Slaves of Magic - tactical turn-based RPG inspired by XCOM and Guild Wars

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3505518337774406317

Devlog #19 Breaking the base
This devlog is about the resistance base changes, as we have broken up the one big base into multiple smaller ones.

Spoiler

Hello everyone! We had our hands full with the release of the demo at TactiCon and we had to blow off a bit of steam after that. But we are back now with a new devlog about the resistance base -or more accurately- bases!

The old ways

Before I go into how it was changed, a quick recap of how it worked previously. It was pretty much identical to how XCOM 2 did its base. It was set up like an ant farm underground, and every level had 4 slots for rooms. Like so:

Now that is okay, after all, it worked for XCOM as well. But to me, it doesn't feel like the player has too many decisions to make here. Mostly it's just the order in which the player builds stuff. In addition, I had another problem, namely that I wanted the player to care about the different territories a bit more in the campaign map.

Then a solution dawned on me that could solve both of these problems. What if I break up the bases into smaller ones, and place them inside territories on the maps? This creates bases that need to be protected, leading to certain territories beings more important than others. Plus I can make bases more unique depending on which region they reside in.

What can a base do for you?

Every base built will provide the region base resources, by simply existing. These are smiths, scholars, soldiers per month, and gold per month. Smiths provides equipment points that govern how much equipment can you bring into a combat mission, scientists speed up research and skill acquisition, soldiers per month governs how many new recruits you have at the start of the month, and gold per month is well, the gold you receive per month.

The base rate for these resources is different for the 6 regions on the map so that itself differentiates the bases. But that is not all! Every region has attributes(reminder, every skill belongs to an attribute) that belong to them, and the player will only have access to those in which they have a base in. So for example, if you want to use swords, you will need to have a base in a region that is known for sword-wielding. That means the choice of the base location is not only determines your income but your available and researchable skills and equipment!

Anatomy of a base

The base itself is a tavern that acts as a front for the secret base below. Every base will have 4 slots to build into. At the beginning of the game, you will have four buildings you can build, corresponding to the 4 resources a base can provide. A black market for gold, a laboratory for scholars, a smithy for smiths, and a training center for soldiers. In addition, if you research one of the early techs you will unlock the scrying room, which will add scrying charges for your planning phase in combat.

What is important to note here is that income these buildings provides are not flat but dependent on the base value of the region. So for example building a laboratory is more beneficial in a region naturally high in scholars.
How to lose them

Now I have deliberately avoided what makes territories different inside regions for a base. The reason is there is nothing if all of the territories have the same loyalty to the resistance. But the amount of territory does matter! If a territory loses all of its support for the resistance the base will be lost. But if there is another territory still valid for a base in the region, the player can play an evacuation mission to move the base there. How much of the base he manages to evacuate depends on the player's performance on the mission of course.

The player will start with one base for free, and additional bases will be buildable, for a considerable cost. This system provides a natural defeat condition for the player as well, the game will end if all of the player's bases have been destroyed.

Closing thoughts

So that's it about the new bases! For me, it feels like this was the last piece of the puzzle that was necessary to make the decision-making in the campaign portion compelling!

For more general news, the TactiCon event feels like a big success for us, as we managed to more than double our wishlist count! I want to thank everyone who is supporting us in this project! In addition, we have started a Discord channel where we post everything related to Slaves of Magic, so if you want to ask us anything, or just want a central place for all the news related to the game feel free to join us here.

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3601222453308918088

Devlog #20 Polishing the Campaign
This devlog is about presenting the reworked artwork for the campaign map, plus other gameplay changes related to it.

Spoiler

Hello everyone! This year's last devlog is about presenting our new reworked artwork for the campaign map, plus other gameplay changes related to it.

Campaign art rework

Let's start with the flashy bit! Every asset on the map has been reworked, and their size and positions adjusted. Take a look at a few examples of how it looks.

