Greetings adventurers,

We debuted “Battlecursed” on Steam Early Access in order to garner players' feedback on features and the game's direction. All the while, we’ve made our mark in the Steam community and have been providing regular updates on the game’s progress.

You’ve spoken, and we’ve listened. We are aggressively tweaking and changing our design, gameplay, and narrative structures to more closely resemble the game you all want to see. This means more RPG elements, storytelling structures, revamped and expanded abilities, inventory management, and (possibly) even a new name.

As a result of this massive shift in focus, we’ve made the decision to pull “Battlecursed” off of Steam Early Access. This is not a decision we made lightly, nor is it one we made without consideration for all those following the progress of our game.

Allow us to be clear: We are not shelving this product, nor are we halting or scaling down development. We are simply refocusing development in a new, exciting direction.

What does this mean for you?

Those who own “Battlecursed” already will retain the copy registered in their Steam Library, though it may be some time before any update is made available for that build. Rest assured, when that update goes live, announcements will be posted, and we’ll look forward to hearing your feedback.

For those who wish to request a refund on their purchase, we’ve spoken with our partners at Steam. They’ve made the decision not to extend their refund policy to Early Access adopters in this instance.

So, we will be issuing full refunds on our own.

If you’d like to request a refund, please follow this link.

You’ll be required to provide a few details, including your name, a PayPal email address, and a copy (or screenshot) of your proof of purchase. Refunds will be issued directly from us through PayPal.

We hope you continue to follow our progress as we work to bring “Battlecursed” to market with all the gameplay and features we know you want to see.

Greetings, adventurers!

March has been a busy month for us! Members of our team attended GDC, and we spent the weeks leading up to the show hard at work preparing. With the show over with, it’s time for our first major community update!

Back in early February, we launched Battlecursed on Steam Early Access. Since then, we’ve been reading all of your feedback, internally discussed it, and agreed to adjust our development plans based on your commentaries. This includes expanding the RPG features of our game. This will result in much larger updates with more features. That said, we will need more time to add and balance new features in order to make our game better. So keep commenting! Currently, our dev team is working hard on the first major content update, so stay tuned for more details.

We have also been looking at ways to improve our community engagement. Starting a Discord server has been brought up, but we’re open to any ideas from the community as well!

Thank you to everyone who has supported Battlecursed in Early Access. Within the next week or two, you guys can expect an update regarding our Discord server. By the end of April we’ll have the preliminary changes to our Road Map announced. We are hard at work making the game that you guys want to see!

**Read on our Blog here**

Adventurers!

Check out the State of the Game if you haven’t already. This update will cover a very brief summary of what you should expect in the coming months. We are a team with ambitious ideas, yet realistic expectations. Everything included here is part of our original vision for Battlecursed with room to modify the game based on community feedback.

As Early Access progresses, we will keep you informed of any changes to this vision based on the size of the community and the feedback that we receive.

World Generation: Each Act contains its own unique environments. Act I (exemplified in Early Access) is an underground series of caves, ruins, and sewers. Act II allows you to explore an abandoned dwarven stronghold that you may have seen glimpses of in the Early Access trailer.

As each unique environment enters in to the ‘enhanced detail’ phase, you will notice your surroundings becoming more immersive and alive with the inclusion of environmental objects, lore discoveries, enhanced foliage, and more!

Combat and Adventure: This is one of the areas that we hope to gather as much of your feedback as possible. Combat in Battlecursed needs to be fun, engaging, and rewarding. We will be making constant adjustments to ability cooldowns, damage output, monster stats, monster abilities, and rewards to balance the challenge of gameplay with the satisfaction of ongoing progress in the adventure.

Enemy behavior will evolve throughout Early Access. As we implement advanced enemy AI, enemies will begin to use various tactics with new abilities not yet revealed in the game.

In addition, we will begin to implement Adventure elements through scripted events and encounters, traps, puzzles, hidden passageways, and more.

Storytelling: The story of Battlecursed will be told through 2D animated cinematics within each Act, voice over, collectible objects, and lore unlocks. You will be rewarded lore pages of varying rarity that you can use to complete books within the Library. A completed lore book will contain information about Pylandria, its history and denizens, religions, magic and metaphysics, class guilds, and forbidden knowledge.

