General Update #37

Hey there everyone!

With April coming to an end, we have some exciting content in the works, and it's precisely what we'll talk about today!

Silent Echo

We hope you had fun with v0.3.0's early access, at least it certainly looks like it!

On our side we're already working on v0.3.1, and most notably the new corruption levels. Last week, we've finalized the designs for corruption leveld 5 and 6 and I think we've made some good compromises that should allow everyone to find what they want out of these new tiers of corruption. We'll talk about that in next week's post!

I also think it's the perfect opportunity to have a chat about what's next for corruption after these tiers are added into the game. Based on our current design document, corruption 6 is the final stage where Agent 36 still retains full control over their actions.

So what happens after that?

What happens next depends on two criterias.

The first is the technical work associated with these corruption levels. The more levels we add, the more need to be handled in the next chapters. If we take the upcoming Chapter 4 as an example, you can go through levels 1 to 6 in a single chapter. This means every possible case needs to be handled, and the complexity increases with each new corruption tier added to the game.

The second is the logicality of it. If corruption tier 7 is the moment the xenomaterial finally manages to overpower Agent 36, then it's a major turning point in the story and something that should come with consequences.

Right now we already have a lot of fun ideas for Corruption 6 and making it already a fun reward for those who chose to trust the goo, all while being able to continue to play the game normally.

We have not yet set in stone what we want to do beyond Corruption 6, and we will make a poll soon to get your input on a couple of possibilities for what's next for corruption.

Starwatch

We've made some good progress on version 0.4.0 and as you can see in the image above, the Eos has received some brand new artworks. Your personal space cruiser is looking better than ever!

In addition to this, we've made some really good progress on the new talent system. It is now a lot more user friendly and simple to use.

Instead of full trees with many choices, we've cut it down to 10 trees ranks to progress through. Four of these trees are common to all classes, and an additional two class specific trees will be available with skills and upgrades specifically designed to enhanced that class' style.

Blue ranks are stat upgrades, like health, armor, crit chance, or even squad damage.
Yellow ranks are the most interesting as they give you passive perks or special new abilities.

With 0.4.0, all trees will have 3 ranks, which we feel is a good starting point for you to experiment with and provide us with your feedback before we add more ranks.

That's it for this week!
Have fun!