Greetings, Raid Leaders!
The demo hasn't been out for long - it released a month ago here on Steam and about 4 months ago on Itch. Through all of this game's public existence, this update is the biggest one yet. The game has received a ton of improvements based on your feedback, and I am proud to present all the good stuff to you today!
Elemental Reactions
Core gameplay of Crab Raid Tactics has finally received its biggest missing piece - Elemental Reactions become available with this update! If you missed the previous post about it - Reactions are triggered when enemies are attacked with abilities Attuned to different Elements. This adds even more depth to the choise of upgrades, providing another way to optimize your team composition
This system would not be complete without a Spirit attribute for crabs, that affects the power of caused reactions. It also provides some alternative to Attack stat, effectively adding another way to increase crab's damage output in the mid and late game.
Permanent Progression
The core loop of a roguelite game could not be complete without Permanent Upgrades - something to look forward to after each run. This upgrade introduces the basic progression system! It does not have a lot of content (and any further content will most probably not be included in the Demo), but it does provide ways of improving your Raid's performance in different ways.
You won't be, however, able to use all the possible buffs at the same time - each upgrade is focused around a certain aspect of the game and provides two different options of improving it.
This also helps to improve the experience for players who see the game for the first time, locking some of the complexities behind the progression. For example, Healing Totem, that used to be available right from the beginning, has been changed to be an unlockable random event.
Complete Rebalance of the whole game
The encounter system has been reworked completely. The objectives haven't changed - the goal is still to eliminate all attackers or survive their onslaught, but the way it's done has been significantly improved.
- First of all, the way monsters are selected for the encounter has been changed. Each monster squad that is spawned now has a different enemy composition, allowing for more variety and fun. There is a whole new system in place to ensure the fights are being challenging and fair.
- The amount of monsteres and difficulty of the encounters have been incresed significantly! I was afraid of scaring off new players with difficult gameplay at first, but the game is supposed to be about strategy and tactical decisions. Even the first level is now quite difficult and requires careful planning to complete. And then again, who does not like mowing through hordes of enemies that burst into explosions of shiny trinkets?
- Captain Slimebeard, the one and only boss implemented so far, has moved to an encounter #13, and beating him does not end the game. Instead, after this fight all following encounters become significantly harder, giving you an opportunity to put your squad to the ultimate test!
UX Improvements
Even though there is very little content implemented to this moment, Crab Raid Tactics is a pretty compex game at its core. It features a ton of mechanics that are far from obvious - even recently added Elemental Reactions need proper explaination.
The will be a proper tutorial one day, but for now, there is a Codex that contains a lot of useful information on the existing features.
Apart from that, there are also small, but still very significant improvements - like the hotkey indication near Crabs' healthbars, to make controlling them even easier in the middle of the fight.
Sounds and Music
The gameplay music is coming to the world of Crab Raid Tactics! Thanks to amazing Phyrnna, the game now features an original music track! While it is not yet finalized and there is still a lot left to do, this is a welcome and long-awaited addition many playtesters mentioned before.
This update also introduces a couple of ambient tracks for all locations (brought to you by Pixabay), and a number of missing SFX have been added for collecting loot pieces and rewards.
What's next
This update brings the Demo much closer to what it is intended to be. A lot of systems are in place now, and there is (almost) enough content to experience what the game is about
That being said, there's still a number of improvements that need to happen before this demo could be considered complete - it requires balancing, improvements to game flow and UI screens (especially Raid Over UI). I have plans to do some UX improvements and implement a proper tutorial with some narrative elements to it.
There are also several missing systems of the core gameplay - the biggest one left being Shell Abilities. They are meant as conditional abilities that trigger passively when something happens (picking up Loot or defeating an enemy), or manually triggerable raid-wide buffs with a limited amount of uses per encounter.
The content of the demo is unlikely to change significantly from now on - it will receive most of the freshly-implemented systems with minimal content as an example, but once those things are in place, the main focus would be on polishing, optimizing and producing enough content for an Early Access release, that will have a price tag on it.
As always - I'll be happy to see you on Crab Raid Tactics Discord, hear your honest thoughts and awesome ideas!
GL;HF! Until the next time!
Stefan, Your Dungeon Master