It’s been a month since the last update. Most days were productive, but some were not – several people got sick or had to take care of their relatives who got sick (for here, it is the season of the first snow, that changes to rain, and then freezes into ice).
Such days normally fly under the radar if you have a larger team, or a longer period between updating the game. This time it had a direct impact on how many extra features we could add into the mix: we focused just on the two most impactful changes.
Well, such is the winter. And if we ever add winter season to Spire of Sorcery, then it will have an increased risk of receiving Infection tokens while traveling; a penalty of having one move point less; and a longer time to lose the tokens of Chaos after undertaking extra actions.
This is how our home city, Vilnius, looks these days.
Meanwhile, some good news: the sales of the game here on Steam are increasing, from one week to another, which we take as a sign that what we deliver with updates is exactly what players desire the most. Additionally, we started to talk to several publishers who expressed interest in working with our studio, and the vast majority compliment the monthly update schedule and the weekly development logs. This, they say, is the sign of the discipline. What they don’t know, however, is how much coffee we consume each week to make it happen! :-)
WHAT’S IN THIS UPDATE?
There are 2 main changes:
ːspellcastingː Chapter 1 now has a story mode. It’s a huge change for us!
ːspellcastingː The encounter interface is upgraded. Based on player feedback!
ENCOUNTER INTERFACE
Let’s start with the interface, since it’s a very practical change.
Tokens now become counter-based
Previously, we would show three fire tokens like this: ːfire_tokenː ːfire_tokenː ːfire_tokenː.
Now we display them like this: ːfire_tokenː 3.
It makes the screenshot less cluttered and allows us in the future to use any numbers, be it 10 or 20 – whether for character stats or for opponents.
Progression of actions on opponents is now radial
We used to show empty dots for all the possible places where tokens could accumulate.
We now show radial progression to keep it informative.
Character stats received a facelift
Once we transitioned to counter-based tokens, we looked at the character stats and realized that they also could use an upgrade.
What we used to have:
What we have now:
There is more clarity: you see the type of tokens that this stat receives, including the number for progression, followed by the outcome when the bar is filled: an injury, or a disease, or a Chaos burst.
Fewer colors, fewer icons, more clarity – and more information (earlier, you had to hover over immune system to understand what happens when it’s overwhelmed; now this is upfront).
SPELLBOOK AND SPELLS
Something we explored, but did not finish this month, is a change to spell progression.
Some of you asked for a progression system that will result in different mages having different books, we played with this idea for a while… and we liked it.
While we didn’t have the time to implement such change, we already started cleaning up the Spellbook’s interface.
Spell formula no longer has an icon for the specific spell
To be honest, we forgot why we introduced it in the first place. So we just removed it :).
Spellbook is now more transparent
Earlier, an open Spellbook covered the whole encounter screen. Now it’s easier to coordinate the spells and their possible targets.
Spell formula no longer has a specific “Cast” button
The special button was a part of an earlier design. As we’re at the stage where we remove redundant elements for better clarity, we kicked it out just as well. We – and most of those who stream – click on the whole spell area anyway, and this button isn’t really needed.
STORY MODE
The story mode is a complete game changer for Spire of Sorcery and took the most of our time in the last three weeks.
All the maps will be handmade
Every chapter will have unique stories
Stories are intertwined with encounters
Stories bear consequences beyond the chapter when they happen
Stories have unique visuals, creatures and objects
After developing the tools, we managed to apply the change to Chapter 1, and you will notice that:
The map has changed
The opponents have changed
There are now 3 separate stories, with equally valuable choices in each
This change is ːalchemic_potionː the most important change ːalchemic_potionː at this point in development of the game. We transition to more rewarding exploration, more interesting maps, and deeper involvement into the overall storyline.
Chapter 1 is just the first step. The January update will deliver stories for the other 2 chapters.
Things that are worth noting:
We introduced animations on the map
You will see the first one as you cross the river. This is just the first try, and we will include more of these as we update the other chapters.
Characters in your party now make comments
When mages spot certain things, they will voice their opinion right from their portraits. The portraits, by the way, have moved to the bottom of the screen specifically because of this.
Decisions in stories have impact on the map
Whether something is destroyed, or saved, the choices have real impact.
WHAT’S NEXT?
We revised our priorities for the next update and will focus in January on adding story mode for Chapters 2 and 3. Broodmother will receive… a labyrinth. There will be a new use for the gems you might collect in Chapter 1. We will create the first mechanics for terraforming a map through use of items. Exciting times!
When we work on the story mode, the whole team comes together: we draw, we write, and we design around the challenges that we invent. We thank every player who contributed to identifying this evolution of the game as the most impactful. Without Early Access feedback, we would not have made such a change.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
We wish you a very warm, and safe, Christmas period, and a happy New Year ahead!
May the year of 2022 bring you all the wonderful things that you may have missed in 2021.
We are here because we make games, and you are here because you play games, but in this message, we want to talk to you like humans to their fellow humans: health, mental and physical, and the wellbeing of your families, is more important than anything else. Please take care of the ones whom you love, and please take a break to recharge during this holiday season ːhypnoheartː.