Typical month

But not only the art change but the gameplay as well. In our previous devlog we talked about bases, and how they function, so if you are interested in that I advise you to check that out! Today we will talk about the invaders, what are their goals, and how they want to archive them. When the player clicks on their holy city, they will see an intelligence report which shows some vital information about their general resources.

You can see 3 important values:

The first is their supply level. Its level will affect the number of units on missions, plus they can use it to activate stronger missions for their armies (like building a new base).
The second is their research level and progress. When they reach a new level new they will receive new stronger units.
And third is how dangerous they think the resistance is to them. While this doesn't have any immediate impact it does affect AI decision-making.

At the start of every month, the AI assigns missions for the armies, taking into account these 3 values. For example when the resistance is deemed not dangerous, they will more likely to choose high-risk high reward missions, while they choose a more slow and steady approach if the resistance put up a fight. There is a bit of randomization added to the choosing and assigning of missions so that the player can't accurately predict the exact missions.

But what are these missions? There are 3 common missions:

The first is tax collection. If the army succeeds in it, the invaders will gain supply, and the region's loyalty value will be reduced by 1. How much supply will be gained depends on the region's loyalty value at the start of the mission. Generally speaking, they will receive a high amount at 4-5 loyalty, medium at 1-3, and low at 0.
The second is abduction. This mission is nearly identical to tax collection but instead of gaining supply, the invaders gain research progress.
And the third is a crackdown. This mission does not provide any resources to the invaders if successful but will reduce the territory loyalty by 3.

There are other missions as well but those cost extra supply to conduct. One such mission is to build a new forward base:

This mission can't be countered by the player and will build a new forward base for the invaders in a region which does not have one already. Besides in the first month, this can only be played on a territory that has 0 loyalty. An enemy forward base will provide extra supply and research progress for the invaders at the start of every month, and makes countering missions in that region harder. Later in the game, the resistance can learn how to destroy these, but till then, they will pose a big problem.

Throughout the month, these armies will conduct their given mission at a randomized time. When they start their mission, the player will be presented with a screen like this:

There is an important part, namely the enemy amount. The quality of the units on a mission will be defined by the army size, but the amount will depend on this value. You will get a summary of what modified this value, but in general, it depends on the enemy supply level, if there is a resistance/invader base in the region and the current loyalty value of the region.

Closing thoughts

So, that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support feel free to join our Discord here. Otherwise, I wish you a great holiday season, and see you next year!

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3660898323272970649

Devlog #21 Adding details to the combat map
This devlog is about the reworked look of the combat portion of the game.

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a great holiday season and let me welcome you to this year's first devlog about Slaves of Magic! I think we start this year with a bang, as we have completed the first finished tileset for the game.

Changes since the demo

People who have taken a closer look at the game's campaign map could notice, that generally, it has 4 regions. Every region will have its own tileset and the ones you will see in the pictures are based on a temperate climate with medieval European architecture.

In the picture, you can see the reworked temple. It received a lot more details all around, plus as you can see we have added light emitting wall torches as well, rather than the old standing ones.

But that is not the only change for the temple! We have added some environmental storytelling as well. These temples are repurposed by the invaders as a base of operation, as they masquerade as the returned gods. They have erected new statuses to their image, as they try to destroy and replace all kinds of depictions of the old gods.

You can find some quite worrisome sights if you take a look into the priest's private room. You can only guess what kind of experiments they are conducting in secret! In addition, you can see that the lighting system has been reworked to support multiple colors of light as well.

But of course, that is just one of the many hand-made tilesets that have been created for this region. While I want to leave some for you to explore in the game, I want to show you one additional smaller tileset, which has some interesting new features as well.

As you can see, we have added support for the visual representation of damage to the environment. You will be able to find ruined houses like this one by default, but this was done in preparation to support environmental destruction so that combat can destroy houses as well! We just need to actually add skills that destroy walls and obstacles!

Closing thoughts

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support, the best way to do that right now is to join our Discord here. Otherwise, see you next time!

 

[luj1]

INSPIRED BY GUILD WARS??

