Worship
Dev. Diaries #7 - Worship is Coming to Early Access this July
Worship Summer Game Fest Celebration!
Dev Diary #6 - What's it like to Worship An-Ansgaidh?
Get ready ‘cause we’re jumping right into it!
Boasting an almost immaterial appearance with its silky white skin, its humanoid shape is a ghastly sight. Its two elongated arms end with abnormally large claws, soaked in blood up to its forearms. A head empty of features is only adorned with a crudely painted eye. The flesh of its skinny belly is torn up, arms reaching out of it, grasping for something.
An-Ansgaidh is the bane of every living thing. Being the most compassionate among the Old Gods, it could not bear witness to the hardships and sufferings of mortal beings over the length of their fragile existence. What once was empathy became twisted and mutated into hatred directed towards mortality. No longer would it stand idle while mortals struggled for survival until time deigns bring an end to their fruitless lifetime. It will be there instead, rending their flesh, mercifully freeing these poor souls.
Cults devoted to the Herald of Annihilation have adopted its twisted vision. Its followers have their sights on the extinction of sentient life, and as such, they are fearsome warriors. Acts of faith for An-Ansgaidh are of the murdery kind.
As a cult worshipping An-Ansgaidh, your main goal is to liberate all those poor souls. Your starting arsenal should reflect that.
Berserk Followers
Unlocked by default, this perk allows your followers to attack faster the more damage they receive during a fight. Followers of An-Ansgaidh are true zealots and should not fear pain. They are instead emboldened by it.
Ghastly Claws
Call upon An-Ansgaidh’s will in the shape of spectral claws to rend the flesh of your enemies. These may look spectral in nature, but they will tear apart anything that comes in contact with them.
Ghastly Claws is a ritual available by default once you select An-Ansgaidh as your God.
The Sculptor
A fervent admirer of The Herald of Annihilation, this one little fella’ established himself in your base as a way to pursue his passion for making effigies in honor of An-Ansdaidh.
This sculptor serves as your cult’s utility building. Trade him your extra catalysts to have him sculpt the most perfect of An-Ansgaidh statues.
These precious works of art can then be offered to the altar for some extra devotion points and freshly summoned followers for your cult!
That's it for today! We hope that it enlightened you a bit more about An-Ansgaidh's motives and how it reflects on you as a carrier of its faith. Will you fully embrace An-Ansgaidh and worship it or will you choose another Elder God? Let us know!
Until then, see you next time for another Diary entry!
- The Chasing Rats Team
Dev. Diaries #5 - New Features coming for Next Fest
Greetings Cultists!
As you know, Steam’s Next Fest is coming today and with it some important additions in terms of quality of life for the Demo. To celebrate this, we've revamped our trailer a bit to show the upcoming features that will be coming today.
Steam Next Fest is an important event for Indies and one of the last remaining key promotion beat we have for Worship before its early access release. Your participation in the Next Fest in the first few days has a huge impact on the visibility of Worship throughout the event. So if you'd like to give us a bit of support, the best way is to play the updated version of the Worship Demo on Steam at 12:00 EST!
Today’s Dev. Update will serve as a little mise en bouche for the upcoming features for the Demo! Let’s go through them in rapid fire.
Build Management
As a direct response to the community's feedback, we are implementing two new ways to help you manage your build/upgrades. This has been grazed a bit during previous updates, so we'll be quick about it!
A new face joins your cult
Seen as a little An-An Afficionado, this new NPC will be there to stay as long as you revere An-Ansgaidh!
Always looking for inspiration, he will chip away at your extra catalysts in no time, turning them into magnificent works of art! Even An-Ansgaidh will be incredibly pleased to see these objects at its altar.
Play the new version of the Demo to find out!
Breaking your own upgrades
We're adding a way to destroy your own buildings. That's right, you'll be able to tweak your build a bit by destroying the building holding the corresponding upgrade. Mistakes happen or luck may not be on your side at the start, but rest assured that you'll be able to replace the upgrades you do not need anymore to make way for ones you'd like.
