Hello!
It’s been an overwhelming week in a lot of ways after launching LONE RUIN this week, so thank you all for your kind words, support, and feedback so far. The reach my little twin-stick roguelike has made has really taken us by surprise – we never really expected so many people from all over the world to play.
It’s been super fun to watch LONE RUIN be played on Twitch and have so many people engaged with the game on Steam and social media. Speaking honestly and transparently, some of you love it (thank you!) and some of you didn’t. While I’m keen to not completely change the core of LONE RUIN and what it’s about, I’m working hard alongside Super Rare Originals to make improvements, fixes, and increase replayability.
I’m the only developer, artist and designer on this project, and I’m going to be careful not to overpromise, but we have some ideas how to maybe make some of you happier.
In fact, in the days since launch, I’ve already been working like crazy on 2 patches which are now live on Steam. You can see a changelog list at the bottom of this post to see everything updated so far. They’re mostly small changes to begin improving games longevity and bug fixes. Here’s what I’m working on for the near future:
Increasing replayability
The main complaint is “lack of content” and “lack of encouragement” to keep going after the end boss is dead or you cleared Survival Mode. We should have known, but it turns out that a lot of you aren’t as into leaderboards as we are.
I don’t have any real intent to change the core of the game and add a meta-progression system that locks spells or perks from you behind the grind. There are other great games that do that much better than what can be retrofitted onto LONE RUIN.
BUT there are other ways to give you in-game encouragement to keep going.
The first of which is to look over how the builds in the game works and are presented.
I don’t think I have been successful in conveying the depth and breadth that is already there. It could be presented better. Someone suggested something like an encyclopedia. Maybe we can even make a little checklist to ensure you find them all.
On top of that we have a few spells, perks and synergies in the making. Stay tuned.
The other big thing I am currently prototyping is a kind of Ascension system that unlocks harder and harder runs, with the goal of requiring you to fine-tune your build to get to the end, unlocking the next level.
We hope this works out great and might not be too far out. Let us know if this is something you’d be interested in!
We are also considering adding the second and third area of the game to Survival Mode. Maybe as Unlocks?
Just for extra clarity, these ideas could become something different if I discover something works better during development and tests over the next few weeks. Please don’t buy LONE RUIN expecting there will 100% be an Ascension feature, for example! 😂
What Else?
Difficulty mode changes
I’ve made some changes to the difficulty in the latest update, with plans to change this further in the coming weeks ahead.
Survival Mode competition
You can win from a prize pool of $1000 in a Survival Mode score competition right now, being run by Super Rare Originals. For more information on how to enter, read here.
Changelog – all of these fixes + more are available in today’s latest update:
✔️ Intro now hides after first skip
✔️ Level up slightly faster in Survival Mode
✔️ Credits no longer show after a completed run (now in main menu, falsely implied the game is over lol)
✔️ Various ongoing changes to difficulty (Easy mode is removed + Medium is now “Normal” mode)
✔️ Enemies no longer shoot across height differences
✔️ Added destructible boxes with a small chance to drop a heart or currency
✔️ Shop has been moved one room forward so you have more chance to afford things (+ appears before bosses)
✔️ Lower chance of treasure (+ removed from first few rooms and when full)
✔️ Higher chance of hitting a hard room
✔️ Hard room reduced to 2 reward limit (for balance)
✔️ Added an additional room to each section
✔️ Boomerang changes (now returns and spreads more, so no more boss cheese! 😉)
✔️ Lower chance of Blessing reward when slots are full (+ only get more slots when full)
✔️ Added chance to get a spell reward in any room (+ removed health reward if you enter at max health)
✔️ Reduced HP of the Spitter enemy
✔️ Reduced some of the windup on the Nova spell
✔️ Enemies are now slightly visible behind geometry
✔️ Root Potion heals up to 4 hearts when standing still
✔️ Reduced trippy/hazy side effects on hit/low health
✔️ Hard enemy health scaling altered (2.0 -> 1.75x for scale)
✔️ Cursor locked when game is not paused
✔️ Fixed an issue with getting stuck under the floor, which a lot of players experienced (sorry).
✔️ Fixed Blizzard placement issue
✔️ Fixed issue with the Fireball spell that made it hit the ground when used with Swollen Pride
✔️ Fixed Syringe haste multiplier display issue
✔️ Fixed issue with Scythe Nimble fingers tooltip
✔️ Fixed issue with frozen, unkillable worms
✔️ Fixed issue with game crash towards the end of a run when using Black Hole or other spells
Thanks so much for all your feedback and support, please keep it coming! LONE RUIN is the result of blood, sweat and tears, most of which I livestreamed over Twitch, so I’m working as hard as I can to improve the game! 👍
🙋♂️ Hannes (Cuddle Monster Games)