Soulblight - Dev Blog

Hey Everybody!
As you know last month we’ve decided to delay our Kickstarter campaign in order to spend more time polishing it. Since then we’ve been working very hard and this time I’ve decided not to mention anything about it until we were 100% satisfied with our pitch. And now, since we are, the time has come to finally announce it - Soulblight Kickstarter campaign will go live on October 17th ( btw it just so happens that it’s just one day after my birthday )

Now let's talk a bit about some of the improvements we’ve made to the campaign:

Demo
First of all to reward you for waiting we've decided to add a demo access as an additional Kickstarter reward! We will send out the demo keys just after the end of the campaign! So if you decide to become our backer you will be able to try out Soulblight really soon!



New Main Message
One of the main reasons for postponing Kickstarter was the fact that our “More literal approach to RPG” pitch was a bit too abstract to get across without at least two paragraphs of text. However removing this aspect from the game to make it more “promotable” was absolutely out of the question. The only solution was finding a new way of talking about our game. The answer came to us at PAX West. While chatting with all the people visiting our stand we’ve realized that we’ve been focusing on a wrong thing in our pitch. Instead of talking about game’s mechanics we should be emphasizing what we’re actually trying to say with it.



Probably some of you already know what I’m talking about . The question: “Why the personalities you can acquire in the game are always negative?” was popping out quite regularly. It was natural as all the little signs were already there:

• The name of the game - “Soulblight” suggest that it’s about the sickness of the soul
  
• The quote form “The Divine Comedy” in the trailer pointed in this direction as well
• Our main art presenting that the greatest danger in the game will come “from behind you”
• The fact that we chose to call progression system in the game “Taining Mechanic” was also a hint

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All this was already there. What was lacking were three sentences with which we could explain all that to the person that knows absolutely nothing about the game. (btw never thought writing 3 sentences can be that hard) And so here it is:

Soulblight is a dark, top-down roguelike luring you to cross the thin line between good and evil. Embrace your flaws to survive a journey through an unforgiving Sanctuary. Gluttony, Lust, Cannibalism - how far are you willing to go?

New Main Art
Another thing we’ve addressed was our main art. It wasn’t that we weren't satisfied with the one we had. On the contrary we really liked how straightforward it presented the top down perspective and at the same time shown the danger of Soulblight lurking behind the character. The thing that we considered a problem was the fact that once you scaled it down its readability dropped drastically. This unfortunately was a deal breaker as most of the time the art will be viewed in a crowded social media feed. And so we’ve decided to prepare a new one. This time focusing on the character and it’s transformation into something evil.



Social goals
To make our campaign more fun we’ve decided to gamify it a little bit and set up some social goals. Have a look at these three “vaults” we have created.



Each of the vaults contains a special piece of in-game equipment. When opened the item will be revealed and added to the final game. How to unlock them? By reaching our social goals. The number on top of the vault shows how many are needed. Here’s the complete list of our social goals:



If you want you can already help us reaching the social goals Here are all the links:

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• Steam Page
  
• Facebook Fan Page
• Twitter page
• Subreddit
• Newsletter

[/ul]That would be all for today folks I would like to once more thank you for all your support and patience. Especially thank you for all the words of encouragement you sent our way after we were forced to delay our Kickstarter campaign. It meant a lot to us!

Cya Around,
Kuba

P.S If you would like to help us with the announcement of the Kickstarter campaign, and you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to support our Thunderclap!

Hey Everybody!
It's time for our first Kickstarter update. Today I would like to talk in more detail about combat in Soulblight. Before we go any further you need to know one thing about me. I’m a martial art enthusiast As a programmer and game designer I spend most of my days in a dark room in front of the screen This way of life isn’t too healthy so to balance things out I train Judo. You don't believe me? Here's a gif of me (barely) performing a throw

The thing I love the most about fighting is the fact that what matters the most is not the strength but tactics. This is a different kind of tactics than you know from strategy game though. It’s more like thinking about the plan under the pressure of things happening right here and now. This is what I wanted for our combat mechanic to be all about. In my experience tactics in martial arts consists of the following elements:

• Management of Strength
• Distance Control
• Balance Control

Now let’s talk in more detail about those elements and see how they are represented in our game mechanics.