We purposefully set the time to destroy your own buildings to be a tad bit longer, just in case you change your mind or you sent the command by accident!
Keep in mind that once destroyed, the buildings do not turn back into catalysts. So you'll have to be extra, extra sure before destroying them!
VFX for Clarity
We implemented some new VFXs to help with the overall clarity regarding followers. When sending out your mob against enemies and your followers get knocked by one of their stronger attacks, it can get confusing pretty quickly as to who died and who survived.
Luckily, we added one VFX to help you see which ones died!
When enemies or followers are incapacitated, they will display some swirling stars around their head. This added VFX helps to add clarity to the game in many ways. One is that in addition to the souls leaving their bodies, you will know exactly which followers are still up and alive to keep on fighting. The other is to display as a status effect on enemies when their shields are broken. When these go on, it’s your sign to unleash your mob on them!
New UI - God Selection Screen and load outs
In the demo, you will also notice a newly made UI when you start a game session; the God Selection Screen.
As a cultist, you will have the honor choose the Eldritch God of your choice and we made sure to have an interface well suited for the occasion. Chose wisely, because the God you chose will impact which load out you will have for your run.
Your cultist is hidden by assets? We got you (un)covered!
This addition has been in the works for a little while now but we’re finally adding it to a playable build! This shader allows you to see behind assets when your cultist walks behind them. Pretty handy when you come across an object that's hidden behind some trees or walls!
That's it for this update! We hope you're ready and excited for today and all of the features that's coming your way. As we said above, the Next Fest is super important for indie devs as it helps us push the game towards more people. Any participation counts so go tell your friends!
See you next time for the next Diary entry!
- The Chasing Rats Team
Worship Demo update - Steam Next Fest
The Worship demo has a new update for Steam Next Fest!
Come test out the latest changes and features in the game!
Dev. Diaries #4 - Narrative Spotlight: Untamed Borderlands
After a little Holiday break, we are back again and ready to talk more about Worship and what makes our game unique. This month will be taking a narrative turn as we will be doing a narrative highlight on the zone you’re currently playing on in the Demo: The Untamed Borderlands!
But first, it’s important for you to have a little more context about the two factions that are currently at war in this zone. Let’s jump straight into it!
The Last Church
Established as the belief of the common folk for more than five centuries now, the Last Church is supported all around the world. Its constituents pray to the Shattered Goddess, a motherly and compassionate holy being whose power can bring about miracles for the people of the land. But only a select few know of the terrible secrets that the Church has been holding for so long. Dark and eldritch secrets that have been present ever since the Church’s inception.
Salithys the Deceit Weaver bears her name proudly, she has managed to dupe most of humanity into believing in a just and pure Goddess, an idol fabricated by lies. Assuming the identity of the Shattered Goddess, the Elder God has an army at her command that is ready to purify the land and its people in her name. In addition to worshippers of the Goddess, Salithys has at her command a small force of corrupt leaders who are aware of the truth. With help from within the mortal realm, she can quietly single out and erase any who tries to expose her secrets to the masses.
The Akkas
In the world of Worship, the term Untamed is used by the so called civilized to describe those living outside conventional society. This appellation is applied to both sentient beings and mysterious creatures still roaming uncharted territory. Among the ones referred to as Untamed, the Akka tribes are the most noteworthy. Despite their primitive way of life, this ancestral race has managed to hold its territory and unique culture in a world dominated by humans. Their way of life has made them close to nature and dedicated to seeking both mastery in their vocation and balance in the world.
Akkas carve important part of their history into huge stones
The initially tense relations they had with The Church wanting to forcefully convert them and the Coven desiring to study them escalated into all out hostility. The Akkas defend their sacred territories fiercely, as their culture and livelihood depends on it. Both hunters and shamans from Akka tribes are capable of fighting to protect their home. The otherworldly horrors that are recently making their appearance in the mortal realm are their sworn enemies. To the Akkas, they are a disgrace to nature itself and must be eliminated at all costs to maintain balance between all living things.
