Greetings Wizards,
If you haven't already, you can follow Rogue Wizards on Steam and add the game to your wishlist.
Spellbind Studios is proud to announce that we are entering into the closed beta period for Rogue Wizards. We'll be adding Kickstarter backers and Humble Bundle pre-order players into the beta bi-weekly over the next few months. When that period is over we'll look into opening the beta up for more players that sign up through the mailing list on our website. It's important for our feedback and testing that we slowly introduce players into the beta and always have a fresh set of new players checking out the game ... so if you don't get your key right away don't worry, it will come in one of the later waves.
During March we've put in a ton of effort into game balance and new monster abilities and the game is playing better than ever. Besides getting ready for the beta, having these new monster mechanics and balance have really helped make a solid demo which we have submitted to IndieCade. Let's hope we get selected for the fall show this year, wish us luck!
Phil has finished the final artwork for the opening scene at the Wayside Inn. We're really loving the dark wood and the warm vibe we get from the visuals of this mini environment.
For one of the new enemy abilities the Harpy can now cast silence on the player and their followers. When silenced the player is unable to equip or cast any spell runes and must rely on only their weapons or wands until the silence spell wears off.
The Overseer enemy also has a new ability that raises a rock wall around the player, completely blocking your movement until you destroy one of the stalagmites blocking the path. It's particularly fun to see this wall interact with the other enemies nearby, sometimes it's helpful to have a barrier between you and a monster and sometimes you want nothing more than to be able to get away quickly but instead find yourself blocked in.
Visit the Spellbind Studios development blog to see the full list of changes.
Major Changes
- New artwork for the opening Wayside Inn scene
- Harpy now has the ability to silence targets for 10 turns. Silenced targets cannot equip or cast magic spells.
- Overseer enemy now has an ability to smack the ground and raise stalagmites surrounding the target
- Yeti breath attack now freezes the player for 1 turn and yeti now has two moves per normal turn
- Disturbing now has a bite attack and a magic attack that can turn other enemies invisible
- Disturblings now have a 50% chance of starting out invisible when spawned
Minor Changes
- Follower can no longer switch weapons and attack on the same turn
- Turns are now longer skipped just by opening your inventory, however if you modify any equipped items it *will* use a turn when you return to the game field and in world text will appear on your character saying "Equipped"
- Item buy prices are now displayed in red if you can't afford to buy the item
- Quests can now be abandoned from the Quest UI off the Town Inn or Backpack UI if the quest is not for the current level and is not a main storyline quest
- Banish is now an instant skill and works on multiple targets at once within a radius
- Increased the healing amount from the regroup skill and reduced the cost
- Fixed comparision selection logic for bows and chakrams to prefer other bows and chakrams before comparing with other ranged weapons (daggers)
- New art for town intro cinematic taken from in game and character art
- Added 5 new shields to the game and replaced art on a few of the existing shields
- Bosses now teleport when they become trapped and have nowhere to move
- Increased potions in town at supply shop to 4
- Decreased potion cost
- Added healing shrines that refill in the boss rooms
- Champions and Boss quality monsters now summon one more wave of minions
- Followers now avoid traps and hazards
- Malevolence fireball now has a lower burn chance and burns for only 2 turns instead of 3
- Wandering merchants will now always appear somewhere on the next to last level in a dungeon chain (beyond the starter dungeon)
- After defeating a Guild Wizard boss, the entire player party is now healed and negative status effects are removed
- Leveling up will now also remove negative modifiers
- Healing shrines now also remove negative modifiers on your player
- Bosses and champions now become scared for less turns (down to 5 from 10) at most health threshold events
- Decreased the credit from item sales for vendor upgrade by -10%
- Force magic weapon drop in first dungeon after 10 hostile kills with follower and is a chakram or bow
- Combat affixes for fast and element immunity no longer appear on bosses until 25% through the game
- Reduced duration of Fire Giant flame from 4-6 to 2-3 turns
- Malevolence damage reduced
- Sentinal range reduced by 1
- Thiefling scared for +2 more turns to a total of 5 turns (keeping in mind they have 3 actions per 1 player turn)
- Wandering Merchant always now has at least 3 health potions
- Stalagmite spell range increased by 1
- Thieflings are no longer allowed to be champions or quest bosses for now (too deadly until tech can be added to tone their summons back)
- There is now a short cinematic animation when you return to town after completing an elemental rift where the camera zooms to the gem and the Guild Wizard sigil appears around the gem
- Slightly reduced the sizes of medium and large dungeon levels
- Reduced upgrade cost of vendors by 25%
- Skip turn visual feedback is now in world text that appears on the player
Visit the Spellbind Studios development blog to see the full list of changes.