Hi there,
It’s already well past the 1st half of the year by now, time hasn’t exactly been slowing down has it?
For us at Drop Rate, the past month has been in large part dedicated to consolidating and upgrading the features we’ve last implemented (gear, talent tree, memories and instability…check them out in Devblog #6 - Character progression & colorful minds).
Another large chunk of our time has been (and still is) spent turning our initial prototype biome, the Dead slums, into a more immersive, thematically fit biome - the Desolate nightmares.
The Desolate nightmares are inhabited by a mix of your patient’s forsaken ideas, repressed thoughts, and resentment. All of them manifested as rather unsympathetic abominations, of course.
Here are some of the transformations!
The Bone fly The Wretch
“Thoughts long abandoned, forgotten. Not out of shame or growth, merely for lack of relevance.”
These guys can now jump right next to you, and leave carcasses on death that can either poison you or strengthen other enemies on contact.
The Nutcracker Lesser strife
“Dreams given up, battles that should have been fought. They've known no closure, no peace, defending causes long forgotten.”
Their core behavior hasn’t changed much: they shoot you from a distance. It just happens to be an even longer distance now.
The Scavenger behemoth The Forsaken ego
“Though the self feels continuous across time, you weren't always who you are today. You used to be another person, and another even before that, each with their own perspective, hopes and dreams. These other selves came and went, you matured and they disappeared. Or did they?”
Aside from larger area of effect for most of their skills, these guys can now create a flesh bond with an ally, taking most of the incoming damage in their stead. They also leave large, movement impairing carcasses on death.
Self-deceit
“Inner demons and dangerous thoughts wouldn't be as resilient if it wasn't for all the false post-rationalization. Dishonest justifications for your weaknesses are great at disguising as truth.”
These are a new “support” enemy. They can have other enemies grow, heal them, and make them Tenacious (the Tenacious status lets characters resist a death blow once).
Aggression
“There are only so many goals and dreams you can give up on before your gagged combativeness turns into something darker. Something you couldn't control. Something that could come to control you.”
Aggression is a new boss. A fast, unpredictable damage dealer who shoots down friend and foe alike.
These are just a few examples, many more have been and are being reworked, alongside the environment and level design that’s also getting a full makeover. We'll showcase more of the environment part in the next devblog!
Another one of this rework's goals was to make core combat gameplay overall more interesting, and to that end we chose to make enemy behavior more advanced, and generally more difficult to deal with.
To make that work, we’re making a few adjustments, including:
- Looted items and obtained experience are now kept on failure. Patient rewards are still lost, alongside some reputation.
- Combat rooms now hold “Intuitions”, shrine-like objects you can interact with for some awesome effects such as restoring your Action Points or putting the surrounding enemies to sleep.
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That’s it for this one!
As always, thank you for reading, and we’d love to have you on our small Discord server!
Play, laugh, stay safe ♥