Hello everyone!

Here we are!
The Slormancer is now available in Early Access!
Really sorry about the delay!

We're both really excited and super nervous.

We sincerely hope that you will have tons of fun playing the game!

If you have any questions before buying the game, please read this article, detailing the content available right now, in the first version of Early Access.

And if you would like to know a bit more about the future of the game, please check the Road Map we've made.

If you find bugs or want to share your feedback please send it to us on our Discord, on Reddit or on our Steam Forums. A screenshot and a detailed description of your problem is always super useful!

Cheers!

Hello everyone!

We wanted to make one last post before release, hopefully answering the last questions you might have before launch.

First, the price.
The Slormancer will be available at $14.99 during Early Access.
There will be a 15% Discount at Launch, for a week.
So about $12.75 at Launch.

The Soundtrack of The Slormancer will also be available at launch, at $5.99 alone.
About 2-hour long of Epic & Spooky Music. No less!

These prices may vary depending on the country you live in.

A bundle with The Slormancer+Soundtrack will be available as well, with a 10% Discount.
You can already check/wishlish the Steam page of the Soundtrack!

We're super proud of the Soundtrack, and we really hope you'll like it.
If you want to listen to the Main Theme right away, it's right here!


The Slormancer will be available at 7PM CET.
To make it easy for all timezones, here's a beautiful countdown to release.


This one is really important as it raised some concern among the community so we wanted to address this before release: The Trailer and a couple of screenshots on the Steam page feature some content that will only become available in later Early Access updates.

The most important thing being the Ancestral Skill Tree and Elemental-related skills that you can find on it: As we mentioned in our Early Access Q&A (that you can read on our Steam Page), only the first 2 Tiers of the Ancestral Tree (out of 7) will be available at launch.

Not because they are not ready, but because they are unlocked throughout the story, and since the first version of Early Access is limited to the first act of the story, you will not be able to unlock the 5 missing tiers until we add new acts.

Same goes for environments, you will have access to 2 different environments, out of 7, and they will also be available through later acts.


Another common question was the Endgame content available at launch.
Basically, once you have completed the first part of the story (which should take about 4 hours), you will have access to a mode called "Battlefield".



In "Battlefield", you will be teleported to a randomly generated area where your goal will be to slay every enemy around, while looting equipment and materials for crafting, gaining experience and unlocking new NPCs.

There are a good number of features to unlock once you're done with the story, including various forms of crafting, new materials and NPCs but also Slorm Reapers and Legendary items.

You will also be able to increase the difficulty by using Wrath: A modifier that will increase the strength of enemies you face but also the rewards and experience you get.

It's the barebones of the endgame we want for The Slormancer, but we feel like there's plenty to do with it.


The game is an Early Access, and we are trying to be as transparent as possible regarding what's in the game right now, so we strongly encourage you to read our Early Access Q&A. For your convenience, it has been pasted just below.

We also posted a Road Map, so you can find out what's coming next and what we're working on.

Why Early Access?
“We want to make The Slormancer the best game it can be, and we know that working with our community and listening to players' suggestions during Early Access will be key to achieve this.”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Since The Slormancer is our very first game and since there are only two of us, it is difficult to accurately estimate how long Early Access will last.

The Slormancer will be released as a final version when we feel the game is complete and polished, which may take some time. We have a lot of content that we still want to add and new features. Not to mention what needs to be tweaked or modified during Early Access.

But expect approximately two years.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The final version of The Slormancer will feature a complete adventure and rich end-game content. We plan to extend the bestiary with new enemy types and new bosses. New Legendary items, skills, and Achievements will also be introduced.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Players can already play 3 complete classes up to level 40 (out of 100), as well as access the first two tiers (out of 7) of the general skill tree of the game and allocate skill points for their class. More than 30 (out of 120) Slorm Reapers, which are unique weapons, are available to each class, as well as their primordial version.

Players can also find all types of equipment in the game, with dozens of different stats, as well as materials for the upgrade and crafting systems, which are also already present. 80 Legendary items, with unique effects, are also available (and we plan to add many, many more of those).

Most of the game's features are also integrated: dialogues, cinematics, non-player characters, combat, tutorials, the possibility to play with the mouse, the keyboard or the controller, everything is there.

Nevertheless, players will only have access to one act of the story (out of 5) for now, which represents an experience of a few hours. Endgame content is present but also limited, as is the diversity of environments and the variety of enemies.
These are very important points for us and will be our priority during the first phases of Early Access.