Under the guise of reclaiming what was the Shattered Goddess’, the Last Church’s purpose is clear: find the angels scattered throughout the world and bring them back to the Shattered Goddess to make her family whole again. The Inquisition is ruthless in their approach, they will stop at nothing to find the angels. They have been informed that no cost is too great if it means acquiring more power in the name of the Goddess and so they marched with resolve towards the Untamed Borderlands.
One thing is for certain, if the Inquisition is headed your way, you should pray to the Shattered Goddess for mercy.
Regardless of the Last Church propaganda, the Untamed Borderlands is to this day very much contested by the Akka tribes of the region. The forces of the Inquisition are greater in numbers, which gave them the edge in the territorial takeover. That being said, they are struggling to keep it under control, suffering heavy losses to Untamed ambushes and guerrilla warfare. Chapels and other religious sites dedicated to the Shattered Goddess are vengefully vandalized by Akka warriors. A reminder that this land is theirs. This feud will be paid back in blood.
Walking around and establishing your cult knowing these conditions, you will be bound to find remnants of past conflicts. And some might still be ongoing. Though rare, it is possible to find these two factions fighting while exploring these uncharted lands. One clever cultist might also use this to its own advantage. Forcing encounters on these two warring factions is also a viable strategy when it comes to fighting them.
Despite the inhospitality of the region, a growing cult could definitely make some worthy finds. From worn battlefields to traces of the Church’s many attempts at creating a settlement, you will be able to find many landmarks that reflect this narrative setup. Your ritual book will be sure to comment on anything it finds interesting.
Lore entries are interactable objects that are scattered around the world. Taking the shape of a floating ghastly book, interacting with it will give you more context on the location you’re on and even give you some eldritch insight into what truly happened at some specific locations.
Be on the lookout for these interactables when exploring the game world!
That’s it for today! We hope this Dev Diary entry helps you to have some insight regarding the narrative choices we made for this map specifically. If you enjoyed it, let us know in the comments!
Next update we’ll be talking about the upcoming Steam Next Fest and the features we plan to update for the Demo. Stay tuned for next entry!
TGAGWCAGA
Don't forget that TGAGWCAGA will start in less than an hour from now!
Catch Worship LIVE on Youtube! Show starts at 12pm EST
See you there!
Dev. Diaries #3 - Blood & Rituals
As an aspiring cultist on their way to bring the end of the world, you will have many means at your disposal to reach your ultimate goal. Being grim and evil is not just about appearances, you know? Let’s talk about the real deal: the dark arts and the magic behind it! Rituals will be an essential part of your arsenal as a cultist, after all.
Rituals are Worship's take on casting spells and it also enables various ways to interact with the world with its many puzzles. Rituals are designed with cooperative play in mind, because nothing is more fun than painting with your friend's blood!
Blood is an important resource in the world of Worship. You will have to manage it carefully as it is both your life force and your ink bottle. Pay close attention to how much you’ll spill or you’ll leave yourself vulnerable for the next incoming attack! Fortunately for you, your followers are more than eager to share their own life force to aid in your grim endeavors.
Risk does come with better rewards. As you spill more blood and take more time to draw these bloody shapes on the ground, your magic will become more powerful. Casting a bigger ritual will allow it to have stronger effects. It also works the other way around too! Smaller shapes will result in a weaker ritual or less charges for your spells.
For bigger spells that have charges, a useful tip would be to draw the shapes in advance. That way, you’ll be prepared when danger arises!
The game will be sure to tell you which kind of shape it recognizes while you draw. This helps you to know when your ritual is good enough to activate.
If you don’t see this little bubble pop up above your head after drawing a ritual, you’ll have to re-do it!
Combat is where all the action will take place. Maybe you'll have prepared your rituals beforehand or maybe you'll paint them right as the action happens. If that’s the case, your loyal mob will be here to distract your enemies while you work towards tipping the scale.
You'll have a few rituals in your cultist arsenal to get rid of your opponents. No matter which one you have at hand, you will always stand a chance. As long as you can keep the blood flowing, the eldritch powers will provide you plenty of means to retaliate against your enemies. Always keep an eye on your health bar though!