 

[Fowyr]

Demo freezed in the first combat after purple circles of enemy's reinforcement appeared.

 

[sipibaki]

Demo freezed in the first combat after purple circles of enemy's reinforcement appeared.

Thanks for the report! I thought I have managed to fix the soft-lock bug, but it seems that I have not got all instances of it. It's just hard to catch these where it seems multiple conditions need to meet to cause the bug, and I just don't run into it while personally testing. Probably I should do some sort of a beta test to catch the biggest bugs before releasing the next demo which will include both layers.

 

[Fowyr]

OK, tried demo again. As I understand, after your victory you are returned to main menu?
Make quick buttons for unit's commands. For example, 1-5. It's pretty tiring to click "attack" every time.

 

[sipibaki]

OK, tried demo again. As I understand, after your victory you are returned to main menu?
Make quick buttons for unit's commands. For example, 1-5. It's pretty tiring to click "attack" every time.

Yes, in this combat demo, it just returns to the main menu. You can start again by trying out attacking a different army, with a different composition of units, but basically, that's it for that demo.

Quick buttons for skills are a very good idea and came up multiple times as feedback. One detail I'm not completely sure about is what buttons should be the default for that which would be the most intuitive. I would add 1-6 for the skills in the character bar, but then I don't know what to give for the basic actions bar. I guess QWERT etc.? Or maybe it makes more sense to reverse and give 1-10 for the basic actions, and QWERTZ for the character bar skills. Still, whatever option will be chosen, it will surely help to reduce the number of clicks needed.

Unrelated: I have an announcement on the Steam page about removing the demo from our Steam page on Jan 30. The TLDR reason is that when I tried to go back to try and find the bug on the demo version realized that since our migration to a 64-bit application, that required changes that are not trivial to reverse (the demo is still 32-bit) be able to work on that again. But I'm not comfortable having it out in the wild while not being able to properly support it, while such bugs still can happen in it. But as I said we are planning to have a new demo with the improved combat and campaign layer planned in the spring, so we won't be demoless for long!

 

[Fowyr]

Quick buttons for skills are a very good idea and came up multiple times as feedback. One detail I'm not completely sure about is what buttons should be the default for that which would be the most intuitive. I would add 1-6 for the skills in the character bar, but then I don't know what to give for the basic actions bar.

F1-F5 for basic actions, 1-6 for skills. Just duplicate basic attack in character skills bar for convenience.
Another option, is using Shift+1 - Shift+6 buttons.

 

[sipibaki]

Quick buttons for skills are a very good idea and came up multiple times as feedback. One detail I'm not completely sure about is what buttons should be the default for that which would be the most intuitive. I would add 1-6 for the skills in the character bar, but then I don't know what to give for the basic actions bar.

F1-F5 for basic actions, 1-6 for skills. Just duplicate basic attack in character skills bar for convenience.
Another option, is using Shift+1 - Shift+6 buttons.

Sure, I will try these layouts out when I implement it, thanks for the ideas!

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

So when does this come out?

 

[sipibaki]

So when does this come out?

Our plan is to release it sometime around the end of the year, though we don't have an exact date yet.

 

[sipibaki]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1442610/announcements/detail/3651893659819944316

This devlog is about how we implemented the base evacuation mission.

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

This month, we have done a lot of work on a new mission type, called base evacuation! In this mission type, the resistance will need to hold up the invaders long enough for the evacuation. Let's see how it works in detail.

Campaign side

A quick reminder of how rebel bases work. Every region has multiple territories, and the resistance can have one secret base per region, in one of the territories. If at any point the territory with the base loses all loyalty to the resistance, the rebel base will be exposed, and the base will be attacked by the army that caused the loyalty loss. So managing the loyalty of territories with a rebel base will be very important if the player wants to avoid this kind of mission.

In case there are other valid territories for the resistance base in this region (so territories with non-zero loyalty), then the base evacuation mission will trigger. How much of the base will be evacuated will depend on the performance of the player on the mission. On a failed mission, or if there are no valid territories to evacuate the base is automatically destroyed.

