Hey folks!

Starting last week, we've entered full playtest mode! Yes, that means the game is being prepared for full release! Hype!
While we're playtesting, we've got a content freeze. No brand new assets are being made, and all artists are promoted to the role of playtester. Programmers are partially promoted to the role, because, you know, somebody has to fix the reported issues as well.
We’re also keeping track of any bug reports on the Steam forums and our Discord server and fixing them asap, so if you're playing the game, let us know of any issue!

We’ve also got reports coming in from the QA team testing the game. They’re testing the game on Linux and macOS as well, and the reports for those should help with most of the obvious issues on those platforms. One of the issues that should now be fixed is the clicking issue reported on macOS, where sometimes the mouse either did a double click on every single click, or required a double click to register as a single click.
One of our programmers valiantly dug deep into the macOS handling code to fix that one, which was both hard to reproduce and hard to even debug to figure out what was actually going on, so the fact he got a fix for it is great! If you previously had this bug, try the game and let us know if it’s fixed for you so we know if the fix is working the way we expect it to.

So as you can see, by entering this mode we’re basically gearing up for our 1.0 launch in the near future. Our days are spent tracking down and fixing bugs, and our designer is busy with putting the guides for modding on Steam and handling balance changes as they’re reported.

We’ve also gotten some good general game feedback on our Discord server and Steam that we’ve been discussing internally. We’re actively looking to iron out the kinks in the game, and improve the situation for new players. Although we’re close to release, it doesn’t mean the patches stop until then, they will happen probably every week up to and a short while after the full release. We've actually got a patch coming today as well! So the more people let us know their pain points with the game, the better we can make it for its 1.0 sticker :)

If you have suggestions, please drop them in the forums or on our Discord server. We love to see them and discuss them!

MarkoP

General fixes:
• Fixed a crash when opening the in-game Options menu on macOS.
• Fixed an issue in the final boss fight which would cause the script to break (and the boss would never spawn) if player killed a Pylon in a certain way.
• Added a check to the lobby that automatically unlocks any heroes that are not unlocked in the profile, but should because they don't have any unlock requirements. This is notable for mods adding new Heroes.
• Added a fixup for Atlantes' core achievement for players who unlocked the core before the achievement was added.
• Fixed a rare occurrence which could block progress in Roncevaux Pass, making it impossible to progress into Al-Andalus.
• Fixed a bug where locked relics (rewarded for completing the game) could appear in encounters/relic shops before being unlocked.
• Fixed Canoel random encounter with the Thief: they should now properly steal a static amount of gold every time, and return it if caught.
• Fixed Keen status effect (granted by Breunor's passive) to properly expire at turn end.
• Fixed a bug where the self-buff part of Warrior's Taunt skill (Blocking) could sometimes miss.
• Fixed a bug with Grail of Piety relic where its extra healing effect would also erroneously reduce CDs by 1.
• Fixed an issue preventing Thorns status effect from reflecting any damage.
• Fixed an issue preventing different variations of Roland's Horn relic from spawning.
• Fixed an issue where Cockatrice's abilities were not affected by cover.
• Fixed a bug where status effects (and their visuals) could in rare occasions be applied to units that just died.
• Fixed multiple skills which you could not use at 0 AP despite them costing 0 AP.
• Added green and red diamond markers to tier 3 skill upgrades where they were missing.
• Updated Cockatrice's Wingslam VFX to better fit the ability's logical hitbox.
• Added several sound effects which were missing on certain enemies.
• Updated various hint images to display the latest UI.
• Updated descriptions of various relics and skills to clarify them.
• Fixed a rare bug where the grid outline in combat was sometimes flashing or was not rendered properly.
• Fixed missing footstep sounds on a certain skirmish map.
• Various minor visual fixes across several levels.

Quality of life changes:
• Improved the automatic camera tracking logic. The camera movements should feel smoother and far less janky now.
• The rankup notification can now be shown even while the Journal is open (i.e. the player is in an encounter), which should help players not miss their rankup opportunities.

