Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Tactical, Adventure, Indie, Card & Board GameThe Hand of Merlin
Versus Evil 8th Anniversary Sale Going on Now!
Versus Evil is turning 8! Can you believe it? Well, believe it because to celebrate we're having a sale on our awesome catalog of games!
Over these past 8 years, we've had the opportunity to help put out many fun and creative games. This year saw the release of Jumpala, Hitchhiker - A Mystery Game, and Sockventure, as well as Early Access releases for First Class Trouble, Almighty: Kill Your Gods, and The Hand of Merlin. Tomorrow sees the release of our latest addition, UnMetal!
UnMetal is a 2D stealth action-adventure that pays homage to the classics with a healthy dose of humor and satire. You play as Jesse Fox, who is definitely NOT an elite commando, under arrest for a crime he didn't commit, and must escape a covert military base using his wits and fists.
Sounds like fun, right? Check out UnMetal and the rest of our catalog for anything that may interest you!
To close, some thanks are in order...
Thank you to our developers who really give it their all to bring these games to life.
Thank you to our Heralds who are the best ambassadors we could ever hope for.
And, of course, thank you to our players who are the reason we continue to strive to put out the best games we possibly can. This has been one long, crazy journey, and we're glad you're all on it with us.
From all of us at Versus Evil, thank you for making these past 8 years great. Now, go score some deals!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203710/UnMetal/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1206600/Almighty_Kill_Your_Gods/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222340/Sockventure/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/888530/Yaga/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/904400/Cardpocalypse/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1003120/Hitchhiker__A_Mystery_Game/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1278190/Jumpala/
Dev blog 87 - Hardmode Curses and Blessings
Hi there! Quick one today: I want to introduce another aspect of Hardmode, Curses and Blessings.
We alluded to this before, but we are considering hardmode to be an “ascension” mode of sorts. As you master its challenges, you’ll gain more and more essence, and there must be a place to spend it!
Here’s where the Blessings come in. Whenever you pick Hardmode, you are able to spend Essences to gain temporary benefits to that run. Some examples are Leylines, which increases your maximum mana, and Wealthy Endeavour, which makes your gold rewards larger. We are also preparing some interesting ones about mana or messing with the Grail!
Now, when we were first talking about this model, the idea of spending enough essence to make hardmode too easy rubbed us the wrong way. So we doubled down on the “Ascension mode” theme and added the Curses - negative modifiers that you can pick for the run. All fun things, like No Witnesses making corrupted fights yield less rewards, and Grievous Wounds increasing healing costs. Pretty nasty stuff. Each one of these modifiers has a number associated with it, that we call Doom Value.
Here’s the thing: if you want to spend, say, 3 essences in Blessings? You gotta pick enough Curses to match the Doom value to the cost, in this case at least 3 Doom. So it’s always kind of balanced, but you can pick which benefits you want to use to take on an ever increasing challenge.
the current state of the modifier selection segment, not all modifiers are in yet
That’s not all. We want to reinforce people moving up in Doom Value as they play, so the higher the Doom Value of a run, the more Essence it’ll reward you based on how far you went.
So we leave it to the player, you see. If you got essence to spend, do you want to give hardmode + doom value 3 a go? Alright, pick 3 points in Blessings, and pay up. Now, every boss battle you defeat, you gain more essences at the end!
There you go! Mia, one of our designers, is hard at work creating interesting curses and blessings to change up your gameplay, and offer the more hardcore among you an ever increasing challenge to measure up to!
Want to participate in the design of those modifiers? Join our Discord server and let Mia know what you’re thinking!
Mat
Patch Notes - Early Access Build 674878
• Fixed a crash with gamepads when using R1/RB.
• Fixed an issue with gamepad controls where moving from tile picking back to actionbar didn't reset back to the skill that initiated the tile picking.
• Fixed an issue where ending gamepad drag in the relic shop to purchase a relic didn't restore the hover target to the destination slot.
• Fixed a crash on the map state when all heroes are lost.
• Fixed a few issues with misbehaving tooltips in the relic shop and blacksmith book chapters.
• Fixed "Feats of Strength" encounter which could lead to a page with no options available, halting progress.
• Measured Shooter (Salim's passive) should no longer unintentionally increase Damage-Over-Time effects.
• Fixed an error in the Agile status effect (associated with some relics), so that now it consistently grants action points as described.
• Fixed an error with Expurger (associated with an upgrade of Mystic's Raise Totem skill), where the heroes could poison themselves if they had the Holy Grail.
• Fixed several typos.
Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Gamepad Y/triangle button can now be used to show formulas in skirmishes.
Gameplay balancing:
• Redcap's Horror ability now deals just 1 stack of Stunned.
• Adjusted minion spawning by Pylons to bring them all closer to the same power level.
Dev blog 86 - Dire Units
Hello! Wanted to share a bit more about our hard mode plans.
One of the early concepts of the game’s difficulty curve was to introduce “powered-up” versions of each abomination. Larger and meaner, these units would serve as the center focus of a match. In fact, the older players among you might notice that we do have such a unit in the game, the current Dire Thorntoad - a 2x2 version of Thorntoad, introduced in Marca Hispanica.