We will do our best to entertain you with more development stories, and updates, in the coming year. And above that, we send you our love and support, wherever you are. Stay warm, stay safe, and make someone happy – every little smile helps.
Hey guys, just a quick note to say that we're currently testing and translating the December update, and aim to release it in the afternoon of December 22.
The focus is exclusively on the story mode, with 3 stories added to Chapter 1, and an update to how we display tokens and character stats. We may also be able to throw in the first arena (a replayable map), but we're not 100% certain as we may not have enough time to test it.
The last 3 weeks were a fast sprint to develop the tools that we need to build stories, and the content to fill them in, and it feels like a change that will have pretty great impact on player experience. We hope that we squash most of the bugs, and that you will enjoy the result... very soon! ːloot_sackː
Early Access Dev Log 07
Hello, lovely people of Steam! ːhypnoheartː
We hope that this update finds you well.
In just 3 weeks, this year will be over. If anyone knows where the difficulty settings are for this simulation, please change them to “Easy” – the world could use some breathing space to process all that happened and continues to happen.
In the world of Rund, everyone is also getting ready for the end of the year festivities, which this year falls on the season of the Phantom Moon.
The mages that cooperated well with the Inquisition will get extra food rations, and maybe a brief unsupervised walk outside of the walls of their Sanctuaries.
And the mages that did not cooperate would get a gift anyway: a few days without beatings and forced labor, while their guards eat and drink and stay mostly in their well-lit, warm barracks.
Let’s dive into what our team has done over the last week:
“STORY MODE”
We’ve been fleshing out the 3 stories that will arrive to Chapter 1, iterating both the content and the interface. In the space of these days, we’ve gone through at least 3 concepts of how a story flow may happen better and settled on a version that combines the dialogues and the narrative text.
As always, the ultimate test for us is in whether a new feature or content feels as “extra” – or if we ask ourselves, how the heck we didn’t think of this before. All the best solutions always feel “obvious”, and it’s the same with the story mode.
Stories deliver the lore, stories deliver choices, stories make encounters meaningful. And we’re certain that the story mode is the most impactful change that you will experience in the December update (just God help us finish it on time, and without too many bugs).
The way it stands, we will now produce stories for every chapter, and in fact new chapters will be produced based on stories rather than based on biomes and creatures.
Which reminds us of the time in the production of Gremlins, Inc. when we launched a multiplayer-only game, got multiple requests to add the single-player mode, and only after releasing it discovered that over 30% of all game sessions do happen in this single-player mode – to which we were completely blind (same as with the stories) on our own.
MORE CLARITY IN THE ENCOUNTER USER INTERFACE
A second thing that we prioritized (just because it can be done by a different part of the team, to be honest) are the improvements in UI during encounters.
You may think that we’re happy with what we have right now and expect you to just embrace it – but we’re not =). We fully realize how many things can get better, and when we look at the user interface, it’s like a writer who looks at another draft of a novel: never finished, always with space to get better.
Here are a few things that bothered us for a while:
Opening Spellbook obscures the whole screen.
You need to hover over opponents to understand what you can do to them.
Character stats are a bit overwhelming and are shown in a different way.
On top of that, a few top players sent us the screenshots with 20 and even 30 tokens applied to opponents, and in the current “stacking” visualization that’s not pretty – for sure, it is a rare case, but it shows that the system does not scale well.
And here’s what we aim to deliver:
Token counters become circular. This scales well, and this takes much less screen space.
Spellbook will no longer obscure the screen AND you will be able to see at the same all the actions that you can do to them, for better planning.
Character stats become better structured:
Progression (notches)
Same color for each stat
Consequence of exceeding the stat shown right next to stat
We’ve gone through more iterations than I dare to remember, but finally, we think that we found an option that works for every team member.
SPIRE OF SORCERY: PROLOGUE
Aside from the development work, we’ve been looking at the stats of how the game sells, and we’re seeing good conversion between “tried the demo / visited the page / purchased”, but the game could use more visibility.
Since Steam limits visibility in Early Access (and rightfully so, one may say), nearly every developer is looking for the extra opportunities to show their game to more players.
One of the options that works is releasing a demo as a standalone “Prologue” app in the “play for free” section, which exposes the game to a whole new audience.
Next week, we’ll follow this route and launch Spire of Sorcery: Prologue. No changes, it will be the same demo as here, just more visibility for the project.
QUESTIONNAIRE IN THE DEMO
Another thing we’ve done to get more player feedback is a questionnaire that we now show after someone played the demo. It asks about what you liked and what you didn’t like, and the first results are already helpful.
It’s one thing to ask people in general if they like the game. It’s another to ask specifically those who played the demo and have fresh impressions.
What we see so far is that the story and the user interface are the two things that beg improvement, and we’re relieved that we ourselves share the same opinion and work exactly on these things.
WHAT NEXT?
We’re about a week away from the release candidate of December’s update, and just a few days away from the deadline when we can send the texts to our translators. These days will be spent writing all the missing texts to be on time. ːnotebookː
In the meantime, if you enjoyed the game but didn’t yet have the time to leave a review, please consider doing so as an early Christmas gift for our team. Every review helps other players to understand if this is the sort of game that they will enjoy.
