Sep 28, 2023

Roboquest - Progress, Playtest and Pricing

Roboquest - Yun and the Yuns

The playtest phase has ended and the playtest branch is no longer available!

Hey Guardians!

We’re here to keep you in touch about our progress and discuss a few things regarding price increase, price adjustments and the playtest.

Preparing for 1.0 Launch

We’re nearly at the finish line with Roboquest. We still need to fix things on the latest build following your feedback and our data. And we also have plenty of things to do for everything around it, may it be trailers, reaching out to press and influencers and everything you might imagine to make a successful launch.

We can’t announce the release date yet but it’s starting to shape up.

Thanks to the playtesters, we’ve gathered a lot of feedback and fixed many issues. And most of the feedback has been positive. We can only hope that you will all enjoy the full release as much as our playtesters! Or even more yet, since it should be more stable and balanced (hopefully?!).

In any case we’re nearing the end, and what a journey it has been. But let’s stop here because those words are probably for another day. Like when we actually release the game. And we have other things to discuss today.

We wanted to give you guys a heads-up before we make some changes, so here's what's coming up:

Playtest Closing

We'll be closing the Playtest Monday the 2nd of October.

This weekend marks your last opportunity to experience the 1.0.0 version of Roboquest before its official launch.

If you haven't had a chance to dive into the playtest yet, or if you encountered any pesky bugs and crashes that prevented you from playing, or even if you just want more Robo-action, this weekend is your chance.

We’re still in need of your feedback, and your support has already been a game-changer for us so far.

Roboquest Price Increase

+ Regional Price Adjustment

Starting from October 2nd, the price of Roboquest will be going up from $19.99 to $24.99.

As you may recall we mentioned the price increase for launch, and we're making that move a tad earlier. And just to clarify, if you already own the game, this change won't affect you at all.

We need to make this change early so that we're able to run a launch discount following Steam's pricing rules - and running a launch discount can be super important for a successful and very visible launch. We hope you don't mind that we're making that change earlier than expected.

As part of the price update we are re-visiting our regional pricing. We realize that last time we did this it was... confusing (some would say controversial, and we would probably agree). So we're going to try again and hopefully find a better balance.

How exactly will prices be affected? Well, most prices will increase in line with the $19.99 -> $24.99 update but some local prices will actually decrease.

We want to be fully transparent in case you're planning on buying Roboquest soon, so below we are posting the full list of prices that will come into effect on Monday:
(note that the game will be on sale when it officially launches)

Canada 34.99 CAD
Australia 39.99 AUD
United Kingdom 19.99 GBP
EU 24.99 EUR
United States 24.99 USD
Poland 109.99 PLN
Hong Kong 199.99 HKD
New Zealand 44.49 NZD
Norway 279.99 NOK
United Arab Emirates 89.99 AED
Switzerland 24.99 CHF
Israel 99.99 ILS
South Korea 30,000 KRW
Japan 3,339.99 JPY
Singapore 29.99 SGD
Taiwan 719.00 TWD
South Africa 349.99 ZAR
Kuwait 5.79 KWD
Qatar 64.99 QAR
Saudi Arabia 64.99 SAR
Argentina 4,999.00 ARS
Uruguay 499.00 UYU
Costa Rica 6,999.00 CRC
Colombia 53,399.00 COP
Brazil 64.99 BRL
Chile 11,899.00 CLP
Peru 49.99 PEN
Mexico 229.99 MXN
China 78.99 CNY
Turkey 289.99 TRY
Kazakhstan 4,999.00 KZT
Ukraine 389.99 UAH
CIS 9.99 USD
Russia 1,019.00 RUB
India 879.99 INR
Philippines 599.99 PHP
Malaysia 49.99 MYR
Indonesia 159,999.00 IDR
Thailand 379.99 THB
Vietnam 257,999.00 VND
South Asia 9.99 USD

(reminder that those will be the updated prices for the 10/2/2023)

That’s it for today

We'll be back with more news regarding the launch.

In the meantime, we wish you the best of robot smashing.

Discord - https://discord.gg/roboquest

Website - http://www.roboquest.com/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ

If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).

