We hope you're alright! So today, we have a very special announcement for you! We know you've been wondering when the next update is planned to release! Don't worry, we have great news for you ;)
New release timeline for the next updates
For the Glenwald Update, we put all our efforts into releasing one BIG update. This was certainly cool for some players, but we realized that other players wanted more updates more regularly.
Although we won’t be able to give you updates that are as big as Glenwald Calling every month (we like to sleep at night ^^), we’ve decided, with our awesome publisher The Arcade Crew, that from now on, we’ll release updates more often! Instead of releasing a major update every 3-4 months, we'll release smaller updates and each of them will have one big focus.
For the next one, the "End of the year update" will be divided into 3 updates!
[H2]New "mini roadmap" for Winter 2021
Our first batch of "smaller updates" will be released this winter, up to early 2022. If everything goes as planned, there will be 3 updates to go and each of them will focus on ONE big feature of the game
Without further ado, here's the roadmap for the 3 next updates. We can't give you specific release dates yet, but the first one will be released very soon, and the last one will be released in Early 2022 :)
So, for the end of 2021/early 2022, we'll have 3 smaller updates.
The first update will focus on the enemies
The second update will focus on the perks
The third update will focus on the maps
This changes our initial roadmap so here's athe new and updated one detailing what's coming up this Winter
So yeah, the next update should be released very soon ;)
We hope you’ll keep on enjoying The Last Spell! Please feel free to join our Discord server and give your feedback to our Feature Upvote page!
Balancing patch is LIVE
Hello warriors ! This week, we have some news for you!
“Glenwald Update” Balancing issues: We have a new patch!
We hope you’re alright! So, as you remember, we released the “Glenwald Calling” update a few weeks ago. It was a huge work for us, but we’re glad you folks seem to like the new map!
However, we’ve quickly realized there were some issues with the new balancing of the game. Indeed, before the update, the game was a little too easy, and now it’s become too hard especially in Glenwald.
The Last Spell is a very hard game to balance in general, but thanks to your feedback and comments, we’re very happy to release today this balancing patch that should alleviate some of the issues that made the “Glenwald Update” too hard. Please let us know what you think of this new balancing that is detailed in the changelog
We’re very glad to have such a committed community, and it’s thanks to you that we’re able to make the game better during this early access! So, from all of us at Ishtar Games, thank you!
Changelog 0.93.1.3
Balancing
Economy
Houses:
Price: 45 Gold→ now 40 Gold
Ruins:
The overall yield from scavenging ruins has been increased. Gold is mostly noticeable on the bigger Ruins (even smaller buffs shouldn’t be disregarded, though), but the Materials increase is huge!
For 1 Worker:
Gold Focus: gives 10 Gold and 7 Materials→ now gives 12 Gold and 13 Materials
Materials Focus: gives 4 Gold and 18 Materials→ now gives 4 Gold and 38 Materials
For 2 Workers:
Gold Focus: gives 22 Gold and 14 Materials→ now gives 28 Gold and 28 Materials
Materials Focus: gives 9 Gold and 35 Materials→ now gives 9 Gold and 84 Materials
For 3 Workers:
Gold Focus: gives 36 Gold and 23 Materials→ now gives 48 Gold and 46 Materials
Materials Focus: gives 23 Gold and 58 Materials→ now gives 16 Gold and 138 Materials
For 4 Workers:
Gold Focus: gives 52 Gold and 34 Materials→ now gives 72 Gold and 67 Materials
Materials Focus: gives 21 Gold and 85 Materials→ now gives 24 Gold and 200 Materials
Tip: Scavenging Ruins is a GREAT way to kickstart your run! Keep that in mind when trying to get the Gold needed for your first batch of Workers, which in turn will be the backbone of your economy; Or when in a sudden need of an immediate influx of Materials, to build a few more defenses.
Gear
Weapons
Magic Scepter:
Increased the base damage (about 15%)
Reworked the skill set of the Magic Scepter: Magic Bash, Wind Walk (new), Shocking Touch and Hammer of Faith. Further details in the Skill section later.
Replaced the bonus attribute from The Adept’s Scepter: Stun chance bonus→ now Dodge bonus
Replaced the bonus attribute from Master's Scepter: Resistance bonus→ now Stun chance bonus (but bigger than the previous Adept’s Scepter)
Replaced the bonus attribute from Archmaster's Scepter: Propagation damage bonus→ now Move bonus
Removed the accuracy malus on the following weapons: Hammer, Spear, Power Staff.
Reworked a bit the Move points bonus scaling on the following weapons: Adamantium Hammer, Adamantium Dagger, Adamantium Crossbow, Adamantium Pistol → Higher levels will get a bigger bonus than before
Off Hand Scepter:
Now grants the skill "Hammer of Faith" instead of "Shocking Touch"
Skills
Magic Scepter:
Magic Bash :
Use per turn 3→ 4
Base damage multiplier 50%→ 100%
Momentum skill effect 50%→ 25%
Wind Walker (new skill):
Cost: 1AP
Range: 0-5 (modifiable)
Target: 1
Use per turn: +2
Buff (+3Move, +15% Dodge, 1Turn)
Shocking Touch:
Cost: 2AP, 0Mana→ 1AP, 2Mana
Use per turn3→ 2
Base damage multiplier 100%→ 120%
Debuff accuracy -10%→ -15%
Hammer of Faith:
Base damage multiplier 100%→ 70%
Stun chance 50%→ 70%
Overall difficulty
Glenwald Haven:
Enemy quantity progression is (a bit) less brutal.
Apocalypse
Apocalypse 5, Enemies have +2 Move Points→ Enemies have increased Move Points. We decreased by 1 the move point bonus for all enemies except for the Winged, Runner and Crawler which stay at +2 Move Points.
Bug fixes
Fix of freezes and some slow down caused by the mist censers.
Fix of an exploit which made enemies not able to attack any building from the mist.
The boomer won’t explode on barricade anymore.
The skill “Watchout” from the “Longbow” weapon can only be used on heroes now.
Fix of certain skills that sometimes could not be casted on heroes (for example potions skills or the skill transfer).
Using the catapult skill now reset the cancel movement history (preventing exploits with the light fog).
Improvement on some traits incompatibilities.
Offhands now have the same damage scaling as their standard equivalent.
Don't forget to update your game!
Hotfix 0.93.0.6
Hello warriors!
Thanks a lot for reporting all the bugs since the "Glenwald Calling" update! There's a new hotfix online, so don't forget to update your game! :)
Fix of a save corruption due to a bug caused by the death of heroes.
