Three weeks to launch! Polish, balance tweaks, new guest composer
Happy new year, adventurers! It's the most exciting month for us yet as we near the completion of Tangledeep 1.0, exiting Early Access and sharing the game with the whole world.
Something you'll see sooner than February 1st is a new trailer, which will feature the voice of one of our favorite actresses. She's someone who embodies the character of Tangledeep's heroine perfectly. There's also more badass new digital art in the works which will launch with the game as part of Steam trading cards and profile backgrounds.
As always, there's lots more to share, so let's dive right in!
NEW GUEST COMPOSER
In addition to my own ongoing work on the soundtrack, I'm pleased to welcome the work of esteemed composer Norihiko Hibino to the world of Tangledeep! Hibino-san has worked extensively on such series as Metal Gear Solid, Yakuza, and Bayonetta, among many others. He's penned the theme to a very important Tangledeep character that has not yet been revealed... stay tuned for more!
LOADS OF VISUAL AND SFX POLISH
Our big focus has been making the game look, feel, and sound as awesome as possible. Loot and coins now 'pop' up out of enemies instead of just appearing on the ground, the screen shakes with mighty critical hits, many SFX have been added where there was only silence before, a number of abilities have new visual effects... We want the game to be a real joy not just to play, but also to watch.
EASING THE DIFFICULTY
We've decided to make some small adjustments that should make the game a bit easier, especially for those not accustomed to roguelikes. For example, the resource costs of using abilities has been reduced across almost all skills, Campfire floors now show up more consistently, and you will find a Fountain near each campfire as well. Rumors are now more rewarding and offer a chance of legendary items, and certain overwhelming floors have been toned down.
BOOSTING MELEE
Another balance issue we've been looking at is how melee combat is often far riskier and less rewarding than ranged combat, particularly early on in the game. As you accumulate skills and equipment this gap diminishes, but it was still a problem as playing a class like Edge Thane or Paladin was substantially harder than Hunter or Floramancer.
The ideal tactics in Tangledeep should involve multiple types of combat, not just ranged, and so we've been making changes to help bridge this gap. For example, there are new "Whirlwind" champions that pose little threat to melee, but will give ranged fighters a harder time. Hitting monsters in melee may now generate a bonus powerup, and *ranged* monsters will deal less damage if you're standing right next to them.
GETTING UNSTUCK IN ADVENTURE MODE
One frustrating thing that can happen in Adventure Mode, particularly if it's your first time playing the game, is running out of all resources and being unable to continue because you have no way of healing yourself. In Normal or Hardcore modes, permadeath is expected, but Adventure mode is intended to be more forgiving. This "lame duck" situation is not a fun way to lose the game and we thought about how to address it.
Now, if you're between levels 3-9 in Adventure Mode and you return to town with an empty Flask and minimal healing items, Percy (the healer) will offer to restock you for free - in exchange for one experience level. Think of it as a "get out of jail free" card. You can do this twice (ever) but it should help those who might have made early mistakes to keep playing the game.
Naturally, this won't help you BEAT the game, but hopefully the lesson of resource management will be remembered!
NEW CONTENT? WHAT?
Oops, I said we were going to lock down features and content but I guess I couldn't help myself! Since the last news posts, there have been new legendary items, new quests, and various new convenience features like cooking from your recipe book. Had to get a few last ideas in there...
HERE'S A GOLDFROG PLUSH
Here's a limited edition plush of everyone's favorite loot-filled critter created by Deia "DragonAvenger" Vengen! Right now this is only one of two in the world, but hey, if you want one, let us know!
Tangledeep launches out of Early Access on February 1st, 2018!
We hope you are excited about this as we are! Though this is later than our original planned release period (Dec/Jan), our progress has not slowed down, plus we want to make sure the game isn't lost in the holiday chaos.
To that end we've been hurtling along full speed and improving the game in every way imaginable. Let's cover some of the major changes and additions since our last big update post...