If there is a particular thing that you like about the project, and a particular thing that you think is still raw, it would be helpful to let the others know what they might enjoy and what they should expect, so that whoever reads your review, can make a better decision of buying – or not buying.
On our side, we update the store page description from time to time for the same reason – to be clear. It’s a game with deck mechanics. It’s a game with tokens. It’s a game with hex-based map. The better we explain, the more accurate the decision. And then there’s the demo, of course.
Enjoy the first snow ːfrost_tokenː ːfrost_tokenː ːfrost_tokenː, and see you next week!
/ Team CO /
Early Access Dev Log 06
We released the first monthly update for Spire of Sorcery a week ago, and it makes us very happy that this update has been well received – thank for all the feedback!
As a small team, we keep our focus on the issues that deliver the most impact, and it’s always crucial for us to identify what exactly will improve your player experience the most.
Having shipped a couple of hotfixes since then, we had a long discussion about what do we want to ship for you this month, in December.
Here’s what we think, and please share your comments once you read these thoughts!
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: “STORY MODE”
Because we only have 2 weeks for active production, and 1 week for testing, we must identify the single most important feature that we prioritise above all else.
It is not crafting: crafting is fun, but it’s not going to change the experience in a big way.
It is not travel magic: travel magic is cool, and practically useful to solve some situations on the map – but it’s still an addition to the existing core loop, and not the heart of it.
It is not new chapters: new chapters are enjoyable (new creatures! new biomes!), but they are only as good as the core loop is.
So, what it is then?
We call it “the story mode”, and this addresses the issues that players have described in various ways, from “the map feels empty” to “one battle follows another without lore in between” to “I miss lore that would be woven into each chapter, little stories and secrets”.
A big test that we apply to this feature goes like this:
ːmagic_sparklesː “If two different players with two different initial parties complete the same chapter, will their experience be different on the strategic level – or roughly the same?” ːmagic_sparklesː
Right now, it will be mostly the same: move towards the main quest, solve it, explore surroundings, evacuate.
What we want, though, is for two players to have different experiences, and to continue discovering the world, its lore, and its stories, at every point during the chapter.
PRE-DESIGNED MAPS
Once we realized that we want more stories, and more options, we realized that we want the maps to be more like the pre-designed Forest Camp in the tutorial and less like the current procedurally generated chapters 1-3.
Creating a pre-designed map allows us to plant unique objects and design stories and challenges around them – which sounds to us more exciting than a randomized map that, nevertheless, remains the same as its core.
WE START FROM CHAPTER 1, “THE CHASE”
As I’m writing this, I’m debating with myself if I should spoil some of the stories that we created for the first chapter. I’ll try to be specific enough – but without killing the fun!
We aim to add 3 big “stories” to this chapter. All of them will be optional. You can activate the node, and move to the Spire, without engaging with them.
All three stories are based on custom content. You will see opponents that you haven’t seen before in the game, including one opponent that is unique. Each of these three stories has 3 options to be resolved, connected to the 3 driving forces.
ːopponentː In some cases, you’ll have to fight.
ːspellcastingː In some, you’ll gain a new character.
ːloot_sackː In some, you’ll get unique items.
In every story, you will need to make a choice, and these choices are not only balanced between each other – but also affect the situations in the future chapters.
ADVENTURES TO BECOME CAMPSITE EVENTS
Another ask that we heard, is to add “more things that happen every day”.
At the same time, we ourselves did not feel like our current adventures do their job well – they are too far spread, too specific, and do not deliver enough fun.
Thus, we are folding all adventures into ːfire_tokenː campsite events, which have a chance to happen whenever you press “end turn” in the travel mode.
We want two characters to experience a quarrel, someone to break their leg, another mage to get drunk on unknown berries, and everyone to, occasionally, have nightmares when camping in ruins – yes, most campsite events are to be biome-specific.
Whether we succeed in making this happen in time for December update, we will know in about 10 days when the translation deadline approaches.
OTHER CHANGES
There’s a few more things that we want to do, that will have a positive impact:
Making Spellbooks more transparent in the encounter and moving away from full-screen window.
Structuring all spells into three “schools”, connected to the 3 soul essences, with cost of new spell dependent on how many spells in this school you have already opened (in other words, the same spell has different cost depending on how many spells in this school you have already opened). This will push us to make more choices when upgrading!
Connecting spells in “chains”, so that when you upgrade one spell, you have at least two options what to upgrade it to.
In general, we’re looking at the option to have more spells, and allow to influence the progress. The time to test this idea will come later, in January or February.
Adding character reactions to game events.
We agree with the comments of players who find the “silent mages” boring, and we’re preparing pools of character reactions for various events. We will then need to test the system to fine-tune the style and the scope. But it is something that we want to make.
WHAT NEXT?
We are now hard at work on the features described above and will show you more details in the next week’s dev log. Meanwhile we’re facing a few additional challenges this month, with several family members of our team falling sick (kids, grandparents) – we’ll do our best to stay focused, but life is life, and at points it intervenes without asking.
Stay safe, stay healthy – and see you next week!
/ Team CO /
THE NOVEMBER UPDATE IS HERE!
