We hope this little update finds you well and energized from some well-deserved summer rest! Our sympathies go to you too, who’ve worked all summer instead.
Our social media has been rather quiet lately, and while we won’t be able to go over why that is today, development hasn’t slowed down in the slightest!
As usual, let’s jump right in.
1) More Twisted Dreams
We’ve spent a lot of time building the first batch of content for our new mind biome, the Twisted Dreams.
a) New enemies have joined our ever-cheerful cast of materialized woes:
Worthless
A reflection of self-destructive instincts and low self-esteem, the Worthless self-destruct, inflict high damage and stacks of the dreaded Infect debuff (more on that a few scroll-units down).
"Self-esteem rested atop other people's impressions will crumble when they part. Not much remains standing then."
Brume
The Brume is a lesser manifestation of people's ability to hide their needs from themselves, out of fear or self-deprecation. They spread Haze to hinder your perception, and sprout into bigger threats after a few turns.
"All roads lead to sorrow eventually, that's unless they evaporate partway. Why the roads in the first place? No roads, no destinations, no destinations, no expectations, no expectations, no sorrow."
Grudge
The Dreams are also home to some more bellicose manifestations. Grudges move fast, and hit faster. Their straightforward damage-dealing profile is made deadlier by all the debuffs and hindrances thrown by other Dream dwellers.
"Loss is seldom fair, and injustice sticks to your soul. Let it macerate for too long, and it'll breed monsters."
Hollow
One of the first bosses you'll find in the Dreams, the Hollow will try to bury you under thorned brambles and charge deadly skills you must dodge to survive.
"At first it was just pain, then a hole, then a vaster gape...then this. The thin husk of being that remains is barely enough to justify existence."
b) Signature effects you’ll find in the Twisted Dreams are now implemented and include:
Haze
Haze is a tile effect that renders all enemies inside invisible, and reduces your Action Points if you're caught in it yourself.
Tear pools & clear water
Tear pools are another signature Dream tile effect, non-fungi entities walking over it will receive an Infect stack, reducing their damage output and resistance proportionally to the number of stacks. As a non-fungi human being yourself, you are of course vulnerable to it, but you could also use it to infect a Grudge, for example.
When a fungi entity walks over tear pools, they heal instead, and turn it into clear water. Clear water in turn clears infect stacks when you walk over it, so you'll have to try your best to control who walks over tear pools and when.
Summoning brambles
Brambles are destructibles permanently under the "thorned" effect. They break easily, but you'll take damage whenever you hit them.
These are just a taste, many other illusion and confusion-themed effects show in the dreams.
c) Finally, a ton of assets are now ready to help us build the level design for these realms as we see fit:
2) The Map
Wantless takes place on a floating transposition laboratory, a ship. As you sail down river Artiris, you’ll go through different hamlets and meet different patients.
It is through this map & navigation mechanic that you’ll progress through the story and difficulty tiers. It is one of the last structural features we were missing.
The high-level game loop looks like this: Navigate to the next, more difficult area >>> Successfully transpose patients >>> Earn enough reputation in the current area to unlock the right to travel further
Each area has its own visuals, difficulty level, unique patients and events.
There’s still a ton of content and polish we want to add to this feature, but its initial introduction kinda closes the game’s core loop!
There will definitely be a whole devblog about this feature when more of its content comes together.
3) Corruption
We’re just starting to work on the game’s main storyline and its special mechanics.
Eiris' travels will take you inside spirits afflicted beyond what’s incarnated by the Twisted Dreams or Desolate Nightmares. Something different looms over these unique patients’ minds, something darker.
We’re starting to see the light at the end of the core system implementation tunnel. Hopefully the next few months will see us focus more on content and polish, so YOU can see more gameplay and get a clearer picture of what Wantless will play and feel like.
Our Discord server is still tiny and quiet for now, but it’ll happily welcome you for a chat anytime!
You can also follow Wantless on Twitter to get more frequent updates.