Gameplay balancing:
• Attribute rewards at rankup have been adjusted. The choice is now between +2 Health or +1 Armor, but every four levels there will be a third choice for a random attribute.

This post was written by Will, our VFX artist.

Hi everyone.

In The Hand of Merlin there are a great number of status effects, (over 200 in fact) which grant the player various different boons and banes that players will have to manage to effectively beat the evil monstrosities they are presented with. The task of visually representing these needed to be broken down so that players could quickly and effectively see what type of status currently affects the units on the skirmish map.

The gameplay implications needed to be represented were decided as follows;


Status effect VFX categories

Buffs:

1. Increased damage dealt
   
2. Reduced damage taken
   
3. Increased speed, evasion, accuracy or AP gain
   
4. Healing over time

Debuffs:

1. Reduced damage dealt
   
2. Increased damage taken
   
3. Decreased speed, evasion, accuracy or AP gain
   
4. Damage over time (burning / poisoned / bleeding)
   
5. Immobilized (unable to move)
   
6. Incapacitated (unable to take any action, stunned)

So I designed some quick concept sketches which the team helped me to refine. Then it was time to test and check them in the engine.













This is how they all look overlapping and while there's a lot going on it's much more readable than it was.


We here at Room-C hope this will make the game easier to play and make it more obvious that a status effect is affecting a unit and indicate its type.
You can share your opinions with us on our Discord server!

Will

New features:
• Updated the VFX for most status effects, which should be now be more intuitive and readable even with multiple effects stacked.

General fixes:
• Fixed an issue on certain Mac and Linux machines causing a "GPU not recognized" error message at game start.
• Fixed an issue where Hero Prowess unlocks did not work when defeating the final boss.
• Fixed an issue in the final boss fight where Mana would not be restored via the Holy Grail if killing a unit on the same turn it was spawned on.
• Fixed an issue where Dire Toad's Bristleback ability could trigger repeatedly off of reflected damage (such as Thorns).
• Fixed an issue where the choice cards for Ranger's Explosive Arrow skill upgrades showed the same text.
• Fixed a bug in the encounter "A Day for Jousting", where points were awarded incorrectly in the case of one broken lance.

Quality of life changes:
• The "essence available" notification on the world map now pops up and animates only if you had no essence before gaining one. If you start the map state with one or more, it is still present, just not animated across the screen.

Optimizations:
• Reduced clutter on several maps, which does not affect visuals but improves performance and reduces memory usage.

Gameplay balancing:
• Replaced Ranger's Specialty Arrow skill upgrade which was overlapping with the new Exploding Arrow skill with a new upgrade - Stunned Arrow, which applies a stun to the target.
• The status effect Timed Bomb applied via Ranger's Explosive Arrow skill can now be detonated prematurely by killing the affected target.
• Mystic's Noxious Fumes skill is buffed: increased max charges from 2 to 3, and it no longer affects allies.
• Tendril Whip relic now has a 60-degree cone area of effect instead of a line.

Hey folks!

On Monday we released our long awaited Content Update 7!

Along with a bunch of fixes, changes and improvements, it also marks the release of our Editor to the general public. That’s right, you can now play the game in a modded environment and create your own mods or install mods others make!

We have prepared several modding guides to help anyone wanting to try making their own. These span making new abilities, relics, encounters, maps, units, etc.

The guides are now all up!
Abilities guide!
Units guide!
AI guide!
Auras and ground effects guide!
Status effects guide!
Equipment guide!
Relics guide!
Skirmish maps!
Encounters!

Due to how the game is set up, some things are simpler to mod than others.
Relics, skills and (by extension) status effects are for the most part a “drop in and it works” resource. They automatically integrate with their respective systems.
Encounters, zones and skirmish maps are, to some degree, mutually dependent on each other. Zones require some number of encounters to work, and encounters that have a fight need to specify the skirmish map where the fight is, and each fight needs input from the encounter (if set up for it) on where to spawn enemies.