However, the gameplay loop is complete: Players can now embark on an adventure, defeat monsters, find loot, level up, improve their skills, and start again, increasing the difficulty if they wish to.

Despite our best efforts, the game probably still has some bugs. Also, skills, items and enemies most likely lack proper balancing.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“We expect to increase the price of the game by an undetermined amount when it comes out of Early Access.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“Since our first demo, we've made it a point to listen to all the relevant feedback from our players, which has already helped The Slormancer move in the right direction.
Players will be able to provide feedback on our Discord, our Reddit, or our Steam Community Page where we will strive to be both accessible and receptive.”

If you have any other questions or concerns, please, feel free to ask!

We hope to see you on April 6 for release!
Cheers!

Updated on September 27, 2022


Hello everyone!

As you probably may have heard, The Slormancer will be available in Early Access on April 6.

And because it's an Early Access, we feel like we owe you a complete Road Map of how we plan to update the game during this period so that you you know exactly what you are buying and in what state the game currently is.
For this reason, you might also want to check out the Q&A about Early Access on our Steam page.

Above is the current Road Map we plan follow.
However, please note that things may (and probably will) change based on players feedback but also based on our own ideas as we want to remain free to add unannounced features if we (or you) suddenly come up with a brilliant addition for the game.

In short, the Road Map is subject to change.

We will update this post when changes are made to the Road Map and keep a clean changelog aswell so you know what's happening at all times.

Cheers!
And see you on April 6.

Want to see the trailer again? Fine...

Hello everyone!

We're pleased to let everyone know that after developing this game since what feels like 1986, we finally have a release date for Early Access.



The hunt for The Slormancer will begin on April 6!
And we are super excited to let everyone try the game.

If you've missed the latest Trailer, now would be a great time to watch it!
And a great time to watch it again, if you've seen it already!



See you (very) soon!

Hello everyone!

We've had a lot of controversy about the default control scheme of the game (WASD/Mouse by default, like Enter the Gungeon, or Hades) and had a lot of feedback on most of our social platforms from people that wanted an experience closer to what they were used to in the Action-RPG genre.

So we've decided to add a "Click to Move" option to The Slormancer with all that's expected.

You can now pretty much play The Slormancer any way you want (Controller, Click to Move or WASD), you can rebind everything aswell so you can customize the controls to your needs.

Also, we had a small timeframe in our schedule before our Early Access release so it will not impact or delay the release of the game more than it already was.

We'll announce the final date soon, once everything is ready on our side.

Thanks for reading!

See you soon in The Slormancer!
With a Mouse, an Xbox controller, or a Wheel if you feel like it.

Hi everyone!

Today, we'd like to talk about what we've been working on these past few weeks: Crafting and Items.

Disclaimer:
If you've played the demo, you will notice that we have reworked a bunch of things on items: names, stats and slormite behavior. We'll talk about it in the post as well.

Disclaimer 2:
The state and inventory of the character displayed in the screenshots below does not represent accurately how the game works. I mean... It's a level 1 Knight with around 65 Millions Goldus and countless currencies of all sorts.





Let's talk about currencies before talking about Crafting, there are 4 sorts of currencies in the game (besides Gold): Slormites, Slormelines, Slormandrites and Slorments Fragments.

Slormelines:
There are 5 Slormelines: One for each rarity, that will be useful everytime you want to modify, reforge or reinforce an item of equal rarity. You use a Rare Slormeline to modify a Rare Item etc...

Fragments:
Each Slormeline can be crafted using Fragments: There are 5 types of fragment, one for each rarity aswell. You get fragments by salvaging equipment. And you will need 100 fragments to create a Slormeline.

So basically: you salvage Rare equipment to get Rare fragments, you then use them to create Rare Slormelines that you can use to modify and enhance Rare Equipment. Easy enough.

Slormandrites:
There are 6 other currencies we call Slormandrites:
The Slormandrite of Fate
The Slormandrite of Negation
The Slormandrite of True Potential
The Slormandrite of Aptitude
The Slormandrite of Harmony
The Slormandrite of Virtue

Slormandrites can also be crafted using combinations of Fragments: The Slormandrite of True Potential, for example, needs 100 Normal Fragments, 50 Magic Fragments and 50 Rare Fragments.

They all modify different aspects of an item and can be combined together or with Slormelines for more powerful effects.