Fix of the cursor that was framerate dependant.
Fix of the huge sprites displayed sometimes on skill targeting.
Fix of Glenwald haven that was disappearing sometime on the world map.
Fix of the skill “Fatality” from the perk that could be used on any healthy enemy in range.
Fix of the conditions from meta that was reset after loading the save preventing some players to unlock major unlocks like the Seer or the Inn.
Fix of the meta condition “Build X defenses” that was only increasing with the construction of barricades.
Fix of the following perks: Mana collector, Energized, Swift as the wind, Vampire. The regen effect of these perks was stacking if the hero was at maximum in the regenerated stat and then all the stacked effect would be triggered by any skill under any condition.
Fix of Scorching Wave Scroll and Rain of Arrows Scroll not having the rotate option on targeting.
Fix of the Accursed and Bulky attacking directly after getting out of the fog instead of waiting one turn.
Fix of the perk “Potion Thrower” that was not active on every potion.
Fix of the perk’s description “Night owl” that was mentioning the turn 4 instead of the turn 5.
Fix of a very specific case where it was possible to use an attack on the caster of the skill.
Fix of a visual bug that was occurring on enemies inside light fog after destroying Mist Censers.
Fix of bug in the night reward panel that was causing a desynchronization between the displayed reward and the reward that the player receives.
Take care! <3
Glenwald Calling Update livestream!
Developer Stream
Developer Stream!
As we release the new update, we'll be hosting a stream to show you the new update and answer all your questions! (Please don't ask us about rotating buildings)
And for players who didn't get the game yet, it's 10% off until 09/30rd! :)
We’ve been working very hard on that update all summer, so we hope you’ll like it! It’s the very first Major Update for The Last Spell, so we’re VERY excited! This is why we’re writing this blogpost to go into more details regarding some of the big changes we made for this update!
For this, I’ll let Benjamin, Producer and Game Designer on the game, take if from here!
New Map: Glenwald
Brace yourself Glenwald needs your help and it’s not going to be easy!
Before going into the details of what this map is about, I want to make some disclaimers about it. Currently Glenwald has no boss but instead we’ve done a special wave that is…well…very intense (you will see). To be honest, at this stage of the development, we don’t know yet if every haven will have a boss or if other ones will have a wave like Glenwald, or a random boss pool at the end of the run. Moreover, to be able to play Glenwald you will have to complete Lakeburg at least once. Let’s talk about the details now!
This new map gave us a hard time in the beginning of the summer as Lakeburg has been in the game since the very beginning of the development and there were a lot of things to decide on how to design/implement/make the art for the next map. We knew since the beginning of our reflection that we wanted to make a map that is more difficult than Lakeburg and that would be played by players who unlocked most of the meta content. This orientation was a good thing, we played with a 100% save file and tried to prototype challenges that would fit this configuration.
First thing we did differently compared to Lakeburg is the randomness of waves. In Lakeburg almost everything is pre-defined and there is a strong “scenario” that the game follows in terms of spawn directions and composition of waves. It was our way to control a bit more the difficulty and the player experience to ensure that it was somehow balanced. But for Glenwald we broke this “scenario” thing. Now, randomness is our new “scenario”.
Well of course we’re not crazy, we are still controlling some things to ensure that the challenge is feasible but multiple runs in Glenwald should feel a lot different than multiple runs in Lakeburg. I also hope it will reinforce the seer abilities to predict waves.
We also introduced a new “type” of enemies distribution in waves. There are now waves that can be on a whole side and trust me, this can be very tricky to handle even if it’s “just one side”. In general, waves should be less centered and more scattered than in Lakeburg.
Two more things about the progression.
First, there are a LOT more enemies in Glenwald, to compare there are almost twice more enemies at the end of a Glenwald run than at the end of a Lakeburg one.
Secondly, Glenwald is shorter and is completed in 10 days. We wanted to test this “shorter runs” for a long time and so, we found the challenge interesting to have less time to build your town. But since there are more enemies, there is more experience to get for your heroes and so they should be stronger than in Lakeburg!
Let’s focus on Level design Our goal was to create a level that emphasizes melee heroes and try to give some hard time to range heroes. To do that we thought of a forest to create a lot of variations in the line of sight.
For the global shape of the map we brainstormed a lot, tried to think about different shapes for the haven, different configurations of the sides, we had some ideas but they were too complex in terms of development/design for the deadline and we knew we would have a lot of new things to implement in addition to this map. So we stayed “old-fashioned” with the shape of the haven but we still tried to do something different than Lakeburg.
We also worked on giving something unique on each side of the map to create different playstyles. For example, on the southwest there are ruins of a shrine with some graves, while on the northeast side, it’s more like the forest side with a lot of places for enemies to hide and scatter.
Then we created something new in the level design: destructible obstacles. For now, only Glenwald has some, and that includes graves, wood piles, and dead trees, but we want to extend this later to Lakeburg and the future maps. It’s something we are excited about, bringing more interaction with the environment. With this update we’ve made the first step and we are going to work more on that for future updates!
Finally, our artists made a fantastic job on creating a new atmosphere for this map with some unique props and grounds. So thank you Jacques, Adrien and also Eloise who joined us this summer for her internship and did an amazing work to adapt quickly to our process!
New enemy
Let me introduce you the Guardian, an abomination that only the mist knows how to create (and our artists with weird ideas). This enemy is exclusive to Glenwald waves and introduced a new type of enemy support oriented. We already experienced buff on enemies with the Ripper but instead of the Ripper, the Guardian will buff other enemies and not itself.
Also, the Guardian is block oriented, its main defense is the block stat and it buffs surrounding enemies in block. We hope this will gives some shine to the “No Block” skill effect and will gives you some new challenges! We also experimented something new: the guardian blocks the line of sight. It’s something we wanted to do for a long time and here it is! We will see if it works well and if so maybe we will expand this behavior to other enemies.
New Apocalypse Levels
We worked a lot during this summer on apocalypses, we knew that we had to rework the existing ones and find new exciting ideas! Before going into the details, I just want to make a reminder that this update will erase your completion on apocalypses levels but not the progression. So, if you completed the 4 levels of apocalypse you will still be able to play the apocalypse 4 on the new update but it will be marked as “undone”.
First apocalypse we looked at was the level 2 “Enemy waves are 20% bigger”. The problem was that since there were more enemies, you gained more experience, so your heroes were stronger, and the game felt easier with this apocalypse. To balance that we decided to not increase the overall gain in XP, so your heroes keep the same amount of XP as before this apocalypse.
