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Slaves of Magic

 
Demo 1.3.7 patchMay 17, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! This is going to be a small patch that changes the balance and fixes some bugs. Balance changes: Increased enemy density (meaning generally fewer squads, but those squads have more units in them), plus increased the average amount of them by 1. Previously, the enemies were spawning in a lot of small groups (even as small as 2! at lower intel levers) because they were quick in converging at the player. However, after the AI change, they are not as aggressive, and dealing with isolated teams was a bit too easy. Added a new army that starts at size 1. The reason for this is twofold. The first one is this provides the player with another easy target in the beginning, providing more valid targets per month. The other one is that this sixth army can be upgraded in size by the invaders with supplies, giving another way for them to spend it. Reduced the cost of new bases. The second base costs 400, and every new one after that only cost +200 more. The reason for this is that bases provide a lot less than when their cost was initially set. Added a new main goal for the player right after choosing their headquarters which instructs the player to build a room in their base. The reason for this change is that a lot of new players can easily miss the base-building aspect, and this objective will make sure that they are aware of it. Added more stamina for the VIP in escort missions, but increased the distance it has to travel. The reason for this change is that previously, the VIP needed multiple rest to reach the goal and it was simply not fun. After the change, the player will only need to plan for 1 rest, or some other way to restore the VIP stamina to reach it's destination. Bugfixes: Fixed a soft lock that happened sometimes when generating VIP escort missions. Fixed missing description for the end game screen for gained etherglow. Fixed showing the wrong amount of gained etherglow when the player received the timed bonus. Fixed the set direction after turning setting was always resetting after every mission. Fixed walls and trees not being transparent when the VIP escape tile was behind them. Demo 1.3.6 hotfixMay 12, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The 1.3.6 demo hotfix has just been released, which fixed a crash that occurred when changing armor or utility equipment for units when playing using Proton on Linux.Demo 1.3.5 patchMay 11, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! In preparation for our participation in the Endless Replayability Steam Fest, I'm happy to announce the release of the 1.3.5 patch to the demo! This patch is mostly about quality-of-life features and balance changes according to the feedback we have received so far, with the highlight being voiced end-of-month scene. UI changes: - Reworked the end-of-month screen. Now the player will read the report in front of the council while they provide him/her with their opinion about the progress(with voice-acting!). - Reworked the mission end screen to be more informative. It now includes the amount of enemies killed, damage caused, and the XP earned for every participating unit. Plus the amount of etherglow earned by completing this mission. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/49b6697fd6f79fdf686501d9722dd99b47979ffc.png - On the combat map, the bottom bar disappears if there are no units selected {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/2fcfc68e0152a63c7f63174f150b2f2567bccc99.gif - The character description on the combat map is now bound to the screen, it cannot go outside of it. - You can open the character description when right-clicking on the unit's profile picture as well, not just when on the unit. This is especially useful to the player while teleporting in, as the unit is not yet on the map at that time. - On the base builder screen, in the building description, the player can see the actual number of smith/scholar/soldier/gold amount the building will provide. - Added a new profile overlay for units that have been teleported out of the battlefield, and reworked the dead unit overlay. New features: - The game now saves the team the player set before starting the mission, so there is no need to set the team again after reloading. Balance changes: - Swapped the position of Forceful style skill with Endurance training skill on the warrior class. This gives every character an easier chance to increase their stamina if they dip into the warrior class. - Because of the previous change, the knights that previously had Forceful style skill has been replaced with the self-defense training general skill. - Swapped the position of Surgical precision skill with the improviser skill in the Assassin class. Same reason as in the warrior, this gives easier access for every character to increase their initiative if they dip into the assassin class. - Swapped the position of the Move order skill with the Motivate skill in the Strategist class. The move order was a bit too strong for being a tier 1 skill that is freely accessible to everyone. - Increased the stamina cost from 1 to 2 for the basic bow attack and the crossbow reload. - Crossbows can't be reloaded while adjacent to a melee character (but can still use point black shot at melee range if already reloaded!) Bugfixes: - On the campaign map, it was not possible to close the ESC menu with a right click, this has been fixed. - Fixed subtitles that sometimes were aligned wrongly compared to their black backgroun...Demo 1.3.4 patchApr 15, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Our