Combat side

The combat map will be generated using the rooms that have been built in the campaign layer for the base. A reminder of how it looks in the campaign layer:

Every buildable room has a combat map equivalent. Few examples of parts of the different rooms:

The mission itself will be the inverse of what the resistance is used to. The mission starts with the resistance units semi-randomly placed around in the base, with the enemy's first wave teleporting in. The player will have 1 round to try and make the best of the given situation, but depending on the circumstance, it can be a very tough fight!

The player units can retreat at any point like in a normal mission, but the objective is to defeat 3 waves of enemies. The end result depends on how many waves have been defeated. In case of 1, the base will be evacuated, but the rooms are lost. In case of 2, a random 2 rooms have been evacuated as well, and in case of 3, the full base has been successfully evacuated.

Closing thoughts

Unrelated, but a piece of very good news is that we have found a great composer who did a great job creating custom-made music for the game. Thanks to this, we will have control over the copyrights of these tracks, so there won't be any issue for content creators who will want to create videos about our new demo! While you will need to wait for the demo to check out the tracks themselves, but the composer has a Youtube page with great tracks if you are curious about what to expect here.

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support, the best way to do that right now is to join our Discord here. Otherwise, see you next time!

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3685673374373448672

Devlog #23 Combat changes
This devlog is about how the combat layer has been changed since our previous demo.

Spoiler

Hello everyone!


This month, I'm here to talk about how the combat layer has changed since our previous demo! Let's get to it!

Connection to the campaign layer​

To recap, check out what a mission briefing looks like when the enemy army tries to accomplish its mission.

The important part for this devlog is the Resistance mission part and the magic dust rewards at the bottom. The resistance mission shows what kind of mission the resistance will have to conduct to foil the army. These will be randomly generated except for special situations like base defense. For now, we have implemented two types. Ambush, in which the goal is to clear the area of enemies, and escort, where a VIP will be needed to be escorted to a designated location. But we plan to add more types of missions.


Another big change in the design of these missions is that we have removed the unlimited reinforcements. This came from a design philosophy change. I wanted to move away from hard timers which punish players if they are too slow. I still want to make the player take risks, but I wanted to rather reward players if they do. And here comes the magic dust into the equation.


In the campaign layer, there are basically 2 main resources. Gold, which is gained by the resistance's current status in the campaign layer, and magic dust, which will be earned by performance in the combat layer. A combat mission can end in three ways:

1. The player couldn't archive the objective. In this case, the enemy army mission goes through, and the resistance does not receive any magic dust.
2. The player archives the objective but failed to meet the time limit. In this case, the enemy army mission has been countered, and the player receives the normal magic dust reward.
3. The player archives the objective, and inside the time limit. In this case, the enemy army mission has been countered, and the player receives an increased amount of magic dust.

General combat changes​

The general combat has received some changes as well. To recap, originally we had a system very similar to the new XCOM-s with 2 activations, where the most "meaningful" actions will end your turn, like attacking. In addition, we have a stamina system that is being used by the unit's activatable skills.


The biggest change we have made is that no skill will end your turn. This means for example if you have an enemy unit adjacent to your active unit, that unit can attack twice if it wants to! But to make it more interesting, and not a no-brainer choice, every attack after the first will have a quite big multiple-attack penalty to the hit chance. This means that attacking twice will always be a strong option, but other non-attack skills can still make sense for a second action as they don't get the attack penalty.


The movement has received some changes as well. Namely, attack of opportunity became a passive skill rather than being always active by default. Instead, leaving a tile that is inside the enemy zone of control will cost 2 instead of one. This change makes maneuvering stronger by default, but it is a necessary change so that the movement action can compete with the sheer value of a second attack.


The way stamina is used has been fundamentally changed as well. Now, every time a unit uses its second action, that costs 1 stamina. If they don't have enough stamina they can't use their second action. This makes stamina an integral part of the system, rather than just the fuel for skills (though it retained this function as well). It gives a nice dilemma to the player when you have an exhausted unit to use its one possible action point or skip the turn to rest and regain stamina.