Examples: The Slormandrite of Fate, if used alone, rerolls all the unlocked Stat Values of an item.
If used in combination with an Epic Slormeline, it will then only reroll the unlocked Epic Stat Values of an item (There are ways to lock stats of an item, preventing further modification).



Slormites:
Then there are Slormites, that are used to Reinforce an item and all its stats. There are 15 different Slormites of different strength that can be used on your Equipment.

Slormites can either be found or crafted using lower Slormites (except the very first, that needs Fragments).

In The Slormancer, the ability to Reinforce an item is infinite and is only limited to your own dedication and time.







Here's what the crafting menu looks like.
You can basically reforge absolutely everything on an item.
Every single stat and score can be changed. You can also upgrade the rarity of items and transform a Normal Item you like to an insane endgame Legendary Item if you want to (and if you have enough currencies, money and dedication, of course).

We tried to be as transparent as possible so you get to see the possible rolls before actually reforging, along with possible outcomes.

Bonus: New Effects:
On the screenshot above, you can actually see a Crest Shield Mastery Bonus and a Willpower Bonus.
These are new effects that can be found (or added/reforged) on any equipment and that give you a small bonus.
Getting a +2 Mastery bonus can open up new tiers of upgrades while getting Attribute bonuses can help you reach new Perks.
These can be rolled on every slot and are cumulative, so you can reach high Mastery, Attribute or Reaper bonuses if you roll the correct effects.





Known as The Slormitizer, this is the device that will let you Reinforce your items.

Note: If you've played the demo and have used Slormites, you should know that they no longer work the way they used to.

Potential:
Equipment pieces have something we call "Potential" that you gain the same way you gain experience: by slaying monsters.
This represents how easy Reinforcing the item will be.
So basically, an item with 100% Potential will always be Reinforced succesfully while an item with 25% Potential will have 75% Chance to fail.

How to Reinforce:
To Reinforce an Item, you need an Item (duh...), a Slormite, and The Slormitizer.

Besides Potential, there are a few things that can change the outcome of the Reinforcement:
First, the quality of the Slormite you use: using a Slormite of tier that is too low compared to the level of your item will almost always trigger a Reinforcement Failure.
Then, you can use Slormelines and Slormandrites to modify the outcome in your favor: some will simply increase your chance of success while other will increase Critical Reinforcement Chance or Double Reinforcement Chances.
A Critical Reinforcement will give a small amount of Potential to your Item once it is Reinforced while a Double Reinforcement will Reinforce the item twice.

When you Reinforce, whether you succeed or not, the Potential of your Item gets back to zero (unless the Reinforcement is Critical).



You can also buy or sell items the good old fashion way.
You can either buy random containers if you like randomness or buy specific items on sales that are renewed regularly.
Here are a few screenshots of what the store looks like:






That's it for now.
We're getting closer to release so we should be able to give you a precise release date soon.

A demo of The Slormancer will be available during the Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition, from October 7th to October 13th. If you haven't tried it yet, now would be the perfect time.

If you've tried the demo already, you should know that it is the exact same build as before.


The Slormancer is an epic 2D Action-RPG Dungeon Crawling game following a band of outcasts on their fight against hordes of enemies lead by The Slormancer!
Play as a "Mighty" Knight, a "Fierce" Huntress or a "Mischievous" Mage, master hundreds of abilities and ancestral powers, gear up, fight for the reputation of your kind and prove your value to the realm.

Featuring loads of shiny Loot, tons of collectibles, countless hours of content, a frenetic gameplay and carefully crafted pixel art.


The demo lets you explore a small portion of the world of Adreart and directly hop into the heat of action by trying out Expeditions using the Hero of your choice.
You will only have access to the first few skills and weapons of your Hero which should be more than enough to create your first builds and have fun with the various effects and synergies you will discover.

Good Luck, Adventurer!


We are a two-man independent game development studio based in France. It was created in November 2017 with one goal in mind: to center the player's experience around FUN. Plain and simple. Not frustration, not tedious quests, not paywalls, not overwhelmingly complex mechanics or unfair challenges. Just fun. And we've been working on The Slormancer ever since.

The Slormancer is our first game and our most important project to this date which means we are determined to impress, and we will give everything we can!

• An irrational story!
  You were born with absolutely no skill whatsoever, and yet you find a way to be the last hope of the realm as the enigmatic Slormancer and his incompetent underling try to conquer the world once again. How great. But like your grandfather once told you: "You might not have the talent but you have the will."
  
