Rise of the Soulmancer
0.0.0.84.4-0.0.0.84.6
Rise of the Soulmancer » Devlog
New Characters:
- Added 6 new characters (found in soul fragment hunting).
New Gameplay Mechanic:
- Soul Fragment Hunting:
- Search for soul fragments hidden in the darkness.
Gameplay Changes:
- Skill Tree mechanics have been reworked:
- Procedurally generated.
- +1 skill point every 2 levels (less high maintenance).
- Choice between two skill options per row (less cluttered).
- More consistent enemy level scaling with your world level.
- Effects no longer stack, instead they replace the current effect if it's already applied (less cluttered battles).
- You're slightly more likely to land debuffs on bosses now.
Bug Fix Attempts:
- Trivia not granting rewards.
- Improper damage values in cases where conditions needed to be met to apply the conditional damage.
- Positional effects such as tornadoes lingering in battles beyond their duration.
- Skills ending up as applied effects.
Quality of Life Attempts:
- Effect words can now be hovered over in addition to icons to see effect info.
- Camera zoom and position is now saved per character on character specific interfaces (eg. skill trees).
- Chance values greater than 5% are now rounded to 10's for easier understanding (10%, 20%, 30% etc.).
- When customizing your avatar the animation pauses for easier recognition of visual changes.
- Removed stats from character unlock interface as they served no useful purpose (cleaner interface now).
- Amplified/re-voiced certain dialogue.
- Better spacing when collecting expedition rewards.
- First summon guarantees 4 souls for smoother early gameplay.
Rise of the Soulmancer
Command your army of souls to fight the Chaos!
| Status | In development |
| Author | 1StepCloser |
| Genre | Strategy, Role Playing |
| Tags | Deck Building, Dungeon Crawler, Idle, Incremental, Roguelike, Roguelite, Tactical, Turn-based |
More posts
- 0.0.0.85.17-0.0.0.85.26Apr 10, 2024
- 0.0.0.85.15-0.0.0.85.16Feb 11, 2024
- 0.0.0.85.14Feb 10, 2024
- 0.0.0.85.11-0.0.0.85.13Feb 10, 2024
- 0.0.0.84.7 - 0.0.0.85Feb 04, 2024
- 0.0.0.84.2-0.0.0.84.3Sep 09, 2023
- 0.0.0.84.1Aug 14, 2023
- 0.0.0.84.0Aug 07, 2023
- 0.0.0.81-0.0.0.83.9Aug 03, 2023
Comments
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I was so excited for this to drop!
The only bug I noticed was with hovering over an ability, the effect on the character flickered a lot, and made it tough to see what it did.
It has been a while since I really sat down and played, I really like the addition of the quizzes. It motivates me to read the flavor texts of things, which helps me have a better experience, and I wouldn't normally do that.
The hunting for a piece of soul for a character mini-game seem like it doesn't fit the rest of the game. There is no particular challenge or risk in choosing that mini-game. I think adding a timer would get it to be too stressful in an otherwise turn-based game, I'd rather it be similar to a tough choice, like have 3 options of character's soul shards, and pick -1 health, -2 health, or -3 health or something to make the more valuable ones, or the ones close to being complete be more risky to get.
I haven't explored much with the expanding the home base, but that looks good, and simple enough
I would love a little blurb written about each character, that might hint at their background, or the best ways to use them. Obviously some characters have specific roles in the party, and just starting out, I would love some hints or general advice about that.
Thanks so much for playing Doug!
"The only bug I noticed was with hovering over an ability, the effect on the character flickered a lot, and made it tough to see what it did."
I've heard of this bug report on rare occassion (3 people total so far I think), and I'm no sure if it's device specific or not. Has this flicker been present before or is this a new experience for you? (I've yet to reproduce this on my end, so trying to track down why this happens)
"I really like the addition of the quizzes. It motivates me to read the flavor texts of things, which helps me have a better experience"
Glad you like it. Perhaps we can push the lore further in this way.
"The hunting for a piece of soul for a character mini-game seem like it doesn't fit the rest of the game."
For the most part it doesn't, and this is where the battle between novelty and relation to the rest of the game lies. Ideally I'd like a player to enter the Outerworld and consistently have a full page of options with many they didn't see the last time. I find it difficult to reach this goal if I stay too similarto the main gameplay modes. So the question is would you rather have a smaller set of highly related options, or a smaller set of highly related options mixed in with other less-related options (thinking face).
"There is no particular challenge or risk in choosing that mini-game. "
Indeed, I also considered the timer, but as you said the pressure/anxiety that might create might not be worth it. I also considered having the object move around a bit, or be mixed in with decoys or objects not realted to the soul fragment. Any thoughts on how we can keep this game mode, but make it more challenging without being too stressful?
"I'd rather it be similar to a tough choice, like have 3 options of character's soul shards, and pick -1 health, -2 health, or -3 health"
That's an idea, but I think that could just become an encounter at that point (Which is fine, however the goal right now is building up Outerworld options, so if you have any ideas I'm all ears).
"I haven't explored much with the expanding the home base, but that looks good, and simple enough"
The goal there is to allow a bit of a sandbox for the player, I do need to add some quality of life features here in terms of tile-breaking multiple tiles at once though.