The guides will go into more detail on each aspect of modding if you’re interested.

Other than this, we have a patch for later today that will fix some issues found at the last minute before the update went live and a few extra ones reported after, plus some additional VFX.

This is about the time we like to either mention or write a whole blog post about the “what next?” question, the roadmap, the future, 1.0 release and adjacent topics.
Good news!
There’s one more feature we’ve got in the oven, the dreaded Endless Mode (name pending?). We have it playable internally, but we still need to playtest it and tweak it and see what the difficulty progression needs to be and all that stuff. Once we’re happy with that, we’ll slap the big ol’ 1.0 sticker on the game and release it out of Early Access! It’s really not that far off.
After that, we plan on supporting the game with any updates the game can benefit from. We’ll be listening to every piece of feedback we receive and see which ones we can do to further improve the game! Just like, keep in mind we’re a small team and don’t have the manpower to turn the ship (or the camera) in a whole different direction. Thanks!

If you have any questions about either modding, our release date, or just want to yell at us for making a (great) game, join our Discord server and let’s engage in some constructive discussions! Steam forums are fine too!

MarkoP

Patch Notes - Early Access Build 678477

New features:

• Revamped the final boss fight with new mechanics. It should now be more engaging, but also more rewarding: every victory will unlock new skills and relics that can be found in the following runs.
  
  
• Added new skills for each class:
  
• Warrior: Charge, Fend Off, Hook, Rebuke, Second Wind, Slam, Sword-sworn, Taunt.
  
• Ranger: Commanding Shot, Disengage, Explosive Arrow, Partner Up, Supply Line.
  
• Mystic: Cleanse, Empathy, Incense, Observation, Volatile Mixture.
  
  
• Added new per-class passive skills:
  
• Warrior: Automatically attacks enemies moving into or out of melee range to apply Bleeding.
  
• Ranger: Gets a stacking bonus to power and accuracy against a target flanked by the Ranger's allies.
  
• Mystic: Applies a stacking healing-over-time effect to allies standing next to the target of the Mystic's primary attack.
  
  
• At rank-up, instead of getting an automatic Health increase, Heroes will now be able to choose to improve either Health, Armor or a combination of both (presented via choice cards).
  
  
• Added official support for macOS (10.13 High Sierra or newer) and Linux (SteamOS 3.0 or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS).
  
  
• Added official support for Steam Deck.
  
  
• Added modding tools and integrated support for Steam Workshop.
  
• To install mods, subscribe to them here:
  
• http://steamcommunity.com/app/600610/workshop/
  
• Then run the game from Steam and select "moddable" from the popup menu. You can view and manage mods from the Options / Steam Workshop menu.
  
  
• To create mods, install and run The Hand of Merlin - Editor. We'll be adding modding guides soon - stay tuned!

General fixes:

• Fixed an issue where closing the game in specific circumstances could cause the save data to get corrupted - this should no longer be possible.
  
• Fixed a crash in the relic shop when dragging a relic into a slot where there is no hero.
  
• Fixed a bug where the reroll button for skill cards was not usable with a gamepad.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where Tariq's Bladedancer passive would not work correctly in certain cases.
  
• Fixed a rare crash if holding down [Esc] while the game is transitioning between states.
  
• Fixed a bug where unit attributes weren't updated when a status effect that affects that unit had its stack count changed.
  
• Fixed an issue where toggling "show extended tooltips" (formulas) didn't trigger an update for status effect tooltips, for cases where they had a value derived from a formula.
  
• Fixed an issue where destroyed cover objects could sometimes still show up as whole and translucent when hovered-over by mouse.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where encounter cards could get overlapped if clicking on them extremely fast.
  
• Fixed the tooltip for Pheasant Feather relic, which did not list the actual effect applied.
  
• Irish Gorget relic can no longer miss with its heal effect.
  
• Fixed an issue causing the Skein of Thread relic to be unequippable.
  
• "The House of Peace" encounter now correctly grants Supplies when picking pomegranates.