Ranged combat​

Another big feature is the return of ranged combat! We have implemented both bows and crossbows. Regions with the marksman attribute will unlock them for the resistance. They share the marksman skills between them, but they have some pretty big fundamental differences.

The bow does rather low damage but is able to shoot twice. This means that it is very deadly against badly armored targets, but armor is very effective in reducing its damage.

The crossbow has an accuracy bonus and does moderate damage with armor piercing. But there is a big catch! After every shot, it will be needed to be reloaded. So while its damage is more consistent, especially against armored opponents, the max potential damage per round is lower.


The calculation of hit chance is a bit different for ranged attacks as well. Instead of using the target defense statistic, it will use the double of the distance between the attacker and the target. And there is no flanking hit chance bonus in case of a ranged attack, though it will still ignore shields in this case. There is a possibility to obstruct a shot if there is an obstacle or another unit right next to the target.

The best defense against ranged attack is not being in the line of sight, or if that fails shields and armor. The max range by default is double the sight range of the unit, so other units can spot for the ranged attacker.

Closing thoughts​

On an unrelated note, the heavy armor the resistance is using has been reworked:

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support, the best way to do that right now is to wishlist the game on Steam here or join our Discord here. Otherwise, see you next time!

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3684550462564511964

Devlog #24 Managing the resistance fighters
This devlog is mainly about resistance fighters, more specifically how can they be acquired, and what their level-up means. Plus some gifs about the new northern map.

Spoiler

Hello everyone!


This month, I'm here to talk about the heart of the resistance. The resistance fighters! They are the player's most important pieces as controlling them is the main way the player interacts with the tactical layer. But before we get to that, let's start with some eye candy!

Northern region​

The northern region map generation has been completed. In the upcoming demo, the temperate and the northern region will be accessible for missions. A few examples of how it looks:

Recruiting units​

The resistance can recruit new units in the recruitment tab for gold. The available recruits will be cycled monthly, and the amount of them depends on the resistance monthly soldiers tab (top left on the next picture).

Not all soldiers are created equally. There are positive and negative traits a soldier can have, and that can affect their various statistics. Building training facilities in the resistance bases can improve the monthly soldier rate, giving the player a bigger pool of units to choose from, plus every facility increases the freshly recruited soldier level by one.

Leveling up​

All soldiers at level one will start with access to 1 skill slot and will gain one every level up till they reach the max skill slot number of 6. The skills will be freely swappable at any time outside combat. There are no classes so every soldier will be able to access any skill the resistance has access to, leading to a high amount of possible skill combinations. There are 2 restrictions though:

1. Every skill belongs to an attribute, for example, sword-wielding. On any unit skill bar, there can be skills from 3 different attributes.
2. There are very powerful elite skills, which have a golden border. Every unit skill bar can only have 1 elite skill.

Besides getting access to more skills, the level-up increases a unit's melee attack and melee defense of a unit by 5, making them more consistent.


Experience is earned on the battlefield. The amount of experience earned will depend on the invader's unit amount and level, plus there will be a bonus if the mission has been successful.

How to learn new skills​

The resistance has access to different attributes depending on their bases location. Every region has attributes that belong to that region. If the resistance wants to use skills of that attribute, they will need to build a base in a region that has that attribute. In practice, that means the player will going to have to consider this aspect as well when choosing base locations. Choosing one can mean losing access to another.


Research has a big impact on the availability of skills as well. There are 3 levels of understanding for a given attribute. Researching a higher level will unlock stronger skills belonging to a given attribute. Neglecting research will lead to slower skill accumulation.


The plan is to have 11 attributes in the game, 5 for the weapons, 3 non-magical, and 3 for magical late-game attributes with at-least 6 skills each. This should provide plenty of combinations for replayability.