Offensive rituals are split into two categories: instant cast and active effects rituals.
Instant rituals, such as Impale, is a ritual that has its effect go out immediately when you activate it. Active effects rituals will give you charges of a spell to use whenever you see fit. Both of these rituals can be ‘active’ at the same time. Meaning you won’t have to use all of your spell charges before activating an instant effect ritual.
Some puzzles and encounters will require you to spill that sweet, sweet, crimson juice in order to complete them. What kind of secrets will your precious blood uncover?
The Painter module is one of the bigger types of content that features the blood drawing mechanic in one of its completion paths.
Sealed Rituals
It is said that some rituals are so powerful that they require some great feats in order to be uncovered. Sealed Rituals are a bit stronger than your usual spells and are correspondingly tougher to unlock. Amongst them lies the Tribute ritual, which allows you to offer the bodies of slain enemies to your God.
Sealed Rituals are usually more complex to draw and require a bit more time and execution than their normal counterparts. In exchange for your trouble, their activation will reward you with powerful effects.
Offer slain enemies to your god using the Tribute ritual. Obtain rewards in exchange for their bodies. And if you don’t have anything to offer to your god, you can still Tribute your own followers… eh eh eh.
Angel Blood
Through the blood of her so-called angels, the Deceit Weaver is able to bestow her devotees clad in white and gold with a glimpse of her powers. Within the blood of all four angels lies a fraction of Salithys’ abilities according to the aspect they represent: healing, control, power and illusion. In an act they consider sacred, bishops periodically collect blood from Valhyni and Nobilia. The amassed blood is then used in one of two ways to draw its eldritch properties.
The blood can be refined into incense through a rigorous process known by few church officials. Inhaling mist produced by one of these “sacred” incense grants inhuman powers. This is how some bishops and church leaders can magically heal wounds and convert enemies into docile servants.
However, the Church is aware of another dreadful property of angel’ blood. Drinking it triggers violent mutation on humans, turning them into brainless hulks of warped flesh. A terrifying hint pointing towards the true nature of these winged horrors. Following the guidance of their Goddess and its loyal eyes of the sanctum, the inquisition had no qualm in using this angelic blood property in inhuman experimentation on church enemies and servants alike. Executioners and other drudge created in this manner bolster the ranks of the Inquisition while some even more unsightly results of these experiments remain hidden as trump cards for decisive battles.
Ulmira paid a high price for a small vial of angel blood in order to save her daughter Eleanor.
That’s all you need to know about blood and rituals for now! Do you have a favorite ritual so far? What kind of drawing will you do once you get your hands on Worship? Do let us know in the comments section!
See you next time!
-The Chasing Rats Team
TGAGWCAGA Participation Announcement
Hey Cultists!
We’re thrilled to announce that Worship has been selected to be part of The Game Awards for Games Who Can’t Afford the Game Awards (TGAGWCAGA) 2024 Showcase!
TGAGWCAGA is a brand new showcase designed to spotlight incredible indie games that truly deserve more attention—while also poking a bit of fun at the exclusivity of The Game Awards.
See you there!
Date: Friday, December 13
Time: 5:00 PM UTC / 6:00 PM CET / 12:00 PM ET
Subscribe to the YouTube channel and don’t miss it!
- The Chasing Rats team
Dev. Diaries #2 - Combat
In today’s Dev Diary, we are looking into the combat system in Worship. Since Worship’s gameplay includes a lot of novelty in its mechanics, a little of context is needed to properly understand combat in the game.
Quick overview on Worship terminology: when we talk about a Cultist, it defines the playable character. When we talk about Followers, we talk about the cute little mascot looking fellas following the Cultist. As a Cultist, you can bleed yourself to draw symbols on the ground to cast rituals. The most important ritual to a cultist arsenal is the conversion rituals, which will convert followers to your cult. As a Cultist, you can order your Followers to do different tasks, including fist fighting enemies.
While in combat, you will have access to three types of actions to defeat your enemies: Followers, Rituals and Follower Throw. Each of those actions have a different purpose in combat.