TONS OF ART AND FX POLISH
The visuals of Tangledeep are among its best features, and we've been continuing to make them pop. New spell animations, battle FX, number popups, and other effects have been added to juice up just about every aspect of the game and make it look fantastic.
Oh, and there's new music and sound effects too!
OVER 15 NEW ITEMS AND LEGENDARIES
New recipes, consumables, accessories, and both legendary AND set gear are available for you to find - happy hunting!
NEW SIDE AREAS AND SIDE QUESTS
Crawling through the dungeon is good and fun, but interesting and memorable side areas, environments, and events are equally important. You can now explore a desert maze, thaw out a frozen research area, rematch Duke Dirtbeak, and find a lost pet - plus meet some new NPCs and merchants too!
EASIER MONSTER RAISING
Getting your first pet - the escaped frog in Riverstone Grove - is now a guarantee, once you hit level 3 and head down to that area. Also, raising happy monsters is now much easier at lower levels. Previously it could take a ton of time and food to raise even a simple Moss Jelly to the point where it would be usable as a pet. Now, the investment is only about 25% of where ti was; however, this does scale up with higher level monsters. Don't expect that Verdigrizzly to be as easy to tame!
UPDATED CASINO
There are more reasons than ever to head to the Casino! There's a third game now (Chinchirorin), and you can bet up to 10,000g in all three games. Plus, winning gold in the casino wins you Casino Tokens, which can be used exclusively at the new Casino Shop to get all sorts of awesome items.
FINAL BOSS REVAMP
For the most experienced among you, the placeholder 2nd phase final boss fight has been redone from the ground up. Though the actual boss sprite is still placeholder - we need to roll out the rest of the story, first - the fight mechanics are there.
UI REWORKS
We've remade the Equipment, Inventory, and Skill pages of the UI totally from scratch with all new code and layout. This will continue to change as we skin and perfect the UI, but these changes were necessary to fix bugs, provide more functionality, and allow better compatibility with the Nintendo Switch port.
CLASS AND FEAT UNLOCKS
Three of the game’s jobs (HuSyn, Gambler, Wild Child) are now locked initially. This is for any or all of these reasons: the jobs are a little more unusual OR difficult to play, the story requires it, to reduce ‘analysis paralysis’ for new players, and provide a sense of accomplishment as you progress through the game. (Don't worry, no lootboxes here!!)
If you have been playing the game for awhile, the unlock requirements will not be too difficult. There are also two new feats, which - along with rager - are also locked, but not too hard to unlock.
FULL ENDING SEQUENCE
What great RPG doesn't have a beautiful ending sequence and credits roll?
Black Friday Patch Roundup + Sale!
Hello Adventurers! These last two weeks have marked a big milestone for the game, with the completion of our 12th playable job. Let's get into all the details, but first, take note: Tangledeep is 15% off as part of Steam's autumn sale!
Inspired by the concept of Blue Magic from the Final Fantasy series, the Wild Child rounds out Tangledeep's lineup of playable jobs*. Raised by monsters in Tangledeep itself, the Wild Child has only a handful of abilities available by default; she learns most of her skills from monsters!
In total, there are 12 monster abilities you can learn, ranging from the Salamander's Fire Breath to the roar of the Mottled Sandjaw, all the way to the Destroyer's mighty cannon fire. Every ability has both a primary effect and a secondary self-buff. Learning all monster powers gives you a huge array of new options!
* More jobs will come post-release!
CLAW COMBAT
Going hand-in-hand with the Wild Child is a new weapon type: claws. These weapons are ideal for characters who go "all-in" and offer a ferocious new fighting style. Claws are more easily dual-wielded than other weapon types, and gain power as you take damage. Their weapon masteries make it even easier to stay in the fray and tear apart your enemies.
MAGIC MOD EXTRACTION
For those of you looking to get that perfect modifier for your gear, you're in luck: the Dreamcaster can now be used to extract magical properties from items! Doing this will destroy the item, but give you a Lucid Orb Shard with a specific magic mod attached. Getting three shards will automatically create a full Lucid Orb used to attach that mod to any other item.