first bigger patch after the 1.3.0 demo release is here with a lot of tweaks and bug fixes! Plus a big out-of-combat AI behavior change. Major AI behavior change: The AI was too aggressively rushing to the player's spawn point and as such it was easy to kill them all (especially with ranged weapons) inside the time limit for the bonus. While I don't want to completely invalidate this tactic, the time-limit bonus should only be archivable with proactiveness and risk-taking. To reach this goal, the AI squads now have 4 internal states. Hold/Patrol/Slow-Advance/Active. Hold means they just stay put. Patrol means they will randomly patrol the map with their walking speed. Slow-Advance walks towards the player's last known location again with walking speed. Active is the old behavior which is to rush to the last known location of the player. Pods will become active as soon as they see a player unit or they take damage. In addition, at the start of every round, they have a chance to escalate their status. The chance itself increases with the round number. In practice, this means that they will be less aggressive at the beginning of the combat so the player will need to actively seek them out if they want to finish the mission inside the time limit for the bonus. But their aggressiveness increases with time so that it doesn't devolve into trying to find the last pod for 10 turns. In addition, the randomness means that their behavior will be a lot more unpredictable. For example, you could be rather certain that a building was empty even without checking previously because the AI would have stormed out from it the first chance it got. Now, a pod can stay put for several rounds there, before going out surprising the player. Balance changes: - The available character builds were very restricted in the beginning by every class skill requiring a base in their region. Now, the first 2 skills of every class are available from the start. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/3013caf8985c1a67abdc6804dee6498265dab85e.gif - Reduced the crossbow damage by 1 across the board. - Increased the bow and crossbow equipment cost by 1. Massing range units should be less cost-efficient than melee units. - Shields have been a bit too easy to break so increased shields max health to 15. - Shields now have a +20 bonus block chance against ranged attacks, making them a more effective counter against ranged units. - Removed the hammer-making from the Barbarian region and it has been given to the Strategist region so that they have access to a melee weapon as well. - Changed the starting lineup of the Strategist region giving them a melee unit. - Units leveled up a bit too fast, so the gained XP rate has been tweaked. Ui changes: - Skill chooser ui has been completely reworked to show the available skills in a better organized way, and to give the player a hint of all the available skills. - Added a level-up animation to returning troops. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/107...Demo 1.3.3 hotfixApr 12, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The previous 1.3.2 hotfix was incorrectly applied and created a crash when changing weapons. This has been corrected in this new 1.3.3 hotfix.Demo 1.3.2 hotfixApr 9, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! This is a very small hotfix that fixes a crash that can happen when 2 description boxes have been locked at once (like when checking the skill a weapon provides).Demo 1.3.1 hotfixApr 5, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! This is a small hotfix that fixes the issues that came up during the release of the 1.3.0 demo: Fixed that the intro video started again in case the loading has not been finished till the end of the video. The intro sound volume is now governed by the effect sound volume, not the music sound volume, which should make it louder by default. Fixed a crash that can happen when opening the smith projects when there is no approvable project in the list. Fixed a crash when the player successfully finishes the last mission. Aimed shot bow skill range is now correctly set to sight range from half-sight range. Added a general description for units from the Eastern culture. Demo 1.3.0 patchMar 30, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! I'm happy to announce that our newest 1.3.0 demo is out with a new gameplay trailer: New features: - Reworked traits system. Every character will have a background trait that represents what they did before joining the resistance + 0-3 random character traits. Backgrounds can be region-specific. - Recruitment cost and starting level depend on the character's background. The worst backgrounds can be recruited for free. - Removed weapon schools. Every weapon adds its own advanced skill to the character that equips it. - The Trickery, Teamwork, and Aggression schools have been reworked into 6 classes, one for every region. - Completely reworked profile images, that respect which region the character is from. - Added pushing as a core mechanic. A melee attack if hit by default will push the attacked out of the tile and the attacker will take its place. If the target can't step back, it will count as cornered and the attacker receive +20 attack against it. This gives another way (besides flanking) to increase hit chance with better positioning. - Added a lot more region-specific names for the random name generator. - Added an overall difficulty estimate to the party builder that takes into account your current party, the enemy composition, and their amount. This should help the player to make a more informed decision. The eastern region has been opened up. Can