The Last Days of Feature Lock

With the days counting down to release and a pinboard full of uncharted, free-wheeling ideas, we've reached that sad part of development where we finally have to tell each other "no" more often than we can say "yes, and..."

That being said, during these last few months we've packed in so many new features that even our team has trouble keeping up with them all (looking at you Olly)!

So before I deliver any more exposition...

We come bearing GIFs!

Requests

One theme we felt we didn't really nail down as much as we truly wanted to for the Steam Next Fest Demo back in August was juggling the five adventuring guilds (brawlers, outriders, performers, diviners and arcanists). They all want different things and their interactions should feel like the constant competition and bickering of the classic D&D party:

The wizard, who frowns upon the brutish warrior, wants more books that are decried as heresy by the holy man, who's pious pomp is ridiculed by the bard, whom the ranger thinks is just "a bit too much sometimes".

This is where "requests" come in. The guilds will ask you to complete various tasks in exchange for their favour later down the road.

Adjacency Bonuses

Early on in development we were got plenty of feedback about wanting building placement to matter more. The reason why this wasn't pursued earlier was that we didn't want the player to feel creatively constrained by chasing some optimal min/max. It turns solution is actually quite simple if you have several months to argue about it; allow the player to tailor their experience to their own preferred play style.

How that works exactly is the topic of our next exhibit.

Perks System

The idea was to always have some kind of meta progression (it is a roguelite after all), but we didn't really imagine a skill tree originally. This is where it all comes together. You can build up your own preferred style of play by cashing in on your favours with each guild to get perks that persist between playthroughs. It's been great for pushing us to explore new ways to play and trial some of the more experimental ideas we've had along the way for bonuses.

Pretty Lights!

Yup, we've made it prettier! That's the feature. But like goddamn does it look pretty! Olly, how did we do that? Probably something really cool and technical-sounding like "s h a d e r s".

We still have a bunch of new features waiting in the wings for our next post, so be sure to stay on the lookout for updates. With our charming yet deceptively complex town builder finally coming to maturity, we're absolutely psyched to get the final game into the hands of players very soon!

Until then you can follow more regular updates on our Twitter (@Caps_Collective) and chat to us directly on our Discord here.