Then pretty much the same thing happened with the level 3 “Every Gold and Materials cost is 20% more expensive”. Everything was indeed more expensive, but you earned more by selling items, so with this extra gold you could buy more things for your town and heroes and here we go again, the game felt easier. To prevent that, selling costs remain the same as before the apocalypse.
Last apocalypse we weren’t happy with was the level 4 “The Mist is closer at the beginning and gets closer every morning”. We thought this was a cool idea but then we watched players play this level and we read a lot of feedback and we saw that this level was generating a lot of frustration and forced players to do only one strategy. So we changed our mind and decided to replace this level with a new one. Now this apocalypse is “Enemies have +2 Move Points”. This apocalypse should do the same effect as before, enemies will be at your gates very quickly but this time you will have more strategies to overcome this challenge.
Now let’s talk about new apocalypses! But first, we reordered all apocalypse so here is the new order! :)
The new apocalypse 3 has the feature I’m most excited about because it introduced a new gameplay element: The Mist Censers.
As we were brainstorming for the new level, we found this idea of the players forced to play more with the mist. At first, we were prototyping this for Glenwald but we extended this to the apocalypses challenges.
A Mist censer is an obstacle that produces a cloud of thin mist around it. Enemies can go inside this mist. While being inside, they can’t be targeted, and they are invulnerable (just like the Deadly Mist). From there players have several options:
Attack the mist censer, if it dies the thin mist will go away and monster will be once again targetable. To add some more spice, mist censor will regrow every two days.
Heroes can dissipate the thin mist in a radius of 3 tiles around them. So it might be good to send your melee heroes inside this thin.
Just wait until enemies get out from the thin mist (I never said that all options were good)
I’m excited to see what strategies you will find to face the mist censors! :D
Last apocalypse I want to talk about is the level 6 “Every item (initial gear excepted) gets a random negative attribute modifier”.
At one time during the development of TLS, almost every item had trade-offs in their attributes. It was cool but it added an extra layer of complexity on the building of your heroes and it can be hard for new players that are still learning all the games systems. We kept some trade off on specifics items but it’s not something common.
With this challenge we restored this idea to create some unique situations and force players to adapt more.
Consumables Rework
Just before the release we had a debate about consumables in RPG in general. We were saying that often players don’t want to invest on these items because it’s something temporary or if the game gives to the players some they won’t use them because there is a constant fear of using an item for a situation not worthy (we’ve all been there). The result of this is, you beat the final boss of the game and you realized you still have 50 health potions (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy).
In TLS consumable were not very used so we never took much time to make a proper progression for these items. And we had players that didn’t want to waste money on them because it’s consumable (like I said earlier) and players that were buying all of them because they had too much money. We searched for solutions to this problem, and we realized that we liked our system we’ve made for the catapult and it could be applied to consumables.
So now consumables have uses per night. I think that the fact that consumables are not destroyed anymore integrate them to the building process of the heroes and can create some interesting synergies.
Of course, this changed all the balancing of consumable. For example, mana potion and health potion will give less than before in the beginning of the run but can be used every day. We also reworked all the progression of consumables, now every one of them have 6 levels (like every other item).
Last thing I want to talk about this rework is the scrolls. We removed the cost in action point to use the skill, it now only cost mana points. This can be very useful if you need an extra attack for your turn.
Balancing
[Thomas here, Lead Game Designer on TLS, taking over from Benjamin because he’s not a superhuman and thus doesn’t have time to write down everything by himself!] Of course, no update would come without its lot of gameplay balancing, tweaks and changes. This is not a comprehensive list, but rather an overview of what has changed and why.
Dodging alterations Many players complained about dodging a Bulky’s boulder or an Archer’s arrow and still being debuffed… And rightly so! It has never been intended and has been fixed! \o/ Just remember: the combat system is symmetrical, so any mechanic can be a double-edged sword. Enemies dodging your attacks will now also evade the related effects!
Production phase & economy Shop As a global feeling, we wanted to empower the Shop a little bit more. It has always been our intention for the Shop to be more of an early run helper than a late run game changer, but we acknowledged that it wasn’t scaling enough and ended up REALLY before the end of the run.
This is even more important now that we have reworked the consumables and made them scale, as currently the only way of getting some is through the Shop. Highlights:
Additional Item Level upgrade to be able to buy Level V (5) gear and decreased a bit the overall price of those upgrades.
Increased chances of presence of magic/rare/epic gear (epic was impossible before).
A few more consumable items slots.
Houses & Workers We like our system, so this didn’t change at all! But we tweaked the rhythm of obtaining Workers, because it was a bit too easy (once accustomed to the game, of course) to trick the system and have an explosive yield within the first couple of days. It’s not problematic to be able to do so, but it should have a strategical cost. Houses now cost a little bit less but come with a single worker, and have an additional upgrade to still be able to reach 3 Workers per house.
Scavenging Ruins Scavenging Ruins yields have been increased a bit overall to help the early run, and newcomers that don’t have as much meta-upgrades unlocked to boost their economy. The bigger the Ruin, the better the increase, to account for the cost of opportunity of spending more Workers at once.
Mana The whole Mana scale of the game has been tweaked, to improve the balance of spending vs regenerating. The gist of it is that we started by doubling EVERY mana value (starting mana, caps, costs, etc.), which enabled us to perform some more fine-tuning: since we don’t deal with “0.5 Mana points”, something that deserved to be more than 1 and less than 2 was problematic (that’s often a problem with smaller scales!) whereas now it can be 3 (between 2 and 4 post doubling).
Taking advantage of this new granularity, we were then able to individually tweak many components. For instance, melee weapons have received an indirect buff because their mana cost have not been doubled entirely, so they will be less reliant on Mana and Daily Mana Regen than the other items/skills. Also, Mana will probably be a little scarcer overall and players may need to be more cautious on their spending depending on their playstyle, since Daily Mana Regen has been increased as well but not doubled (will Potions and Mana Well shine again?).
Items & Skills Many weapons and skills have seen some of their number fudged, and I won’t list them here. Overall, Melee damage weapons received some buffs here and there: reduced mana cost, higher damage scaling and less/no native attribute malus (bye-bye reduced Accuracy). Ranged damage weapons generally have had their damage scaling nerfed A LITTLE BIT, but nothing that can’t be overcome since it’s mostly a slight decrease in their minimum damage, and thus require more Reliability.
Regarding defensive gear, Block and Res attributes scaling has been decreased a bit. On the other end, the active skills provided by armors and the like now scale with Item Level, just like other skills!
