After our last Slormite Chronicles, which celebrated 5 years since the Early Access release, and at the same time, 5 years of Slormite Chronicles, it’s now time to celebrate the first anniversary of the game’s 1.0 release, following four years in Early Access.
Give or take a month, we spent almost exactly four years in Early Access, at least twice as long as we initially expected.
Unlike those Early Access years, where we pushed out as many updates as possible without really taking the time to enjoy things, this past year has been completely different. We actually got to enjoy the release, watching streams, videos, and even players competing for records. All in all, a pretty great year for us.
Story Time : A lot of things didn’t go as originally planned, and one of them is that the game wasn’t even supposed to go through an Early Access phase at all.
If you’ve been following development for a long time, you’ve probably seen the sheer number of reworks that happened even before Early Access. At one point, we reworked almost everything we had done: Skills, Slorm Reapers, the Ancestral Legacy etc... because the game kept growing in scope, and we felt it lacked depth and richness in several areas. That took time, and forced us to make some tough decisions.
(Before/after of a pre–Early Access rework of the Ancestral Legacy.)
At some point, the question of the story also came up. Initially, we had planned a much simpler concept centered purely around Expeditions (basically the system currently in the game menu, and nothing more).
But, just like everything else, the project kept growing, and we wanted to deliver a more complete experience. And to make a story work, we realized we would need to go through Early Access.
Story has never been the game’s strongest point, nor its core focus, but I do think it helped the game appeal to a wider audience. Adding a more developed narrative gave the game a lot of personality, despite its flaws.
That said, if we had stuck with a game purely centered around endgame Expeditions, a sort of hybrid between hack’n’slash and roguelite, we probably wouldn’t have needed Early Access at all, and the game’s journey would have been very different.
In a previous Slormite Chronicles, we mentioned wanting to move toward larger expansions rather than smaller DLCs for the future of The Slormancer.
However, considering how long it’s taking to develop the Whimsical Witch, the cancellation of the Roguelike Mode we talked about late last year, and the fact that we haven’t released any major update or DLC in a year, we’re likely going to revisit that decision.
Right now, we’re considering releasing a DLC focused solely on the new class, alongside a global update that will include bug fixes and a small feature allowing you to change the color of each character’s clothes/armor, and possibly a few additional tweaks if time allows.
Just like in the previous Slormite Chronicles, it can be summed up to "we're making progress" and we may very well see the end of it eventually. ːsteamhappyː
Here’s where we are: all Skills are now functionally complete on the development side.
What remains is a significant amount of asset work, long and repetitive tasks: all the icons, the Slorm Reapers in their Scythe versions, as well as some animations and visual effects for the last skills.
Once that’s done, we’ll need to fine-tune and balance everything. Then we’ll move into a closed beta with our trusty testers to fix as many bugs and balance issues as possible. At the same time, we’ll need to send the class for localization into all supported languages.
Since this class will be released as a DLC, we’ll also need to prepare the store page, a trailer, screenshots, a description, and translate all of that as well. Nothing particularly complex, nothing we haven’t done before, but altogether, it adds up to quite a lot.
Here comes a few New Skill Teasers:
Spectral Toad Explosion :
A skill that lets you throw a spectral toad that deals damage as it bounces, before eventually exploding after a few jumps.
It can be upgraded to unleash swarms of toads, creating explosions everywhere. Like most Witch abilities involving creatures, the toad can also be turned into a minion using the Soul Stone system (see previous Chronicles).
Flask of Last Breath :
This skill throws a vial that creates a poison pool on the ground, damaging enemies standing in it.
The visual inspiration here comes from how Zerg creep spreads in StarCraft. You’ll be able to expand the pool in multiple ways. With certain upgrades, standing in the pool grants you bonuses, and it becomes stronger as it grows larger.
Spectral Ancester :
This skill summons an ancestor who fights in melee but remains stationary within a targeted area.
We wanted to create a hybrid between several mechanics: by default, it acts as an AoE Melee Totem (with its range depending on the AoE size). With upgrades, it can become a moving projectile, start firing projectiles itself and, like other Witch abilities, be turned into a Minion.
I’m still missing some screenshots for the latest effects since a few assets aren’t ready yet, but they’ll come soon. Still no release date, as you can see there’s quite a bit left to do, but we’re making progress!
In the comments of the last Slormite Chronicles, we noticed a few people mentioning the lack of content in these posts, saying that we tend to talk a lot without really saying anything, and that things don’t seem to be moving forward. In a way, I completely understand that.
I wanted to address it here, because others might feel the same way. It’s true, we’re progressing more slowly than we did during Early Access. Working on the same game for such a long time inevitably brings a certain fatigue, so we’re adjusting our pace to avoid burning out completely.
As for the Slormite Chronicles, I think we’ve found a format that works and helps keep the entire community informed about our progress, even when there isn’t much (or any) to report. We could just as well have stopped posting Chronicles over the past six months, and it wouldn’t have made much difference for us. But I’m fairly certain the community prefers knowing what’s going on rather than being left in the dark, speculating and growing frustrated.
I understand that it can be frustrating to feel like nothing is moving forward, but this is in no way a sign of disrespect on our part, as I’ve seen suggested. Between saying nothing at all and being transparent month after month about the situation, we made a choice. It may not please everyone, and that’s fair, but it’s the approach we’ve decided to take.
That’s it for today!
Cheers!