One month ago, Spire of Sorcery entered Early Access.
ːalchemic_potionː Not everything went as we hoped for, and it’s been a rather difficult month for the studio (it even reminded us of the release of Gremlins, Inc. back in 2015, when we were so little sleep that we currently have only a vague recollection of that period).
ːspellcastingː Putting doubts out of our minds, we became laser-focused on producing for you the absolutely best update that we could make happen within the space of three weeks, prioritizing features based on the feedback that we received – and now it’s here! Hurray!
ːmagic_sparklesː We’d like to specifically thank everyone who believed in us, and who left words of encouragement in the comments, in reviews and on Discord. It might feel like a small thing, but it helps hugely!!
WHAT’S IN THIS UPDATE?
Here’s a list of what we ship today, followed by the detailed description of key points:
Mulligan: reworked and updated based on feedback. ːfire_tokenː
Balanced formula for generating initial characters.
Preview of upcoming elements in the deck: small feature, big impact!
Negative mood effects: a new mechanic, based on feedback
Special powers, inspiration: a new mechanic, based on seeing people play.
Concentration stat and Chaos tokens: improving one of the core mechanics
Chaos burst and Chaos burn: a new mechanics, based seeing people play
Digestive system: updated the way that it works
Faster animations in encounter: based on feedback. ːfire_tokenː
Some stories transitioned to events, to simplify flow (including Supplies)
Locations became non-targetable: improving encounter dynamics
New music: travel theme, Chapter 3
New music: encounter theme, Chapter 3
New music: forest camp theme, Tutorial
New visuals: illustrations for states of blindness, paralysis, entanglement
New SFX: SFX for the frost spells
Updated texts of quests, opening/closing for Chapter 1
Glasses: new special item for owners of Supporter DLC
Other balancing changes and improvements across the board
STANDALONE TUTORIAL
Requested and delivered! Select it from the main menu, and relieve the story of the escape form the forest camp while learning the basics.
REWORKED MULLIGAN
Requested and delivered! Change visuals or stats, or both. All initial party members are now balanced for good/bad traits, strong/weak stats.
PREVIEW OF UPCOMING ELEMENTS IN THE DECK
For that extra tactical depth, you can now preview the elements that are coming to the hands of your mages. Hover over the “discard” button to preview one sequence…
…or press the “deck” button to display all decks and all sequences.
NEGATIVE MOOD EFFECTS
Bye-bye, three-stage effects. Hello, a new set that is better balanced!
SPECIAL POWERS
This is a new mechanics that replaces positive mood traits. Accumulate inspiration points – and turn on the special power, that provides the effect that is unique for each character!
INSPIRATION
When your mages are in a good mood, they accumulate inspiration faster. And when they’re in a bad mood, they lose it.
CONCENTRATION, CHAOS
Endurance stat is now replaced with the Concentration stat, and Fatigue tokens are replaced with the tokens of Chaos. The mechanic itself (perform extra actions – get extra tokens) remains unchanged.
What’s new is that when you’re about to exceed Concentration, and take a penalty, we now warn you with a separate window.
And the penalty for exceeding this stat is no longer damage tokens, but a Chaos Burst that deals random tokens from Book of Chaos to random participants of the encounter. Additionally, Chaos Burst gives the mage a Chaos Burn, which is an ailment (and, as you may recall, exceeding allowed number of ailments leads to death).
DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Digestive system now is a stat. It is filled with tokens of toxicity whenever characters consume items. Once it’s exceeded, the character can no longer consume any items. The good news, however: every day, each character loses 1 toxicity token.
BOOKWORM GLASSES
The owners of Support DLC now have one more special item in their party’s inventory at start: glasses that, when equipped, provide 1 token of protection from blindness. Enjoy!
WHAT’S NEXT?
We aim to release the next update by the end of December.
That update will focus on the balancing of the existing chapters and will introduce a new chapter set in the Dismal Marshes.
We will also work on implementing travel magic.
–––
We hope that you have fun playing with the updated game, and please don’t hesitate to comment or report any issues here on the forums.
Have a great weekend!
/ Team CO /
PS Saved games from the previous version of the game are not compatible with the updated version, if you want to finish your saved games – please switch on Steam to branch "v202" that still contains the previous version.
Early Access Dev Log 04
Today we finished the development of the upcoming update, and started with the two things that need to happen before we release it publicly: testing and balancing.
ːweatherː Testing is easy, but often boring: we changed a whole lot of mechanics and added the standalone tutorial, so what we're doing now is playing the build to try to crash it or find some contradictions (such as outdated tooltips, or missing information).
ːalchemic_potionː Balancing is more fun, but quite intensive: change – play – reflect – change again, on and on and on. For example, we'd like to issue Damage after 2 Fires, not 3 Fires. Playing a bit made us realise that yes, this is good, and now we want to change from "every 3 Fire issue 1 Damage per round" to "3 Fire or more issue 1 Damage per round". Is this a good idea? We need to play, to understand the experience.
We will keep testing and balancing on Monday and Tuesday of the coming week, and currently plan to release the update on Wednesday, November 24.
WHAT'S IN THE UPDATE?