Management of Strength
You have to be careful not to use use all of your strength during the fight. If you do, you will run out of steam very fast and will be easy overwhelmed. The tactics here is about finding the right moment to catch your breath. This element of fighting has been pretty well represented in gaming through the years by the stamina mechanics. I’ve decided for it to be a base of combat in Soulblight


Distance Control
Though stamina management was a relatively obvious thing the same couldn’t be said about the distance control. Video games often do away with clinch combat. This results in removing a lot of tactical depth. Suddenly everything boils down to your attack speed and power. Meanwhile in reality a double handed sword isn’t nearly as useful up close as from afar. When you engage an enemy wielding a heavy weapon he cannot keep swinging while in clinch - he needs to find a way to disengage. To represent this I’ve decided to create a grip mechanic.

During combat each character is surrounded by a circle which represent its position on the battlefield. By pressing the button you can light up a front part of it and activate what we call “the grip”. When your grip touches your opponents circle the characters become engaged in clinch combat. This maneuver, besides linking the characters together, also forces them to use a secondary attack. Depending on the weapon this attack might be less or more powerful than the main one. The one who wields a more cumbersome weapon now will be forced to find a way to disengage. The easiest way to do it is by performing a special “slam” action. But be careful this maneuver burns a lot of stamina.


Balance Control
Ok this part of the mechanics is explicitly linked to the martial art I’m training . Judo is focusing on the clinch combat and can be translated as “The path of the least resistance”. The idea is that while engaged you need to move in a way to throw your enemy of balance so you can use much less strength to defeat him. How this idea is implemented in Soulblight? - you ask. When engaged you cannot move away from the enemy but you can move around him. By implementing certain level of inertia depending on how well armored your character is we’ve allowed the faster character to be able to outmaneuver the heavier foes. This way you can get on the back of the heavier opponents and gain a massive advantage. Although it isn’t easy it greatly increases your damage as well as prevents the enemy from hitting you with his attacks.

The combat in Soulblight might look a bit Hack & Slashy at first glance but the truth is button mashing won’t get you far. If you have any questions feel free to ask them in a comment section And don't forget to visit our kickstarter page:


Cya around,
Kuba

What we’re often asked is:

“Why did you choose pure top-down perspective instead of for example an isometric view?”

Answer to this question is quite complex But here's a short take on the thought process behind our decision:



Creating a game in which you can express states of character psyche requires designing many different interactions and mechanic through which you can do it. To be able to do everything we want in isometric view we basically would have to create everything in 3D. Unfortunately this takes much more time. The level of gameplay depth we strived for would be very hard to achieve in 3D by the small team like ours. We knew it would most likely mean that we have to either simplify the game or compromise the quality of our art.

“If not isometric, then how about side-view”

The problem here was a combat mechanic we’ve chosen for Soulblight. We didn’t want for our game to be about button mashing. What we wanted is for the player to always think one step ahead while fighting. Because battlefield positioning was supposed to be a big part of tactics we felt that “Platformer” view limited a bit too much what we could do.



And so we’ve decided to go with a top-down view. It is the best way to present to player situation on the battlefield. On top of that top-down perspective works well with sneaking mechanic that we wanted to include in the game. This didn’t mean there were no challenges ahead. On a contrary there are reasons why this perspective isn’t a popular choice among the developers. We had a few ideas how to tackle those problems though. What were they and how we solved them? Well... this is a topic for another update

Cya Around,
Kuba

P.S Don't forget to visit our kickstarter page:

Today we have another extensive topic - Character’s Conditions Let’s just jump straight into it



One of the early design challenges during the development of Soulblight was creating a context for all the action the player would have to take in order express his characters. To solve that we’ve decided to add a survival aspect to our game. We’ve done it by allowing the character to be a subject of various conditions. To avoid confusion and allow the player to easily compare buffs he receives we’ve created a special state called synergy. What it does is it represents the character’s overall well being (both physical and psychic) and greatly increases damage and resistance. To systemize the mechanics even further we’ve also divided the conditions into 4 categories:

• Positive Conditions - Simple buffs meant to make you stronger by temporarily increasing the synergy. Example: Rage
• Negative Conditions -Simple debuffs that won’t kill you but make you weaker by decreasing your synergy. Example: Hunger
• Injuries - Serious wounds. With every one of these you get closer and closer to death. You can sustain up to 4 Injuries at the same time. Example: Bleeding wound
• Taints - The personality traits you acquire during your journey besides giving you a passive synergy buff also unlock a new mechanics. Example: Greed

Now the fun part starts when the different conditions start to intertwine. Let’s look at hunger example:



The hunger builds up with the time you play. It starts as a small harmless debuf but can build up to enormous proportion. That’s why It is important to eat regularly especially when you have a concussion injury (it will speed up the healing process). Saving candies for later might be a good idea but their nutritional value isn’t too high. This means that a piece of candy will nullify the hunger just for a short time. It is good thing to have one of these when hunger pins you down before the boss fight. When you run out of food and you’re very hungry you might also consider eating some bad berries. They will give you a food poisoning but sometimes it is better to suffer through it then allow for the hunger to build up even more. If you bump into this dilemma often it might be worth going with Glutton taint. One of it’s secondary mechanics is food poisoning immunity.