host a resistance base and will be a target of army missions as well. - Added the story introduction video into the demo when starting a new game. Balance: - Magic dust has been renamed to etherglow, and the amount that can be earned depends on the enemies faced and the amount of them. - Added the ability to sell etherglow on the black market (5 dust for 50 gold by default). - Reverted the extra starting unit change of the previous patch. Now, the ability to sell etherglow and the possibility to recruit units for free should give enough options for players to manage their unit count. - Level 1 units do not have access to any skill, besides the one that their weapons provide. - Redid the starting roster of every region. - Unit cannot be retrained for free anymore, it will cost 20 gold to reset their skills. Except for universal skills, they can still be swapped around freely. - Simplified and rebalanced stamina usage. The second action no longer costs 1 more stamina. Instead nearly all skills cost at least 1 stamina, but every character regains 1 at the start of the turn. - Missed attacks now do not cause distraction by default. Normal hits cause 1 (previously 2) and critical hits 2 (previously 3). - Rebalanced and simplified equipment point costs. Now by default, every smith creates 1 equipment point. - Updated AI to be able to handle the new cornered and pushing mechanic. - On the escort VIP mission, one pod will guard the exit rather than hunting the VIP. In addition, the enemies' spawn points have a minimum range from the VIP. - The strategist move order skill causes a forced ...Story introduction videoMar 18, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! I'm happy to announce that we will participate in the upcoming Turn-based Thursday Fest with our updated demo which will start on April 4th! While there is still a bit of time till you can try out our new demo, you can check out the new story introduction video: Devlog #26 Sneak peak into the upcoming Immersion patchFeb 28, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! I wanted to give you a status update on our upcoming new patch to our demo. The original plan was to do it in multiple smaller patches, but feature creep had other ideas! Some big changes are coming that just simply couldn't be implemented in smaller increments. We still need some time to deliver the patch itself, but I didn't want to leave you all in the dark so read on if you are interested in the upcoming major changes! Reworked resistance members Every resistance unit will have a background trait that describes what they did previously. This affects their starting statistics, possible additional traits they could have, and their hiring cost. In addition, the possible backgrounds change depending on which region the unit is from. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/40f1675c0580e8587cbc6d55aafb229c46c0146c.png The eager-eyed could notice that the portraits have been completely reworked as well. Now with a quick glance at the portrait, you will know which region the unit is from. Updated the name generators as well with more names so that they can generate more unique names. New core combat mechanic, pushing and cornered I always had the back of my mind that flanking in itself to increase your hitchance is not enough as that is relatively hard to do consistently. Plus it always felt a bit unrealistic that standing right next to a wall is the best defensive position as in that case, the unit is physically impossible to be flanked. Then came the idea of the cornered mechanic. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/b3087bf35828d19a284a319ad19b55b77e883e51.gif Now, units will count as cornered when they can't move backward from the attack direction and suffer a 20 defense penalty. In addition, every melee attack that hits will push the target back 1 tile while the attacker takes their place if possible. These changes make positioning a lot more interesting even in situations where flanking is unfeasable. Advanced skills rework Weapon attributes have been removed. Instead, every weapon will have their own advanced skill that comes with it. This gave me the possibility to differentiate weapons more besides damage, especially the one and two-handed variants of the same weapon. For example, that wide slash attack on the previous gif will be only available to units using two-handed swords! The other 3 skill attributes (Aggression, Teamwork, and Trickery) have been heavily reworked into 6 classes (Ranger, Assassin, Protector, Strategist, Barbarian, Warrior). This means that every region now has a unique class. In addition, because the weapon does not take up one of the 2 available skill school(the new name for attributes) slots of a character, it opens up the builds space. New eastern region We have finished the eastern region combat map as well, so this last region opens up! The region itself is research-focused and will provide the resistance access to the strategist skill school! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/a7852d18492a38c38b37f8b49528fadfcbb424d9.gif {ST...Demo 1.2.5 patchJan 13, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! I hope everyone had a great holiday session! "Behind closed doors", we are hard at work for our new content patch, but I wanted to address some of the feedback the demo received since the previous patch. So without further ado, the 1.2.5 patch notes: UI: All bars transition into the correct value at creation/when the value changes, rather than being there instantly. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/38bac83076c74c4310679f88f7e94ba0c4ff7227.gif Added markers to other units showing sight range from the hovered-over location on the combat map while deciding movement. This helps to see exactly where ranged skills can be used. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/910707dd0ed39bfe4667f50f345248ac1ae234cd.gif All buttons transition into the hover overred state over time, rather than instantly. Updated the barrack/laboratory background Instead of blocking the time advancement button in the campaign map, there will be a flashing exclamation mark on the science lab button when no research has been chosen. Added a flashing level-up marker in the character sheet for the empty skill slot while removing it from the character profile picture, to make it clearer that a new skill needs to be chosen to level up. Balance: Increased armor values (medium to +3, heavy to +6). This means that a tier 2 light armor (like in the case of dark elves) that gives +5 armor still does not invalidate a tier 1 heavy armor completely. Increased weapon damage across the board to compensate for the increased armor. Time to kill is around the same against armored units, but unarmored ones became easier to kill. Weakened the inquisitor soldier's heavy armor to provide +4 armor instead of +6. Reduced the enemy amount at the base defense mission at the end of the demo. Reduced the default range of ranged units from double their sight range to their sight range. Despite the reduced accuracy, the potshots were still too potent without counterplay. Now only the Aimed shot skill allows ranged combatant to shoot beyond their sight range. The range penalty for ranged attacks starts from half their sight range, rather than from sight range. Swapped the point-blank shot and the distracting shot position in the skill tree. The arbalest now starts with point-blank shot skill. Bugfix: Fixed a bug which caused to remove 1 day from the ongoing research when the player loaded a saved game. Fixed blocked clicking on the right side of the campaign map, inside the area of the reminder scrolls, even when there are no scrolls there. Fixed units not receiving wounded status in the campaign map after being damaged in the combat portion. Fixed wounded time for units. Previously the less damage the unit incured, the longer the wounding time was. Fixed shielded units sometimes cause the game to soft lock. Added a max timer for animations so that if similar bugs happen in the future, they will not cause soft locks. Demo 1.2.4 patchDec 18, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Welcome to the last 1.2.4 patch of the year mostly focuses on polishing up the demo according to your feedback. Before I jump into the patch notes I want to thank again everyone who shares their feedback with us! Visual/UI changes: Made the party builder more intuitive. Removed the changed button, the unit selection now opens when clicked on the character portraits. To open the character sheet to see detailed statistics and to change equipment, the player can click on the units themself. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/bd73ae779b98a43a4298b4100273215e770c24c1.gif Added the damaged units to the campaign map reminder so that the player can see exactly when they are healed. In addition made the reminder list scrollable, so it can contain more than the 5 most recent reminders. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/1a0bece14629a35c5d670aaba5649c7da8c0813f.gif The random time generator of the missions has been tweaked to generate more missions that are not in daylight. Changed the enemy counter UI color from green to red when you see at least 1 enemy. The amount of time necessary for things sometimes was represented by an icon, sometimes it was just a text. Now everywhere it will be represented by an icon. Bugfixes: Corrected main menu scaling for various resolutions. Now when scaling the original video it will not stretch it, rather it will zoom into it to fill up the screen. Fixed equipment point tutorial pop-up counted as seen in the beginning. Fixed that sometimes clicking on the tutorial pop-up does not open the relevant tutorial. Fixed end-of-month scene not correctly displaying the mission names that were stopped by the resistance. Fixed that the default team builder could build teams that are over the equipment limit. Fixed when a unit position was set for teleporting in, it was shown with the wrong facing for a frame. To help with future bug fixes, added session logging into the game. This can be found in the game's logs folder. Including this log with a bug report will help me to identify and fix problems. Balance changes: The resistance always starts with enough units to be able to fill up to 2 teams at the start of the game. This is to avoid the situation in which the player spends all their starting money and then can't replace their losses after a failed mission. Reduced the starting gold for the resistance by 150 because of the previous point. I underestimated the difficulty increase because of the improved AI, so that plus the increase of enemies felt a bit too much for new players. It represents well what I envision to be a normal difficulty for experienced players, but the demo should be on the easier side, so reverting the enemy amounts to what it was in 1.1.7. Buffed ranged combatants with a general +1 damage buff. With the increase in health from our previous balance patch, we felt that they were a bit over-nerfed. Reworked quick shield skill into shielded advance. This is a movement skill for 1 action that in addition adds the r...Demo 1.2.3 hotfixNov 29, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! A small hotfix has been released with mostly some small visual and UI fixes, plus an important fix for certain AMD integrated video cards (Ryzen 5600G was the one we got a notice about, probably there were others affected by this issue) which had a problem rendering the texts and the world map in the demo.Demo 1.2.1 content patch note, the arrival of the dark elvesNov 14, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! I'm very excited to announce that our new 1.2.1 content patch for the demo is live! Let me show you some of the biggest changes: - Dark elves have arrived. They are expert in hit-and-run and ranged combat, but fragile if you manage to get to them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/41972d84cb699f744788c9d505966b8470d28548.gif - Sadly, their pet spiders will make it a bit harder to get to them! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/fee1c815292a16ee24322f4529e825063928f90a.gif - The desert region is unlocked, and it brings a new skill school called trickery with 4 new skills focusing on maneuvering and critical damage. Plus it means the enemy armies can target the territories in this region as well from now on! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/aa72bb4fc6fecb10492b31faa2697eacd745ea83.gif - Added the universal skill school with 6 new skills. The universal skills are unlocked at the beginning of the game no matter the starting location of the resistance. These are various passive skills that do not count toward the maximum amount of skill schools a character can have. - Completely reworked new player experience. Reduced the time till the player reaches the meat of the demo, the tactical combat! In addition, broke up the tutorials into smaller more digestible parts, plus they don't obstruct the scene when they pop up anymore. - General rebalancing of existing skills and the economy of the game. Simplified the way gold income works, territories now simply provide their gold income if they have higher than 0 loyalty. Saves should be generally compatible with previous versions, but for full effect, I would suggest starting a new game.Demo 1.1.7 hotfixOct 11, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Another small patch has been released: Fixed a crash related to vakondog enemy. Some small visual bugs have been fixed, like the health value updating before an attack actually connected, spoiling the attack result before the animation. Now the game saves the party composition when the player leaves the party builder for a mission. That means if the player leaves that scene for some reason to check something when he/she opens it again it will have the previously set party composition. Demo 1.1.6 hotfixOct 3, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! This is a small hotfix to fix the crash caused by opening doors with the open door command.Demo 1.1.5 patch note, preliminary SteamDeck supportOct 3, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! This is a quick patch aiming to make the demo build at least playable on SteamDeck. - Updated UI to support the Steam deck 1280x800 resolution. - Tested the demo on Linux, using Steam proton. While we do not have access to a steam deck to test it on, this was the closest we could do to emulate it. It would be a big help if somebody could try it out on their device to confirm it is indeed working. This sadly does not mean that the patch adds native controller support. That would be a bigger task, and for now, we are focused on bringing the best possible experience with a keyboard + mouse in mind. Controller support might come after release, depending on interest in the game. Demo 1.1.4 patch noteSep 30, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! Our new 1.1.4 patch focus is still quality of life improvements, focusing on skill descriptions. The way skill information is presented has been completely reworked. Information that is common for skills (like which school they belong to) has been grouped together, and more important information like damage has been highlighted. Check it out: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/f4b5230d0a9b228416ec308a6d506a3c49fbf77d.png To make the icons hoverable, the tooltip will lock itself if the user holds the mouse on the skill icon for 1 second. Thanks to this the player will be able to hover over everything in the skill tooltip to receive additional information. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/0b8f2ac98e3d083f031575b051e975228fffc564.gifDemo 1.1.3 patch note and changed release dateSep 8, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! The new 1.1.3 demo patch is up! Besides the usual bug fixes, 2 new quality-of-life changes have been implemented: The first is that a new screen was added to the start of the demo to help choose the resistance headquarters. Check it out: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39292251/d0082b2cacd49b0d4457aebac4e6a00e906f679b.png This list summarises the available options to the player, making comparing them a lot easier. The second thing is that we gave audio feedback when exhausted units are selected. This helps to draw the player's attention to the stamina bar. The other important information is the release date change. Sadly we have been slower in creating content than initially expected so we have pushed the release date into the summer of next year. Still, the plan hasn't changed. We will keep updating the demo for the time being with new features, and incorporating your feedback!Demo 1.1.2 patch noteAug 29, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone, I have added an extra tutorial that explains the distracted mechanics into the game.

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