Quality of life changes:

• Fresh profiles will now start with 0 Essence, instead of 1. To offset this, winning the game now grants 1 essence every time as a minimum. This is a QoL feature because it eliminates the Core/Spell selection step of the loadout process for the very first run of a new player.
  
• Improved the Lobby UI (roster and loadout selection) - it should be both more informative and more intuitive now.
  
• Added "camera speed" option for the Lobby transitions.
  
• Removed the list of previous end-of-run reports from the Lobby, as this screen was very seldomly used.
  
• Improved the skill cards layout for better readability.
  
• Added stats tracking to Victory/Defeat screens: enemies defeated, turns taken, etc.
  
• Ability tooltips will now indicate the shape and size of an ability's area of effect in the tooltip header.
  
• Added an attribute breakdown to unit tooltips, for added clarity of various effects' interactions.
  
• All tooltips will now show formulas in parenthesis only if the formula is non-trivial (i.e. involves at least one multiplication).
  
• Added subtle box backgrounds for the various combat UI elements to make them easier to read in both light and dark environments.
  
• Improved the visuals of the in-game UI scrollbars.
  
• Improved the visuals of the in-game Bestiary's navigation labels.
  
• Changed the icons and names of the map nodes in the final zone (Jerusalem) to be more clear about what they reward.
  
• Renamed Mystic's Desecration skill into Raze, as this is more appropriate to the lore.

Gameplay balancing:

• Morgan Tud's Druid Physician passive is replaced with Thornwarden: it applies Thorns to adjacent allies after using Singe, granting them damage reflection.
  
• Zahra's starting skill (Stand Ready) is removed and replaced with Second Wind: it clears debuffs and restores armor to caster.
  
• Soft-disables will no longer be able to reduce attributes to zero, meaning they cannot turn into hard-disables. For example, Slow can no longer reduce Speed to zero, which would make it the same as Root.
  
• Mending now stacks with itself, but has a cap of 5 stacks.
  
• Bleeding now stacks with itself, but has a cap of 5 stacks.
  
• Ranger's Blinding Smoke skill (and its upgrades) have been buffed to apply stronger debuffs (now scaling with Power).
  
• Wilfred no longer starts with the Sprint skill, but instead with Shiv.
  
• Wilfred's passive (Non-chalant) has been buffed to deal more damage to Targeted enemies (now scaling with Power).
  
• Rumayla's passive (Piercer of the Veil) has been buffed - it now reduces targeted enemy's Power by -25% (instead of a flat -2).
  
• The extra damage granted through Breunor's passive (Keen) no longer applies to just one hit, but instead lasts for the whole turn.
  
• Zahra's starting Armor is now 25 (up from 15), and her starting Power is now 5 (up from 4).
  
• Zahra's passive (Resourceful) has been buffed - it now restores armor points equal to 50% of maximum Armor (instead of 1*Power).
  
• Ranger's Surging Shot skill (upgrade of Shoot) has been buffed. Grants Surge on damage dealt instead of health damage dealt.
  
• Abominations will no longer apply Poison or Bleeding - these effects are now reserved for players. Instead, monsters will apply Corruption, which has tighter rules on stacking and maximum damage per turn.

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Hello there, players.

My name is Kaz. I’m a 3D and concept artist who was working on the Hand of Merlin from its very beginnings. For today’s blog post I gathered up some very old concept art to take you through our monster design journey.

When the game was still in its diapers, we had no concrete idea what style or atmosphere we wanted our enemies to portray. We had general narrative pointers - but no aesthetics to accompany them. This was an important decision to make early on because enemies are, of course, a very important part of communicating the nature of the danger you’re facing and for complimenting the overall story of the game. We knew we wanted them to feel completely alien to our heroes, but still aesthetically fit together with each other to make it clear that they come from the same place. Very dangerous and strange place. A different universe, even.