Heroes: We will fully implement the Heroes that are currently playable, their remaining abilities, all passives, and their class Ultimate ability. Once the Town is functioning, you will be able to recruit new, randomized mercenary Heroes to your party with their own unique combinations of abilities. You will need to hire wisely. When a Hero dies, they die forever. As you level up each class Guild, you will unlock special bonuses that make the Heroes of that class more effective.

You can already vote on the next Hero you would like to see in game. Cast your vote here!

Bestiary: We will be adding variations to current enemies, with unique special abilities and visual differences. Animations will be tweaked and polished to make enemies feel more life-like. Additional enemy types will be added in later Acts. Mini boss and monster boss encounters are still to come.

Gameplay Modes: In addition to Adventure Mode, we will be implementing unique named encounters in Survival Mode. You will be able to equip and customize their party before trying for a top spot on the Leaderboard for each individual encounter. We have designed an additional gameplay mode, but you will have to stay tuned to find out what that is!

Reward Systems: Some dungeons will have pre-determined rewards that you can see in the path selection, rewarding you for selecting more challenging paths. Throughout each dungeon, you will be able to strategize your path to gold and glory, items, and lore pages.

Throughout play you will discover Legendary items that will be housed in the Museum. You will be able to spend gold in order to use these items during future adventures and further customize the loadout of your party. You will be able to spend gold and glory to unlock upgrades for your settlement and class guilds as well.

Early Access, done right, is a unique opportunity to shape a game that we all want to play, and your support and participation are crucial to that end.

Thank you for your vote of confidence in our vision for Battlecursed. The Codex Worlds team is excited to share our hard work and progress over the coming months, so stay tuned!

Don’t forget to check on the status of your favorite features on our Roadmap.

Please check out the Battlecursed Blog, our Community Forums, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to us on Steam to stay up-to-date with us.

**Read on our Blog here**

Adventurers!

Our team has been hard at work to bring you Alpha 2.0 of Battlecursed. The entire team would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone participating in Early Access. With your help, we will achieve our goal of creating a stellar game shaped by community feedback! Let’s dive in to what you can expect from today’s Alpha release version of Battlecursed.

The majority of our development time thus far has been put into the creation of a framework of artwork, tools, and game systems that allow us to rapidly deploy new content and iterate based on your feedback, and our goal is to implement new content based on your suggestions as quickly as possible.

When you play Battlecursed, you will experience gameplay that is a mix of designer created levels, randomized elements, and player choice. For example, after each dungeon, you choose your next path (all of which have varying rewards & difficulties), but choosing the same path each time may not always send you to the same area. In this way, you can expect different challenges each time you begin your adventure.

World Generation: On launch day, you will be able to experience dozens of dungeons from Act I located underground; ancient ruins, caves, and sewers. You will notice that not all environments have made it to the ‘enhanced detail’ stage of development, so some may look and feel more barren than others.

Combat and Adventure: The core of the combat system is implemented and functioning. You may use abilities to deal damage to enemies using first-person camera controls and aiming. The Heroes you choose will have two functioning active abilities with cooldowns. Passive effects and Ultimate abilities are not currently implemented.

Enemies have varying combat abilities/AI and will relentlessly pursue your Heroes. Basic units will use standard melee and ranged attacks with leader units utilizing special abilities. Not all status effects on the Heroes and enemies are currently implemented.

Persistent RPG and non-combat Adventure elements are not currently implemented. There are currently objectives in each dungeon that trigger the spawning of keys in order to unlock the portal to the next dungeon, but this system will be greatly expanded on as Early Access progresses.

Storytelling: On launch day, you will see none of the story of Battlecursed in game. Cinematics, voiceover, and lore collectibles and content are still to come. Our Lead Writer has prepared a brief introduction to the story here.

Heroes: You will be limited to choosing eight static Heroes from four class guilds with sixteen different active abilities; Grave Knight, Cleric, Elementalist, and Huntress. These Heroes will not die permanently during this phase of Early Access.

Bestiary: About a third of the enemy types are in the Act I content available on launch day. Enemies are fully animated, but only a few have special attacks and apply status effects to your Heroes. Enemies do not currently use group tactics or coordinated special attacks. Boss encounters are still to come.

Gameplay Modes: In these earliest builds you will only be playing Adventure Mode, the primary experience in Battlecursed to progress through Acts I through IV while discovering the history of Pylandria and uncovering the dark enigma of Xelo Van’s power.