Here's the list of all that we're currently testing, and which should make it into the update unless in the next couple of days we run into critical bugs that we cannot fix:
Tutorial: fully interactive, standalone chapter.
Mulligan: reworked and updated based on feedback.
Balanced formula for generating initial characters.
Preview of upcoming elements in the deck: small feature, big impact!
Negative mood effects: a new mechanic, based on feedback
Special powers, inspiration: a new mechanic, based on seeing people play.
Concentration stat and Chaos tokens: improving one of the core mechanics
Chaos burst and Chaos burn: a new mechanics, based seeing people play
Digestive system: updated the way that it works
Faster animations in encounter: based on feedback.
Some stories transitioned to events, to simplify flow (including Supplies)
Locations became non-targetable: improving encounter dynamics
New music: travel theme, Chapter 3
New music: encounter theme, Chapter 3
New music: forest camp theme, Tutorial
New visuals: illustrations for states of blindness, paralysis, entanglement
New SFX: SFX for the frost spells
Updated texts of quests, opening/closing for Chapter 1
Glasses: new special item for owners of Supporter DLC
Other balancing changes and improvements across the board
By impact, Tutorial and Mulligan are the two biggest improvements. And based on our own playing experience, getting preview of the upcoming elements from the deck makes decision-making about what spells to choose a whole lot easier ːmagic_sparklesː.
THE BIG QUESTION OF THIS MONTH
The big question of this month has been to synchronise our own understanding of the game with the experience of new players. We are way too deep in the development, we have a whole lot of "possibilities" that we keep in mind, and it's a pretty big effort to try to see the game as if for the first time. Thus we spoke to a number of our development friends at other studios, who gave us their own feedback.
Our friends did not worry about the token mechanics or the travel mode. Most of them found the game beautiful and the system of spells and tokens interesting (assuming it will keep getting balanced, of course). As to the tutorial, we told them that it's coming, and it wasn't an issue.
What was the real surprise for us is that a lot of people said they miss "the story", in the sense that they would like to see a few more quests scattered across the chapters; a beefier beginning and ending of each chapter; and more lore shared between the travel.
To us, the developers, creating a nice custom location with an NPC in it, who would tell a tale of Rund, is probably one of the easiest tasks around. No risk! All fun! It's just that we were so focused on the mechanics first, and then on the tutorial... that we all but forgot about these stories that, for sure, in our brain, are coming to the game.
This somewhat changes the priorities for the December update, when we will try – among other things – to deliver more of this "lore" for the existing chapters, to see how it feels when the world is more populated by NPCs and custom encounters.
If you play the game or follow the game for a while, and have a moment, please let us know in the comments your answers to these 2 issues:
ːspellcastingː What do you like the most about the game?
ːopponentː What do you find the most annoying or lacking?
With the next week's update adding Tutorial and updating Mulligan, the second question is really interesting. Let's talk about it!
Have a great weekend,
/ Team CO /
Early Access Dev Log 03
We’re a couple of weeks away from the November update, and there’s now more visibility into what is likely to make the cut. The November update focuses on mechanics and interface, while the December update will be dedicated to new chapters.
THE FOREST CAMP
The biggest thing that we ship in November is the interactive tutorial, built as a separate map.
Tutorials are the luxury of games development, because to build a good one you preferably need to have the game finished first. Thus, you either wait to finish the game, then make the tutorial, and then go into full release – or you update your dev process to include an interactive tutorial into the very core loop of the game, and then the tutorial grows together with the game.
With the localization, we already achieved that – we develop the game from day one as a multi-language product and extinguish out all and any “[I]temporary” texts that otherwise tend to grow like weeds at the prototyping stage.
With the tutorial, we still must get better at that. A big contributing factor here is that as you create the game, you add features one by one, and thus on the inside everything is completely “obvious”. The same, by the way, happens with localization for teams that create just in one language (English or Japanese, for example). You become “blind” to text and then you end up having multiple untranslated strings that seem to pop up out of nowhere.
Anyways, what we’ll ship with this month’s update is a fully interactive mini chapter that explores the basics of the game: how to concoct, how to use alchemy in battle, how to heal, how to use multiple hands when spellcasting, and so on.
In terms of setting, it’s a standalone story of a runaway mage that escapes a forest camp of the Inquisition – a prequel to Chapter 1.
Looking at the game's Steam Achievements, 70% of players cooked food – 56% concocted alchemic substance – but only 36% used alchemy in battles. We think that the new tutorial will help players to discover more features of the game.
NEW MULLIGAN
There’s been quite a lot of feedback on the mulligan screen, and we act on it in the coming update.
If you followed the game for some time, you may recall the transition between “get many characters, have them die and get replacements” and the current “get the characters you sympathize with, and take good care of them” approaches.
Many players wanted to have more influence over the initial party, but there were 2 things that kept us from following that route: the idea that personal traits could become revealed as they were used (hence previewing them at start was unfeasible) and the generation formula that was intentionally random (you could get a very strong, or a very weak, character).
The November update changes that: you will be able to re-roll just the portraits, leaving stats and traits in place, and you will be able to re-roll just the values on their own. And yes, we will show all the values upfront: driving forces, stats, personal traits, and mood-related mechanics.