We went through dozens of distinct ideas, ranging from the remains of prehistoric animals to creepy half-functioning robots from the future. Even a combination of the two, perhaps animated by some unknown alien force. We gave crystals and elementals a go, carnivorous plants, tar and slime, rock/lava themed goliaths, insects and even some fleshy horrors inspired by the Silent Hill series. At one point we even entertained the thought of animal hybrids, though we decided those looked too familiar and not scary enough, even if explained by external alien corruption.

It’s important to note that the design of the abominations was heavily influenced by the technical and gameplay limits, as well. For example, the fact that the enemies were supposed to fit a square-shaped tile underneath them made any ideas for monsters with elongated bodies unviable.
A lot of quick sketches were made, many of which were never even fully coloured, let alone finalised.




Picking a colour theme for our abominations was important as well. We wanted the creatures to sport hues which were as uncommon in nature as possible, to make them more alien. This colour palette would also be the identifying aesthetic of the “corruption” itself - the strange force seeping into our healthy world and gradually killing it. The monsters were to be its deadly harbingers.




After a lot of testing (with fire-orange and neon green being a dominant choice in the beginning), we opted for the dark purple, red and black. We felt that the combination of these colours represented the right amount of darkness and mystery, while looking very unnatural and dangerous when placed on the world and skirmish maps against the rocks and foliage. It really popped out in contrast to the healthy green and made the scenery look infected, sickly.
The monsters born from this unnatural darkness would be a combination of aliens and insects, with a dash of something reminding the players of plants and vines. Something, we believed, would be the strangest and scariest from the perspective of the people in the medieval times who had no concept of any monsters beyond their era-appropriate mythology.
We also decided to avoid giving them eyes (with the exception of the Redcap, our eyeball-pancake), realising that the monsters looked much more scary and unrelatable if they had no identifiable face.

Most of the early concepts never saw the light of the day, being pushed under the rug with the rest of the discarded ideas. However, some early drawings were a nice base for the evolved purple designs later on. Once we had our general aesthetic flashed out, we could make new designs or modify some of the existing initial ideas to fit the needs of the gameplay mechanics assigned to the particular monster.

Here’s an example.



Our game designer, Mat, needed a monster which could run around freely and attack from a distance. This fit nicely with the existing birdlike (or dinosaur) concept we already had, since it looked quite agile and was designed to shoot quills. However, Mat wanted this monster to have a lot of health at its disposal, while not being particularly well armoured. Hence, its sturdy armour plates were removed or shrunk, while its overall mass was increased by adding tumours and wild flesh. This made the enemy look like it could soak more damage to its HP, while also playing on the morbid/sickly aesthetic.
Next, Mat wanted this creature to be able to infect the heroes with a lingering ailment from afar, but also to push away the units in its melee range without causing a lot of damage. This lead to the quills and needles of the original design being dropped, in exchange for something big and blunt. In this case, to stay true to the dinosaur inspiration, a set of heavy protruding tail bones were added.
For the lingering negative status effect the poison of choice was… Well, poison. More accurately, venom. A dash of sickly green was added to the swollen tumours to represent the venom sacks; and with that the monster design for the Basilisk enemy was finalised.

Here’s a picture of this enemy as it looks now in the game.



I hope you enjoyed this short overview of our monster creation history. I, myself, find its evolution to be quite interesting.
Join us on our Discord server!

Kaz

This post is written by Mia, our gameplay designer.

Hello there!

Two weeks ago we mentioned there will be some new abilities coming to The Hand of Merlin, today we’d like to tell you a little more about them!

There are at least a dozen new abilities (not counting the upgraded versions) coming to the game, warriors gaining the most since they needed a few more abilities in their pool to match the Rangers and Mystics.
These warrior abilities which were missing will be readily available in the ability pool right away, the other abilities however will need to be unlocked!

By saving worlds (winning) you’ll begin to unlock new relics and new abilities. This will allow further exploration of combinations and synergies, different builds and strategies.
For every hero that survives the final battle, you’ll have a 66% chance of unlocking a new skill for their role, the other 33% is getting a new relic unlock.
Should you for example already have all the mystic skills unlocked, instead you’ll have a guaranteed relic unlock (unless you’ve already unlocked everything, that is).
You can unlock abilities on any difficulty, so if you'll be in a hurry Easy Mode is an option as well.

