Embark on the great adventure of Valern, a slave in the hands of a corrupt government, and explore colonized planets as you command your heroes to complete story objectives.
Gray Zone features 2D Artwork and comics that chronicle the story’s progress between missions. The game also contains its own electro-orchestral soundtrack.
As the development of Gray Zone progresses, mission 7 and Skirmish will be integrated into the current chapter of the game. 3 additional chapters will be released as standalone, episodic game content. • New Update • Game size reduced by 3,5 GB (video subtitles) • Weapons can be stored in quick inventory • Units collect experience and are leveling up • Heroes can earn specific skills and enhance their effectiveness in battle • Automated looting • Item exchange between two units based on their locality • Small not interactive animals implementation/snake, fish, bugs, scorpions • Mission 6 - new playable mission with 1,5 - 2 hours of game-play • Mission 6 - full animated comics • Animation updates - upgraded animations with heavy weapons • Enhanced Stealth mode with visualization of angle of view for enemies --- very important, game changing feature, drastically enhanced game-play, better approachable for newcomers, more fun for hardcore players • Redesigned Enemies alertness information • Item exchange between two units based on their locality with the possibility to buy for money • New items in looting/trade/exchange • Use stone to distract enemies • Ability to level up heroes and to buy new Skills for experience points • New tutorials • Players can shop for items or sell them for money in several markets in each mission • Existing levels have been visuals improved and updated with new situations and story elements
Features • Mixture of some old school and fresh new mechanics. • Full real-time battles with a 'tactical pause' at your service. • Utilize your team, equipment and environment to get advantage over your enemies. • Expect diversity in units, weapons, vehicles and more. • Unique enemies and boss encounters • Partially destructible environments • Eye-catching fauna and flora • Custom vision & elevation system • Stealth and cover-ups • Vehicles & machines
A good delivery can be as smooth as throwing a perfect 3-pointer!
As we continue our work on refreshing the city and improving our courier we can't forget about... sport areas! Many cities have them - after all they strive to maintain their citizens well-being and condition! While you might be busy delivering the packages during your day perhaps you'll find a moment to rest and visit one of such areas?
As you know from our previous devlogs - our courier will have uncanny ability to throw packages. While we are not saying that it's the best possible way to deliver anything (especially if it's fragile) it is still a skill that is good to have. Now, we're not saying to check whether you can throw one of your packages through one of the hoops but as we all know - curiosity is a fickle beast and if you find yourself at its mercy...
Just make sure nobody is around when doing that!
Thank you for checking in with us - see you in our next devlog!
There will be a 40% discount from Jul 9, 2021, 10:00 am PST - Jul 16, 2021 10:00 am PST Embark on the great adventure of Valern, a slave in the hands of a corrupt government, and explore colonized planets as you command your heroes to complete story objectives.
Gray Zone features 2D Artwork and comics that chronicle the story’s progress between missions. The game also contains its own electro-orchestral soundtrack.
As the development of Gray Zone progresses, mission 7 and Skirmish will be integrated into the current chapter of the game. 3 additional chapters will be released as standalone, episodic game content.
- July 12: Season 7 ends at 8am PDT / 5pm CEST. Ranked disabled. Player ratings are soft-reset. - July 12: Patch 8.00 is released. - July 14: Season 8 begins at 8am PDT / 5pm CEST. Ranked re-enabled.
Season 8 has a softer Elo reset to have fairer games early in the season.
2x Hybrid Featured Game Mode
- Build "tiers" instead of fighters. Each time you build a tier, a random fighter from that tier is built. Waves have x2 the number of spawns. - Limited time from July 12 to 14
Tournaments
Steeni's Summer Cup 2k21 - Solo signup. Signup ends July 15. - 1st place: 150€, $30 premium essence, and Steenicoin - 2nd place: 100€, $20 premium essence - Viewer raffle: 20€ and Steenicoin
LIHL Diamond Division - Team signup. Signup ends September 3. - 1st place: Auto-qualification for the LIHL Grandmaster Division. 3200 premium essence - 2nd place: Auto-qualification for the LIHL Grandmaster Division. 2000 premium essence - 3rd/4th place: 1000 premium essence
Masters Cup 8 Coming soon...
Unity Engine Upgrade
This patch upgrades our Unity engine, which is necessary for future development. While it has major benefits, there are a few drawbacks: - Some Mac OS users may be unable to play due to a Unity issue outside of our control. This affects 1% of players. We intend to support the affected Mac OSes as soon as possible. - 32-bit OS is no longer supported. This affects 0.2% of players. If it affects you, please consider upgrading to a 64-bit OS. - If your game crashes or has new issues, let us know in Discord, so we can help you.
Translations
- New languages: Czech, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian - Significantly improved: Traditional Chinese, Polish - Improved and in progress: Spanish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Bulgarian, Arabic, Persian, Croatian
If you notice incorrect or missing translations, please visit https://legiontd2.com/translate. Any improvements you make will show up next patch.
Thank you to the wonderful translators who have contributed.
Maps
Crystal Coast
The 2v2 map Crystal Coast is getting a makeover!
Oasis
Say goodbye to Desert Ridge, and please welcome our new 4v4 map Oasis.
Monuments
Monuments are a special new lane cosmetic. Think of them as a hall of fame or trophy case for your favorite cards. Equip up to 10 cards to show them off in-game. 6 monument slots (pedestals) are unlocked for free. The other 4 pedestals can be unlocked by owning secret cards, each secret card unlocking 1 pedestal. Equip 3 or 10 of the same card to get silver or gold pedestals.
Earth King is gifted to all players for free. Yozora can be unlocked in the shop with premium essence. Beta King remains as a free option as well.
Skins
We're finally releasing our Kickstarter Premium skins to the public.
Kickstarter backers who already own these skins will be gifted premium essence to unlock other skins and future content: - Brute backers: 1260 premium essence - Aqua backers: 2520 premium essence - Zeus backers: 3780 premium essence - Kraken backers: 5040 premium essence
Progression Improvements
Now that the game is soon exiting Early Access and nearing full release, player XP, guild XP, essence, and cards are receiving a big boost.
Essence - Players now gain x3-5 the amount of essence on average. - Essence cost for some items x2-3. Essence cost of cards is unchanged. - Essence can now be used for name resets, instead of requiring premium essence. - Essence bonus from Guild Contribution: 1% --> 3%.
Cards - Card premium essence price: 1250 --> 395 - Bonus card drop rate per Pity Point: 1% --> 2% - Due to higher essence gain, players can now acquire x3-5 the number of cards from the Card Trader. - Cards can now be shown off in game as monuments.
Cards were ultra rare items. They are still rare, but no longer like a unicorn or grainy picture of the Loch Ness Monster. Cards are now significantly cheaper at the Card Trader, drop slightly more often, and have more real value. Cards are collectibles that can be used as avatars, shown off in game as monuments, and donated for Guild XP. They also add to your collection value.
Collect one of every card, or collect multiple of the same card for special borders and pedestals.
Leveling - Players now level up significantly faster (x3 on average).
Guilds - Guilds now level up significantly faster from levels 1 to 5. - Guild application cooldown: 6 hours --> No cooldown. - Due to higher essence gain, it's now 50% cheaper to apply to guilds. - Players that are booted from guilds now get a partial essence refund. - It's now much easier to find active, recruiting guilds. Browsing guilds now shows recently active guilds with room for new members, rather than random guilds. - Bonus Guild XP and Contribution during Guild Wars: x2 --> x3 - Bonus Guild XP and Contribution from donating first card of that type: x2 --> x3
Weekly Challenge - Players tied in first place each week now receive a Challenger Elite trophy and 2500 essence. - The “First Place Finishes” leaderboard is still reserved for the first player to reach the top score. - The Weekly Challenge “Top 20” leaderboard is replaced with “Weekly Challenge Wins” which is now awarded to anyone tied in first place.
Game Improvements & Fixes
4v4 Dual Building - Enemy tab screen (Tab + Space) now supports dual building, rather than not showing their builds.
Quality of Life - You can no longer use legion spells on units that have zero effect (Villain/Pulverizer on Soul Gate, Sorcerer on units with no ability damage).
Pathing & Targeting - Fixed a bug where King wouldn't properly switch targets from its current target if a better target was available. - All tank mercenaries now spawn slightly less in front to reduce the aggro difference when getting a tank send vs. no tank send. - Fixed a case where ranged mercenaries would unexpectedly “snipe” backline fighters. - Fixed a few other cases of pathing behaving unexpectedly. - Fixed a case in the 4v4 map when catching leaks where fighters would keep trying to turn back when there were enemies in front of them.
Fixes & Improvements - Fixed unintended interactions with Starcaller/Magician and Kingpin, Infiltrator, and Orchid. - Fixed some cases where Sea Serpent/Deepcoiler didn’t play their burrow animation. - Fixed a bug where Classic losses always displayed as 0 or 1 after finishing a game, instead of your actual classic losses that season. - Fixed a bug where a client wouldn’t connect/reconnect to the Lobby server after finishing a game, which resulted in an unresponsive game client. - Fixed a bug where alt + clicking a unit to ping it would accidentally select that unit, too. - UI Scale (Experimental) capped at 200 instead of 300. Reminder that this is an experimental, currently unsupported feature. If you experience issues, set it to 100. - Merged "Toggle Environment Assets" and "Enable High Quality Terrain" options into a single "Enable Full Scenery" option which provides similar performance, but retains more quality. - When browsing Collection or Skins, it is now less laggy when scrolling up/down. - Reduced ping spamming -- All players have more consistent ping limits. Max 4 pings stored, recovering a ping every 2 seconds. -- Chat banned players now have much stricter ping limits and cannot ping power score.
Game Balance
King - Now 20-25% stronger in the early game, 10-20% stronger in the mid game, and 0-5% stronger in the late game. - Fixed a bug where the king didn’t switch to a higher priority target, most noticeably on waves 10, 15, and 20. - Upgrade Regeneration: 0.005% missing health + 0.005% max health >> 0.004% missing health + 0.004% max health.
Encouraging early game risk-taking and aggression with king health buffs and power mercenary buffs.
Leak Gold - Gold gained from enemy leaks reduced by 5%. - Leak gold is now deterministic, rather than random. 1.5 rounds up and always gives 2 gold, rather than granting 1 gold 50% of the time and 2 gold 50% of the time. - Players that are behind now gain a larger share of enemy leak gold.
4v4 - Starting workers: 2 >> 1 - Leak gold (all sources) increased by 70% (now same as 2v2) - 4v4-specific wave buffs on waves 11-21 reverted (now same as 2v2)
4v4 has an insanely bloated economy. Despite cutting leak gold many times, adding 4v4-specific wave buffs, and nerfing the king, 41% of games currently go to wave 21, usually causing lag. The above changes get things in a healthier spot, where worker counts and economy are more comparable to 2v2.
Dark Mage - Redesigned and improved how Dark Mage prioritizes targets with Mind Warp. Will be smarter overall and easier to make adjustments in the future.
Bringing back Bone Crusher opening by giving it better damage thresholds on waves 2 and 3.
Angler - Health: 420 >> 400 - Damage: 20 >> 19 - Junior Fisherman: Mana per dying unit: 1 >> 2 - Can now gain mana from Magician and Starcaller
Young lads like Angler learn faster than old timers like Bounty Hunter. Increasing the viability of Angler openings and Anglers being used in the mid game.
Bounty Hunter - Health: 1700 >> 1660 - Damage: 82 >> 78 - Can now gain mana from Magician and Starcaller
Bounty Hunter is statistically the best opening in the game. It is the #1 most common and #1 highest win rate opening in high Elo.
Zeus - Power Surge: Damage: 80 >> 170 - Power Surge: Mana cost doubled
This change makes Zeus viable with Magician, Starcaller, Sacred Steed, and Pegasus (Zeus get stuck at max mana less often).
Pyro - Attack speed: 1.59 >> 1.61
Small compensation buff for changes to waves 8 and 15.
Sky Queen - Damage 69 >> 72 - Mana synergy with Magician, Starcaller, Sacred Steed, and Pegasus increased by 25%
Ranger - Damage: 26 >> 27
Daphne - Damage: 73 >> 75 - Mark Target: Damage amplification against bosses: 0.25 >> 0.5 - Mark Target: Max stacks: 20 >> 10
Bazooka - Damage: 32 >> 33
Aqua Spirit - Attack speed: 0.73 >> 0.74
Fire Elemental - Damage: 33 >> 31 (Combustion damage unchanged)
Fire Elemental is statistically the second strongest opening after Bounty Hunter.
Nekomata - Attack speed: 0.91 >> 0.92
Golden Buckler - Attack speed: 0.79 >> 0.77
Royal Guard - Attack speed: 0.91 >> 0.88
Fun fact: Golden Buckler and Royal Guard were the only fighters never to have been buffed or nerfed after release.
Sacred Steed - Mana regeneration increased by 5% - Self buff (when no mana users around): 40% attack speed >> 20% attack speed and 20% damage reduction - Mana synergy with Magician and Starcaller increased by 100% (Sacred Steed was unexpectedly the worst unit to buff with Magician or Starcaller)
Pegasus - Mana regeneration increased by 5% - Self buff (when no mana users around): 40% attack speed >> 20% attack speed and 20% damage reduction
Warg - Health: 980 >> 960
Alpha Male - Attack speed: 1.11 >> 1.09
Lioness - Health: 2360 >> 2300
Warg is currently the premier natural fighter with a 94% pick rate and solid win rate. It has efficient stats and versatility with two upgrade paths.
Head Chef - Health: 3600 >> 3730 - Attack speed: 0.97 >> 1.01
Making Butcher a more competitive pick with natural tanks like Warg, Antler, and Golden Buckler.
Antler - Thick Hide: Bonus damage reduction when build next to Whitemane: 15% >> 10%
Antler has a 93% pick rate. Rather than nerf its base stats, we’re nerfing how much free damage reduction it gets with Whitemane. Antler’s insane self-synergy with Whitemane makes multi-tank combos like Whitemane + Golem or King Claw less rewarding than they should be.
Grarl - Attack speed: 0.87 >> 0.86
Now leaks 1 extra Wale to a Snail on wave 2 when solo
Starcaller - Self mana regeneration reduced by 0.1 - Amplify Magic aura: Mana regeneration: 0.5 >> 0.6
Millennium - Health: 2000 >> 2100
Doomsday Machine - Health: 4900 >> 5140
Reverting the last hotfix nerfs during the AOE meta, which over-nerfed these units.
Soul Gate / Hell Gate - Mana regeneration increased by 4%
Mercenaries
Right now, it’s too strong to play safely by income sending and scaling, then all-inning late game. Power mercenary buffs create a leakier, more fun game and reward aggression, especially in the early game. Power mercenaries are now more likely to cause leaks, but with king buffs and bounty changes, those leaks are no longer as game-breaking.
Prison Ball: Full Blown was made free-to-play way back in January of 2020. The ultimate reason for this was to get the base game in the hands of many Steam players. Since that date, more than 10,000 Steam users have taken advantage of getting this game for free, but the sales of DLC hasn't increased and sadly the game hasn't gotten more than a small handful of reviews.
Prison Ball: Full Blown was not developed to be handed out at no cost as it offers a completely unique blend of several popular arcade style games and also allows you to play against a friend or an AI opponent.
A lot of hard work and creativity went into Prison Ball: Full Blown, and I'm sad to see that making my game "free" hasn't benefited the game in any way. It saddens me as an indie developer that so many people don't mind downloading a game and playing it for nothing, and won't even consider spending a few moments writing a review. I'd understand people not bothering to write a review for a game they only played a few moments for free, however, the average median play time for Prison Ball: Full Blown is a staggering 3 hrs, and 27 minutes! That average play time for this game is many times all of my other charged games median play time and it's not even close! ..People ARE playing this game, that much is obvious.
So, I'm letting people know that Prison Ball's base game will now go back to being charged at the median price point it was between launch ($6.99) and just before it went free-to-play ($2.99). $4.99 will be the price for this game going forward and a bundle will be made available soon that will include all of the DLC. More DLC such as the "Solo Reflection" single player challenge mode will be available soon as well.
Thanks for reading, and for understanding. Being an indie developer is very rewarding, but it can consume a lot of time and hard work and be frustrating sometimes as well.
I wish you all the best and thanks for playing my game!
Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2 - Agate Studio
Greetings, Principal!
Welcome to our Dev Diary series where we’ll update regularly about what we’re doing, what we’re changing... or just the development in general! In this series, you’ll be given a detailed information regarding Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2’s development.
To kick it off, we’d like to highlight the notable changes in Hero School Story 2 compared to the first one, and we’ll give you more in-depth explanation of the changes (and additional features) in the future Dev Diaries.
Combat System From what you might’ve guessed from the shots on our page, HSS2 now uses a turn-based system instead of action-based like the previous game. Previously, the combat felt a bit too simple, so we decided to spice it up and make it more interesting by whipping up a turn-based system for this game. It will still be fast-paced like before, so it can provide a break from the slow-thinking academy, but it still reward those who play it smart.
Academy In HSS, we noticed that players tend to spend the majority of their time casually smacking monsters, which isn’t what we intended the game to be about (it’s a school sim game first and foremost). Therefore, we’re trying to balance between the combat and academy management by 50-50 each, to actually make you feel like a principal in your own academy. Moreover, we will deliver better principal experiences for players by developing a better interaction with their student.
Art We are extremely thankful that you loved the art design in HSS, though there were mentions of how the environment somehow made it look like a mobile game. In this sequel, we wanted to keep the cuteness along with the depth from each character but simpler than HSS, while improving the quality of the art and bring it to the next level.
Narrative We’d also like to tell you that in HSS2, you’ll be able to explore more on the story! From the characters and main quests, we aim to make a better storyline than HSS. There will be multiple plots, character stories, and also a different, and more interesting plot from the prequel. You’ll also see some familiar faces in HSS2! So you can feel nostalgic throughout your playthrough.
We know that some of these changes will be far more different than the previous titles, but hopefully it will create a new and better experience in playing Valthirian Arc series. We’ll reveal more of our game and the development in the following diaries. Wishlist us and stay tuned for more!
Sword and Fairy 7 is a role-playing game developed by Softstar Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. This work balanced the experience of drama and gameplay. The attractive story happens between three races of Humans, Demons and Beasts. Compared with the previous series, combat system has undergone major changes. To ensure the fast pace and fluent controls in the battlefield, this game adopts a real-time combat from a third-person perspective, players may enter and exit the battlefield seamlessly.
In 2019, NVIDIA and Softstar jointly announced that Sword and Fairy 7 will have ray tracing technology in the game, and announced an in-game recorded trailer using ray tracing. After two years of painstaking development, NVIDIA joined hands with Sword and Fairy 7 to bring more RT scenes from the game, showing more types of RT features applicable to different types of maps.
The crystal clear pond not only reflects the whirling reflections of the trees and buildings on the shore, but also shows the sparkling water caustics effect, making the player's ideal fairy world more real. The pool water uses NVIDIA Hybrid Translucency technology, which enhances RT reflection over the water, and makes the reflection effect more realistic than traditional SSR. The caustics effect is calculated in real time using NVIDIA Ray-Guided Water Caustics (RGWC) based on ray tracing, which can make the caustics effect of the water body and the characters interact realistically. The combination of the two technologies produces the now-seeing Sword and Fairy art style gorgeous effect of the pool water, which is difficult to achieve with traditional rendering.
Direct sunlight enters deep seabed caves, RGWC water caustics technology is also used here to reflect the caustic ripples on the reef, making the experience of snorkeling on the seabed more immersive.
The light emitted by the scarlet crystal in the cave reflected red on the surrounding cave walls and paths. If you look closely, you will find that the light from the crystal forms a brighter caustic spot on the ground. Unlike water caustics, NVIDIA Adaptive Anisotropic Photon Scattering (AAPS) ray tracing technology is used here. This technology can calculate accurate real-time caustics effects on translucent objects, highlighting the mysterious atmosphere of the cave.
Sunshine goes through the stained glass and reflects on the dim hall, NVIDIA AAPS technology generates mottled color patches on the ground in real time. As the sun moves, not only the entire hall is illuminated, RT global illumination also makes the places in the hall gradually brighter even if there is no direct sunlight. Different from the traditional global illumination, NVIDIA ReSTIR GI technology based on ray tracing is used here. This technology can implement indirect lighting from various light sources and emissive surfaces using a very low sampling rate, therefore producing complex light and shadow effects almost consistent with the real physical world, while maintaining extremely high rendering performance. This is a precise balance of effects and efficiency which is difficult to achieve with traditional rendering.
Ray tracing technology is fully applied in the development of Sword and Fairy 7, improves the overall light atmosphere in the game. Softstar is expecting to bring an upgraded new generation of Sword and Fairy artwork.
Levels : - Reworked Pendulum (2-2) : Introduced death blocks in this lvel - Reworked Edge (2-3) on chapter 2 (renamed to Lost) : it should be way harder to cheese it, overall you know have to go through the building, I also added a new feature, moving death blocs - Reworked Shortcut (renamed to The Path) (2-4) : Added a brand new section at the beginning with a lot of jump pads, also added death blocks to make the gold medal harder - Reworked Failure (renamed to Silence) (2-5) : Added death blocks to make the parkour a little bit more difficult and interesting - Added one new level on Chapter 3
Fixes : - Separated the saves from the demo and the full game to avoid leaderboard conflicts
Next on the Roadmap : - Finish rework of chapter 2 levels with Mour, Awash, Sanctuary and Highway
🔹All biomes now each have a list of ambient sound effects that randomly play.
🔹There are now new sound loops for light rain, medium rain, and stormy weather.
🔹(Fix) Playing as a dinosaur, going to the main menu, and hatching a new dinosaur no longer results in the previous dinosaur being entered into the game instead of the dinosaur that should be hatched.
🔹Tyrannosaurus, spinosaurus, baryonyx, and carnotaurus had their movement speed reduced by 1 tier.
🔹All dinosaur species are now unlocked from the start of the game and do not require evolution points to unlock.
🔹Players of the demo version of the game can now play all of the dinosaur species and try them all out.
🔹Players of the demo version of the game can now switch maps and try them all out.
🔹Players of the demo version of the game no longer save or load any dinosaur data, hoard data, or nest data. This means each time they go to play a dinosaur it starts as a hatchling and no previous hoard or nest items will be waiting in their hoard or nest.
🔹(Fix) Now when it stops raining the rain sound loop stops.