Development Update 3

DREAMHACK ATL

Attention gamers. We're going be part of the Indie Playground at Dreamhack ATL on October 4th through 6th. If you're interested in knowing what we smell like, this is your opportunity to know! We will have three stations set up with the latest version of MycoRelic straight off the press. Use the code "SANDYDINGOGAMES" to get 15% off tickets!

Roadmap

We've more or less decided on the general layout and content structure of MycoRelic's world. In previous devlogs, we've talked about the archipelago approach to the world design. Here is a map that Jon drew for our publisher pitch deck:

You will start in the mindless bunker, escaping to crab island. We've spent the last 4 months working on these two levels and they are almost polished and ready for the public. We think that the demo version of the game will be locked to these two spaces, though we haven't decided if crab island should be included or if it should just be the bunker. However our upcoming playtests will encompass both spaces, so be sure to sign up for that when it goes live.

Playtest Sign Ups

Recently we've disabled our old demo for reasons mentioned in (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2624080/view/4566175115308261675?l=english). We've decided to use Steam's playtest feature while we sort out the demo page. This playtest will be the same build we bring to Dreamhack, with the benefit of Steam multiplayer.

These signups will go live on the first day of Dreamhack (October 4th). We will post an announcement the day of in our discord as well as Steam's announcements page.

Leveling Up

In a previous dev log we talked about changes to the level up system and how souls-like mechanics would work in our game. We expressed that we wanted to maintain the discrete upgrades offered by a robotic body, but also appreciated the incremental upgrade system featured in many souls like games.

Since then we have come up with a system that bridges both design goals:

Moldmetal & Body Parts

Moldmetal is our base exp/currency and is dropped in residual amounts by every enemy in the game. There are also moldmetal pickups strewn about the world. In multiplayer, moldmetal is shared. If your friend kills something and you aren't there, you still get the exp drop.

Body parts use moldmetal to be upgraded, but are only able to be upgraded to a threshold. You are only able to change your body parts at a body part station (pictured above). Each body part has an attribute limit bonus. If your integrity limit is 4, you are only able to use moldmetal to upgrade your integrity to 4. You're rocking junk centurions? You're going to need to find a higher quality pair before you can get past this limit.

We've decided on this because it makes balancing a zone a bit easier because we know what body parts a player will have access to by the time they get to that zone. It also discourages excessive farming, but this is something we're still debating because we know certain types of players love to farm.

Luckily there are also vendors who will accept your moldmetal in trade for various curios and consumables. Lastly, we think the player should also be able to transmute their moldmetal to gain spirit charges, which can be spent on powerful abilities or unlocking various pathways through the world.

A message from Jon (Our artist)

Hey everyone, I'm Jon.

I work on a lot of different things, but lately my focus has been on designing, modeling, and animating couple of new bosses.

We've learned as a team just how valuable a good boss fight is for a game in this genre. When we were getting feedback on the old demo we were surprised by how many people enjoyed repeating Zizifek (the giant firebird) and Berac (the purple magic dude). I think all three of us consider the bosses of that demo to be pretty sloppy, but it's telling that people still really enjoyed engaging with them despite the rough edges. We know that players will sometimes do stuff that isn't fun over and over because they're chasing a rare reward though. While it's unrealistic for me to expect myself to design perfect bosses that will be fun to fight on repeat for eternity, I do want to set a higher bar than we had previously. Ideally the prospect of joining up with a couple friends to kill a boss a few times for drops is exciting both because the rewards are cool and because fighting the boss is genuinely fun.

The first new boss I'm working on is placed at the end of our new tutorial area.

From an abstract design perspective we want this boss to act as a test to prove players understand melee combat, how to move around, and be difficult enough that they feel a need to level up their stats. Ideally by killing this boss you've proven that you understand the fundamentals of how to play MycoRelic (unless you're getting carried in co-op).

From an emotional / experience point of view, we want the fight to be the height of the rising action within this new starting tutorial area of the game. The visual design of the boss is larger and more intimidating than the other enemies you will have seen up to this point and the music David composed for it really raises the intensity of the encounter. I try to make sure there's always some memorable feature of a design that players get to engage with. For this one I wanted to convey that this was some unholy combination of the enemies you have encountered already, and that it has this weird goopy mace arm that slings around like a couple of tennis balls in a long wet sock.

Blocking out the animations for this boss had me spending a lot of time playing with the cadence of the attacks. A lot of people seemed to like the crab knight from the demo, so I took some queues from how clear and spaced out those combos were and applied that principle to this new one. There's always a couple of good options to avoid damage from each of these attacks, so players should experiment with dodging, deflecting, jumping, and sprinting to figure out what works best for them. I want the average player to find this encounter challenging enough that it gets them experimenting with the different tools they've been provided with to clear it. More importantly than that, I want it to be fun.

There's a lot more I could talk about, like details about the second boss I'm working on. I think I've given enough away about the game for one devlog though. I'll say that I hope it makes you s*** your pants.

Stay well.