NEW ITEMS
Since the last set of patch notes, you'll now find 6 new legendary items and several new consumables!
EXPANDED TUTORIAL ZONE
There is now a second tutorial area after the first "Path to Tangledeep", which appears when you make a character on a fresh save slot. This new area is larger and offers some opportunities to explore and learn mechanics without the fear of running into champions or respawning monsters.
TONS OF BALANCE CHANGES
Thanks to your feedback, we've adjusted many job abilities, monsters, Item Dream mechanics, magic mods, and other game features to provide a better experience overall. Be sure to check the full patch notes to see what changed.
Sunday Patch Roundup: Tons of changes and additions!
Happy Sunday, adventurers! This week's patch has turned out to be one of the very biggest in Tangledeep's entire history. It started as mostly bug fixes but grew to include an enormous amount of meaningful balance changes and new content. Let's dive in!
THIRD TIER WEAPON MASTERIES
All 8 weapon types now have a third tier mastery skill. Each of these skills are totally unique to each weapon type and provide excellent passive benefits. For example, the third Bow mastery will randomly interrupt enemy skills used within your bow range. The third Axe mastery will execute another attack immediately if your first attack slays a monster.
Of course, this is just the appetizer for...
ULTIMATE WEAPON TECHNIQUES
Rounding out the weapon mastery tree are Ultimate Techniques for each weapon! These are super-powerful active skills that cost no Stamina or Energy, but carry a long cooldown that only ticks when wielding their respective weapon types. Ultimate Techniques are the most expensive to learn, and you can only accept ONE per character due to their incredible power.
EXTENSIVE BALANCE CHANGES
There are a ton of changes in this patch, all intended to deliver a more well-rounded experience. Spellshapers (and Spirit Power in general) have been toned down; Parry now scales a bit higher, but is halved at ranged, giving melee fighters a new advantage. Several magic mods have been tweaked to drop at any level, that previously only dropped at low levels. The Strength stat has been improved. And more!
NEW SIDE AREA: CRAGGAN MINES
Venture through a volcanic mine and help some friendly Craggan miners, picking up some gems along the way! This area will appear for any new characters.
NEW MAGIC MODS AND ITEMS
A new gear set has been added that should make tanky melee characters very happy. There are also a number of new magic mods for *melee* weapons specifically.
IMPROVED INVENTORY
We threw out the previous inventory filter system, which didn't make a lot of sense. The new system is much more straightforward, fitting each item into a 'tag' such as Recovery, Offense, or Utility. You can easily filter your consumables with a single click or button press, and view just Favorites as well.
PET COMMANDS
Want to boss your pet around? Is your summon misbehaving? Try giving them commands! By clicking on their portrait in the 'party' HUD (lower right), OR entering examine mode and clicking on them, you can issue some basic instructions. For example, you can tell a pet to stick more closely to you while moving around, stop using abilities, or drop everything and run to you immediately (even in the middle of combat.)
Friday Patch Roundup: Polish, balance, quality of life!
Hello adventurers! Halloween might be over, but we still came up with a mountain of treats over the last week. Our focus was primarily on making the game experience better overall, fulfilling many player-requested features and conveniences, addressing balancing issues, and fixing tons of bugs. Here are some of the highlights:
Balance: Monster Density and Respawns
In the 2nd half the game, most maps would often spawn with a very high monster density and respawn rate. This made it a bit too difficult to survive as you'd be constantly overwhelmed by monsters, even after defeating a whole group. We've adjusted these numbers, which should make it more rewarding to stand and fight instead of just running through.
Pet Improvements
Love having pets? Well, we have good news! Tamed corral monsters now regain 25% of their health with each passing ingame day. Also, the "Companions" magic mod now applies to ALL pets, not just ones from the corral. Plus, you can now buy Pet Insurance to ensure your carefully-raised monster buddy isn't lost forever if it gets in trouble.