But this would have been impossible without the next item on the list…
REBALANCED TRAITS, CHARACTER FORMULA, SPECIAL POWERS
We’ve cleaned up the traits that were obviously OP: no longer will someone concoct an extra substance or cook a second portion of the food. Expanding the list of traits to nearly 50, we now give each a “weight” (+2, –1, etc.) and balance them, together with stats, to result in a “slightly positive sum total”.
This rebalancing and the introduction of formula now makes it fair to see all the values of the initial party, for you cannot “cheat” by going for the strongest characters – there are no longer “winners” and “losers”. Rather, you choose the specific combination of traits.
Speaking of traits, we nuked the old mood traits and replaced them with Special Powers (good) and Negative Mood Effects (bad). The way it works now is that every day when a party member is in a good mood, they accumulate inspiration points. Once enough accumulates, that character can use their special power. And every day when a party member is in a bad mood… they lose their inspiration.
In the upcoming version, you’ll see the following special powers:
Expanded consciousness: 1 extra element in hand
Flow state: action costs -1
Magic barrier: remove all environmental effects and conditions
Wild hand: change hand to wild elements that fit any formula
Surge of power: get 3 power tokens (once)
Vanishing: retreat without penalties
Cleansing: remove all temporal tokens (once)
Warcry: initiate morale boost mechanics for everyone
WHAT NOW?
In addition to the big things above, there’s a bunch of smaller improvements. There will be 2 new music tracks (for Chapter 3) as well as changes in endurance/concentration, and digestive system mechanics. Plus, our favorite “small but impactful” change – the preview of the upcoming elements in the deck.
We’ll spend the next week working to finish all the tasks for the update, and then will open a password-free BETA branch on Steam to play with the updated version for a few days ahead of the public release of the update. And then, between November 22 and November 24, we’ll push the update to both the main game and to the DEMO.
Stay safe, stay happy, and see you next week!
/ Team CO /
Early Access Dev Log 02
Another week, another update – let’s talk about what we’ve been working on during the last few days.
SETTING THE PRIORITIES
After the release, we’ve listed all the hot issues and graded them by impact (high, medium, low) as well as split them into “risks” and “gains”.
For example, making the Fatigue interface easier to grasp is a “risk” since it causes confusion to some players. While making the Mulligan screen more beautiful is a “gain” since once it’s done, it will add to the player experience.
Essentially, it’s the split between “removing annoying things” ːopponentː and “adding nice things” ːmagic_sparklesː, and we should do both as a matter of balance.
Next, we asked everyone around the table (most of us are back to working from the studio, by the way) to choose just one issue that carries the most impact, and voila, every single team member underlined the same one: better tutorial.
Aside from that, high votes went to:
Previewing deck sequence during encounters <*>Balancing personal traits <*>Giving characters special powers <*>Updating Mulligan <*>Improving Fatigue UI/mechanics
Plus, the usual suspect: adding more music and more animations.
THE EXPERIMENTS WITH FATIGUE
As you may recall from the last week, we’ve been scratching our heads as to what exactly makes some among those who play the game misunderstand the Fatigue mechanics, which leads to lots of injuries and untimely death.
Discussing this here on Steam as well as internally, we separated the UI issues from the issues of the mechanics itself. And then there’s one more issue with the naming.
Here’s what we’ll fix in UI:
Currently, when you’re about to overdraft on the fatigue and exceed endurance, we show you no warning. You just overdraft and get the penalty (ːdamageːːdamageːːdamageː).
ːspellcastingː We’ll display a warning “you’re about to overdraft” to add more control. This should prevent players (both new and old) from getting too carried away with the spellcasting to notice this risk.
Currently, we show fatigue as an icon on the stat bar, but as a number on the action bar.
ːspellcastingː We’ll display action costs the same way as the stat bar. If it costs 2 tokens – we’ll show 2 tokens rather than “2” + icon. It’s a small thing! But small things can build up into a mess.
Currently, when we issue the penalty for the overdraft of Fatigue, we don’t show a separate window like we do with poisonings, injuries, and diseases. We just deal the penalty.
ːspellcastingː With the next update, we’ll do that to be clearer about what is happening.
But these UI fixes alone are not enough.
We’ve been experimenting with changes in the mechanics itself:
Changing Endurance/Fatigue from progress bar to a counter. So that you won’t have Fatigue as a token, but rather have Endurance as a value – say, 20 – and every action will deduct from it.
We didn’t like it, since it removes Fatigue from the interaction with all the other tokens, and token mechanics is at the core of the game.
Changing Endurance from a stat that restores between encounters to a stat that is set for the whole chapter. You start with, say, Endurance of 100 and with each encounter you draw from this pool until you’re at zero, and no more extra actions are possible.
We played with this system for a day, and we didn’t feel like it adds something special. Actually, it drives you to over-spend early on (“I’m rich! I can do 4 actions every turn!”) and then face the boss monster with insufficient energy, and that’s not much fun.
Changing penalty for overdraft to something other than 3 Damage tokens
We feel like this is one of those counter-intuitive solutions, where every little thing bundles up into a bigger mess. Getting Damage when you overdraft on Endurance from casting spells sounds like a stretch, really.