Take care, stay safe, and don't lose track of your needs ♥
Devblog #8 - Nightmares, Dreams & Merchants
Hi there investigative gamers,
We hope you’re doing well and, if you’re a northern hemisphere dweller, enjoying summer! Southerners among you should of course still be having a great winter time ♥
We’ve spent a lot of time working on necessary admin tasks and continuing the upgrade work that’d been started on the Desolate Nightmares biome, so there might not be as much novelty as usual.
Nonetheless, here’s some of what we’ve been doing!
A support variant for the sniper enemies. They shoot doping rounds that cause enemies to grow stronger, and crippling bullets that silence you.
“Hatred often takes a less direct, more insidious form. Self-centered worldviews can fuel silently hateful friendships, and deeply resentful love.”
The Hive DriverRegret
The swarm-themed boss. Regret herds forsaken thoughts and ideas, strengthening them and making them ever more noxious. This fight is about controlling summons and keeping damage over time effects in check.
“At times, the immeasurable mass of abandoned thoughts and lost potentials makes itself manifest. Panic ensues, what else could you have been, what splendors have you missed out on?”
The Bubonic BehemothAcrimony
Core gameplay identity for these guys hasn’t changed much from before: they’re tanky, deal quite a bit of area of effect damage, and cover the battlefield with Foul ground - a tile effect that slows you down and inflicts damage on contact, while healing enemies instead.
“Part of yourself doesn't want to see the world thrive. Being miserable wouldn't feel so bad if misery was all there ever was. You detach your conscious self from this toxic persona, but you can always feel it crawling up the back of your mind, oozing resentment.”
The environment
We’ve made progress on enhancing the environment as well, with new assets and level design.
We'll keep working hard to make it ever nicer and more immersive, but we've arguably come a long way from just a few months ago:
While it’s not a new implementation, I thought it’d be relevant to mention that all minds have a difficulty tier that determines what enemies you could face inside and how powerful they are.
All bosses have upgraded forms depending on that difficulty tier, each with an enhanced skillset and stats.
Regret, for example, goes from Lesser Regret at Tier I to Deepest Regret at Tier III.
We’re now back to working on Wantless’ 2nd mind biome: the Twisted Dreams.
Visuals are still coming together, but since this “Alice in Wonderland”-inspired biome is set to explore themes such as addiction and mourning, we’re implementing fitting gameplay effects such as:
Haze: some tiles are covered with dense fog, causing the enemies inside to become invisible. Lure them out, or blast the area like a madman, but keep your distance, as your Action Points are reduced inside the haze.
Tearpool: some tiles are covered with a sap-like substance that inflicts a stacking damage and resistance debuff to most allies or enemies. Certain types of plant-like enemies will instead consume the sap on contact and leave a pool of Clear water in its place. Clear water cleanses some of that same debuff’s stacks.
Replicate: certain creatures in the Dreams can create exact replicas of themselves, indistinguishable from the original until damaged.
Can’t wait to show you visuals for these effects and many, many more! I think this biome is going to raise the stakes for strategic gameplay, with a lot new, less straight-forward, enemy behavior.
Thank you for reading, and we’d be happy to welcome you on Discord if you ever want to chat!
Smile, enjoy the weather, take care of yourself ♥
Devblog #7 - Desolate nightmares
Hi there,
It’s already well past the 1st half of the year by now, time hasn’t exactly been slowing down has it?
For us at Drop Rate, the past month has been in large part dedicated to consolidating and upgrading the features we’ve last implemented (gear, talent tree, memories and instability…check them out in Devblog #6 - Character progression & colorful minds).
Another large chunk of our time has been (and still is) spent turning our initial prototype biome, the Dead slums, into a more immersive, thematically fit biome - the Desolate nightmares.
The Desolate nightmares are inhabited by a mix of your patient’s forsaken ideas, repressed thoughts, and resentment. All of them manifested as rather unsympathetic abominations, of course.
Here are some of the transformations!