Item Stacks
You can now drop, deposit, or withdraw specific amounts of any item instead of whole stacks at once. Also, shopkeepers now display stacks of consuambles instead of the same item 4-5 times in a row.
Snack Bag Shortcut
Eating food is something any good Tangledeep player will be doing all the time. However, it was a bit clumsy to open the menu, go to your inventory, and filter your healing food every time you wanted to heal. Now, there's a new UI shortcut (and bindable action) that jumps immediately to your Inventory with only healing tiems filtered. Handy!
Combat Log Cleanup
In a heated battle, the combat log can easily generate tons of messages. We've done a pass of consolidating many of these messages; for example, if you restore HP, Energy, and Stamina, this is now displayed on one line instead of three. If a monster takes damage multiple times from the same source, that is also combined. We'll continue making improvements and tweaks here.
More Attack Animations
The rest of the jobs are now fully animated, with movement, idle, and attack animations in all directions!
All this, plus a smattering of new legendary items and lots of bug fixes!
Halloween Part 2 + Tangledeep on Sale!
Happy Friday, adventurers! Wait - you don't have Tangledeep yet?! Pick it up now during Steam's Halloween Sale for 15% off!
And now on to our SECOND Halloween patch which brings a whole mess of awesome new permanent features!
ITEM NIGHTMARES
For those who have defeated three Nightmare Princes in regular Item Dreams, you should have three Red Orb Shards... deliver those shards to Mir in Riverstone Grove to receive a Nightmare Orb and enter an Item Nightmare!
This is a very different dungeon type full of danger, new frogs, a deadly new boss (the Nightmare Queen, and new rewards. In fact, Item Nightmares are home to 18 exclusive new magic mods, so gear hunters, rejoice!
NEW MAGIC MODS AND LEGENDARIES
In addition to the Nightmare-exclusive gear, you'll now find yet more magic mods for your gear throughout the world, plus several new pieces of legendary armor!
TONS OF NEW ART
This is one of the biggest sprite enhancements yet, featuring top/side attack animations for 5 jobs, a new visual tileset, and lots of new attack/skill animations. These new battle FX look much flashier and more impactful, and plus, they feel great to use!
PANDORA'S BOX
These wicked treasure chests have been improved, sporting tempting animations and FX if you open them (so you can feel the impact of your choice.) In addition to XP, JP, gold, and possibly Lucid orbs, they now have a chance at dropping legendary items... but remember, every chest makes the game harder!
QUALITY OF LIFE
We've removed stamina drain in water, improved pet AI, added tips during load screens, and ditched some extraneous tutorial popups, among other things. All thanks to player feedback :D
DEEP ENGINE WORK
Jim has been hard at work making the game faster, smoother, and ready for Switch. In this build we've included some changes that should make combat and turns run smoother overall, especially when fighting groups of enemies like Neutralizers.
New patch: Halloween comes to Tangledeep!
We're celebrating Tangledeep's first ever seasonal event with both limited-time and permanent new content! There's also some awesome new features that we introduced in last week's patch, so let's go through everything here!
HALLOWEEN GOODIES In addition to spooky mists and a few new seasonal costumes for some of our favorite monsters, be on the lookout for new limited-time consumable items that can drop from any enemy in the game! Don't gorge yourself on too much sugar, though...
NIGHTMARE PRINCES As a *permanent* new feature, you will now occasionally find the lair of a Nightmare Prince while exploring an Item Dream! These are extra-powerful enemies with unique powers and dungeon lairs, as well as unique loot that can't be found anywhere else. Plus, they are the prelude to something new coming NEXT week to further continue our Halloween celebration...
SKILL ORBS You will now find a special type of Lucid Orb called a Skill Orb once you have explored deeper into Tangledeep! Skill Orbs allow you to attach ability modifiers to your equipment, which transform and enhance certain skills. There are 33 Skill Orbs available - that's 33 skill transformations and modifications! Each of these can change how the skill works and how it fits in your build!