Aug 16, 2023

Roboquest - Developer Report & New brobot found!

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Howdy everyone!

We have news regarding Roboquest and we’re here to tell you all about it.
We will also take this opportunity to give you more details about what’s going on right now in terms of development.

If you have been following us on our Discord, you might already have heard about some of this, but we decided to sum it all up here for everyone to see as well as provide additional info.

Loading the dev report...

New brobot found!

You might have seen this on some press sites, or other places.

RyseUp has partnered up with Starbreeze to publish Roboquest!
To be more accurate, Roboquest will be published by both RyseUp Studios (that’s us!) and Starbreeze.

Rest assured that we, at RyseUp, remain the same as before. Just better and stronger now that we have people with the skills to help us through the release process and to bring Roboquest to people who might be interested in it but haven’t heard of it yet.

To quote the official Starbreeze post:

“Starbreeze Entertainment will be publisher by name and support Roboquest and RyseUp Studios with its expertise in release management, marketing, community management, live service operations, continued development, and data management and analytics.”

As you might have understood, Starbreeze will mostly help us for the marketing process but we remain in command for everything related to creativity, business model and gameplay. Our priorities remain the same: getting a good (and healthy) game out.

Only, we now have Starbreeze to help us make sure we’re as loud as we can be when the time comes to release the 1.0.0 update.

Official Starbreeze announcement:
https://www.starbreeze.com/news/starbreeze-entertainment-to-publish-roboquest-by-ryseup-studios-get-ready-to-kick-some-metal-ass/

Enough of it, I want Roboquest now!

Roboquest is set to release in Autumn 2023.
The official release date will be announced later.

Is the 1.0.0 behind that door?

In terms of development we completed most of what we had planned for the 1.0.0 and we already started localizing parts of the game and internally playtesting the game.

Though it’s not ready yet. If it were a baguette, it would start smelling good but would still need more time in the oven. You know, that moment you’re hungry and start to salivate but have to wait for the final touch.

We need to fix every issue/bug we find during our QA tests, we need to balance the game, we need to modify things here and there, we need to polish everything, we need to change a few things around, we need to experiment with that final version, we need to replace every placeholder (work-in-progress resource) that might have slipped under our radar.

But it’s cooking, we’re cooking.

We and the bugs.

But what am I waiting for exactly?

That would be a good question, what will 1.0.0 include?
We already discussed it in detail in our previous devblog (here:)
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/692890/view/6300017307886421524
But among other things, we thought we’d remind you the “highlights” of what’s coming in the 1.0.0 of Roboquest:

The final level and final boss
One more class
A bunch of new levels
Cinematics, data-logs, NPCs and quests
POWER CRYSTALS!
Achievements and compendium
More weapons, enemies, perks and items

And many other changes!

If you want more details about those highlights, you can check out our previous devblog (link above).

To leak or not to leak

We’re leaking both relevant and non-relevant screenshots regarding Roboquest development on our Discord every day. It can be new, wip or just straight up goofy things.

Make sure to join our Discord if you haven’t already and are interested in following our progress.

The screenshots and images used in this announcement come directly from our devleaks!

But what after 1.0.0 ?

We didn’t even release the game yet, but some people (ourselves included) are wondering about after 1.0.0. Will we continue to work on Roboquest and to add more stuff to it?

The short answer is yes (and we touched a bit on that in our previous devblog) but we don’t have much to say about it. We’re solely focused on getting the 1.0.0 out and on making it as good as we can.

But the 1.0.0 will not mark the end of the journey for Roboquest.

Another peek at one of the new weapon

And that's it for these news guardians!

We'll see you around very soon, we're sure of it.

May 24, 2023

Roboquest Devblog #13 - Moar Content

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Introduction

Howdy guardians!

We’re back for another Roboquest devblog.

Before diving into it, let us repeat a few information we’ve talked about already:
• The reason there hasn’t been a game update for a long time is because we’re working on the 1.0.0 version of the game (out of Early Access)
• It is the biggest update we’ve worked on so far and we’re all hands on deck
• That’s also why we might be a bit less active on our different community platforms
• For now, the only date we can talk about for the release of the 1.0.0 is Q3 2023
• We’ve been asked several times whether there were going to be updates after the 1.0.0, the answer is likely yes, but it’s way too soon for us to talk about anything regarding this as we first need to finish what we started, and to finish it properly
• There will be more Noisecream tracks (and yes, they’ll be added to the soundtrack)

Talking of Noisecream... what could this be?

