Darkest Path · published
We've been working on another big update for the Darkest Path demo!
Our last update was mostly about helping players understand the game better. This time, we've focused on the combat itself, along with some changes to progression, rewards, and a bunch of other things you've brought up.
And honestly, the combat feels pretty different now.
This is easily the biggest change in this update.
Until now, hitting an enemy during its attack wouldn't interrupt it. There were also some bugs causing enemies to react inconsistently, sometimes playing the wrong animations or behaving in ways they shouldn't.
We've fixed those issues, and your attacks can now interrupt regular enemies!
It might not sound like a massive change on paper, but it changes a lot about how fights play out. You can be much more aggressive now, and you're no longer forced to wait for every enemy to finish attacking before fighting back.
There is one exception: Elite enemies, like the tree monster, still can't be interrupted by normal attacks. You'll have to be a bit more careful with those.
There was just one problem with all of this.
The game became way too easy.
So naturally, we added more enemies.
We've spent quite a bit of time adjusting spawn rates, enemy movement, attack ranges, and difficulty to make everything work with the new system. You'll encounter much larger groups in later levels now, but you also have a lot more control over those fights.
We don't really want to make the game easier or harder just for the sake of it. We want fights to be challenging because of the situations you're dealing with, not because the combat mechanics are getting in your way.
Two of our elemental effects have received a complete visual overhaul.
Electric
The old chain lightning was basically a line connecting enemies. It worked, but it never really looked or felt like lightning.
We've rebuilt the effect with branching lightning arcs, flashes, and new particles. It looks much more like actual electricity now, and we're much happier with how it turned out.
Holy
Holy had a different problem.
Previously, applying Holy stacks mostly turned enemies yellow. It didn't look particularly good, it made some enemies (especially bosses) harder to see, and you could barely tell how many stacks were active.
So we got rid of the yellow overlay entirely.
Holy now creates glowing runic circles beneath affected enemies. The circles change depending on the number of stacks, making them much easier to recognize without covering up the enemy sprites.
We've also fixed an issue where Earthquake wasn't applying Holy stacks correctly.
We've seen quite a few comments about the lack of progression between runs in the demo, and we agree that this needs work.
First, we've adjusted several relic unlock requirements.
Some of these requirements were originally designed with the full game in mind, which made certain relics extremely difficult, or practically impossible, to unlock with the content available in the demo.
That wasn't really fair, so we've adjusted them.
We're also changing how Corrupted Hearts work!
Completing a normal level now rewards +1 Corrupted Heart.
These Hearts are saved permanently, even if your run ends.
Defeating the demo boss still rewards +20 Corrupted Hearts.
We wanted to make sure that even if you don't reach the boss, your run still contributes something to your overall progression.
This isn't our final plan for progression, though. We have much bigger systems in mind for the full game, and we've already started working on them. For now, these changes should make progression in the demo feel a bit more rewarding.
We've also made a number of smaller changes:
Gambler tutorial: Added a short introduction explaining how the Gambler works. We noticed quite a few players had no idea what to do when they first encountered him.
Enemy behavior: Fixed several issues with enemy movement, targeting, overlapping, and inconsistent attack animations.
Skill Shop: Adjusted the second Skill Shop to give players better opportunities to complete their elemental mastery builds.
Balance: Rebalanced various enemy stats, elemental effects, and abilities.
Rewards: Updated some Mad Hunter rewards and improved how rewards are displayed.
One thing that's become pretty clear while working on these updates is just how much a single mechanic can change the entire game.
Being able to interrupt enemy attacks sounded like a relatively straightforward improvement at first, but we ended up having to rebalance a huge part of the combat around it.
And we think it was worth it.
There's still plenty we want to improve, especially when it comes to progression, combat feedback, and making each run feel more rewarding.
If you've played an earlier version of the demo, we'd really appreciate it if you gave this one another try. We're particularly curious to hear how the new combat system feels compared to before.
And thank you to everyone who's been sharing feedback, reporting bugs, and giving the game another chance after our updates. We've been making a lot of changes based on what you've told us, and it's genuinely helpful to see what works and what doesn't.
We're a small team, and there's still a lot we want to build. The demo is only a small part of what we have planned for Darkest Path.