• Three unique Classes
  Unlock and master more than 200 unique Abilities, Upgrades and Passives for every class. Each active Ability has its own skill tree, allowing you to create unique combinations.
  
• Harness the power of your Ancestral Legacy
  Choose your Legacy and inherit ancient powers among more than 150 Element-related Skills and Passives in the Ancestral Skill Tree.
  Master Fire and summon powerful elementals, use Ice to freeze your foes, convoke Thunder and create massive storms, embrace the power of Light or make one with Shadow, it's up to you!
  
• Unique Weapons
  120 unique and game-changing weapons available for every class. Each Slorm Reaper is a unique and priceless weapon that you can loot during your adventure. Once found, wield it to benefit from its powerful effect, level it up, and eventually evolve it to a greater form.
  
• Endless quest for Epic Loot!
  Find and collect normal, magic, rare and epic items with completely random properties but also shiny legendary items with more than 80 unique affixes.
  Then enhance them with an infinite upgrade system!
  
• Collect and Progress
  Unlock Skills, Upgrades and Ancestral Abilities, find epic items, and collect Slorm Reapers to create deadly combinations that suits your own play style!
  The Slormancer is all about Collection and Progression so you can switch at any point between any skills you’ve previously unlocked, Slorm Reapers and items you’ve previously found, even between the 3 classes of the game! This unique Flexibility allows you to swap between different combinations and play styles in the blink of an eye, whenever you feel like it.
  
• Procedural Adventures!
  Defeat lots of unique monsters, elites and bosses with more than 40 different affixes through procedurally generated adventures and hunt down The Slormancer’s Warlords through 7 different upgradable environments. There are always things to do and monsters to kill! And it's always different!

Join us during the Steam Game Festival at 8pm on October 7 for an hour-long stream as we are playing The Slormancer and answering questions live on our chat!

See you on Wednesday, October 7th!


The Slormancer is an epic 2D Action-RPG Dungeon Crawling game following a band of outcasts on their fight against hordes of enemies lead by The Slormancer!
Play as a "Mighty" Knight, a "Fierce" Huntress or a "Mischievous" Mage, master hundreds of abilities and ancestral powers, gear up, fight for the reputation of your kind and prove your value to the realm.

Featuring loads of shiny Loot, tons of collectibles, countless hours of content, a frenetic gameplay and carefully crafted pixel art.


We are a two-man independent game development studio based in France. It was created in November 2017 with one goal in mind: to center the player's experience around FUN. Plain and simple. Not frustration, not tedious quests, not paywalls, not overwhelmingly complex mechanics or unfair challenges. Just fun. And we've been working on The Slormancer ever since.

The Slormancer is our first game and our most important project to this date which means we are determined to impress, and we will give everything we can!

• An irrational story!
  You were born with absolutely no skill whatsoever, and yet you find a way to be the last hope of the realm as the enigmatic Slormancer and his incompetent underling try to conquer the world once again. How great. But like your grandfather once told you: "You might not have the talent but you have the will."
  
• Three unique Classes
  Unlock and master more than 200 unique Abilities, Upgrades and Passives for every class. Each active Ability has its own skill tree, allowing you to create unique combinations.
  
• Harness the power of your Ancestral Legacy
  Choose your Legacy and inherit ancient powers among more than 150 Element-related Skills and Passives in the Ancestral Skill Tree.
  Master Fire and summon powerful elementals, use Ice to freeze your foes, convoke Thunder and create massive storms, embrace the power of Light or make one with Shadow, it's up to you!
  
• Unique Weapons
  120 unique and game-changing weapons available for every class. Each Slorm Reaper is a unique and priceless weapon that you can loot during your adventure. Once found, wield it to benefit from its powerful effect, level it up, and eventually evolve it to a greater form.
  
• Endless quest for Epic Loot!
  Find and collect normal, magic, rare and epic items with completely random properties but also shiny legendary items with more than 80 unique affixes.
  Then enhance them with an infinite upgrade system!
  
• Collect and Progress
  Unlock Skills, Upgrades and Ancestral Abilities, find epic items, and collect Slorm Reapers to create deadly combinations that suits your own play style!
  The Slormancer is all about Collection and Progression so you can switch at any point between any skills you’ve previously unlocked, Slorm Reapers and items you’ve previously found, even between the 3 classes of the game! This unique Flexibility allows you to swap between different combinations and play styles in the blink of an eye, whenever you feel like it.
  