Now onto the Devblog itself, what are we going to talk about today?

Let’s talk about something that you all talked about a lot during EA: “MOAR CONTENT”.

Adding more content

We’ve already been adding more content at each update, but we still need to push it further in the 1.0.0.
In terms of content, we would say that what you experience during the EA is the “skeleton” of the gameplay loop of Roboquest. We now need to talk about the muscles we’re going to add on top of it.

So let’s discuss just that: what features we’ll be adding in the 1.0.0 that are pushing the content further.

Higher toy diversity

What we’re calling “toys” are anything you can play with. Things such as weapons, classes, perks, enemies, items etc. More toys means run variety, replayability and more playtime in order to discover, learn, play around and get tired of each single toy.

However, we need to be extra careful with certain types of toys. For example, adding too many items might distill the “good” ones among a lot of “junk” ones, negatively impacting the gameplay experience.

In any case, regardless of those “too much of it” cases (which can be handled through careful random system management), usually “more toys” means “more content” and we’re adding more of that in the 1.0.0.

Alternative in-run objectives

Right now there’s only one objective in each single run: to go the furthest possible, eventually beating the game.

While it’s simple and straightforward, there’s nothing much to pay attention to in each level, there’s not much to “unveil”, to “discover” or “to do in between”. It doesn’t get fresher each run.

But what if there was more to it? What if there were quests to complete? Paths to discover? Secrets to unveil? Things that would ask you to actually pay attention to stuff, whether that’d be environment, enemies, items or weapons. Things that would require you to plan a little bit more, to think ahead, to plan your next run for?

Well, then we feel like it would make each run more exciting and overall extend the playtime of the game. Mostly because it would give you other things to do aside from beating the game but also because you’d be incentivized to spend more time figuring things out in the game.

But discovering things for the sake of discovery isn’t that thrilling, especially in a fast-paced game. So we needed to find things you’d actually care for as Roboquest players (or Guardians shall I say) and reward with it when pursuing those “alternate objectives”.

Here’s what we came up with:

Power Crystals

The later in the game, the more powerful enemies are. So much so that they are powered by powerful and mysterious crystals.

Finding and claiming these crystals for yourself will weaken the late-game level traps and other hazards as well as populate the world with more elite enemies (netting higher rewards).

Those crystals only need to be recovered once, and then their effects will be permanent. There are several different crystals, each granting a unique basecamp upgrade and applying a different set of effects on the late-game levels and bosses.

One of the new objectives as a player is then to find and recover those crystals to facilitate the access to the late game and increase the number of rewards in each run (by increasing the number of elite enemies).

This also goes well with the player progression. The more you play, the better you become and the easier earlier levels might become. Making these levels harder by adding elites to them makes each playthrough a bit more engaging and challenging. Also, since you have more experience in the game, being granted more rewards won’t “overwhelm” you with too much information or choice to make because you’re more than capable to make those choices at that stage of the game.

Finding and claiming power-crystals will usually imply changes in rhythm, pace and play style compared to your regular gunfights.

Quests

We added a wide array of NPCs in the game. They all are friendly figures you can encounter in the different levels of the game. Most of these figures will give you a unique reward if you complete a quest for them (quests are one-time completion, meaning once completed their reward is permanent).

Rewards will usually be game elements like gadgets (most gadgets will now be unlocked through quest completion).

“Quests” can imply a wide range of objectives but we mostly limited it to “find an item and bring it back to the NPC in your next run” or “find a specific hidden place”. It is not necessarily limited to that though.

While playing, we realized it creates an interesting player behavior where you’re actually looking for a specific item or place and then, once you found it, go back to the initial place you were given the quest in (usually in another run). So you’re actually changing your run behavior to look for something specific.