Perks The perks still weren't the focus of this update, so there isn’t a big overhaul and many disliked perks at their core will remain that way (basically we only changed some stuff that didn’t require any programming change, only stuff we could already do by ourselves).
That being said, a significant amount of changes have still been made, ranging from number tweaking to bigger modifications (hello “Leapfrog”). These alterations added to all the rest of the gameplay changes will have an interesting impact on how things go during upcoming runs. Please check the patch note for a comprehensive list.
QoL
What would be a [major] patch without its share of quality-of-life improvements?!
When building Ballistae/Catapults, their range and line of sight are displayed.
Skills patterns displayed within the skill tooltip, making it easier to understand how they will behave (even before buying/picking the item).
Attributes boundaries are displayed in their tooltip. For those who didn’t notice it yet, each attribute has some cap (min; max); they used to be hidden and will now be common knowledge so that it’s easier to plan accordingly.
Apocalypse and Easy Mode shown in-run: we noticed some streamers displaying their own overlay on top of them game to do so, hence the addition. Plus, one can hover those for a reminder of the currently active effects.
And more!
Localization Mods
We know a lot of you wanted to help us translate the game in more languages, so we worked on implementing the steam workshop for TLS. For now only localization mods are supported. However, there is a big disclaimer on this feature: custom fonts are not supported yet. Currently we have two fonts integrated in the games, one for the latin languages (English, French) and one for Chinese, but may be these fonts supports more characters that we know, so you can do some tests with your alphabet and see if it’s working, don’t hesitate to talk to us on discord! For example, we tested some Japanese characters and it was working but we don’t know if all Japanese characters are supported. To conclude we are working right now on a solution allowing you to import your custom font into the game and it is promising, so stay tuned. If you’re interesting in this we wrote some guide to help you start modding and translate: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607723968 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607152208
Our plans from today
And this is it! Now, the first major update is done, it was quite complicated with the summer and we want to make the best experience possible so we are working hard to achieve that! Right now, we’re already working on the next major update still planned for the end of the year.
Until then, you can expect from us some hotfixes as usual and some minor patches to polish some parts of the game, and also some balancing on the gameplay side.
I can’t tell you all the details of the next update, because even us don’t know yet (as I said earlier we were really focused on delivering this one properly) but we want to focus more on broader balancing issues the game is facing, like maybe reworking/tweaking some core systems, reworking the perks and more… But we also want to wait a bit after all the changes we’ve done for this update and see how it impacts the current game experience. And of course, we will add some new content as promised in the roadmap.
That’s all for today, warriors! Once again, as you saw, your feedback is more than precious for us! So please keep sending them to us!
Finally, feel free to come to our Discord server! We have the best community, and they’re always more than happy to welcome new players! 😊
Glenwald Calling Update OUT NOW!
Hello survivors!
We're very happy to announce the official release of the very first Major Update for The Last Spell, called "Glenwald Calling"! Here's the full changelog!
Disclaimer: there will be spoilers about the update in the changelog!
Changelog 0.93.0.4 "Glenwald Calling" Update
TLDR
<*> New map “Glenwald”: unlocked when completing a run in lakeburg.
<*> New enemy exclusive to Glenwald: “Guardian”
<*> New apocalypses levels and rework of the existing ones.
<*> Rework of consumables: now consumables have uses per night.
Balancing:
Rework on the economy of the “Workers” resources.
Rework of the mana scale
Buff on melee weapons
Rework on some perks
Rework on some skills
And more…
Lots of QoL and polish.
[H2]Save Warning! The update will “break” your current run. If you want to finish your current run safely, we have another branch on Steam with the previous version of the game. When your run is finished, you’ll be able to update your game without being scared of losing your current run.
So, if you fear for your run when the game gets updated, you can choose to opt-in for the previous branch. To do that, you need to right-click on the game in Steam, "Properties", "Betas" and then click on "v0.92.2.3 - "We can be heroes" update".
That way, you'll still be able to finish your current run. You can opt-in for this previous branch NOW, so don't hesitate to do it! :) Just know that if you wish to update your game, you'll need to go back to the normal branch.
New Features
New map: Glenwald
New enemy: Guardian
New destructible elements of scenery:
All obstacles can now be selected by clicking on them
Some obstacles blocking the LOS can be destroyed and are then replaced with indestructible obstacles that don’t block the LOS
Rework of the existing Apocalypses and their order (more details below in the “Balancing” section), and addition of new ones:
Full rework of Apocalypse 3: The map now includes several Mist Censers, an element of scenery which locally generates Thin Mist for the enemies to hide in
Apocalypse 5: All enemies now have +2 Movement Points
Apocalypse 6: All items except for the ones generated with the heroes now have an additional negative affix whose level of malus depends on the item’s level
Consumables now have a number of uses per night, instead of a number of uses in total
Consumables don’t get destroyed anymore when their number of available uses reaches 0
At the beginning of the production phase, the number of available uses of every consumable item is recharged
Alterations affecting heroes are cured every morning at the beginning of the production phase
Heroes can’t use skills during the production phase anymore
When Accursed and Bulky monsters leave the Mist, they don’t attack right away anymore
Improvement of the line of sight algorithm to avoid solitary tiles and be more lenient to the player.
Addition of a preview of the AOE skills in their tooltips
When previewing a non-symmetrical AOE skill (“Intimidating Scream”, “Tight Volley”, “Rain of Arrows”, “Suppressive Fire” and “Scorching Wave”), it is now easier for the player to visualize the skill’s orientation. Additionally, the player is now offered the choice to rotate the AOE skill when their cursor is over a tile oriented in the direction of a cardinal point.