Here’s what’re changing with the next update, then:
ːspellcastingː Fatigue tokens become Chaos tokens.
We don’t really make the mages perform physical exercises, and term “fatigue” was somewhat misleading. On the other hand, mages do dip into the Chaos to draw the energy for their spells and can burn up if not careful.
ːspellcastingː Endurance stat becomes Concentration stat.
Same logic as above, the stat is not about running a marathon or scaling a wall, it’s about the mage’s ability to cast spells without resting.
ːspellcastingː The penalty for exceeding Concentration with Chaos is “Chaos burn”.
We want something special here, not just other tokens. Chaos burn removes 1 element from the hand of the mage. Chaos burns stack. Chaos burns are automatically removed upon return to the Spire, and each party member loses 1 burn per each campsite used.
THE EXPERIMENTS WITH SPECIAL POWERS AND MOOD
Another experiment that we ran in the last few days is what to do with the current mood traits. We’re removing the over-powered ones, but what next?
We don’t like having 3 grades of each negative and positive mood trait. This limits the available options a lot and introduces a bunch of unnecessary counters.
We want the party members to have “superpowers”, which means something they will use occasionally rather than in every encounter.
We feel like mood should have its own dynamic, and not stay at the same level once reached (i.e. nobody should remain depressed or euphoric on their own, day after day).
Here’s what we’re building right now, and will add to the update if it proves itself:
ːspellcastingː Positive mood traits to be replaced with 1 special power per character
ːspellcastingː Every special power is unique (get 4 elements in hand, remove all environment effects, get 3 “wild card” elements in your hand, and so on)
ːspellcastingː Special power becomes available once party member scores enough inspiration points
ːspellcastingː Activating special power costs inspiration points
ːspellcastingː Inspiration points accumulate every day when the mood is positive
After all the discussions that we had, this seems like an improvement to what we currently have. But we first need to play and “feel” it before we commit to shipping this into the game. We’ll have more news on this in the next dev log!
TUTORIAL CHAPTER
Much of our time, however, is spent on preparing a standalone tutorial chapter.
The events are set in a forest camp, where the mages have been convoyed to burn alive the leaders of a rebellious village. By luck, one of the mages manages to break out…
This is a new map, with a new look, and it will have a fully interactive sequence “do this”, “now do this” – intersected with comments from the runaway herself.
From where we are right now, the game’s core loop seems “fairly simple”, but once we sat down to write all the basics we want to explain, the list became quite long –
Move around the map and end turns
Pick up resources
Cook food and eat it
Start encounters with active opponents
Choose spells
Assemble and cast spells
Concoct alchemic substances
Start encounters with parties that protect locations
Use alchemy during encounters
Convert tokens (acid to fire, acid to frost)
Preview deck sequence
Discard elements and end rounds in encounters
Complete adventures
Use curative substances
Get injuries and observe ailment counter
Assemble one spell from multiple hands
Use environmental conditions to start environmental effects
Retreat
We’re about 2/3 in the new tutorial, with 65 episodes thus far, and will spend the next few days crunching the rest to meet the deadlines for translations.
That’s it for today – and we’ll see you next week.
If you have any questions or comments, do feel free to ping us here on Steam forums.
Have a great weekend ahead!
/ Team CO /
Early Access Dev Log 01
Welcome to the first of the weekly development updates that we’ll be posting throughout the Early Access period. In these updates, we share our current plans for the game as well as preview work in progress.
THE GAME IS IN EARLY ACCESS – FINALLY!
After some challenging development episodes, Spire of Sorcery is finally in Early Access. We’ve got some backslash from people who still want us to go back in time to 2019 and develop a different kind of game, which is unpleasant but unsurprising. ːweatherː
Friends at one studio got bad reviews for changing the color of a character in one of their games, friends at another studio keep getting bad reviews for not supporting a specific language with localization, and we ourselves got a ton of bad reviews with our first game back in 2015 for lack of tutorial and lack of save game option. It happens! Our development focus is on making the people who like the game's concept happier, by further developing the strong parts of this project. ːloot_sackː
GREAT FEEDBACK!
Thanks to everyone who played the Early Access version game and left detailed comments as a review or a forum post already: this helps a lot. Reading these messages, we’re seeing the game from the outside, gaining a different insight into how it’s being played. This is very valuable in helping us improve the game. We mean it when we say that the few detailed comments and a few encouraging posts will play a major role in making Spire of Sorcery better and faster. ːmagic_sparklesː
MUCH LOVE TO THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE SUPPORTER DLC
The Supporter DLC is really a way for players to send their encouragement to our team, directly to our hearts. When someone buys it, it gives us a clear message that we’re making someone happy – and it motivates us to improve the game more, and more. Thanks to nearly a hundred of new supporters, we feel loved ːhypnoheartː. And we already came up with the idea for another special item of the initial party that will ship with the next update: it will provide useful encounter effect, as well as affect the visual appearance of its owner.
NEXT UPDATE: WHEN?
We fixed nearly all tech issues with the two post-release hotfixes already, and now the next update is going to happen around ːspellcastingː November 20 ːspellcastingː. The scope of that update is quite significant, and we’ll be keeping a very tight focus so that we deliver the most improvement where it matters the most.