It serves an interesting purpose. It takes the place of the Behemoths as a “Major abomination”, and it's important to have some variation there, especially since we don’t introduce Lindworm, another abomination in the same category, until Al-Andalus.
But we want to further the concept. We’ll change the large toad’s name, and introduce new versions of each abomination in the game, called Dires. They’ll be far stronger versions, having more action points, less cooldowns, and unique passive effects, changing the challenges that each enemy presents. And, just for good measure, a bit more health and armor.
These Dires are planned as a Hardmode-only treat. Our current plan is for each corrupted fight in Hardmode to pick one of the enemies and “upgrade” them to their dire version, offering a somewhat randomized challenge for you to solve. Due to their nature, we are expecting each Dire to be your focus for most of the match, making each skirmish just a tiny bit different, a useful trait for our target audience for hardmode - the player that already mastered the game.
The Dires are also retextured, and Kaz has been consistently delivering interesting visual variations so you can know at a glance which of the Mandrakes is about to ruin your day!
We’re excited to show you what Hardmode (and metaprogression) is shaping up to be, and this is just one of the pieces. What do you think? Any particular ideas for how each Dire should behave? Drop in to our Discord server and let us know!
Mat
Dev blog 85 - Pylon Adjustments
Hello there! Some spoilers for the end of the campaign below. Beware!
Quick one today, as we’re busy making all the preparations and tech work for the hardmode update, which we iterated a few times over already.
While we were working on enemy behavior, we noticed that there was quite a bit of interesting feedback and discussions regarding how the final combat works in The Hand of Merlin. In particular, players were a bit concerned about some of the Pylons, the units that are created to fight your warband in the later stages of the game, which were a bit unbalanced and… well, unfun.
Few opportunities for counterplay, differences in power, and debuffs a bit too severe were some of the thoughts, and we agreed! Part of the EA experience is to get to pursue the fun live with our players, and we definitely have enough information now for some touch-ups.
We just uploaded a patch that addresses this. We took the pylons, considered them against each other, gave them some cleaner abilities and fixed a few bugs. Summons make a bit more sense now, and the “maximum unit count” in that fight has also been reduced, leading to a more coherent experience.
We believe it to be an improvement, and it's all based on your input, specially over in our Discord server. So, hey, thanks for making my life a bit easier, and keep that feedback coming!
Mat
Patch Notes - Early Access Build 674825
• Created several new encounter illustrations.
General fixes:
• Fixed an infinite loop with the bookmark mode for gamepads.
• Fixed a bug where unit tooltips would sometimes erroneously be shown on the world map when using a gamepad.
• Fixed a bug where skill tooltips from the base ability would remain on the screen when upgrading skills and cover up the cards.
• Fixed certain issues with the interaction between Opportunist (Wyvern's passive) and The Holy Grail.
• Vengeful Martyrdom (upgrade of Mystic's Martyrdom skill) should no longer proc on player's turn, as expected and described.
• Fixed several typos.
Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Fixed issues with several more Al-Andalus skirmish maps on ultra-wide monitors.
• Fixed an issue where the camera would sometimes make sudden movements during enemy (AI) turns.
Gameplay balancing:
• Revamped the Pylons, changing the base abilities of most variants, with the intent of normalizing their power levels, reducing "chore" mechanics, and providing mechanics with counter-plays instead.
• In addition, Pylons will no longer summon more units if there are 6 enemies already present. Instead, each Pylon variant now has a unique new ability to use in such a case.
• "Weak" status effect is now capped at 5 stacks max.
Patch Notes - Early Access Build 674690
• Created several new encounter illustrations.
General fixes:
• Fixed an infinite loop that could happen when using directional aiming via gamepad for cone attacks / abilities.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen when spawning enemies.
• Fixed several UI layout issues when using Big Picture mode.
• Fixed a bug where the Holy Grail spell couldn't be hotkey activated with the keyboard.
• Fixed "The Maze" encounter to no longer halt progress if lacking Supplies to proceed.
• Opportunist, Wyvern's passive, should no longer be triggered at a distance, only when the Wyvern is adjacent to a unit who just took damage.
• Toxic Buildup, Basilisk's passive, should no longer decay when the creature is hit with ranged attacks.
• The "Stunned" status effect now interacts correctly with the new 0-AP unit selection feature.
• Warrior's Stand Ready skill (and its upgrades) now no longer require 1 AP to be used, allowing them to be used as the last action in a round.
• Warrior's Command skill (upgrade of Warcry), now properly adds the Powerful buff to allies, as stated in the description.
• The "Expurger" status effect, associated with the Expurging Totem upgrade of Mystic's Raise Totem skill, now properly adds poison to attacks, and carries a combat message for clarification.
• Fixed a bug where card tooltips would sometimes be set to the wrong position.
• Clarified several ability tooltips, and fixed several typos across tooltips and hints.
Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Added tooltips to the gameplay legend shown on the world map, which lists the types of map nodes, possible rewards, etc.
• The "Options" menu now has a new and improved layout, and now also works directly with gamepads, rather than relying on a virtual cursor.
• Sped up the world map notifications if the player is trying to move to the next node while they are on the screen.
• When using a gamepad, the default window mouse cursor is now hidden.
• Renamed Pylons' Ethereal status effect to Immortal, for clarity.
Optimizations:
• Reduced texture sizes for several heroes, without loss in visual quality.
Gameplay balancing:
• The healer in the city of Toledo no longer accepts gold but has the option to reject waiting for free healing.
Dev blog 84 - Next Stop: Metaprogression & Hard Mode
Now that the Enemy Update has been out for a week, let me tell you about what our next plans are!
Even before we entered Early Access, we knew that the game had an “upper-bound”, that is, a limit of how many things you could do before you mastered all of its challenges. We introduced some side tasks, like the Prowess unlocks and some specific achievements, but we really needed more time and feedback to design a true metaprogression system.
Hell, you can note some discussions in the Steam forums or our Discord servers on the topic of “now what?”, and those did not go unheard. We started working on it!
It’ll be implemented in a few steps. First of all, we need a Hard Mode. A nastier challenge with more complex resource management and tougher beasties will be a great starting point. Then, we’ll leverage our persistent currency, Essences, into a “modifier” system, with positive ones that result in a power increase (More gold? More mana? Start with a more powerful grail?) and negative ones that will increase your essence gain, but bring an extra challenge (Harder enemies? More expensive healing?).
We hope that the end result is that you have a fine control over the intended difficulty of a run, and can slowly progress your warband’s power across multiple runs. Challenging yourself will reward you with more essence, which in turn allows you to purchase more positive modifiers… a full-fledged economy for you to participate in, and a final goal. Can you do a full negative modifier run in Hardmode?
I hope you are excited about the new additions to the game and the challenges we are going to present you with. Hit us up in our Discord server if you have any questions or feedback to offer in this design stage!
Mat
Patch Notes - Early Access Build 674609
• Fixed a bug where unrevealed enemies could remain in their turn indefinitely.
• Added missing entry for the new Basilisk abomination into the Bestiary.
A New Evil
Patch Notes - Early Access Build 674600
New features:
• Added 3 new enemies: Enchanter and Witch as two new Mystic Bandits, and Basilisk as a new ranged Abomination.
• Added support for Steam's Big Picture mode.
• Added first-pass gamepad support; it's functional, but UX improvements are planned. Also, only the standard Xbox controllers are officially supported.
• Created a new model for Skill Cards, shown when ranking up your party. The new cards are more informative, and now also include effect area in the skill specs.
• Added some new SFX to Heroes.
• Added some new illustrations for encounters.
Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Units with no action points can now be manually selected. This makes it possible to use 0 AP skills after having spent all AP.
• Added a hint on how to recruit a new Hero in case one of them dies in combat - by visiting Heroic nodes, denoted by a helmet icon on the world map.
General fixes:
• Fixed a bug where reaction attacks against large units would sometimes fail.
• Fixed a bug where trying to end a turn while any unit had a free action wouldn't end the turn until the free action was used.
• Fixed a rare bug in Isabel de Orreaga's encounter that could sometimes prevent her from being recruited.
• Warrior's Driven Haste skill and its upgrades now have correct cooldown values, as stated in the ability card.
• Warrior's Command skill (upgrade of Warcry) should now be usable even if there are no allies nearby.
• Mystic's Scavenging Singe (upgrade of Singe) can no longer target a tile if there are no units in that tile, making it consistent with other attack skills.
• Ranger's Volley skill should no longer allow hitting targets behind full cover.
• The relic Snake Skin can no longer poison the bearer if they receive a debuff.
• Fixed a bug where the effect of Stasis spell would decay twice as fast as intended.
• Fixed typos in several encounters and tooltips.
Optimizations:
• Reduced texture sizes for several heroes and enemies, without loss in visual quality.
Gameplay balancing:
• Changed how Wyvern's passive works. Instead of gaining a stacking Evasion buff when attacked, Wyvern now has Opportunist - when an enemy takes damage, the Wyvern will attack a random enemy in melee range.
• Changed how Mandrake's Quicken ability works, now allowing it to gain an extra action point istead of a Speed increase, making it similar to Warrior's Haste.
• Changed how Behemoth's AI works during reaction turns, favoring the use of the Trample skill.
• Behemoth's Heavy Armor passive will no longer affect damage over time effects.
• The Inspired status effect (gained from various abilities and relics) is now capped at 10 stacks maximum.
• Warrior's Coordinated Parry skill (upgrade of Parry) is now usable at 0 AP.
• The relic Strong Drink can no longer miss, and now has 3 charges with effects that stack with itself.
• The relic Alardin's Shield now grants +2 Evasion (up from +1).
• The relic Blood Amulet now grants +2 Power (up from +1).
• The relic Beast Talisman is now Common, and costs 50gp (down from 80gp).