We think it’s quite compelling to complete the toy collection (gadgets mainly but not limited to) by scouring through the levels. The extra “exploration” layer added is a quite fresh addition to the usual “run and gun” gameplay.

We really liked this system: not only did it gave us more things to do in the game (by incentivizing new and fresh run objectives), it also made the unlock process of game elements (like gadgets) more interesting (because more interactive: you don’t need to simply “click a button to unlock” anymore).

Finally, adding QUESTS to RoboQUEST was definitely something we felt was missing.

Secrets

As simple as it sounds, the Hidden Sanctuary in the Oasis had quite an effect on most players who discovered it. Back in the days, we also had several other secrets such as Buddy bot opening an hidden door.

Not only is it rewarding in itself to discover such areas or hidden interactions, the actual rewards contained within are often interesting in terms of gameplay and can incentivize going in a specific level just for them.

We’re bringing back those kinds of secrets.

“Secrets” in Roboquest can take various forms: hidden places, interactive elements scattered in the levels, items to carry on from a run to another (or within the same runs) and other things like this.

Some Secrets will grant unique and permanent rewards (and you won’t have to “find” or “resolve” them again). Some others will unlock the access to rewards you can gather each single run (which can have an impact on the levels you’re going for in a specific run).

We can’t really dive deeper into the details of what secrets are, at the risk of spoiling them. But we’ve concocted a wide variety of interactions that we hope you’ll be thrilled to discover by yourself (and to take advantage of during your runs).

While it may seem like it doesn’t “add more content”, we believe the additions of those secrets will actually be interesting “side run objectives”.

Alternative Levels

Tied to the quests, the secrets, the power crystals and the exploration of the levels in general comes the addition of several alternative levels.

We’re populating the game with various “corrupted” versions of the levels.

These levels will be harder, weirder, sometimes different in terms of gameplay and filled with different enemies than usual.
Accessing these levels will first require you to complete quests, find secrets or simply to explore the regular levels.

These levels will each contain a “power crystal” that you must claim for yourself.

Once a crystal is claimed, you will still be able to reach these corrupted levels and run through them (in case you’d want it for various reasons such as gaining run time, earning specific rewards or taking a specific route).

We hope that finding the way to access the corrupted levels and then completing them will be a compelling experience for you as it diversifies the way to play the game.

Various elements to unlock

Unlocking non-gameplay things for the sake of unlocking them. Things such as unlocking all achievements or filling the entirety of Max’s Museum (a collection of everything you’ve encountered in the game).

While it isn’t something that directly “adds playable content” (depending on what type of player you are), one shouldn’t undermine the importance of such “unlocking” systems.

Granting players “a list of things to do” and the possibility to show how much of the world of Roboquest you’ve explored (and challenged) is something that often greatly increases the amount of “content” to play with.

While “unlocking non-gameplay things” is a joy in itself and doesn’t grant you any reward gameplay-wise we’re still ironing out the details of these systems and imagining the potential ways to add gameplay rewards to them.

”Wrong” Content

During the Early Access of Roboquest and along the way of adding more content, we’ve come across several systems that we deemed unfit to the game. Either they didn’t fit our philosophy or they’d be detrimental to the gameplay experience for various reasons.

Among those ways, we ruled out the idea of increasing the length of each run, the idea of having to grind for numerous small stat upgrades in order to be able to compete against the enemies (in terms of raw stats) or the idea of “virtually multiplying” everything we have (from basecamp upgrades to levels).

These solutions mostly added “content” that we didn’t deem worthy of your time. We like grinding stuff, but not in Roboquest. Ultimately, our goal is to provide a very high rate of awesome / second.

After 1.0.0

If there’s one thing we’ve been discussing for a long time now it is “alternative game modes”. And two of them have caught our attention.

We’ll be discussing something here that won’t be included in the 1.0.0 but that we have our eyes on.

We very much like the idea of having things such as an endless mode and a run-of-the-week system.

While both modes seem to be straightforward in terms of design, there are still some design decisions to make and some technical difficulties to face. We can’t just say “let’s add them” and be done with it.

“Run-of-the-week” would simply be a fixed run that every player can try to finish once a week. That would require implementing things such as leaderboards, data synchronization between players (and platforms) as well as a few other details.