An attack no longer applies buff/debuff/status if the target dodges it
Display of the tooltips now include stats caps
The Construction mode input has been split into Construction mode (Buildings) for buildings costing Gold (W) and Construction mode (Defenses) for buildings costing Materials (X)
Addition of an icon in the Easy mode menu and when the game is played in Easy mode, with information about the modifiers when hovering over it
Addition of an icon when the game is played in Apocalypse mode, with information about the modifiers when hovering over it
New option: Framerate limiter
When opening the game, the player will now see a note if some keybinds have changed since the last time they played due to a game update
Localization mods are now supported through the Steam Workshop (for more information: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2607152208)
Community Suggestion: Improvement of the ballista’s targeting, so that several of them won’t target the same enemy if only one attack is enough to kill it
Community Suggestion: Display of the ballistae, catapults and traps’ range in construction mode
Community Suggestion: Players can now customize the warnings they see at the end of each turn in the option panel
Community Suggestion: Players can now hard reset their save from the main menu
Polish
The selected hero’s orientation now follows the player’s cursor when previewing a skill
Similar alterations will be merged to appear on one single line, rather than on several ones
Similar perks bonuses will be merged to appear on one single line, rather than on several ones
Visual rework of the health bar of indestructible elements of scenery and traps
Visual rework of the world map
The color atmosphere will change during the night and day of the boss in Lakeburg
Overhaul optimisation on the game
Community Suggestion: Addition of a custom cursor
Community Suggestion: Similar bonuses on rare and epic pieces of equipment will be merged to appear on one single line, rather than on several ones
Bug fixes
Fixed impact SFX when hitting an enemy (NEW)
Fix of a softlock that happened when players pressed the Esc key after opening a dropdown menu
Fix of the hotkeys that were not properly saved and loaded
Fix of the Esc/Enter hotkeys that didn’t work in the hero customization popup
Fix of the heroes customization feature that applied a color scheme to other heroes as well as the selected one
Fix of the “Shopkeeper’s Friend” upgrade that allowed players to get an unlimited amount of Gold when destroying the shop and buying it repeatedly
Fix of a bug which made it possible to unlock new weapons during the very first run
Fix of the boomer that still exploded while being stunned by a stun trap
The save file has been optimized to be lighter in order to minimize the amount of crashes
Fix of ballistae, catapults and traps not considering the resistance of targets.
The skill Transfer, Mark and Cheer cannot be used on empty tiles anymore.
Balancing
Apocalypses: Reordered apocalypse levels
Apocalypse 1: Enemies get + 15% HP --> Enemies get + 20% HP
Apocalypse 2: Waves include +20% enemies --> Waves include +30% enemies but the overall XP remains unchanged
Apocalypse 3: The map now includes several Mist Censers locally generating Thin Mist for the enemies to hide in (NEW)
Apocalypse 4: All items cost +20% Gold and can be resold for more Gold --> All items cost +20% Gold but the resale costs remain unchanged
Apocalypse 5: All enemies now have +2 Movement Points (NEW)
Apocalypse 6: All items except for the ones generated with the heroes now have an additional negative affix whose level of malus depends on the item’s level (NEW)
Consumable items:
Each consumable item is now available in six levels
Shop:
Addition of a new upgrade unlocking level 5 items
Reduced the price of the shop’s upgrades
Reworked the price of the items
The shop is now guaranteed to sell at least one weapon of each category (melee, ranged, magic)
Increase of the number of consumable items for sale
6 levels of consumable items are now available, depending on the shop’s level
Houses:
Price: 55 Gold → now 45 Gold
Max buildings: 6 houses → now 5 houses
Workers given per construction: 2 workers → now 1 worker
Upgrade House Expansion: 55 Gold → now 30 Gold and added a second level House Expansion + for 60 Gold
Scavenge: For 1 Worker:
Gold Focus: now gives 10 Gold and 7 Materials
Materials Focus: now gives 4 Gold and 18 Materials
For 2 Workers:
Gold Focus: now gives 22 Gold and 14 Materials
Materials Focus: now gives 9 Gold and 35 Materials
For 3 Workers:
Gold Focus: now gives 36 Gold and 23 Materials
Materials Focus: now gives 14 Gold and 58 Materials
For 4 Workers:
Gold Focus: now gives 52 Gold and 34 Materials
Materials Focus: now gives 21 Gold and 85 Materials
Material reward given by the panic gauge:
D, C and B grades gain more material at the beginning of the run
All grades gain less material at the end of the run
The distribution of this resource is better divided between the nights
Defenses:
Watchtower: 40 Gold → now 70 Gold
Slow traps: 5 uses → now 3 uses
Warp Gate: 100 Materials → 80 Materials
Ballista doesn’t block line of sight anymore
Repair costs are now 50% cheaper
Meta:
Wealthy Haven 1: 50 materials and 50 gold at the start of a new Haven → now 25 materials and 25 gold
Wealthy Haven 2: 100 materials and 100 gold at the start of a new Haven → now 50 materials and 50 gold
« Epic Items Production »: the chance to get Epic Items increase slightly less per upgrade
« Rare Items Production »: the chance to get Rare Items increase slightly less per upgrade
Enemies:
Splitter: reduced the damage progression over time
Mana: Rework of the Mana scale: x2 everywhere but for a few exceptions
Mana costs for weapon skills: x2, except for a few melee skill x1,5
Meta upgrades now give +8 and +6 Mana
Items: x1,5 Mana
Affixes: x1,5 Mana
Daily Mana Regen: x1,5 Mana
Mana Well: regenerates x2,5 Mana
Items:
The resistance scaling on items has been reduced
The block scaling on items has been reduced
All defensive skills (Brace, Evasion…) provided by items have now an evolution in their buffs depending on the item level.
Weapons: General
Some melee weapons (Axe, Great Axe, Sledgehammer) don’t have native Accuracy malus anymore
The base damage scaling for all melee weapons has been increased a bit
Some weapons (Shortbow, Longbow, Axe, Great Axe) have had their base damage range widened.
Skills:
The Jump Over Wall skill, renamed “Jump Over”, can now be used on buildings and obstacles as well as walls
Hammer:
Bash has now the skill effect “No block”
Crush: Range 1-1 → Range 1-2, Cardinal, not modifiable
Axe:
Shred has now the skill effect “Opportunistic (25%)”
Major update coming SOON! + New "old branch" opening
Summer is over :’(
Hello everyone! We hope you’re okay! It’s September already, and we’re seeing Autumn in the air! (Not that it was a very hot summer anyway, but we had some days of sun. I think...) As we told you in the last blogpost, we’ve been working hard on the next update! It will be the biggest update yet for the game, so we’re a bit nervous.^^ This is why the update took us a little more time than we anticipated. At first, the new map was not supposed to be so different from the previous one. But we kinda went all out with it. It’s quite different from the first map, but we hope you’ll like it. Today, the update is pretty much “finished”. All the features are implemented and working, and we’re putting the last touches on the balancing.
We'll kick off the tests by next week and if everything goes well (fingers crossed!) we should be able to launch the update right after that. It's just a matter of week and we'll give a release date very soon.
We are currently working on optimizing our internal process to deliver the upcoming updates faster but without neglecting their quality.
But let’s move to the exciting topic of the day: new features that will be available in the next update!
A new Haven?