• Procedural Adventures!
  Defeat lots of unique monsters, elites and bosses with more than 40 different affixes through procedurally generated adventures and hunt down The Slormancer’s Warlords through 7 different upgradable environments. There are always things to do and monsters to kill! And it's always different!

Hi everyone!

We've been working on various aspects of character customization lately. We've changed the way Slorm Reapers work (Slorm Reapers are weapons that you can find in the game) and we have added a new layer of customization called Character Attributes.

Slorm Reapers were initially designed to enable new build opportunities and to make the player think on how to make the most out of its weapon by finding the proper synergies.
Each Slorm Reaper has one or more positive effects and one negative effect (such as reducing your Max Life or preventing you from doing Critical Strikes etc...) so you had to figure out how to play around all these.

Unfortunately, we ended up with underwhelming weapons, that felt weaker than regular Items and with a repealing negative effect, so looting one was a bit disappointing.

Our design goal for the rework was to make Slorm Reapers a pretty rare item that you should be thrilled to loot, with awesome and ready-to-use effects but with super-strong hidden synergies to explore. A Slorm Reaper should always make you want to try it instantly.

So we have divided the effects of Slorm Reapers: you now have a regular form that you can loot during your expeditions. Regular forms have been reworked to be much richer than before, they do not come with a Negative Effect and should work with pretty much every build.
Each Reaper has an hidden form called the Primordial form that you can unlock by playing the regular version. The Primordial form is much stronger but also comes with a strong Negative effect so playing with a Primordial Reaper has to be thought through and planned.

Both Reapers will be available at any point so you can switch to the Primordial form when you feel ready and come back to the regular form if you don't like how it works.

Each Slorm Reaper also has a different design when it's in its Primordial form.
And as stated in our Steam Page, there are 120 different Slorm Reapers to find and try out.


Before/After of a Slorm Reaper.


Regular Collection


Primordial Collection

Hopefully, Slorm Reapers will be exciting to play for everyone!


We added a new layer of Customization to the game called Character Attributes. We did this because we felt that leveling up was not exciting enough, lacked proper feedback and rewards.
We also felt that it was a bit tricky to fill gaps and really tailor stats to your needs.

Since we feel like we have a lot of complex features, we decided to add something super simple, that will hopefully be easy to understand and use.

Behold! The Character Attributes Menu:







So basically, you gain a point every level that you can add to one among 8 different attributes:
Toughness, Savagery, Fury, Determination, Zal, Willpower, Dexterity & Bravery.

Each Attribute focuses on a base stat plus secondary stats and effects that work well together.
Each point you add increases the base stat. Additionaly, you increase another stronger stat every 5 point (usually in %) and unlock various Effects every 15 points.

Pretty straight forward!

That's it for now!

We've been working on The Slormancer for almost 4 years now and the 2 basic enemies (Skeleton Soldier and Skeleton Archer) have been here the whole time.
So we were super excited to create new enemies for the game!

We added a dozen of new enemies to The Slormancer, it's time for you to meet some of them!


Zombie Peasants

Weak alone but deadly in numbers. It applies the "Scratch" debuff to its target, doubling Zombie Peasant Damage for the next 30 seconds.



The Plague Doctor

The Plague Doctor spreads Poisonous Areas all over the Map while also moving out if you get too close. Dangerous if you let him live too long



The COLOSSUS

The Dreadful Colossus deals Damage in Circles of various sizes when he slams the ground, better be careful. Also, never hide under its fists.



Corrupted Puddings and Burning Puddings

Corrupted Puddings create a Dangerous Area of Effect below you.


Burning Puddings cast Elemental Projectiles that follow you for a short period of time.


Turn out these cute little guys are quite a threat.



The Hex Shroud

The Hex Shroud applies a Curse decreasing Armor, Attack Speed or Movement Speed while dealing Damage over time to you if you are within its ever-expanding range.



The Fallen Knight - Elite
The game also features Elite enemies. They are obviously quite stronger but also faster and smarter.
Each Elite Enemy also has an additional behavior and/or an enhanced effect:
Examples from enemies above:
- Elite Zombie Peasant summons another Zombie Peasants whenever he hits you.
- Elite Hex Shroud applies the 3 Curses at once.
- Elite Corrupted Pudding's Area of Effects are recasted after a bit.

You'll have to meet each and every Elite version to figure out their mechanic.


An Elite Fallen Knight, with an Increased Range of Attack


Additional Illustrations