Hey all!
Alex here with a little sneak peek into what we’ve been working on
The third major update of Stories from the Outbreak is planned for the end of October. It’s bringing some new content and improvements to various gameplay systems.
Although the original plan for the update was to bring modding support to the game, we’ve decided to postpone this indefinitely and focus on more pressing matters for now. Instead, allow me to introduce you to the main focus of this update - the changes we’re making to in-run progression.
The systems we had in place - the current use of inspiration points and ability upgrades - were designed a very long time ago (before we even knew this game was going to be a roguelike!), so there were a few problems that we wanted to address for quite some time now. The main issues with progression were as follows:
- Players frequently only use 4 of their characters, leaving the rest as idle. The game doesn’t sufficiently encourage swapping out the team more often.
- There needs to be plenty of agency and options for players to customise their team. At the same time, we must avoid players always picking the same “favourite” build.
- More emphasis on long-term strategy, not just the short-term tactics of a single battle.
- We want the characters to progress a bit more during a run, so there’s a larger gap between where you start and where you end up with them.
- Characters found later in a run should keep up with the characters the player starts out with.
Some players have also reported a few of these issues. I’m happy to announce that these are being addressed in the upcoming update!
First, inspiration points now serve as the backbone of progression, a currency of sorts to be spent either on stat points (as before), or on ability upgrades, which no longer drop as rewards from combat. They’re also much more common than before, giving the player plenty of options for how they wish to improve characters.
Second, we’ve added a new role: Training. Characters that remain in training for long enough will start finding more inspiration for the remaining run.
Because inspiration is now so essential to progression, this means players are strongly encouraged to put their favourite characters in training whenever possible. Even if you have characters that normally collect dust in the idle bench, they’ll be seeing plenty of action now while Anna is busy doing pushups.
To make matters even messier - in the second half of the game, players now have free choice whether they want to go to character nodes. They’re sprinkled in the map randomly just as any other node. Do you take more characters, allowing for more training opportunities and backup in case a late-game enemy wipes your team? Or do you stick with a small and reliable team that is easier to feed?
Lastly, new characters you meet along the way start with some inspiration points, depending on how many inspiration points your current characters have found. They’ll be just as viable to use in combat as the units you started with.
Along with that, we’re bringing enemies, events, some additional content and gameplay improvements. I’ll leave some of it as a surprise. But who am I kidding, I simply can’t resist another screenshot.
May your strikes be nimble,
Alex and the rest of the Coldwild Games team