The Bone flyThe Wretch
“Thoughts long abandoned, forgotten. Not out of shame or growth, merely for lack of relevance.”
These guys can now jump right next to you, and leave carcasses on death that can either poison you or strengthen other enemies on contact.
The NutcrackerLesser strife
“Dreams given up, battles that should have been fought. They've known no closure, no peace, defending causes long forgotten.”
Their core behavior hasn’t changed much: they shoot you from a distance. It just happens to be an even longer distance now.
The Scavenger behemothThe Forsaken ego
“Though the self feels continuous across time, you weren't always who you are today. You used to be another person, and another even before that, each with their own perspective, hopes and dreams. These other selves came and went, you matured and they disappeared. Or did they?”
Aside from larger area of effect for most of their skills, these guys can now create a flesh bond with an ally, taking most of the incoming damage in their stead. They also leave large, movement impairing carcasses on death.
[NEW] Self-deceit
“Inner demons and dangerous thoughts wouldn't be as resilient if it wasn't for all the false post-rationalization. Dishonest justifications for your weaknesses are great at disguising as truth.”
These are a new “support” enemy. They can have other enemies grow, heal them, and make them Tenacious (the Tenacious status lets characters resist a death blow once).
[NEW] Aggression
“There are only so many goals and dreams you can give up on before your gagged combativeness turns into something darker. Something you couldn't control. Something that could come to control you.”
Aggression is a new boss. A fast, unpredictable damage dealer who shoots down friend and foe alike.
These are just a few examples, many more have been and are being reworked, alongside the environment and level design that’s also getting a full makeover. We'll showcase more of the environment part in the next devblog!
Another one of this rework's goals was to make core combat gameplay overall more interesting, and to that end we chose to make enemy behavior more advanced, and generally more difficult to deal with.
To make that work, we’re making a few adjustments, including:
Looted items and obtained experience are now kept on failure. Patient rewards are still lost, alongside some reputation.
Combat rooms now hold “Intuitions”, shrine-like objects you can interact with for some awesome effects such as restoring your Action Points or putting the surrounding enemies to sleep.
As always, thank you for reading, and we’d love to have you on our small Discord server!
Play, laugh, stay safe ♥
Devblog #6 - Character progression & colorful minds
Greetings,
It’s been a while since we’ve last posted a devblog, and that’s in large part because we spent a while preparing an internal demo of the game. It is still not ready to be experienced by actual players, but in the meantime it’ll help us pitch and present the game, which is key for development!
Aside from that demo work, here’s what we’ve been at:
New mind biome: a twisted dream
We’re in the early stages of working on a new biome - a colorful, twisted dream struck with isolation, mourning, addiction and self-deprecation. We’ll also use it as a stepping stone to visually upgrade the dead slums, our 1st biome.
New feature: Mind tree
We’ve implemented a 1st version of the Mind tree. It’s a talent tree that lets you choose between different experiences that yield perks and stats, every time you level up! We were missing a crucial progression system to reward leveling, and a character customization feature unrelated to loot.
These are early perks we’re experimenting with, they’re not final
New feature: Gear
Speaking of progression systems, we’ve added the indispensable equipment system! Contrary to the mind tree, this is THE loot-related character customization feature (alongside skill crafting, of course).
We’re starting off with 3 equipment types:
Gloves carry offensive stats and determine your basic attack. Tired of hitting stuff, how about stacking damage over time instead?
Coats come with powerful stats, and at least one build-defining tradeoff. Here are some examples:
Trinkets carry all kinds of stats to enhance your build. You can equip more than one of these.
New feature: Memories & patient stability
Inside your patient’s mind maze, you’ll often stumble upon some of their lost memories. Preserving them will soothe the patient’s spirit and make your life easier, whereas letting them crumble will cause the mind maze to grow unstable. You don’t want that now, do you?
Some other upgrades
The Neural forge now lets you preview your skills:
Awareness now boosts your skill's effects in addition to reducing total discipline cost:
