Gatekeeper is an intense 2-player card game that has you pitched against an opponent in a duel. In four locations you will position witches out of your hand and attempt to take control in small and larger-scale confrontations, with the mysterious Gatekeeper playing a merciless referee using some unique dynamic mechanics.
When positioning a witch of a specific element at a location, columns are formed. A new witch will compare her spellpower with that of the opposing witch, with the higher value "dazzling" the weaker party. In dazzled state, witches are vulnerable for the vicious Gatekeeper that is now activated by the Gatekeeper value on the last played witch, moving X-number of locations in a set cycle movement. In the location she lands in, she will check if a dazzled witch is present and eliminate her from the contest.
Next, she will activate a rondel and move a marker to the next position, activating the next Element Gate in line.
By activating the gate she awakens all the witches of this element present at the location, triggering a larger scale confrontation, with the player holding majority inflicting damage equal to the number of withes they have present. The defending player can however fend off part of the attack with opposing witches.
Each witch also cast 1 of 10 unique special spells, each manipulating parts of the duel in devious ways. This additional layer creates tough decisions in an already challenging duel of wits.
Will you control the Astral plane by lowering the mana level of your opponent to "0"?
New Skill - Frost Trap: Spawn a Frost Trap. On activation, deals 100% combined weapon damage to nearby targets and creates an area of freezing cold for 5 seconds. Enemies within the area are 30% Chilled and take 30% combined weapon damage per second. Max 1 trap. Trap becomes armed after 2 seconds. Hold Left Ctrl while casting to dismiss.
IMPROVED
Bows added to Loot Filter
FIXED
Fixed many types of items not dropping while playing in Non-English languages
Fixed Bows not dropping due to a missing Loot Filter
Fixed traps not being destroyed if the casting requirements were not met
Good morning everyone! We analyzed your feedback and reviews and made a quick update to improve your gaming experience. We added two new features that should help you manage your gang easier. Also several tweaks to make game easier.
Features: - x1.5 & x2 time speed options - Paused time allows you to do actions. - Hotkeys for selecting bums (1,2,3 etc.).
Changes: - Fights will always give a reward now, can be super tiny.
Balancing: - First garbage invasions are slightly weaker. - More food in Slum bridge & Playground. - Easy modes are even easier now. (Down to 60%)
Localization: - Chinese localization fixes. - Russian localization fixes.
Bug Fixes: - Fix recruiting characters not taking your money. - Comics audio now affected by global volume. - Skill trainers will not duplicate (double stamina trainers etc) anymore when starting a new game. - Eating multiple foods without restoring satiety bug fix. - Fix characters getting stuck after combat. (should also work with save files, but might need an additional restart of the game). - Fix item & skills descriptions shown out of screen on higher than 1080p resolutions. (ultra wide work in progress..)
Thank you for your insights, we will continue to improve the game based on your feedback!
We just got back from our trip two weeks from now, and your future is looking bright! After putting your trust in Dissentor’s capable guidance, he’ll lead you through the time-bending Future Tense Live Set Event. You’ll harness the power of synths to perform a captivating set and climb the FUSER leaderboards. (Your future self also looks really cool but may be an android clone.)
To make this vision a reality, fuse the past and future together with a synthy set and locking decks! Future Tense resembles campaign gameplay, and your high scores will unlock various rewards. There are many possible futures: players will earn 20 Diamonds at 51,300 points, 30 Diamonds at 76,900 points, and 40 Diamonds at 92,300 points.
Make sure your Crate is up to date by checking out the latest DLC and Diamond Shop additions. With the new Headliner Spotlight update, it’s easier than ever to show the world your signature sound and style in FUSER!
Future Tense will be open from June 7 at 12:01 AM PT/ 3:01 AM ET (8:01 UTC/9:01 CET) until June 21 at 12:00 AM PT/ 3:00 AM ET (7:00 UTC/9:00 CET).
Become a legend and gift your highly advanced mix to the FUSER community. After you submit, post it on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook— and tag us with #FUSERfanMix if you want us to share it around!
There's a lot of different news to talk about this month, so strap in!
The New Trailer
The most important thing to come out of this month is the new trailer! Check it out if you haven't yet:
I'm overall really happy with how it came together, and we all had a part in the end result. I'd also like to give a special commendation to Elissa Park who did the amazing voice over for the trailer. It was a pleasure to work together!
It's also been great to finally get some custom music by Mikel into an official part of the game. He's also been working on the first music tracks that'll be in the game, and I've been working on a music system to support horizontal mixing with the tracks. I'm very excited to get all that together into the game and see how it all feels! I hope that by next month's update we'll have a short preview of that for you.
0.1.1 Release
Meanwhile we also pushed out an update to the vertical slice release that makes use of the new linear quest system we put together. It should overall also be a lot more stable and includes many fixes for issues people reported to us. Thanks!
As always, if you want to have a look at the demo yourself, you can do so free of charge.
I think this will be the last patch we put out until September. I can't afford to backport fixes even if more bug reports come in, as the overhead of managing that is just too high. I can't just push out new versions that follow internal development either, as those are frequently in flight and have more regressions that we typically stamp out over time, but would in the meantime provide a more buggy experience.
Dev Streams
I'm heavily considering doing regular weekly development streams, both to see if we can attract some more interest for the project, and to be more open about the process in general. I feel like we're already very open about everything with our weekly updates, but having an immediate insight into how the game is made is another thing entirely. I think it would be really cool to show that side of development off more often!
In order to coordinate what time would suit the most people, please fill out this Doodle form. The exact dates don't matter, just watch for the day of the week and the time. Don't worry about the name it asks for either, it won't be public!
Some good folks have put together a bundle on itch.io gathering money for Palestinian aid. I'm very happy to say that our game, Eternia: Pet Whisperer is a part of this bundle!
This month I had a varied mix of tasks: working on the script for the new trailer; updating the quests in the vertical slice demo to work closer to our original vision; researching press and influencer contacts as we plan more of Kandria's marketing.
The trailer came out great, and I'm really happy with the voice acting that Nick produced with Elissa Park. It was a great idea Nick had to use the character of Fi as the narrator here (originally we were going to use Catherine) - her serious outlook, and reflection on the events of the story, was just what we needed to fit the epic music from Mikel, and the epic gameplay and exploration that Nick captured on screen. The whole thing just screams epic.
The quests were vastly improved too. The first quest now uses Nick's new sequencing system, so that triggers fire automatically (and more robustly) when the player arrives at the correct location, and when combat encounters are completed. The logic is also much quicker to write, so linear quests will be much faster to produce in the future. The mushroom quest also had a big refactor; now you can organically collect mushrooms out in the world, rather than going to specific enabled points. You can even sell what you find to the trader, including those poisonous black knights. It really makes the world feel more interactive. There's been general tweaks to the other quests from playtesting, and I'll continue to refine them from my own playing and players' feedback up until the Pro Helvetia submission later in the year. I'm also planning to add a couple more sidequest diversions based on the new fishing (!) minigame being added at the moment; we think a combat-focused sidequest will work well too.
Finally on the marketing side, it's been rewarding to collect tons of potential press and influencer contacts we could approach in the future. I've basically been taking games that are strong influences and have similarities to Kandria - from hugely popular games like Celeste and Dead Cells, to lesser known ones like Kunai and Armed with Wings - then cataloguing key journalists and influencers who've streamed, made videos, or written about them. This will hopefully highlight some of the right people we can contact to help spread the word about the game.
Roadmap
Let's look at the roadmap from last month with the updates from this month:
Make the combat more flashy
Finish a new trailer
Revise the quest system's handling of linear quest lines
Design and outline the factions for the rest of the game
Develop the soundscape for Kandria and start working on the tracks for region 1
Add a music system that can do layering and timed transitions
Build and add the tutorial sequence to the beginning of the game
Finish the region 1 music tracks
Reach out to journalists, streamers, and other communities
Polish the ProHelvetia submission material
Polish and revise the combat design
Explore platforming items and mechanics
Practise platforming level design
Start work on the horizontal slice
As always there's some smaller tasks that aren't in the overall roadmap. We seem to be doing pretty well keeping on track with what needs done, which is really good! It's all too easy to misjudge the time required to complete things, especially in games.
In any case, time is flying fast, and there's a lot to do. In the meantime be sure to check our mailing list for weekly updates, and the discord community for fan discussions!
* Fix leaving halfway through Level 2 soft-locking other levels * Fix Level 3 being selectable if you haven't completed Level 2 * Fix Level 2 not checking whether you're looking at the top-most node when it changes state