KOTCL Dev Diaries - Our Own Impressions from the Rebalance

Knock-knock

Thank you to everyone who shared their impressions of the final rebalance. I’d like to share mine too.

I started a new game twice on the public_beta branch—once from my home account and once from the office one. I played for renewed Persival and realised that I have even more new impressions of the game as a whole, than of the new balance itself. To tell the truth, I rarely notice balance in video games, especially in rogue-likes. I’m more interested in other things.

But if we’re talking balance, I was really into the messy gameplay of the earlier KOTCL versions, where it was possible to stand no chance in an elite battle if you had a perfect but unfitting build. I diligently memorised—and even made notes on—which equipment worked or didn’t work on specific enemies and how to better avoid them. It was an important part of the gameplay for me, but we received so much negative feedback that we had to give up on it partially.

I also liked looking for and making OP builds. That’s fun. I even have a screenshot saved somewhere of Millenis with less than 10 HP and my character with hundreds of Strength and Armor. I couldn’t track down the screenshot though so you’ll have to take my word for it.

That type of gameplay was probably too mischievous, but it was very fun. Maybe it’s the nostalgia in me speaking.

Anyway, I’m a peculiar gamer, so it’s maybe not worth listening to me.

It’s better to ask Misha and Innrey.

Misha, How Do You Like the New Balance?

Steam post image

Misha: It’s hard for me to be objective in this matter, you do understand that, right?

Me: Just say that you can’t be then.

Misha: I did say that! :D

(I remind you that Misha is the main person responsible for the rebalance.)

Misha: We wanted to make the game more “honest” and understandable overall. And in my opinion, we did it.

Me: Tell me more, Misha.

Misha: Well, I liked it.

Me: Ha-ha-ha!

Misha: Okay, let’s go over our goals:

1. give the project a unified vision;

2. get rid of glaring gameplay spikes and smooth out the average gaming experience;

3. simplify the understanding of some mechanics and eliminate ones that are too complicated, broken, or tedious;

4. make the overall game experience as fair as possible;

5. create balance between “mathematically correct” and “actually fun.”

And in my opinion, we succeeded in most of the goals.

The gameplay feels different now—more varied, more lively, and more readable.

It’s not perfect yet, but perfection is the enemy of good, and you need to know when to stop. There’s also polishing based on player feedback that is looming ahead for us.

Innrey

(I won’t be reminding you who Innrey is.)

Hey everyone! My opinion might change with time, but for now I feel like the balance has improved a lot and the gameplay has become clearer. Preparing for battles is more comfortable now.

So overall, the game is obviously better, clearly more understandable, and, in some parts, even more interesting.

Dumb meatbags are gone. Higher difficulty levels finally got actually difficult for me. Overall, I really liked it. One thing I’m not sure about is whether it actually needs more polishing if people don’t really notice the difference.

The game hasn’t changed in any major way, and we’d be reworking it for another six months without anyone feeling or understanding all the fun we put into it. That said, there’s no outright negative feedback on the rebalance, so we’ll just keep finishing it up bit by bit.

Back to My Impressions

I think that the game got harder to play—maybe because I’m not used to it yet, or maybe because I need to rely on luck less and calculate more. Maybe I was just engrossed in exploring, forgetting about actually finishing the game. I don’t know.

What makes me happy in the first place is how the game has improved overall after months of polishing. Where there used to be a placeholder, which you might not even have noticed, there’s now full-fledged content: sounds, visuals, little details here and there.

The rebalance is a great excuse to return to our game world. Forgetting about the numbers, I tried to recruit different allies just to chat with them again in the camp. We added the campfire dialogues very late, because it was technically difficult and not strictly necessary—but they’re so good, and sometimes really hilarious.

It’s great to compare and see how “low-priority” tasks being completed gradually filled the game step by step—and continue to do so. Very soon there’ll be a new patch where we’ll add sounds, and more too. I’ll post the patch notes separately, as usual.

Speaking of sound, a question for those of you who’ve been with us for a while. Have you noticed how minor and secondary sounds that weren’t there before but are there now—little grunts, whistles, and so on—really enhance the gameplay when they are timed and placed right?