GENERAL THOUGHTS ON PRIORITIES
Here’s the list of things that we agree on:
ːalchemic_potionː More control at the Mulligan stage
We’ll give more insight into characters at the Mulligan stage. We’ll reveal all stats as well as all the traits, and the special power of each character. Which is related to the next topic.
ːalchemic_potionː Better balance for personal traits
A part of the reason for why some players wanted to re-roll the initial party is that a few traits are over-powered right now, including those related to cooking and concocting. We’ll be removing some of the traits completely (e.g. “concoct x2 substances”) and fine-tuning the rest with a formula that balances “good” and “bad”, to remove imbalanced options.
At this morning’s meeting we listed about 60 traits that we’ll roll in, and which won’t be too strong either positively or negatively. We’ll be working on replacing the current pool with this updated pool in time for the November update.
ːalchemic_potionː Mood traits to be replaced/complimented by special powers
Some of the current positive mood traits are way too strong, such as lower cost of action, and will be removed. And in general, we’ll be replacing the positive mood trait system with the system of special powers. The current design is that upon reaching positive mood state, each character will gain access to 1 extra action that can be activated (at a cost) during encounter, such as negating all environmental effects or during discard drawing the 3 specific elements that you want instead of the random ones.
As to negative mood traits, they will transition from 3 stages into 1 stage. Such as having, instead of 3 elements in hand, only 2 elements. We feel like 3 stages for positive and negative mood traits is too restrictive for what we can design there.
ːalchemic_potionː Fatigue and endurance to go away, mana to come in
The system of fatigue and endurance bordered on too complex, and when we watched new players try it, we understood that we need a more intuitive system. We already started to work on removing fatigue and endurance, which will be replaced by a mana pool that a mage spends on encounter actions. This will reduce the number of encounters as you’ll need to choose where to engage, and where not to. It will be a value (e.g. “120”) rather than a stat bar.
ːalchemic_potionː Preview of deck sequence
A small QoL feature that will enable longer tactical plans: we plan to preview the next 12-16 elements in everyone’s deck, in a sequence, during encounters. This will provide more context for which spells you can assemble faster, and which elements you can count on in the nearest future.
ːalchemic_potionː Replaynig with the same party: evacuation to the Spire
Currently, if you fail in one of the chapters, you will probably replay from an earlier save or restart the campaign with a new party.
We’d like to change this to allow you to evacuate your party to the Spire, heal the wounded / resurrect the dead, and return to the same chapter for another try.
ːalchemic_potionː Arenas
We’ll explore the idea of adding now, rather than later, a few arenas that would be small maps, with a central drop/extraction point (cairn), that will be generated with a high degree of randomness, and will be full of resources, opponents, and locations. These will become available for repeated visits to harvest resources and improve skills, along the line of new chapters becoming available.
ːalchemic_potionː Blindness and Entanglement active states
A small thing, but it matters: we currently show active blindness and entanglement with a small icon on character portrait, and it’s easy to miss that. We’ll change visually the whole action area of a character to make sure it’s obvious that the mage is affected.
ːalchemic_potionː More music, more animations
We’ve got at least 2 new tracks in the works, and a dozen of new sound effects. We’ll be also working on animations for more spells, and creatures.
ːalchemic_potionː Updated introduction texts
In the rush to polish the core loop, we didn’t pay much attention to the introduction texts. We’re editing them now, and creating custom illustrations for the early story.
We'll be also working on streamlining the flow of animations for complex scenarios, e.g. cast a spell – see it fly – see token animation – see outcome animation – see essences and loot issued. There are certain gaps in the timing that can be compressed, to show the same thing faster. Plus we'll look into the option to have a "skip animations" setting.
WHAT NOW?
We’ll keep posting development updates weekly, and next Thursday we’ll report on the specific issues that the team’s working on. About 1 week prior to November 20, we’ll make the beta version of the updated build available on the special branch on Steam.
PLAYTHROUGHS FOR CHAPTERS 1 AND 2
If you’re curious about what the regular playthrough of the game looks like, below is Chapter 1 (English) and Chapter 2 (Russian) for your viewing pleasure:
[previewyoutube="O5G46UsqS6k;full"]
[previewyoutube="GPvOclZBnOM;full"]
ONE MORE THING
Today we updated the DEMO of the game to the latest version. It now includes all the recent changes, including the Spire itself – which is available at the end of Chapter 1. If you haven’t heard the music track that plays at the Spire, we think a re-play is worth it alone.
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That’s it for now. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement, and we look forward to more comments and discussions as we present more details of the changes that the November update will introduce.
And if you haven’t reviewed the game, please consider writing a few words that summarize your experience – it helps a lot! ːnotebookː
/ Team CO /
DEMO –> 202.1605
We just updated the DEMO to version 202.1605.
The update adds the Spire (at the end of Chapter 1) as well as brings to DEMO all the changes in UI and mechanics that happened on the main branch of the game in the last month.
If you're curious about the game, give the demo a spin to experience it for yourself.
And if you run into any technical issues... please page us on the forums, and we'll help.
