Devlog #8 - Back to Basics

Welcome to everyone who found the Demo in NextFest! For the uninitiated, these devlogs are a space where we discuss new features and changes coming to the game in the next major update (in this case Early Access release!). Everything we discuss here is subject to change and we'll be paying close attention to the comments and discussion on our Discord to guide our decision making as we continue to develop the game. So let's take a look...

Revisiting the Town Hall

0.4 will see the introduction of two new Town Hall Events. The Pachinko Event is a great way to earn rewards slightly before they would usually be available. We had a lot of fun making this one, and if it becomes a community favourite we're more than happy to expand it with new boards and extra functionality.

Much like the Roulette Wheel, you'll need to watch out for those pesky curses.

The Black Market is perfect for rule-bending, allowing you to obtain cards and artifacts from other Classes. We're excited to see some of the unexpected combos that arrise from a late game Black Market pickup.

New Wizard Shinies!

Wizard has an array of new Artifacts and Gems coming for Early Access, designed to give him more build options and provide even more capstones for those OP runs.

Filigree gives a quick way to apply Gems to a huge number of cards. With how easy it is to fill your deck with different Lance Cards, this could be a turning point in those high difficulty runs.

The Prismite Gem should be particularly exciting for Missile enthusiasts, when it comes to Legendary Gem we're experimenting with bringing in mechanics from other classes to enable even more unique decks...

We're also increasing support for Basic Attacks in a variety of ways, Wizard's Kindling Artifact can be combined with Dumbells (available to all Classes) to make Basic Attacks a core part of your late game strategy.

Finally, inspired by feedback from a recent Wanderbot's Video we're experimenting with support for crossover strategies between two different win conditions.

Aetherock will have your Orbs firing missiles all over the place, and of course, it synergises with Paradox Orb for true devastation...

The "Retrieve Problem"

Lastly, we wanted to address some recent feedback about the power of reducing your deck size to a small number of powerful cards.

Right from the start of Decked Out's development we knew that reducing the number of cards in your deck would be powerful - it's strong in all deckbuilders but the realtime drawing mechanic makes having a consistent deck particularly gamebreaking.

We introduced the fountain to make removing cards a bigger tradeoff (since you would need to give up going to another building), and we added the reshuffle cooldown when your deck is empty to make relying on a small deck less realistic.

With the introduction of the reshuffle mechanic, we quickly found that card draw from Cards, Artifacts and Gems felt really underwhelming if you had to wait for the reshuffle to take place before you got the cards into your hand... Enter Retrieve...

Retrieve meant that "card draw" could always be a satisfying effect no matter when you played it (important for those clutch moments). We want to maintain this, but it has become very clear from player feedback from our demo that Retrieve is far too easy to obtain and often allows you to completely ignore the reshuffle mechanic.

For this reason we're making Retrieve a far more premium effect, requiring a bigger investment to add to your deck. Notably we're making the Amethyst Gem Epic (up from Common).

We'll be taking these learnings into account as we add Retrieve mechanics through the future of Decked Out...

And there we have it... Early Access is getting very close now, you can expect a release date reveal in the near future and then we'll be talking about our roadmap!

Stay Decked Out