Followers are a multipurpose resource in Worship. During exploration, they will carry stuff, help you solve puzzle and interact with the world. They can even be used as a blood source to heal your Cultist.
During combat, their main purpose is to grab the enemies’ attention and buy you time. Even with their small size, followers are now surprisingly tanky. Send them to attack your enemies to take some hits for you.
After a few hits, followers will be knocked down and vulnerable. Once they’re down, they are not quite dead yet, but they are most likely to die in a hit or two. If they survive, they will eventually get back up and automatically regenerate their missing health. They will also regenerate their hidden health bar out of combat. That, way, they’ll be fresh and ready to take more hits for your next bloodshed!
To prevent losing followers, you can still recall your followers to dodge powerful attacks while they are standing. Be wary, if they get knocked down, you will not be able to recall them back until they get back up by themselves.
Followers are able to damage enemies when they’re fighting, but it is not the most effective way to defeat enemies. Unless you have an overwhelmingly amount of them, obviously.
Although followers are used to grab enemies’s attention during combat, this does not mean that the Cultist will never be in danger. Enemies have attacks in their move sets specifically aimed for the Cultist. Be wary of the Inquisitor quick dash, it will catch you off-guard.
It can be counter intuitive, especially for new players, to use your own resources (either your health or the life of a follower) to draw blood symbols while you have a bunch of enemies trying to kill you. But even then, rituals are the most powerful actions a player can use to defeat enemies. You cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, as the saying goes…
Your Followers will buy you time, enough for you to draw these bloody shapes on the ground and activating them. Rituals are the key for you to win fights quickly while preventing too many casualties on your side.
There are two types of offensive rituals: instant cast and active effects rituals.
Instant rituals, such as Impale, is a ritual who’s going to have its effect go out immediately once you activate it.
Active effects rituals will give you charges of a spell to use whenever you see fit.
In terms of size, obviously, the bigger the drawing is, the bigger the amount of blood spent. Players will be rewarded by having certain aspects of the rituals scaling depending on the size of a shape. Obviously, for any area of effects, it’s easy to imagine why you would draw a bigger shape. For active effects rituals, we can scale it in different ways. For exemple, for the Ghastly Claw ritual, a bigger size will give a higher number of charges.
Finally, these adorable followers are multipurpose. They’re also throwable!
Other than being really funny, throwing a follower will slightly damage the enemies, but it can also interrupt some attacks. Some abilities will grey out the health bar of the enemies and display a variable number of shields over it while they charge up the attack. During that time, enemies don’t take any damage but, by throwing followers to the enemies while they’re charging, you can destroy their shields. If you manage to destroy all the shields before the attack releases, you’ll cancel it and slightly stun your target.
Some rituals will also be effective to destroy shields.
Cultist has a way to directly damage enemies without the use of followers or rituals. With a simple input, you can cast a small damaging spell to attack your enemies.
You will have to be careful with this attack, since every eldritch power has a price. Using this attack will cost you blood. It is meant to be an emergency tool if combat goes dire.
Each god will have a different basic attacks for its cultists to add more variety in your play sessions depending on which deity you choose to worship.
To summarize, the “rules” of design we establish are the following: use followers to crowd control, use rituals to damage enemies and throw your followers to interrupt attacks.
But as we all know, rules are meant to be broken, and that’s where the upgrades take place.
During your run, you will stumble upon worm-filled crystals called Catalysts. They can be used to spawn buildings granting you upgrades for your cult. By unlocking new powers, you will eventually unlock abilities which will let you break those rules. A pretty straight forward example would be an upgrade to your follower damage, but it can take various forms too.
An upgrade we currently have is the Follower Piercing upgrade, which let followers pass through enemies when you throw them, making it a lot more efficient to damage multiple enemies during combat.
We are eager to see what kind of builds and upgrades combinations players will create to surprise us.
That’s it for today! This should cover a bit of everything regarding combat. Hoping this update makes you even more excited to try out different strategies and offensive rituals while playing Worship!
Next Diary entry will be all about highlighting our game’s unique mechanic: blood drawings.
See you next time!
- The Chasing Rats Team