The new map is THE biggest new thing in this update. It was quite a challenge for us, because all the work that we made for the past 3 years was from the level design of Lakeburg. So, when we decided to create a new map, we had to go back to the start and ask ourselves one question: how ambitious do we want to be for this new map? Spoiler: more ambitious than we anticipated ^^
Since you’re all so awesome <3 Here is the very first screenshot of the new map! We hope you’ll enjoy it, because we poured a lot of love into it! 😊
As you can see, the main theme around this new map is the forest. And in a forest, there are trees… And trees often block the view… Which may be an issue for the line of sight!
By the way, the new map will be accessible for the players who already beat Lakeburg once.
And now you may wonder: what the enemy waves will look like? I can tell you that they will be quite different from what they are in Lakeburg. We wanted the map to be harder than Lakeburg, and we did something a little "crazy" to give players a harder challenge...
Other exciting new stuff for our players!
Of course there are many surprises coming in this update! Here are a few examples:
New Apocalypses: We know there are some very dedicated players who already beat the Apocalypse 4! This is why, as promised, we’ve been working on new apocalypses! We thought of something “pretty cool” for the most hardcore players 😉 (Hint: it has something to do with the mist)
We also designed a new enemy for the new map! It won’t be a boss, but we’re pretty sure that it will give you a hard time!
We’ve reworked how the consumables work in the game.
We also took into account the players feedback that you’ve been giving us, as we've been adding some requested quality of life features! Thank you again for that, and keep sending us your feedback, we read them all! 😊
Our programmers have been working on the Performance optimization for the game. This is an issue that we're aware of, and we'll keep working on it.
Here's one of the "Community Requests" QoL we've added in the next update!
Apocalypse Progression Reset
Alright, now on to the most important announcement of this update. For this update, we're going to do an "Apocalypse Progression Reset". Since we fiddled with the apocalypse values, order and behaviour, it was a bit somewhat needed to reset the progression" Don't worry, ONLY the APOCALYPSES COMPLETION will be reset. For the next update, your apocalypses progressions will be partly reset.
The “meta unlock” will NOT be reset for this update!
What will be reset will be the fact that you COMPLETED the apocalypses. However, you will still have access to the other apocalypses.
One example: you completed apocalypses 1, 2 and 3. After the update, the fact that you completed them will be reset. However, you will still be able to do the Apocalypse 4, without completing 1/2/3 again 😊
New branch Opening
For players who are in the middle of a run, we thought of something! Basically, the update will “break” your current run. If you want to finish your current run safely, we’re going to create a new branch on Steam with the current version of the game. When your run is finished, you’ll be able to update your game without being scared of losing your current run.
So, if you fear for your run when the game gets updated, you can choose to opt-in for the previous branch. To do that, you need to right-clic on the game in Steam, "Properties", "Betas" and then clic on "v0.92.2.3 - "We can be heroes" update".
That way, when the game gets updated, you'll still be able to finish your current run. You can opt-in for this previous branch NOW, so don't hesitate to do it! :) Just know that if you wish to update your game, you'll need to go back to the normal branch.
Last but not least, it’s our studio anniversary!
One other exiting thing that I should mention is that next week, we'll be celebrating our "sort of" 15th anniversary! For those of you who knew us before The Last Spell, you may know that we used to be called “CCCP”, and that it was created in 2005, so…16 years ago! Actually, we wanted to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the company last year, but then 2020 happened...
So yeah, we wanted to do something to celebrate that, and we’re happy to announce an anniversary giveaway on Twitter and Discord! Since the creation of our indie games branch, we released 3 games… so what about winning a pack with all of them?! 😊 The pack includes steam keys for Dead in Bermuda + Dead in Vinland + The Last Spell!
How to enter?
On Twitter - All you need to do is RT the contest tweet here and follow us!
On Discord – Join our community if you haven’t done so already and react to the giveaway message in General #announcements
You can participate until September 17th at 2PM GMT+2. Winners will be picked randomly on the same day at 4PM GMT+2. Good luck!!
Aaand that's all for today! We can't wait for you all to enjoy the latest update that we've been working on! Thank you all for the love and support you've been giving us <3 We’ll be back soon with more news!
Community Interviews - Let's talk with our players!
Hello everyone!
Wow, is it already mid August? This means that today is time for a new blogpost! <3
We'll have some news about the next big patch in September! But to keep you up to date:
We're VERY excited by the new map! It's a LOT of work, but we think it will be worth the wait!
As usual, we kinda went all out with this new map, so we needed a bit more time than anticipated to be completely happy with it. This means that at this moment, the "End of Summer" deadline may be very slightly delayed by a few days.
In a few weeks, we'll have a blogpost with more info about the new map and the new features!
Today, we wanted to highlight our amazing community! Since the release, we saw how passionate about the game each and everyone of you are! Not only do you create amazing guides and strategies for the game, but everytime there's a new player who asks for help, you all try to help them the best you can with great tips and advice!
As a Community Manager, it's always a pleasure to see such a positive and wholesome community <3
This is why today, we asked some of you on Discord some questions about the game!
Dran Kuo
Where are you from?
I am from Wisconsin, US!
What’s your favourite build?
My favorite build is a bruiser melee, preferably with a 2H axe for packs and any other weapon to clean up stragglers. It may not be a popular pick, but a quick armory means I've got plenty of gear that everyone can use no matter what stats are on it -- whatever's not getting sold for more cash, anyway -- and more than enough defense (block and resistance specifically!) to not worry about getting hit.
Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time?
If they're just discovering it for the first time, just have fun. There's a lot of discussion on "optimal" or "best" ways to play that are totally overkill and shouldn't dissuade people from playing their own way. Even if the run doesn't go so well, you can go into the next one with new ideas and a few extra unlocks to ensure steady progress. If they're struggling to get further -- pay close attention to the wound system. In a lot of games, a nearly dead unit is still as dangerous as a full health one, but in this game, a nearly dead enemy can barely move, deals about half damage, and most importantly, can get in the way of other enemies. If you're holding a gap in the wall, you can let the weak one hit you instead of letting a fresh one take its place..
Which night is the hardest for new players?
The nights have shifted around recently, with Bulkies showing up earlier than before, but I think the difficult nights are always going to be the one they aren't prepared for. Whether its suddenly dealing with an additional side coming under attack, or a larger wave hitting a weaker side, or a new enemy they haven't seen before, it can usually set them back enough to make the next night unrecoverable.
To anyone going into something unknown -- line of sight can work for and against you, but even a single tile of stone wall can let you assess the situation without getting pinned down by archers or other ranged attacks. If you start behind that for the first turn of the night, you can decide whether its safe to run out in the open or if you need to retreat back to it at the end of each turn.
