A Patch & A Portent
Hello magical mischief makers, I come bearing the announcement of a new patch for YAPYAP; within it lies many fixes for overall stability, and small improvements to the visual presentation of the game, and a declaration on the improved vision of YAPYAP which you will experience in a few months time. As always we are very grateful for anyone who reports issues or feedback through our Discord, as they all aid us in our task of chasing gremlins out of the dusty corners of our game. We hope that everyone who continues to enjoy the world of YAPYAP has an improved experience going forward.
Our team at Maison Bap has been gazing deep into the swirling depths of our Orbs to determine the future of YAPYAP and how we can improve on the fantasy we've promised to you. The upcoming big update will add new content, new ways to progress, new visual themes to explore, deepen the systems extant in the game, and add new ones for you to master. We will deepen the moment to moment gameplay, as we are not content with the amount of agency players currently have to make meaningful gameplay decisions. We will add more open-ended activities and objectives throughout the nights, as YAPYAP will always be about the sandbox nature of the game. There will be an increase in threat and tension, tied directly to how you play the game. You will be tasked with riding the fine line between being chaotic and surviving the chaos your create. The layouts of Towers and Rooms will require much more tactical gameplay, you will be cautiously exploring, scouting and will need to discuss your silly plans before enacting them. There will be an End, a climactic resolution of your treachery, which you can continue from afterwards, but we want to incentivize everyone actually playing through the whole YAPYAP experience!
Forgive me as I speak cryptically about the specifics of all of this, but we will do our best to keep players informed while our small team develops YAPYAP over the next few months. I will try to give some insight into what we are working on:
Wands
We are expanding on the number of Wands available to players, and each new one will offer news way to cause utter Chaos, navigate your environment, pull artful ruses on unsuspecting enemies, evade dire magical consequences for your actions, or leverage new elemental aspects introduced to the game, Brrr. (Plus much more) We are ensuring there will be more ways to actually intentfully use your spells, and that each Wand serves a unique purpose during a run.
Monsters
In addition to several new enemies roaming the halls for you to encounter, we will focus on improving the overall behaviours of existing ones. We want players to be a lot more mindful of frivolous frolicking in the halls of Wizards, and so enemy behaviour will respond more clearly to the noise you make doing so. To give two examples: Tower Guards will play a much more intentful role, they will fiercely guard their stations, carefully watch their patrols and will be less exploitable by a simple flick of a windy wand. Goblins will stop being such shy and confusing creatures and will instead rove in packs; best not be found alone near them less you wish a bludgeoning bullying. The new enemies introduced will require new ways of play to take them down or pull a fast one on them.
Voice & Noise
We will add and expand on the central Voice mechanic, giving you more opportunities to use your Voice to solve magical challenges. We will bring managing your Noise Level to forefront of the experience, there exists today several systems which rely on the amount of Noise you generate, but those are opaque to the player, so enemy behaviour, environment interactions and UX will be strengthened to reflect a player's raucousness.
Interactables & Valuables
The council has spoken, and they are fed up with all these WizKids smashing their Vases. The Wizardly rooms you explore will no longer be populated by just mundane objects for you to smash, but will instead be protected by magic forces, traps and need appropriate escape plans. We want the sanctums you desecrate to really feel enchanted, and protected under watchful eyes. There will be more interactables in general, either for you to break, collect or explode, but also ones that play a mechanical role; mechanisms that control great gates, elevators and platforms within the Tower complexes.
Hub Progression
There will be more for you to unlock within the murky Hub. There will be a useful friend you can make along the way that will take up board at your Hub, a place to appeal to your master's demands, and if you dare you will be able to make dubious dealings in cursed wares. These systems will come together to offer players multiple viable paths to choose from through their journey, reinforcing unique play styles and roles. This will be all be balanced in a way that you will be able to craft custom builds for your Wiz, but can’t become a jack of all trades.
Tower Progression
Right now the progression through the game is largely orchestrated through escalating enemy behaviour, but we will also add a thematic and mechanic Tower progression through your journey. The game will be split into Acts, and through each Act you will be encountered with deeper core mechanics and opportunities for experimentation; in addition to evolving visual themes, tied into thematic mechanics and differing layouts of Towers, each Tower will be unique to the Wizardly Realm in which the Act takes place.
Contracts
Contracts will become a much more necessary aid to accumulating Chaos. There will be some changes to the system allowing players to have more agency over the contracts they are given but we will also place them more judiciously within a single Night to reward specific ways of play.
Achievements
Plainly, we will add Achievements to the game! Our small team has been hard at work on so many moving parts, some things that seem obvious can slip through the cracks. In time you will be rewarded for your wickedness with the satisfying ping of an Achievement.
Player Agency
This category focuses on three connected pillars: player movement, level design, and encounter design. Our intent is to give players meaningful options and let them solve problems using whatever tools and states they have available. Today, spells can be cast while running and jumping, and we are expanding that same control to flying and climbing. We are also testing interactive obstacles like locked doors and breakable windows to create more tactical choices. This supports a core YAPYAP fantasy: infiltrating from unexpected angles, creating openings for your team, and turning the environment into an advantage. As we keep iterating, rooms and enemy encounters are being designed to reward stealth, planning, and improvisation.
I hope this illustrated to you the exciting future we have planned for YAPYAP. The initial reception we received for the game was absolutely amazing, and we can't thank you the Players enough for showing us you are interested in the world we have created. We are sorry if it has seemed a little quiet around here, but I assure that is because our small team are all hard at work making YAPYAP the best it can be.
Stay Sneaky!
Dylan