Another mode we’re thinking about would be “Endless Mode”. We have a specific implementation in mind for such a mode, which is a bit different than just saying “loop again with a higher difficulty once you complete a run”. We won’t dive into too much detail here but basically it would be something like an endless stream of short levels, alternating between free-corridors, battle rooms and boss fights. That would require us to tweak the player progression a bit and also probably to do some adjustments to some Bosses.

Basically these are both ideas we like and enjoy and they do highly increase the game’s content. But they need a lot of work and like we said previously, we need to focus on the core gameplay first and foremost.

And that concludes our thirteenth devblog. We hope you like what you read. Don’t hesitate to give us feedback here on Steam or on our Discord (link below).

We wish you all the best Guardians, and see you soon with more news :)

Discord | https://discord.gg/roboquest

Website | http://www.roboquest.com/

Twitter | https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame

YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ

If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).

Mar 17, 2023

Roboquest Devblog #12 - What's going on?

Roboquest - Elliot Yun

Hello Guardians!

It’s now been a bit more than two months since we released the Winter Update and you might be wondering what we’ve been up to meanwhile.

So here we are with this twelfth devblog.

Today we’ll be having an overview of what’s to come in the 1.0.0 launch and we’ll follow up with monthly devblogs to give more details and juicy visuals about several of these additions.

Please note that we may or may not manage to include them, depending on the time frame. But we’re aiming for that and we’re trying to mini-maximize our schedules to include all of them.

We know a lot of you might be more curious about the “when” than the “what” though, so let’s talk about this real quick.

We can’t confirm any date yet, but we’re aiming for a release around Q3 2023. Obviously, this is subject to change and we will properly announce the release date once we’re certain of it and feel comfortable about the schedule.

As you probably all know by now we’re always aiming for quality over quantity or speed, and what we plan for 1.0.0 makes it our biggest update so far.

That being said, what will the 1.0.0 launch include exactly? The roadmap is well and good but… it isn’t that descriptive.

The 1.0.0 will include everything you can expect from a full-fledged game, noticeably things such as:

Achievements

One of the most asked features, we’ve been patiently waiting for the rest of the game to be in a more final state to include them, and they’re coming!

Compendium

Who doesn’t love collecting things? We certainly do! For now, we’re working on bringing Enemies, Weapons and a few other things to the compendium.

Research / Work in progress

Story implementation

We’re reworking all cinematics (and a bit of the storytelling within) with brand-new graphics. We’re implementing more Max’s dialogues and story bits to read in the data-logs. We’re giving Max a major graphic overhaul (and new animations!). In other words, we’re infusing the story and worldbuilding we’ve been working on since the very beginning of the development of Roboquest. We wanted to do that for a while now, but the gameplay was our primary focus during Early Access.

Complete localization

We’re still unsure of which languages will be available at launch, but those selected will be 100% completed (unlike most of our update releases so far).

We will also implement the remaining parts of the gameplay-loop:

Corrupted levels

We’ve been discussing this in several devblogs and it should have been included in our previous update (but it was postponed). We’re still hard at work to include those special levels. They will be directly tied to your game progression, your exploration of the world and will make choosing your run-path a more meaningful choice.

The final boss

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And necessarily, we will be cleaning up what’s still considered “wip” in the game:

Interface

A lot of user interface bits are still placeholder and we’re reworking / finalizing them.

Work in progress

Game textures

For a long time, lots of game textures were pretty “simple” and we’re in the process of injecting more details and personality in those.

Weapon names

While pretty anecdotal, we thought it’d be fun to mention that we worked hard to choose new weapon names that would sound less generic (while still keeping those we deemed emblematic or that would have a nostalgic feel to them). And we will also make them localizable.

We’ll also be reworking some older system:

Gadgets

For now, we’re planning to overhaul the gadget system to make you able to equip any and as many gadgets as you want. Yes, this has a huge impact on the balance of the game and we’re still thinking of the exact implementation of this system. That will also mean that some gadgets might get removed / replaced / reworked / transformed into other game elements (such as perks or items).