What’s your favourite thing in TLS?
My favorite thing from a design point of view has to be the art and sound direction. The skills look great, feel great, and taking out a large pack of enemies is incredibly satisfying. From a gameplay point of view, I've been having fun testing the limits. The experiment to see how much damage I could deal in a single hit was hilarious, and there's other challenges to try beyond just surviving once you've got the game "figured out". Try new weapons you ignored or different city development plans -- it might prepare you for new stuff that comes out in the future. and if anyone doubts me on the 2H axe, I even have this!
Eevlupix
Where are you from?
New Jersey, USA
What's your favourite build?
Critical builds, definitely Infinite mana and big yellow numbers are very fun, especially when combined with multi-hit, aoe, and propogation abilities
Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time?
Besides focusing on getting a resource income early, I think new players should just experiment with all the build options this game has to offer. This game gives you a lot of freedom when crafting a team for fending off an apocalypse and it's great. Finding what you like to do can often be a lot more fun than just skipping everything in favor of the "best" options, and that's what games are all about.
What's THE weapon that can get you out of dangerous situations?
I think the hand crossbow is probably my favorite weapon, since it can do a little bit of everything, and really well. Being able to burn down a horde in a few actions is really satisfying and if everything is dead, then there are less dangerous situations to get out of.
Do you think TLS is challenging? Why?
While I haven't yet played on the highest difficulty, I feel that the difficulty is pretty well managed, requiring you to plan ahead if you want to survive as long as possible. There's some room for mistakes but not so much that you don't have to think, and I think that's very good for a strategy game, and it's really fun to me.
Firens
Where are you from? I'm from north of France. A few km away from Ishtar Games studio actually!
What's your favourite build? Tough one! Even if I abuse 1h-crossbow (most powerful weapon right now), the build I actually prefer playing is what I call "Propagator", which is a mage with Druid Staff and Tome of Secrets. I optimize it around propagation bounce/dmg, poison, opportunistic, and obviously critical hits. It can debuff armies of monster, deals insane poison dmg over a few turns, and burst a few dozens monsters if needed. I find it the most fun, because you have to think about how your spells will actually bounce from one enemy to another to maximise your dmg.
Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time? Don't be afraid to die! Be bold with placement, and try every type of weapon. Also, don't neglect accuracy! This stat is much more important than it seems!
THE perk that helped you the most? During prologue, I would have said Mana Collector, which gives you mana every time you get a critical hit. But it comes a bit late in the game, and you need a lot of Crit% to actually use it. So in the current state of the game, I would say First Blood is the most helpful (+15% critical hit against enemies with full health). Partly because it helps you doing a lot of dmg (and killing most enemies in one spell), but also because it allows you to trigger Mana Collector consistently, even if you don't have much Crit%.
What’s the biggest mistake you made in TLS? I make a lot of mistakes around base building. But if I stay around battles, my biggest mistake was to use a propagation spell while having a hero in melee range of a monster... Which ended in my hero being poisoned and killed... I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to have done it!
Topgun
Where are you from? I’m from the province of Quebec in Canada.
What’s your favourite build? Anything with mass crowd control and poison, debuff the horde and watch it slowly die by itself. Combine with automated defenses and a big wall to really get that tower defense kinda feel.
Do you have any advice to give to players who discover The Last Spell for the first time? Progress might seem slow, but really it’s just to the pace of the game, since combat is turn based, there’s no rush, take your time, both in combat and just while playing in general. I know the music really makes the adrenaline flow,
What’s your personal accomplishment in the game? I like doing challenge runs, of those, beating the game without dealing damage was the most interesting and fun.
Tell us about traps! How useful are they? Traps are... in a weird place in the game currently, and they will probably always be a bit weird by the simple nature that they need to be used up to provide value, walls block pathing even when not targeted, catapults and ballistas can provide value at no cost after the purchase as long as they are kept alive, traps need to loose durability to do anything. Basically, traps are the material equivalent to choosing between buying equipment in the shop or building a mine with gold. Catapults are expensive but can reasonably be expected to provide long term value, traps help just now... unless they aren’t activated (with semi-random spawn locations, that just sometimes happens). Anyways, so the 2 situations were short term benefits should be considered is when long term isn’t a concern, this is mostly the case when you aren’t sure to survive the next night, or for the last few nights in general. Already this kinda eliminates traps before night 6 ish. Now all you need to do is pick the right trap for the job, damage traps are best for desperate situations with unreliable but potentially massive group damage, slow traps are a cost effective way to give you more time great for late game, and stun traps can effectively grant you one free turn if placed right beside your wall if your going for a more defensive playstyle. One last tip, remember that traps activate after monsters move, but before they act, this means that stun traps effectively stun for 2 turns, and that any traps placed next to a wall has higher chance of getting activated since they’ll move bunched up ready to attack but will get shutdown before the wall get pummeled. That was a much longer response then the others, but don’t you try and pretend you didn’t know what would happen by asking that, devs.
Def_Metal
Where are you from? I am from West Sussex, England UK.
What’s your favourite build? Tough question, i want to provide my optimal build and secondly my 'favourite' build that is more focused on fun.
Build One: 1H Xbow (preferably with multi hit, crit or propagation bounces) Teleport Crystal offhand All armor and trinkets geared towards: Multi-Hit, Crit, Propagation Bounces, Propagation Damage, Ranged Damage or Damage increases.
Perks:
Specialist, unless i find another 1H Xbow with important stats to hold as i want two charges of the Blaze attack at all times.
Mana collector and first blood, to complement the crit chance increases I will take on levels. This ensures I effectively have 'free' mana.
Energized, as with Blaze there will be so many kills that I can generate additional AP.
Swift as the wind, for movement points to offset the low range on the weapon.
Initiator - for the additional multi-hit
Avid Learner - for the XP boost
Steady Aim
Cherry Picking + Confident - Increase reliability to 100% against isolated enemies when at full health, an important early game DPS increase.
Build Two: (Fun Build) Druidic Staff (with damage, poison damage, propagation bounces or magic damage increase or isolation) All armor and trinkets geared towards: Poison, Propagation, Magic Damage or Damage increases
Perks:
Mana Collector and First Blood
Potent Toxins
Swift as the wind
Initiator
Avid Learner
Magic Fuel (as this is a big DPS increase, and gives incentive to collect armor with +Mana as this gives additional damage and can make some unusable armors usable)
Steady Aim
Energized
Cherry Picking + Confident
Mark (as a free debuff to proc opportunistic against key targets)
Levelling upgrades focus on magic, propagation, poison and opportunistic. This build can output huge
This build is fun because you can entrap enemies with vines, poison them with bees and with enough Opportunistic bonus you can one shot almost every enemy in the game. A very powerful but fun build.
