Hello everyone!
A few weeks ago I announced the Hero Class system and said it would take time. Since then, a lot of people have asked how it's progressing, so I thought I'd pull back the curtain a little and show you what "working on Hero Classes" has actually meant.
Along the way, another major design decision has emerged—one that I think will change Portalborn just as much as the Hero Classes themselves.
Hero Classes
The first piece of good news is that all ten Hero Classes are now fully designed.
Not rough concepts or placeholders—complete designs. Every base class now has a Hero Class with its own identity, its own core mechanic, and a distinct way of approaching combat.
The Warlord builds Rage by trading blows before unleashing devastating charges. The Assassin has no resource bar at all, instead manipulating enemy attention and striking when the opportunity presents itself. The Archmage converts Mana into a protective barrier that becomes another resource to manage, while the Oracle builds Faith and creates divine altars that reshape the battlefield.
Other classes push in completely different directions. The Templar heals through the damage it deals. The Soulbinder commands a small number of persistent summons. The Pathfinder grows stronger through exploration and turns terrain into a weapon. The Maestro composes songs between battles before performing them in combat. The Archdruid overwhelms enemies with short-lived swarms, while the Grand Alchemist brews potions that fundamentally change how each encounter is fought.
One design decision I'm especially happy with is that several Hero Classes intentionally share resources. Archmage and Archdruid both use Mana, while Oracle and Templar both use Faith. That means multiclassing isn't simply bolting two unrelated toolkits together—it creates genuine interactions between classes built around shared mechanics.
There's also one small detail I wanted to mention because it made me smile.
One of the Templar's signature abilities was named by a player. Mr. A, who wishes to remain anonymous, suggested 誓言奔袭 — Oathbound Charge, and it was simply better than the name I'd come up with. It's now officially part of the design.
The work underneath
Designing classes is actually the easy part.
Most of the time has been spent building the systems that make those classes possible.
One of those systems is a complete rework of status effects. Every effect now exists as its own object, carrying its own name, source, strength and duration. Multiple effects can exist on an enemy at the same time, and examining that enemy tells you exactly what's affecting it—in your chosen language.
That may sound like a small quality-of-life improvement, but it's actually one of those foundational systems that everything else depends on.
Combat itself has also changed significantly behind the scenes. It now supports multiple independent actors in a single round. Summons, companions and future Hero abilities can all participate together while maintaining their own identity and lifespan. Some disappear after only a few turns, while others can survive between battles and continue travelling with you.
Just as importantly, I wanted to make sure combat stayed readable. If three identical summons attack the same target, Portalborn produces one clean combat line instead of three nearly identical ones. Different actions remain separate.
The fastest way to ruin a text RPG is to bury the line you actually needed underneath nine that all say almost the same thing.
The next major piece currently being built on top of all this is true multi-enemy combat. Everything above was designed with that goal in mind, so supporting multiple enemies isn't changing direction—it's simply the next logical step.
A new direction for portals
Hero Classes aren't the only thing changing.
The other major decision I've made is to move away from fully procedural portal layouts.
Procedural generation gave every run a different map, and there are certainly advantages to that. But after living with the system for a while, I also started seeing its weaknesses. It produced corridors that went nowhere, rooms that existed simply because the algorithm happened to place them there, and places that never became memorable because they were different every single visit.
Going forward, portal geography will become handcrafted.
The goal isn't to make portals smaller—it is quite the opposite. I want them to become substantially larger, built as real places instead of random collections of rooms. Districts should have their own identity. Shortcuts should be worth discovering. Secrets should be worth remembering. Every room should feel like it exists for a reason.
What changes every time you enter won't be the map itself. It'll be everything living inside it: the quests, bosses, monsters, encounters and treasure.
What stays is the ground beneath your feet.
Instead of learning a new map every visit, you'll start learning a place.
You'll remember that the collapsed bridge lies north of the cathedral, that there's a quicker route through the kitchens, or that something valuable is hidden beneath the flooded undercroft. Even though you know the world, you'll never quite know what you'll find there this time.
This also opens the door to ideas the old system simply couldn't support. I'm exploring things like paths that only become available because of the current story—a cult unbarring a sealed passage, or floodwaters receding to reveal a new route. Those moments only feel meaningful if you already know the place well enough to notice that it has changed.
Protecting the game you already have
One thing I've been extremely careful about throughout all of this is making sure Hero Classes don't come at the cost of stability.
Portalborn now has 241 automated tests that run before every release, including an entire suite dedicated to proving that the original game continues behaving exactly as it did before Hero Class development began.
Every major system described above has been built while verifying that existing combat output remains character-for-character identical.
Heroes are being built alongside the game you're already playing—not on top of it.
That approach takes longer, but I believe it's the right way to build an Early Access game.
Looking ahead
I also wanted to share one piece of personal news.
Starting next week, I'll officially be moving to a part-time schedule at my other job. That's something I've been working toward for quite a while, and it means I'll finally be able to dedicate much more of each week to Portalborn.
It doesn't make the work any smaller, and it doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to rush features out the door. If anything, it gives me the time to build these systems the way I've always wanted to—with the level of care they deserve instead of constantly racing the clock.
That gives me a great deal of hope for where Portalborn is heading over the coming months.
There's still an enormous amount to do. Writing ten Hero Classes, balancing them, building handcrafted realms worth exploring, and filling those worlds with stories, encounters and secrets is where the real work lies. Those are the slow parts, but they're also the parts that will ultimately define what Portalborn becomes.
So there still isn't a release date.
It'll be ready when it feels worthy of replacing the combat and exploration you've been playing—not simply because the calendar says it's time.
Thank you
Thank you to everyone who's reported bugs, suggested mechanics, helped improve the Chinese localization, or simply continued sharing your thoughts about the game.
Portalborn genuinely wouldn't be taking this shape without all of you.