The Chained Beasts public playtest has come to a close. As the roar of the crowd dies down, we want to thank each and every gladiator for taking the time to participate in the Chained Beasts public playtest on Steam. We had just under 10,000 gladiators stepping into the arena throughout the one week playtest, which is far more than we imagined seeing!
We want to thank everyone who took the time to leave us feedback through our survey, Discord, and the playtest Steam discussion forum. We are taking that feedback into account and wanted to give you a sneak peek at just two of the many changes we are working on, and what's next for Chained Beasts. That news in brief:
Previously, every player started with a shield, and you can use them to block indefinitely - as long as you had enough stamina. Blocking a hit slightly reduced your stamina, and continuing to hold your shield up reduced the rate at which your stamina recharged.
We have changed this so that now, you do not start with a shield, and shields are instead items you pick up. There is no longer any stamina cost to blocking, and each attack you block will briefly stun the enemy that hit your shield. However, each hit your shield takes will reduce its durability, until eventually, the shield will break. You can pick up a replacement shield from any enemy you kill in the arena who carries one.
We made this change as we would like shields to feel overall less punishing to use from a stamina perspective, but still act as a resource you need to manage. You will need to be mindful of your shield’s durability during combat, but the extra bonus that comes from briefly stunning an enemy by blocking their attack allows you an opportunity to follow up with your own attack that previously didn’t exist. And to make combat feel a little more fluid, you will now be able to cancel out of attacks by blocking, instead of needing to wait for the entire attack animation to finish.
Something else we’ve changed is the way the Trainer levels you up in between battles. In the playtest, the trainer would automatically level you up each time you visited him, and give you the choice between a few different perks.
This will still be the case on the lowest Pleb difficulty. But beyond that, it won’t be so easy you’ll need to break a sweat! Above that difficulty, visiting the Trainer means you will actually need to decide how much you are going to train, in pursuit of that level up. You do this by opting to do a randomly decided number of reps - between one and three each time you opt in. Each rep you do will gradually fill up the experience bar - as will any reps from other players, too! You are all working together to fill up that bar, and when it is full, all of you will level up.
However, each rep you do will also increase the amount of pain you are experiencing individually. If you do too many reps, you will receive a new injury - like a broken toe that hampers your movement, or a dislocated shoulder that affects how well you throw, or a punctured lung that makes you run out of breath.
Just like a real workout, you’ll want to push yourself to do as many reps as you can, without going too far into injury territory. But don’t slack off, or no-one will level up! Perhaps you’re all so close to levelling up, and one player decides to take one for the team and injure themselves by doing the last reps needed to ensure everyone gets to pick a new perk. Much like drinking potions from the Healer, we want decisions in Chained Beasts to always have pros and cons that you need to weigh up, and this is just one new avenue for us to achieve that goal.
We are thrilled to announce that Chained Beasts will be playable at South By Southwest Sydney, on Friday October 17, and Saturday October 18. If you’re nearby, come and get your hands on Chained Beasts and the many other quality indie games we’ll be exhibiting alongside. Plus, Chained Beasts will be played live on-stage by local content creators on Saturday October 18!
Didn’t check out the Chained Beasts playtest in time? Check out this great playthrough from YouTuber GohJoe to see what you missed out on:
But despair not! We are thrilled to announce that there will be another opportunity for you to get your hands on the game before release, as a Chained Beasts demo will be available this November, complete with an extra new difficulty level to unlock and challenge yourself with.