"I would love a little blurb written about each character, that might hint at their background, or the best ways to use them."
Haha, yeah, most of the descriptions of the souls are more lore-ish than battle-specific, the quickest way to assess that is to just skim through the effects they have on their skills and ignore the damage outputs. I could try to generate an algorith that summarizes their role based on the accumulation of all of their effects though. (I assume this would be most useful when recruiting at the Soul Creator?)
"The only bug I noticed was with hovering over an ability, the effect on the character flickered a lot, and made it tough to see what it did."
I've heard of this bug report on rare occassion (3 people total so far I think), and I'm no sure if it's device specific or not. Has this flicker been present before or is this a new experience for you? (I've yet to reproduce this on my end, so trying to track down why this happens)
*****
I get this too. I keep forgetting to mention it. For me, it happens when enemies have that square above their head with a picture to represent their skill. I hover over the picture and the shown effect jumps from character to character. I can figure it out, but it takes a bit of patience rather than just a glance.
Thanks for letting me know.
My main difficulty with this bug is that I don't recall ever being able to produce it on my end. So, solving it will be tricky.
Jumping from character to character seems a bit different though, as that suggests the target is continually switching. While in the cases I've seen they are usually on the same targets but flashing.
I wonder if it has to do with continuing updating the target. (Thinking face)
In either case, the mystery is why it would be device/player specific.
I am using a Windows 10 PC that was not-very-good when I bought it 10 years ago.
Awful graphics card. I can just about play GTA V if I put all the settings down to minimum and even then it crashes now and then. This is how I found my way to itch - a bunch of games that actually work on my crappy computer!
Not sure what other specs you'd need to know.
Ahh, good point, my main PC I use for game dev is quite high-end.
I'll need to test this on a lower-spec device and see if I can reproduce the issue.
What GPU do you have?
Ended up adding a slight challenge to fragment hunting in the most recent update (0.0.0.84.7).
Hopefully that helps a bit.
If you have any ideas to make it better let me know.
Overall, great fixes. Especially with the level scaling. But I'm not sure about a few changes.
1. Effects no longer stack: The stacking was not the issue. The issue was that every time it stacked there was a new icon. That becomes cluttered very quickly.
- One effect, one Icon, stack up turns until a limit, or infinitely.
2. The skills tree changes: I found this game a few days ago and really loved the way I could really customize each randomly selected character to fit each specific role in the team using the skill tree. But now, after just a few days playing, it's been uprooted. Everything is now up to chance. It sucks to keep getting damage skills when you really need a tanky build on a specific character for that specific run.
- This was also an issue of clutter, not really a mechanics issue. Having the skills pop up after you made a choice instead of having them all visible would have helped mitigate the clutter that was the old skill page.
- I suggest having players have a choice between two skill options from each category instead of a choice of whatever the game randomly thinks should be on that specific character.
Quality of life changes/bug fixes I'd like to see:
- An actual Title Screen.
- Save slots.
- Clothing style options.
-(Not sure if it was a feature or a bug) Skills not saving / resetting every time I close and continue the game.
- A Mobile version of the game. (I know it's not likely, but some mechanics just scream "Mobile game.")
I will give this new version a try and will comment again after sinking a few hours into it.
Thank you for this great game btw! Keep up the great work.
Thank you for the feedback Kamouri!
- One effect, one Icon, stack up turns until a limit, or infinitely.
The tricky issue here is that even for the same effect you can sometimes get different values, for example, attack buff that grants +20% Attack vs. +40% Attack.
- The skills tree changes: I found this game a few days ago and really loved the way I could really customize each randomly selected character to fit each specific role in the team using the skill tree. But now, after just a few days playing, it's been uprooted. Everything is now up to chance. It sucks to keep getting damage skills when you really need a tanky build on a specific character for that specific run.
I did foresee this as a potential issue for some players, ultimately what I've noticed in the long run is the there were some nodes on the previous skill tree that were just so good even when they were reduced to miniscule values they were picked most of the time regardless of the character: (eg. On turn start - Heal)
The skill trees are set up to synergize with the effects of the character as well as their element (Fire characters will have more attack based effects for example).
I was also considering having a reroll mechanism at each row of the skill tree so you could reroll nodes using a currency you collect over time, thoughts?
- An actual Title Screen.
^^, fair enough, I've been holding off on naming the game so this hasn't been as much of a priority for me, but I'll start brainstorming.
- Save slots.
Good point, this was going to be further down the road in development but I'll start mapping it out.
- Clothing style options.
In terms of customizing your avatar?
If so I plan to extend this later on, with an included way to customize the avatar even after you first set them. But for clarity, I assume you mean different hat types, different robe types, etc?
-(Not sure if it was a feature or a bug) Skills not saving / resetting every time I close and continue the game.
Hmm, that does sound like a bug, do you recall if you are quitting while in the battle layout? That's the main case where it wouldn't save your changes. I'll investigate.
- A Mobile version of the game. (I know it's not likely, but some mechanics just scream "Mobile game.")
I'll consider it if the desktop version goes well.
I will give this new version a try and will comment again after sinking a few hours into it.
Awesome, thanks Kamouri!