Closing thoughts​

So that's it for today's devlog! Some general information is that we are getting very close to our new demo. It is nearly feature complete, it just needs a bit more time for polish and general bug fixing. If you want to be among the first to know about its release, feel free to join our discord here. And as always, you can find our game on Steam here.

 

[sipibaki]

We have released a new demo on Steam where you can play 3 months of in-game time, getting a feel for the early game.



Our plans for the next few months are to listen to your feedback about the demo, iterate on it, plus add additional content to it.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Hey, Slavs of Magic is alive :]

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3645152842273728864

Devlog #25 Devious goblins

This devlog is about the upcoming content patch for the demo.

​

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

Firstly, let me thank everyone who tried out the demo and shared their thought about it! It's very important for us to hear this feedback to be able to improve the game. Sadly, as a 2 man team, we don't have the capacity to test the game as thoroughly as I would want, but we are listening, and squashing those bugs you report!

Now with this out of the way, let's talk about the upcoming content patch for the demo!

Utilities

Those of you who already tried the game out might have noticed that the Smithy projects were rather empty, till the resistance built new bases to unlock new weapons. This will change with the next patch, as we have implemented utilities. These are usually small passive buffs for the units with equipment point costs, that can be unlocked in the projects tab. But there are things like consumables as well, for example, a stamina potion!

New enemies

Another fraction of enemies will arrive in the patch, which will require a different kind of approach to beat. The orks will be an aggression-focused faction, with high health but nowhere near as well equipped as the dwarfs already present in the game. Plus they bring goblins with them as well. Individually weak, but they will fuel the ork battlefield rage by their deaths, plus are hard to hit.

Resistance goals

To give a bit more guidance to the resistance, after researching magic dust, the player will be able to choose a long-term goal for the resistance to reach, from 3 randomly selected goals. Just to say some examples, gather up a specific number of scholars, or have a unit reach level 4. When the player reaches this goal then the plan is to unlock research which will be able to progress the main plot.

Other changes

Besides these, a lot of other small quality-of-life changes and rebalances will come with the patch, listening to the feedback. For example, the tabs on the barracks and smiths and science scenes have been reworked to make it clearer which tab is active right now:

Closing thoughts

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you have any questions feel free to drop by to our discord here!

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3687938308352488119

Demo 1.1.0 patch released!

A new content patch has been released, including new mechanics, enemies, and balance changes!

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

I'm happy to announce that our new 1.1.0 content patch for the demo is out! It includes new mechanics, enemies, and balance changes, besides the usual bug fixes.

Major changes:

- Added goblins and orks to the enemy roster:

- Added utility items that can be funded from the smithy menu, for example, a stamina potion that restores half of the user's stamina.

- Added a new condition called "distracted" which reduces the unit initiative by 1 till the start of its next activation. Every melee attack (even missed!) applies 1 stack to the target. Every source of damage applies 2 stacks, and a crit applies 3 stacks. Now every action has the potential to change the unit activation order.

- Replaced the survival campaign objective with a more guided experience. The first objective will be to research the magic dust, then the player can choose from 3 random goals for the resistance to reach.

- Rebalanced ranged weapons. Starting hit chance has been lowered to 50. The bow got a bonus to hit chance for its second shot and set both equipment costs to 4.

- Increased HP across the board so that units can survive a bit longer

- Fixed line of sight errors that caused clearly seeable tiles to be useable and unforgettable.

- Fixed missing sound effects if more than 8 effect was active at the same time.

- Updated AI to be more proactive, especially ranged units which sometimes just waited for the player to move into range. Plus they prioritize the VIP on escort missions.

Important information that previously saved games are not compatible with this new version.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/3720593210580046403

Demo 1.1.4 patch note
Hello everyone!

Our new 1.1.4 patch focus is still quality of life improvements, focusing on skill descriptions.