All of this is susceptible to change if we see that it’s not as rewarding as we thought it would be.

Some of these unlockable abilities are:
Warrior - Hook
Disrupt and pull your enemies to your warrior. Set up combos with your rangers or drag them through fire. There’s numerous ways to use it, offensively and defensively.


Ranger - Partner Up
The new abilities of the rangers play around teamwork, and Partner Up is a great example of this.
Designate another hero as your rangers Partner, whenever your Partner is attacked the Ranger will shoot at the attacker in revenge.


Mystic - Incense
Most of the new mystic abilities are heavy on support duty.
Incense is an aura which applies a debuff to all enemies in its radius, lowering their accuracy and evasion. This’ll help your rangers nail those Quick Draw shots and your warriors to evade attacks.

Each upgrade of these abilities adds another function to it, giving you more ways to strategize.

We’re still ironing out some of the new abilities, as well as having our VFX artist hard at work trying to make them all look good as well. It’s a work in progress, but we’re quite happy with how these new abilities act and interact with each other and the old abilities.

If you’re curious and want to know more before the update itself is out, feel free to poke up on our Discord server where we might share more.

Mia

Hi all,

Robert here, this time to talk about - Steam Deck!



Yup, that's right: we got the opportunity to test our game on Valve's fancy new piece of hardware, and I have to say: it's a pretty powerful device, and with all the optimizations we'd already done for the other consoles, The Hand of Merlin already runs on Steam Deck at a smooth 60 FPS.

Some of you - the lucky ones - may already have a Deck in their hands, and if you do, you'll notice that Valve assigned us a yellow "Playable" tag. But over the last few days, we've been working on getting the few reported (minor) kinks out, so that we can have that nice green "Verified" tag.

So let's unpack the journey of porting to Steam Deck, as short and pleasant as it was.

First things first, we've already been working on supporting Linux natively. Although we haven't ticked the box to make this official on the store page yet, the native Linux (and macOS) executables have been available for some time now, and a few of our dedicated fans have been helping out with compatibility testing. This means we do not require Proton (a Windows emulation layer) to run our game on SteamOS / Steam Deck. In other words, there's no risk of an emulation layer introducing bugs or instabilities, plus there's zero overhead, which improves both performance and battery life.

Secondly, the biggest gruntwork was updating our Steam API support from a fairly old version (that came by default in Serious Engine 4) to the newest one required by Steam Deck. This allowed us to correctly identify the input controls: both the touchscreen and the gamepad, and I have to say - planning ahead really helped us out here. With Steam Big Picture mode already supported via our dynamic UI scaling system, font legibility was no issue at all. Having already done full gamepad support, once we updated the Steam API, the controls also Just Worked(TM).

Fortunately, Serious Engine also already has built-in support for touch input, and it helps that our UI does not require more than a single mouse button for most operations. There was just one small but important tweak we had to do: if using the touchscreen, you now always get a small confirm / cancel button before executing a move or attack action. This really helps prevent mistaken actions.

On top of this, our engine works just fine with multiple input sources, so switching between the touch and gamepad controls on the Steam Deck felt really smooth and seamless, so much so that I found myself using the right analogue stick for quick and precise camera panning, and the touchscreen for most UI interactions.

And finally, as I talked about in a previous blog post, we had done some significant optimizations in a push to bring the game to consoles. To properly support Steam Deck's hardware, all we had to do was correctly identify its GPU and set up appropriate default graphics settings. And voila - smooth, stable 60 FPS! Well, unless of course you limit the FPS from the Deck's Quick Access menu in order to preserve battery. But even if you do - the visuals won't change. The game will look just as good, but the battery will last longer.

So, there you have it. Full support for Steam Deck incoming. :) For any questions or comments, find us on Steam Discussions or our Discord server.

Robert