As you can see each mechanics condition is pretty simple. Put them tougher though and a deep gameplay full of interesting choices emerges

Cya Around,
Kuba

So our kickstarter Camping concluded yesterday. It was a close call and It went through just like 40h before the end. Thank you very match for all your support! I already started generating the demo Keys for the backers and will be sending them out as soon as they are ready



Also as I mentioned before this Saturday me and RC and OP were running this stream of freshly baked Soulblight build. In case you missed it here's a chunk of it

This week we've finalized punch cards mechanic. If you find one of thous little plastic plates during your journey bring it back to Quora the Scholar. She will decode them and let you read their content on the camp's floor screen. This way you will uncover Sanctuary's long forgotten secrets. The more you know the more powerful Prying Taint becomes.

Hello and Merry Christmas
So the holiday season is almost here. The decorations seems to be everywhere. A little christmas tree even found its way to my basement-office



With the festive season on the horizon we’ve been working very intensely for a last couple of weeks. As you know - we’ve been founded on the kickstarter last month. To once more show our gratitude we wanted to prepare a small christmas present for all of you And so we’ve taken on the task of closing Soulblight Beta before the holidays. Today I’m very happy to tell you - we’ve made it



So what does it mean that we’ve reach Beta. First of all, the backers that chose to support us with Early Seeker Kickstarter Tier or high will be receiving an access to the beta build (I will send out the keys in the moment). Besides that our demo build has received a significant update (It should update automatically via steam)

And here’s the demo change log:

• Access to the new camp location where you can talk to NPCs and prepare for the journey ahead
• Dual wielding mechanics
• Small improvements to the tutorial
• Rebalance of the taints available in the demo
• The pyraps can now spawn on the top of you when you enter a new platform
• Chrono Inhibitor power will now slowly regenerate over time
• Grip now works more as a tool that you can use against your enemies than obstacle you have to overcome
• The mobility state now increases your parry window
• The combat actions do not scale down when you don’t have enough stamina to perform them
• New spiked boots that you can find and use
• Now you can change targeted enemy with a right analog stick

If you’d like to share your thoughts with us on Soulblight - we’re gathering feedback on our subreddit r/MyNextGames



Meanwhile Take care of yourself, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Cya around,
Kuba

This week I'd like to show you few more automaton you will have to face while playing Soulblight



And here's this weeks dev blog update

This week's vlog update is a bit late as we're launching Beta Test sign ups today!
If you don't have a Demo key and would like to help us you can sign up here: goo.gl/forms/LUc8gZ8EOSCMQcS62



And what we've been doing this week? As you can see we've been focusing on Menu. Yee yeee I know it is not the most exciting game element but someone smart once told me:

“Game’s title screen is like a first sentence of a book. It’s not a reason anyone reaches for it but it’s vital for drawing people in”

To be honest I’m not sure how true it is I personally am a slow reader and so books are not the medium I’m very comfortable with. But I’ve always been a fan of atmospheric game title screens

And of course here's vLog Update for this week

Hey Everybody!
For all of you who haven't noticed. We've launched our first round of beta tests yesterday. Don't worry if you've missed sign ups you can still apply for the next round here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdFNtX3nbWAx5fnHEnrDNpqZWtdraJLKhQAriCAcjDlM9ybkw/viewform?usp=sf_link


For thous of you who got the access to the game earlier Beta Tests also means a content update. Now let's go through some of the main changes:

• Now when your character get's wounded it emits a pulse that pushes away all the enemies.
• You no longer toggle the grip on and off with Y button. You now need to hold LT to have it active.
• Damage in grip dealt by the main character increased.
• New weapon type - daggers
• You can now use sword as w thrusting weapon by equipping it to the left hand
• Intro Update. It isn't finished yet as it still lacks the music but it already has a profession voice over.
• Menu overall including addition of option screen an credit screen

And of course here's this week's dev-vlog update. Am a bit tired in it as we've been crunching a bit to launch beta tests yesterday



Cya around,
Kuba

It's almost a tradition by now for me to peeper a gif for our weekly update Today I have one showing a Pyrope Beast warping on top of me when I enter new level.

And if you'd like to know what we've been up to this week here's the vlog entry