The way skill information is presented has been completely reworked. Information that is common for skills (like which school they belong to) has been grouped together, and more important information like damage has been highlighted. Check it out:

To make the icons hoverable, the tooltip will lock itself if the user holds the mouse on the skill icon for 1 second. Thanks to this the player will be able to hover over everything in the skill tooltip to receive additional information.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[sipibaki]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1442610/announcements/detail/3781395613882556591

Demo 1.2.1 content patch note, the arrival of the dark elves

The biggest changes include a complete rework of the new player experience, new enemies called the dark elves, and the desert region opening up

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

I'm very excited to announce that our new 1.2.1 content patch for the demo is live! Let me show you some of the biggest changes:

- Dark elves have arrived. They are expert in hit-and-run and ranged combat, but fragile if you manage to get to them.

- Sadly, their pet spiders will make it a bit harder to get to them!

- The desert region is unlocked, and it brings a new skill school called trickery with 4 new skills focusing on maneuvering and critical damage. Plus it means the enemy armies can target the territories in this region as well from now on!

- Added the universal skill school with 6 new skills. The universal skills are unlocked at the beginning of the game no matter the starting location of the resistance. These are various passive skills that do not count toward the maximum amount of skill schools a character can have.

- Completely reworked new player experience. Reduced the time till the player reaches the meat of the demo, the tactical combat! In addition, broke up the tutorials into smaller more digestible parts, plus they don't obstruct the scene when they pop up anymore.

- General rebalancing of existing skills and the economy of the game. Simplified the way gold income works, territories now simply provide their gold income if they have higher than 0 loyalty.

Saves should be generally compatible with previous versions, but for full effect, I would suggest starting a new game.

 

[sipibaki]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1442610/view/4139441932564836128

Devlog #26 Sneak peak into the upcoming Immersion patch

Spoiler

Hello everyone!

I wanted to give you a status update on our upcoming new patch to our demo. The original plan was to do it in multiple smaller patches, but feature creep had other ideas! Some big changes are coming that just simply couldn't be implemented in smaller increments. We still need some time to deliver the patch itself, but I didn't want to leave you all in the dark so read on if you are interested in the upcoming major changes!

Reworked resistance members

Every resistance unit will have a background trait that describes what they did previously. This affects their starting statistics, possible additional traits they could have, and their hiring cost. In addition, the possible backgrounds change depending on which region the unit is from.

The eager-eyed could notice that the portraits have been completely reworked as well. Now with a quick glance at the portrait, you will know which region the unit is from. Updated the name generators as well with more names so that they can generate more unique names.

New core combat mechanic, pushing and cornered

I always had the back of my mind that flanking in itself to increase your hitchance is not enough as that is relatively hard to do consistently. Plus it always felt a bit unrealistic that standing right next to a wall is the best defensive position as in that case, the unit is physically impossible to be flanked. Then came the idea of the cornered mechanic.

Now, units will count as cornered when they can't move backward from the attack direction and suffer a 20 defense penalty. In addition, every melee attack that hits will push the target back 1 tile while the attacker takes their place if possible. These changes make positioning a lot more interesting even in situations where flanking is unfeasable.

Advanced skills rework

Weapon attributes have been removed. Instead, every weapon will have their own advanced skill that comes with it. This gave me the possibility to differentiate weapons more besides damage, especially the one and two-handed variants of the same weapon. For example, that wide slash attack on the previous gif will be only available to units using two-handed swords!

The other 3 skill attributes (Aggression, Teamwork, and Trickery) have been heavily reworked into 6 classes (Ranger, Assassin, Protector, Strategist, Barbarian, Warrior). This means that every region now has a unique class. In addition, because the weapon does not take up one of the 2 available skill school(the new name for attributes) slots of a character, it opens up the builds space.

New eastern region

We have finished the eastern region combat map as well, so this last region opens up! The region itself is research-focused and will provide the resistance access to the strategist skill school!

Closing thoughts

And that's it for today's devlog! One important point is that because of the extent of the changes on the skills system, the new patch will not be compatible with previous saves. In addition, the patch will include a lot of other smaller balance and bug fixes as well, plus something else that I do not want to spoil just yet!

As always, if you have any questions feel free to drop by our discord here.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Sweeper]

So...
What do you think about Orban?