A new demo version is now live, but there are plenty of bugs. So it’s still pretty much a work in progress.

This update comes after one month and a half of no updates, because there were two big things that happened in the meantime.

Less RNG, more strategy

I reworked some systems, to transition the game from more randomness to more strategy.

From my test runs, I saw that it was pretty much impossible to aim for a certain build, because you were highly dependent on the RNG Gods to give you shops, the shops to have the proper items, to get some Blacksmith encounters, etc.

This meant that you could not build anything reliably, as you needed more things to do a complete build (eg. to build a spiked build, you would need some green shards, and a shield).

Due to this, I moved the Blacksmith, the Spellforge and soon the shop too, outside of the encounters, so you can access them every time.

No more idling

A big issue from transitioning from a turn based system to a more real-time system, was that the progression itself was still turn based (picking one encounter at a time). But between turns, you will be regenerating HP and MP, and I got the feedback that the “best way to play this game is to actually not play it”.

So, to fix this, I did two things:

1. Increased the stats levels, so that the regen you get will actually be not that much in the grand scheme of things.
2. If you idle too much, a Ghost of Indecisiveness will creep in, and pull you into a combat where you don’t get much out of it (you lose resources fighting, and you get a very tiny amount of XP at the end. No gold, no loot). I think this would be an incentive to avoid idling too much.

New graphics!

I received the first batch of new graphics, and I integrated it into the game, partially. I still have some work to do on this aspect, but the game starts to look and feel more like a game.

The art direction is awesome and beautiful, and in a month or so, I think we will be releasing the demo on Steam.

There are still areas that have the old UI, but area by area, we are overhauling them and make them look good.

See the progress in the stars!

The new progression system is based on the idea of constellations, as a way to reduce the necessary art requirements. But also I thought it was a nice idea that played well with the overall vibe of the game.

Each constellation will be built around a hero, and each star will unlock more and more game content (eg. the Sword & Shield constellation, which will be available in the demo, will unlock various Iron Guard related content such as shield and sword recipes, new skills and maybe even new encounters. The Skull constellation will unlock content related to a new hero, the Assassin, the Flame constellation will unlock content related to the Pyromancer, etc).

Let us know what you think! Beware that the game is pretty buggy at the moment and very unbalanced, manily due to the UI overhaul that messed up some element hierarchies, and from the stat system change (increasing the numbers from 100 HP to 500 HP so that the passive regen doesn’t feel so overpowered anymore).