active on the SpellRogue discord, but also check the Steam Forums frequently.
What should I be reporting? Obvious bugs, hard to understand concepts, inconsistencies, poor tooltips, discuss what you like or what feels weird/annoying. Anything really! We take your feedback very seriously and often make changes based on statements and opinions of our players.
Can I make content, videos or stream SpellRogue? Yes, feel free to showcase and play it as openly as you like! There is no Embargo on anything.
Will my progress be saved for release? No, we expect to reset all achievements/progression at launch. Perhaps also between individual playtests, we’re not sure yet.
I have been a part of the previous playtests, will I still have access? This playtest will close down on June 27th, but if you get access to this playtest you will have access to any playtests we do in the future through Steam.
We look forward to seeing you slinging dice!
Tim & Thorbjørn.
SpellRogue: Closed Beta News
Greetings dice slingers!
Just wanted to let everyone know about some upcoming changes to beta testing of SpellRogue. The first step is establishing a Closed Beta testing group, where we will share upcoming updates early to get feedback and bug reports.
If you are interested in following the development of SpellRogue, get access to preview builds, and help make SpellRogue something truly special, I suggest you head on over to our Discord and sign up to the Closed Beta test. https://discord.com/invite/5AnXVPCqyx
We are also planning to close the Steam Playtest in the near future. However, we might open the Playtest up again and run “time limited” playtest periods, where we open up the game for everyone for a couple of days. We will share more details about these plans soon.
Meanwhile, the Closed Beta has a preview of the upcoming update to playtesters, so go sign up and check out SpellRogue 0.8.6 Vault of Artifacts with improvement to mutators, achievements, UI and a ton of balance changes.
SpellRogue Development Blog #2
Greetings Spellslingers, Tim here!
This is going to be a smaller post, but I’m excited to show off some of the things that I have been noodling on for the past few weeks. As mentioned in the previous dev blog, the Fire and Earth characters are getting a new coat of paint, and I personally think they are turning out really great. Some of the main things I wanted to improve were the animations, poses and making their proportions a bit more "heroic" and unique.
One of the details I’m particularly happy with is the dynamic physics for cloth and other things that move depending on what the character is doing. Check out the dice-necklace in the Earth Wizard gif for example. Small details like these really makes the characters much more believable and feel less static.
I am also continuing to improve things across the board and the fire wizard got a few improvements last week along with some upgrades to the Wizard Select screen. There is still animation timings to tighten up and adding proper graphics for spells, so it's safe to say that there are still much work to be done on the character side of things, but tasks are getting worked on at a steady pace.
With the upgrades for Fire and Earth, the Water wizard and his spells are feeling painfully out of date and not at the quality level that we want. The Water wizard design itself is still interesting, but we definitely now want to tweak and improve it even further. The next playtest/beta update won't have graphical changes for him yet, but rest assured that he will get the same treatment over the coming months. I am definitely also looking forward to updating all the water spell graphics to be at the same quality as the new fire spells!
Water Wizard concept art by our friends at Ghost Ship Games.
In other news, our current short term goal is to get the next playtest/beta build out in about a week's time, but we still have some UI improvements, balance and bug fixing to do first.
That’s it for now, we’re very excited to see what you think of the coming changes!
Tim
SpellRogue Development Blog #1
Greetings Spellslingers!
We are currently working on new features, but still need a few more weeks to finish things. So we wanted to let you know what is going on behind the scenes.
Explore the Void!
The main thing we are working on is a deep redesign of the Transcendence (difficulty) system. Instead of simple stages with cumulative challenges, we are introducing the “Void Map”, representing the progress of defeating the Voidwalkers. To traverse the map, you must complete increasingly harder challenges, while unlocking new loadouts/artifacts/relics/etc.
Work in progress, UI may change substantially: Select challenges from a list to match the challenge rating of the Void Map.
New wizard graphics, again
Tim is also working on new character art for wizards, and has made a lot of progress on new Fire and Earth wizard graphics. We’ve got some help from Ghost Ship Games with concepting parts of the new designs with an aim for a stronger ‘personality’, and we’re quite excited for also revamping the wizard animations. The Fire Wizard graphics are going to be available in the next playtest/beta update, but we also hope to have time to finish the new Earth Wizard. We will drop a few more teasers for how they are progressing on twitter and discord, so keep an eye out for those.
Work in Progress: First pass on the new fire wizard graphics.
Work in progress: The new earth wizard art direction.
New map/reward redesign
Thorbjørn started working on redesigning part of the map- and encounter/reward systems, attempting to solve a few different design issues (e.g. shards being too important, too many spells in late-game, shops being too rare). However, only some of these changes will be ready for the next update. There are also a few other changes like how loadouts are going to work, but we will share details on that closer to the next update.
Closed Beta
As a final note, we have been looking into ways to give new people access to the beta. Our plan is to start running short Steam Playtest sessions, but we will combine this with a small closed beta on our Discord. We are expecting to start this process shortly after the next update is released. That's all for now! We will try to write more posts like this in the future, so please let us know in the comments about the subjects you would like to hear more about.
