It’s all in the title. The Slormancer was released in Early Access on April 6th, 2021 (five years ago!), and we decided from that point on to publish a Slormite Chronicles every month, on the 6th.
Which means we’re now celebrating the 60th (!!!) Slormite Chronicles. That’s no small milestone.
If you want to see what the very first Slormite Chronicles looked like, you can check it out here!
We had just launched the game in Early Access, and our emotions were all over the place, thrilled to have reached this milestone, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of feedback and reviews, and slightly desperate about how much work still lay ahead.
At the time, the game only had a single Act, two environments, around ten enemies, a hard cap at level 40, a single endgame mode, and about thirty Slorm Reapers. We were still quite far from the final form of the game.
And there was also a colossal number of technical issues. Re-reading that first Chronicles, I realized we were announcing our migration from GameMaker Studio 1 to 2, a transition that took me nearly two months. Not exactly ideal right after release.
Since then, we’ve never missed a 6th of the month.
Some Chronicles have been a bit light on content depending on what we were working on, but I’ve learned the hard way that trying to fill an emptier Chronicles with promises and hype is never a good idea. Sometimes, not much happens and that’s okay. But that is not the case this month.
Since the 1.0 release and the follow-up patches to fix the many remaining bugs, we struggled quite a bit to find the motivation needed to move forward with a proper DLC.
After a setback with the Roguelike mode, which turned out to be underwhelming, not really what players expected, and ultimately something we decided to abandon, we shifted our focus to the game’s fourth class: The Whimsical Witch.
This meant starting over from scratch on a massive undertaking. We agreed to take our time, work at our own pace, and explore other projects on the side.
The problem is: creating a class is a huge task. And when you move slowly on something that big, it often feels like you’re not progressing at all. That makes it very hard to stay motivated, because instead of feeling closer to the finish line… it feels like you’re standing still while still not seeing the end.
About ten days ago, we decided to go all-in, so to speak. We paused everything else and focused entirely on finishing this fourth class, pushing as hard and as fast as possible to climb that mountain.
And honestly, it feels great. We haven’t produced this many assets and skills in such a short time in a long while, and seeing real progress again has been a huge motivation boost.
So… When Is It Coming?
To keep it simple: I estimate we’ll finish the development phase of the class within about two weeks (woohoo!). After that, we’ll need to integrate and polish all the assets so everything feels great, followed by a solid round of debugging and balancing. Some effects I coded looked great on paper but turned out to be way too strong, while others are… well, completely useless. Classic Slormancer.
Once that’s done, we’ll move into an experimental version to iron out the remaining major issues and continue working on the rest of the upcoming update’s content. As always: no release date until we’re confident about our window. But we’re definitely getting close to something.
Here are a few screenshots of the Whimsical Witch’s abilities:
The famous Spectral Companion, now with proper assets!
Scythe Strike in action.
We talked about the Life and Death mechanic in a previous Chronicles: it’s somewhat similar to the Huntress’ Mood system, where you balance effects depending on the bonuses you want.
Here, Scythe Strike can be either a Life spell (green) or a Death spell (purple), which changes the bonuses it grants.
Scythe Flurry
A skill that launches a projectile with numerous upgrades that can drastically alter its behavior, from something akin to a hammerdin to an incredibly slow yet devastating projectile.
Siphon Soul
The Whimsical Witch can use Soul Stones to transform her Life spells into minions. To do so, she must gather Soul Stones dropped through various abilities.
The core skill here is Siphon Soul: a channeled single-target spell (initially) that guarantees Soul Stone generation. Upgrades allow it to chain between enemies, target your own minions to boost their damage, or scale with the number of Soul Stones you have, classic stuff.
The skill also scales with the Mana spent since the start of the channel, and includes an upgrade that converts its Mana cost into a percentage of Max Mana instead of a flat cost, making large Mana pools extremely effective.
And last but not least (and a first for a class skill): an upgrade that turns Siphon Soul into a toggleable aura, for those who don’t like clicking.
At the same time, a publisher is handling the console port, which is expected toward the end of the year.
Confirmed platforms include PS5, Xbox Series, and both Switch 1 and 2.
We’ve also started receiving prototype box art for a physical edition, which is incredibly exciting for us!
We’ll also be leveraging the improvements made for the console port to provide a better experience on the Steam Deck.
That’s it for today!
See you for the sixty-first.
Cheers!