BOSS GANGS For hearty adventurers looking for powerful loot and more Lucid Orbs, talk to Erin in town and listen for Boss Gang rumors. These are bands of champion monsters that have claimed a random floor of the dungeon. You must defeat them!
THIRD BOSS FIGHT REVISE This fight should be more engaging and fleshed out than before!
DYNAMIC FONT SUPPORT Though the game is still only in English for now, we can now support other character sets across the entire UI, even non-Western languages like Japanese. This looks great in-game and we're so excited to begin localization!
ENGINE HEAVY LIFTING We've been continuously working on optimization and code cleanup. For the most part this is not super visible but dungeon generation should now be a lot faster, and we're also working on improving initial load times. This is necessary for Switch but will benefit ALL platforms and players too.
SO MUCH MORE! A new champion mod, more Dream Crystal auras, tons of balance changes and tweaks, over a dozen quality of life improvements, better tooltips and, of course, tons of bug fixes too :D
Friday Patch Notes, October 6 2017 + Tangledeep is coming to Switch!
Happy Friday, adventurers! Let's start with the big news... Tangledeep will be coming to Nintendo Switch in Q2 2018! This is really exciting for me, as I grew up with Nintendo consoles and handhelds, and many Nintendo games have greatly influenced Tangledeep. But I also think it's going to be a great way to introduce an entirely new audience to the game!
If you're not a Switch owner, or you somehow DON'T want the awesome experience of playing Tangledeep on a handheld (or on your TV)... don't worry! 100% of my dev time is going toward the PC version. Jim, our second programmer, is handling the Switch port in addition to helping with various code cleanup, features, and engine optimizations.
In short - This port will be a really good thing for the game, but it won't get in the way of the PC version!
On to the patch notes!
NEW JOB: EDGE THANE
Inspired by the roguelike Sil and epic stories like Beowulf and the Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tangledeep's latest playable job is a mighty warrior that charges into battle with the power of song. Edge Thanes thrive when fighting challenging enemies, preferring melee combat and two-handed weapons to run-and-kite tactics.
This job introduces a new mechanic, "Songs", powerful self-buffs that grow in duration and intensity as you fight. The longer and more challenging the battle, the more effects your song will have! You can then ADD to songs by using Verses, which all have their own unique effects as well.
We hope you'll enjoy the Edge Thane and all her awesome new skills!
CHARACTER SHEET UPGRADE
Many effects in the game affect attributes like your overall damage/defense, or elemental damage output. However, they were not reflected anywhere on your sheet... until now! Put on a Shock Ring and you'll see the appropriate bonus to +Lightning damage (along with all other Lightning boosts). Many buffs/debuffs that seemed subtle will now be more visible with a quick glance at the character sheet.
TEXT RENDERING IMPROVEMENTS
All text in the game is now rendered with 'meshes', which provide greater clarity at all resolutions. Previously, lower resolutions would produce more blurry and low-contrast text.
Switching to this new technology also allows us to properly localize all elements of the UI and player HUD. We even did a test with Japanese characters, and they look awesome!
TWO-HANDED SWORDS You will now find five ranks of two-handed swords throughout the world! The spritework/flavor text is not quite done, but the gameplay is all there. Two-handed swords have the highest damage of any weapon type to date, at the cost of not having an offhand item or weapon. On the other hand, two-handers can have up to EIGHT magic mods instead of just five...
CODE CLEANUP + OPTIMIZATION Not the most exciting thing, but we've made some incredible progress here which will help keep the game as easy as possible to maintain and expand upon. Also, Jim has been working on some incredible optimizations to make data loading lightning-fast, something that is very important for Switch.
COMING SOON... Ability orbs! A special Halloween patch! Get hype!
-Andrew
Friday Patch Review Roundup: September 29, 2017
Hello adventurers! Today brings some huge under-the-hood changes for Tangledeep. As a result of these changes, your map/dungeon progress will be reset as of this patch. However, your character progress will be preserved - XP, JP, equipment, monster corral, bank.