Basecamp upgrades

We will be adding / removing some upgrades and we will fine-tune the price of everything to reach the progression feeling that we deem pleasing for a game like Roboquest. We will also complete the visuals of the basecamp (polishing it and making its evolution clearer).

Wrenches flow

You will loot wrenches on destroyed enemies, it should feel more rewarding than simply gaining them at the end of a level. And we will obviously fine-tune the amount of wrenches you earn to make sure it’s not becoming too long to progress through the basecamp upgrades (and to follow the new progression feeling we’re aiming for, which would be a tad faster than the current implementation).

Elite system

As said in an older devblog, the elite enemies were quickly added to the game in their current form. The final form of its system should be better and be intricate with other systems in the game.

New game+

For those who don’t know, NewGame+ is the fact of restarting a game with a higher level of difficulty (it’s basically what Heroes+ difficulties are at the moment). We’re currently thinking of ways to improve this system and to create more differences between each difficulty level (more than just increasing the health and damage of enemies each time). For now one of the leads is to modify the enemy roster of the different levels based on your current difficulty.

Class perks

We’re always in the process of fine-tuning perks, whether that’d be removing / adding / reworking existing ones following our data and your feedback.

Tutorial

The current tutorial doesn’t include some important Roboquest features such as the powerslide (but not only), we will make sure to rework / complete that.

Items

While the system is already in a spot we deem good enough, we will probably clean up some of its aspects and include and tad more control over its random and rarity system.

But more importantly, we will be implementing several new systems you probably haven’t heard of yet:

Corruption Crystals

But what are those?! They are directly tied to corrupted levels, and we’re not ready to tell more about that just now.

NPCs

Bazaar Bob and Smithing Joe aren't the only friendly bot you will encounter...

Work in progress

Quests

What would RoboQUEST be without quests? We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And there will definitely be some questing involved!

Secrets

While there were some secrets in the past, they’ve been really scarce since we removed a few of them. But we definitely want to add a little bit more spice and mystery to the game, so look forward to the addition of secrets to the game.

End-run stats

Something many of us have been waiting for, end-game stats! That would make it more simple to share builds and simply to check out how well you’ve been performing.

And finally, we will continue to add more content to the game:

New class

We’re planning to add one more class to the game. Nothing more to say on the subject for now.

Enemies

We will be adding more enemies (and reworking existing ones) to continue fine-tuning each level’s enemy roster and tune down the level of annoyance of some of them.

Weapons

While it’s not our primary focus, we’re working on new weapons for the 1.0.0 launch (and all the ideas you’re posting in our community channels help us a ton on that side!).

Roboquest 40k

Items

We will be adding more items to the pool as they help each run feel fresh and different. We’ll be closely monitoring those aspects in order to avoid a situation where the pool of items is so vast that every “good item” is diluted in it.

Affixes / Alternative Fires

We’re continuing to think of new affixes and alternative fire to add to our weapons.

Obviously, there probably are several things that aren’t on that list and will end up being added / reworked, and others that are on this list that won’t make the cut.

But you should probably have a clearer idea of where we’re going with Roboquest.

You might be wondering why we’re not releasing all of this in different updates rather than all at once and we’d like to give you a little bit of context about this.

Preparing and releasing an update slows down the entire development process since we need a stable version of the game. This forces most of the team to stop implementing things in the game for a little while each time. Considering the sheer amount of content we’re working on, not stalling the development allows us to keep working on every new system at once and eventually to release the 1.0.0 faster.

In addition, most of the new systems are tied up with each other (the corrupted levels with the final boss, the elites and the NPCs/quests as well as the story elements) like we’ve discussed in other devblogs.

And we deemed necessary for the “1.0.0 update” (the launch of the game) to include those final systems in order to have a very impactful launch.

All of those reasons made us consider halting the release of updates to deliver the 1.0.0 version of Roboquest we’ve been envisioning for a long time now.

We know it’s a long road to the 1.0.0 launch and that you might be getting impatient. But bear with us, we’re hard at work to bring Roboquest in its FINAL FORM. Like we said early in this devblog, we’ll keep you in touch with monthly devblogs to give you insights and juicy visuals of the new features. Stay tuned for that!