Hello again everyone! As summer comes to an end we're working hard to complete our first month-long sprint of Beta tasks. There's a lot of general cleanup, polish, and bug fixing to do, but we've also been tackling a number of improvements identified from our testing.
The 3 levels of the Knife spell. A new feature we're pretty excited about is upgradeable spells. Each spell can now be upgraded twice to improve its effectiveness. Above is an example of the Knife spell where the second and third levels add more projectiles and magical FX. When you reach the third level of a Spell you're also given the option of using a screen-filling Spell Crash that consumes half of your magic meter. We're still working on the visuals for the crashes and upgrade menus, but we'll show them off in a future update.
Collecting some resources. One thing we heard a lot in the backer builds was how punishing the platforming was. Not only were pixel perfect jumps everywhere, but most of the drops ended in spikes making things even less forgiving. We also had enemies and traps jam packed into every space - partly a side effect of our early dungeon generator not having a good sense of how to pace things with different kinds of rooms. I went back through the rooms one by one and improved the flow, pacing, and difficulty. A lot of the tall rooms now give you a much needed breather with some light platforming and resource collection after fighting through hallways of deadly enemies.
The Death Knight miniboss. Finally, we've also reworked and improved the game's minibosses. A couple just weren't up to snuff and were completely redone (like the Keep's miniboss seen above), while others were just tweaked with some new patterns and improved timing. We also changed our approach to them a bit so they feel more like tough-as-nails enemies versus weak bosses. It may seem like a pointless distinction, but in practice it feels much more organic and varied.
We also want to give everyone a heads up that Chasm will be at PAX West 2017 as part of the Playground! The Playground is a new space to hang out and play games, and we'll be sharing the space with others like Vlambleer, Finji, and Indiebox. Our biz guy Dan Adelman will be running the booth along with Musician James Stevulak and Environment Artist Dan Fessler. So if you'll be there too please stop by Booth #6111, say hi, and play some awesome games! We'll have more updates on our progress towards the finish line next month. Thank you once again for your support and patience while we refine Chasm into the best experience possible!