Devlog #4 - Break the Crate!

I want to start with a special thank you to everyone who has participated in the Decked Out playtest and given us a ton of useful feedback! We've already updated the game 5 times, responding directly to player feedback and dropping in new features here and there!

If you're feeling left out, do not worry, you can still sign up to the open playtest on the Decked Out Steam Page before it ends in around 1 weeks time.

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3628810/Decked_Out/"]

Since (understandably) not everyone is deep in the weeds when it comes to our Patch Notes, I want to use this devlog to cover some of the bigger ideas and patterns of feedback we've been seeing and talk a bit about how we play to address them!

Start of the Run

We're very aware that in the first version of Decked Out we dropped, being thrown directly into combat could be a bit overwhelming. Whether you're trying to read you cards to work out what they do or fiddle with the aiming system - it's just a little too much to kill waves of enemies at the same time!

To help with this, we've added a brand new start of run event - Break the Crate.

This event has absolutely no time pressure, so it will allow you to browse your starting hand and try out aiming your cards until you feel ready to find out what is in the box. Then, you'll be able to choose a special Rare Card of your choice to kickstart your deckbuilding.

Overall, we're expecting this to be a more chilled out way to start the run without noticably slowing down veteran players.

Card Spam

We've had quite a bit of feedback that the combat devolves into playing all of your cards as fast as humanly possible when you have enough mana regeneration and card draw.

Some of this can be addressed through balance, and we're not even opposed to this happening in some truly broken runs where the right combos are found (as it can be very fun when it happens from time to time) - but we know this shouldn't be the default.

We'll be doing a pass on Retrieve Cards (the main culprit for infinite resources) and ensuring that some strategies such as Orb Cards and Electric Cards are more about creating high impact damaging zones over longer durations and controling combat with them.

Chaotic Combat

Closely related to the issue of Card Spam, we know that the playtest version of Decked Out is fast paced and often very chaotic. We wanted to give our testers a taste of what they could expect from the game and make sure it lived up to the expectations of even the die-hard shoot-em-up fans.

Having said this, we know that throwing you into the deep end can alienate players who will (understandably) expect their roguelike deckbuilder to give them more than half a second to think about their next move!

In addition to ensuring we offer strategies with more focus on carefully crafting synergies and using the right card at the right time - we're hoping that the customisable difficulty system we'll be introducing early into Early Access will allow people to take on the challenge they want.

Of course there was a lot more feedback than just those 3 points, some addressed already and some to be addressed throughout Early Access development!

Next Devlog we'll be talking about what you can expect