Here's what we've done since last week!
DATA COMPRESSION AND OPTIMIZATION One of our biggest goals recently has been optimizing the size of save data files, and generally optimizing read/write performance. This is not really an issue on PC, but it definitely impacts other platforms. We're not done with all this yet, but already we've been able to reduce save sizes by about ~50%.
MULTI-WEAPON PAIRING Thanks to your feedback, we've now made it possible to pair the same offhand item with multiple weapons. For example, you can now pair Legendary Shield 1 with three of your weapons, but then Legendary Shield 2 with your fourth weapon. This is great for ease of switching your main/offhand setup in the dungeon.
TONS AND TONS OF BUG FIXES This includes both recently-created bugs from new systems, as well as older bugs with things like line of sight, specific character abilities, certain magic mods not working 100% properly, etc etc.
GIANT BOSS HEALTH BARS Need I say more?!
NEW MONSTER ROMANCE MINI-QUEST You'll now get a little quest related to Rose Petals and monster romance once you have at least two critters in the corral, and you've made some progress in the dungeon.
WHAT'S NEXT? Most of the last week was focused on engine work, which is not particularly exciting, but absolutely necessary for maintenance and growth. Moving forward we have some awesome new stuff in the pipeline including a NEW playable JOB! Stay tuned!
Friday Patch Review Roundup: September 22, 2017
Hello adventurers! Development is in high-gear and we've got lots of cool stuff to share from our work over the past week.
MAGIC GROVE EXPANDED Tired of all your trees doing the same thing? Now there are four distinct species of tree, all with their own unique look and items! Depending on what kind of drops you need, you can plant the appropriate seeds and cultivate your very own custom grove. You can also find uncommon and even rare seeds that result in more magnificent and powerful trees.
DEEPER ITEM CUSTOMIZATION - LUCID ORBS If you haven't used the Dreamcaster yet, it's a device in Riverstone Grove that allows you to spend Orbs of Reverie - plus some gold - to delve into "Item Dreams" and power up your items. We've expanded this system further with the addition of "Lucid Orbs", which have specific modifiers already attached to them. For example, using a "Lucid Orb of Elemental Shielding" in the Dreamcaster and entering your favorite legendary shield will add Elemental Shielding to that shield! (As long as you spend enough gold, too.)
Lucid Orbs will allow players to more precisely customize the perfect gear set for their character, and encourage new builds! Stay tuned, as this system is going to get expanded even further next week...
MORE DIRECTIONAL ANIMATIONS More jobs now have idle/run sprites in all four cardinal directions. We're looking more polished every day.
TONS OF QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS From instant switching of ranged weapons to better equipment bonus readouts, page up/down shortcuts, a better pet UI display, better error message feedback, smarter cursor auto-targeting and over a dozen more features, we've been fulfilling lots of player-requested improvements.
Our philosophy is that the challenge of Tangledeep should come from the gameplay, not issues with controls, UI, or information displays. That all should be butter smooth and a pleasure to interact with!
BALANCE ADJUSTMENTS In our ongoing mission to maximize the number of fun and effective builds and characters you can use, we've made changes such as allowing 2-handed weapons to have up to 8 magic mods, making Daggers use both Guile and Strength to compliment the stats of common dagger-using jobs, adjusting how summons work, and much more.
We've also punched up the difficulty of New Game+ mode a bit further, and adjusted the second boss fight to be more in line with the escalating difficulty of the 1st and 3rd. Lastly, the XP curve has been tweaked so the early game doesn't soar by quite so quickly, while at the same time monsters take longer to become "Worthless".
ENGINE OPTIMIZATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS We've continued to do lots of under-the-hood work, reducing the size of save files, reducing level generation time, and adding a spiffier, more-accurate way to see if the game is loading data (rather than sitting at a black screen with static text.)
----
p.s. Have you been enjoying Tangledeep? If so, consider writing a review! It really helps the visibility of game <3