Do I have any advice for new players?
Yes - you must treat your AP like the ultimate resource. Do not waste it on enemies that are (a) out of range from causing city panic or damage to heroes unless no other choice and (b) focus your AP on priority targets. Learning what is a priority will come with successive playthroughs.
Drakenkin's Steam guide on the game is superb and remains relevant, I used this a lot.
Otherwise, my guide series on my Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/c/defmetal1/videos) has a beginner's guide video that gives some focus on how to progress. In honesty though, i would recommend a few blind runs before turning to a guide as you want to experience every aspect of this brilliant game yourselves!
What buildings do you make first?
This is highly debated in the endgame community right now. However, I am very firmly of the view that the first two buildings should be gold mines, upgraded to Production 3 and Mine 2 before moving onto anything else. This can be achieved quite quickly, and produces a very strong foundation for an economy that will generate enough gold to see you through to Night 12. There is no need for 3 gold mines. This remains true until potentially you have full meta unlocks through repeated playthroughs, and at that point it may be better to go straight for production buildings but this remains RNG dependent. Consequently, even in my Apoc 4 runs, I still run two gold mines as the output is steady and dependable.
How many runs did it take you to make through the end of TLS?
I can't quite remember now! I ended up doing multiple runs that I quit half way through because I was filming content etc so wasn't focused on completions. However, I think if i started a clean save right now, I'd like to think I could complete standard difficult on possibly Lakeburg 1 and certainly at Lakeburg 2. Apoc 4 I'm less certain on, but I'd hope for a completion on Lakeburg 7. Watch this space soon!
Thank you very much for answering our questions! We feel very lucky to have such great players <3
We hope you’re okay and that you’re staying safe! Here, summer is… kinda cold! It never stops raining, but at least we don’t need to turn on the AC. (Yes, we try to see the good side of things!)
It’s been one month since the “We can be heroes” update. We hope you’re liking the character customization feature! If you have cool characters to share, please feel free to do so in the comments or in our Discord server!
Since it’s summer, several people in the team are taking a well deserved vacation after the craziness of the launch 😉 Rumor has it that some of them got to see this strange thing called the “sun”! Weird, huh?
On the dev side, we’ve been mostly focused on the next big update! In this update, we’ll have the new map, which is taking more time than we anticipated. One of the reasons is that there are lot of game designs questions that come up with this new map.
We also have some new features for this update that we’ll tell you more about in another blogpost 😉 In the meantime, we thought some of you all might like to see some skecthes and concept arts for The Last Spell 😉 We started to work on these in… 2017! So yes, that goes way back (we were young back then!).
The VERY FIRST sketch!
This one is VERY old! Last weekend, Jacques, our Art Director, found the VERY FIRST skecth that he ever did for The Last Spell! Long story short, Matthieu, our creative director, started to talk about the first ideas for The Last Spell and Jacques did this “very first rough sketch” thinking “ah yes that could be fun to work on a game like that”.
Then, when we started to talk about the game internally and with external partners, Jacques did those to give a more precise idea of the general atmosphere of the game.
As for the inspirations, we could mention 3 main ones for the pixel art of the game:
Into The Breach for the readability aspect
Stoneshard for the very nice high res sprites!
Obviously, Final Fantasy Tactics!
In terms of “mood/atmosphere”, Darkest Dungeon definitely comes to mind! However, Jacques was also influenced by the many movies/comics/games where you have hundreds of “things” trying to eat you!
Implementation of gameplay ideas
As you probably know, at first, The Last Spell was not supposed to be a pixel-art game! If you didn’t already, I invite you all to read this fascinating piece that Jacques wrote last year! https://steamcommunity.com/games/1105670/announcements/detail/3334295484309121885
Very early in the production, we had this idea of “a town being attacked by hordes of enemies”! It’s in French, so I’ll make the translation:
“Murs en piteux état” = “Walls in a pitiful state »
« Magiciens tentant de sauver l’humanité » = « Mages trying to save humankind »
« Autre glorieux héros défendant la porte » = « Other glorious hero defending the door »
« Tour de guet » = « Watchtower »
« Glorieux héros faisant barrage de son corps » = « Glorious hero using his body standing in the way with its body”
“Brèche” = “Breach”
“Mur” = “Wall”
“Brume” = “Mist”
As you can see, there already were quite a lot of things that are still present to this day. One of the big concept that were there from the start was this asymmetric battle between a handful of strong heroes and countless hordes of enemies, in a city you needed to defend.
Here’s one thing that you haven’t seen yet 😉 (Unless you’re in our Discord server!). This was one of the very first concepts of the game (this is all “fake” by the way, this was made by our artists ^^). I’m sure you can find a lot of elements that are still present in the current version of the game 😊
Maybe I should let you know about the upper right side of the screen. That’s right, in one of the very first game design documents for The Last Spell (that was actually called “The Last Stand” back then!), there was a “survival” component. There was a food safe, and one character had to “scavenge” for resources! Sounds familiar with another one of our games, right? 😉
Also, the concept of ammunition stayed a very long time in the game! We actually removed it just before our first public demo in june 2020.
The boss (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED A RUN YET!)
This part is a bit of a spoiler, since it shows the boss of the game. So, if you haven’t met it just yet, you can skip to the next part!
Here, you can check out the research board for the boss! As you can see, Jacques first works in “classic” digital paining before making the pixel art version of his asset.
At first, the game designers and the creative director had in mind a sort of "artillery" that would fire cocoons. However, as Jacques was reading the Game Design Documents, he thought about the boss being still + would make some still elements randomly appear on the map. This is why he started to explore a totally new idea: the idea of a "plant".
The two beings of Light/Darkness
This is BIG spoiler territory again! Only look at this if you have completed the shops !
We did a LOT of research for the goddesses. As a matter of fact, their concept was present very early in the production of the game.
However, Jacques only worked on their actual design a few months before we entered early-access!
Since it’s linked to the story, we wanted them to be one of the surprises that players would discover! We hope you liked them!
(CW: Nudity)
Alright, time for a fun fact: during the release period (around early June!), one dove made her nest right at one of the windows in the office. She had two babies, and guess how we called them? 😉
Aaaand that’s all for today, warriors! Please let us know in the comments if you have questions! Or feel free to join our Discord server!