Reward Systems: While you can open chests and receive rewards at the end of each dungeon, you do not currently have an inventory, so you can not store or equip items. You will find gold as you play, but it is not stored and cannot be spent. The Town is locked, so the functionality for obtaining persistent upgrades is not yet implemented.

We are committed to being transparent with the Early Access community at all times and in all respects: from our development progress, current state of the game, and most importantly, your feedback. All types of feedback and suggestions are welcome and encouraged!

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

Welcome to our journey to create an ARPG in an immersive dungeon crawling environment. We have an expansive world in Pylandria that is unveiled over dozens of adventures in our game and we are working on leaderboards to give bragging rights to the players who are worthy of legendary tales. You can reach me through the forums, we are always looking for help testing and supporting our game.

You can always check on the latest development progress on our Roadmap for a quick overview on the status of features you are most looking forward to. We will update the Roadmap frequently and will be expanding on it in much greater detail over the coming weeks.

Please check out the Battlecursed Blog, our Community Forums, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to us on Steam to stay up-to-date with us.



TIPS AND TRICKS:

• Press G at any time in game to pause and read the descriptions for each of your Heroes’ abilities.
  
  
• Some abilities require you to hold the mouse button to charge and release to fire (Explosive Sphere, Snipe) or continuously hold to sustain (Dragon Breath).
  
  
• Don’t forget to use health potions! Select an active Hero to heal and use the Shift key to consume a health potion.
  
  
• Every dungeon has an objective (or two) that will spawn a key to unlock the portal when completed. Keys may spawn in places you have already been, so you may need to retrace your steps!
  
  
• Players can always get the game controller instructions by pausing the game (Esc) and selecting “Instructions”. We support both Keyboard/Mouse and PC Controllers.

SOME KNOWN ISSUES:

• Damage numbers are not always rounded on your Hero portraits, you may occasionally see multiple numbers past the decimal point.
  
  
• Occasionally, when starting the game, the first-person camera will not respond to mouse movement. This is almost always caused by another device such joysticks, gamepads, and VR devices. In most cases, restarting the game will fix the issue. However, you may need to disable or unplug the other devices.[/ist]

Coming to Xbox One and Playstation 4 in Q3 2018

AUSTIN – Feb. 07, 2018 – Codex Worlds’ Battlecursed, a dungeon crawler with roguelike elements in which a single player directs a four-hero party through real-time first-person battles, hits Steam Early Access today. An Xbox One, Playstation 4, and full PC release is planned for Q3 2018.

As parties traverse Battlecursed’s labyrinths, they must dispatch hordes of menacing enemies, carefully coordinating the strengths and weaknesses of all four party members. Only through strategic use of each hero and his or her abilities will the group reach the maze’s cavernous depths.

Players can select from a range of classes, including the supportive Cleric, the storm-wielding Elementalist, the tank-like Grave Knight, and range-based Hunter. Each class can combine powers with their allies to form devastating cooperative attacks.

Adventurers will lead each party through a dangerous labyrinth of interconnected dungeons to challenge the resurrected Lich Lord Xelo Van. Plunged into darkness, the land of Pylandria awaits the aid of brave heroes capable of vanquishing Xelo Van and his legions of nightmarish beasts.

“Battlecursed’s combat system will challenge RPG fans to build, manage, and lead powerful parties through tense bouts against a seemingly unstoppable dark army,” said Dexter Chow, creative director of Codex Worlds. “Only through wise class pairings, unwavering attention to detail, and mastery of enemy vulnerabilities can players surmount Battlecursed’s relentless waves of foes and save Pylandria.”

We are pleased to announce that we have been selected as a GDC ‘Best in Play’ Honorable Mention for our upcoming title, Battlecursed. We are incredibly thankful for this recognition and cannot wait to share more of our next title with you. Check out the full announcement on Battlecursed and other great titles here.

Codex Worlds will be exhibiting at GDC Play March 1-3 . If you are attending, please stop by Booth PL4925 in the North Hall to chat with members of our team and get hands on with an early build of Battlecursed!

Not attending GDC this year? Keep an eye on http://battlecursed.com for some important news and updates coming over the next few weeks. Our entire team has been hard at work over these past months and we are eager to share some exciting developments with you!