In this devlog, I showoff the first two Cutscenes for the game!



This is my first attempt at developing Cutscenes, and they are utilizing in-engine mechanisms to handle all of the dialogue and actions!

As these are a first pass at storyline integration, I would love to know your thoughts on them, and how I could improve them.

These cutscenes were essentially developed as a proof-of-concept, and will be integrated as part of the next major update to the game. In the future I would love to be able to really increase the production quality of these cutscenes, getting better cinematography, character action, voice acting, and so forth. But for now, I think these do quite well, and I quite enjoy them. They certainly have a feeling and pacing like an old JRPG title, which is what I'm going for.

As far as the storyline goes for the game, it follows the leader of the Mystic Race, Grandmaster Knulxevra. The Mystics are a proud race of spellcasters, formless beyond their long flowing robes and strong horns. The story starts off with the aftermath of one of Knulxevra's most tragic creations, the Fragment. This Fragment was created when Knulxevra split its soul in half; Knulxevra believed it was creating a pure Mystical essence, however that plan went awry and all that was left was destruction. After a failed attempt at destroying the Fragment, Knulxevra now has to wait 1,000 years for another opportunity to destroy it, and so is forced to lie dormant until the time is right. Upon awakening 1,000 years later, chaos has consumed the world, and its Knulxevra's task at fixing the wrongdoings of its past.

The two cutscenes shown in the blog above begin with the intro to the story, and then head into the part where Knulxevra attempts to destroy the Fragment. There's quite a lot of dialogue, and I'm certainly going for a rich philosophical approach to this storyline, so I hope that comes off as intended! I do certainly enjoy deep, well-thought out lore, and want to integrate that into the game in an interesting way. The introduction to the game is certainly being overhauled to be fairly cutscene-heavy, but I think that's okay- more storyline and lore is better than less, in my opinion. (Plus, well... there's always the skip button, LOL).

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Now, to update you all about the state of the game! Right now, I'm still in-progress developing the last handful of Cutscenes for the game (another devlog to come about that soon-ish!). Beyond that, I have a handful of extra major features to integrate (more to come soon!), and then of course plenty of clean up and rebalancing to do. So there's quite a lot of work to be done! But quite a lot that has been done as well. I'm really trying to get the introduction to the game greatly overhauled to be the exact experience I want first players to the game to, well, experience, and these cutscenes are probably the biggest overhaul that will be coming.

While I'd really like to give a more grounded release date, I still believe the next major update is a few months out. I feel like once I get these cutscenes completed, I'll be able to give a more solid time estimate, but I appreciate the patience of everyone who's enjoying the game!

Hello Escapists,

We're back with another Steam Public Playtest of our free update, Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles! Take a look to see how you can get involved.


Escape Academy: Tournament of Puzzles, takes the Academy’s students on the road with Coach Yoach to showdown at various arenas across the globe and compete for glory in multiple Escape events.

The playtest this weekend will take place at the Egyptian themed arena, The Tomb of the First Escapist, and feature three PvP modes, two of which are brand new to the Tournament of Puzzles!

Escape Race: First player to solve all the puzzles, unlock all the doors, and grab the trophy wins!



Tic-Tac-Toe: Solve puzzles in order to unlock your team color gems, then place them on a 3x3 tic-tac-toe grid. First to connect three wins the match!



Scavenger Hunt: Throughout the level, trophies have been hidden in plain sight. First player to collect the majority of the trophies will claim victory!



And if you wanna take the update for a whirl but don’t have a buddy (or just want to play in sweet, sweet solitude) then check out the practice-race mode available for solo play!

For more information on the power-ups and to-be-released arenas, strike up a conversation with Coach Yoach in the lobby. He’ll give you the lowdown on everything you can expect to find in the full update!


Installing the playtest build is as simple as stopping by our store page and pressing the green “request access” button under the playtest header. It will install a separate build of the game that just includes the update and will playable for a limited time only. Launch this from your Steam library and you’re on your way to puzzling!



Once in the build, play through the very first level (if you haven’t already) in order to gain access to the main campus map screen. Once here, press tab to bring up the “Level Packs” screen and select the Tournament of Puzzles.



Now you will be in the Tournament of Puzzles lobby where clicking the trophy cabinet will allow you to choose your game mode and arena track. Each mode offers a new way to engage with the puzzles and your opponent while track selection will effect your route through the massive arenas.

NOTE: For now, the only arena available will be The Tomb of the First Escapist. The full update will contain two other full levels, The Hackannery, and The Showman’s Studio. This playtest does however feature all the modes that will be available in the full update, so give them all a try!


Wow! You are a super cool fan. We would be honored to hear your feedback and have you partake in making this update as good as it can be! For those ace Escapists who would like to go that extra mile, please fill out this brief Google survey so the dev team can continue to improve the experience.

If you encounter any bugs, please feel free to drop by our Discord and visit the #🐛-buglogs channel so we can track the issues on our end and get to work on a fix.


And don’t forget to have fun out there on the Puzzle Pitch with your fellow Escapists! We’re pumped about bringing you guys in to our development process and can’t wait to hear what you have to say.

As always--

GLHF,

Coin Crew Games

V1.0.2

• Fixed an issue where you could walk on Sludge.
  
• Fixed an issue where Star Pages would not grant completion.

With (a bit of) a delay, I have finally uploaded the new tutorial for 0.8 to the experimental branch. I’ll take today to talk about what that includes.

First of all, the size of the tutorial may have gotten a little out of hand. I did mention that I was going to have a longer tutorial with open play after, but I did not expect that it would come out to: 210 tutorial steps, about 1500 lines of explanation, and about 2 hours of actual gameplay. Once again, I feel like this is a good blueprint for any future quests we will implement, so even though it is currently the only “guided task” in the game, there will be more of them in the future.

The tutorial follows along 6 chapters (FPS survival, FPS construction, basic village interaction, advanced village interaction, village expansion, and military command), and you can save any time after finishing chapter 1 (load your game from the singleplayer menu). Chapter 5 (village expansion) is mostly teaching you just how much your logistics are getting bogged down by trying to expand, but you can consider it to be a placeholder for when the pioneer wagon gets added to the game.

As an added change that will affect the regular game, I have re-enabled purchasing for ammo only. This means that you can supply your ranged units at the wood tier with ammo as needed, though it will come at a relatively steep cost.

Now considering how far into the week it has taken me to upload this:

Until... tomorrow!

Hi everyone!

Soul Stalker came out today and we're SO thankful for the incredible support! We've already gotten tons of feedback, and acted on it too! Thanks to your help, we have a pretty concrete idea of where we want to take the game, but we're going to wait at least a week before we announce anything.

Before I go on to talk about today's Beta 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 patch notes, I wanted to say that if you're enjoying the game, leaving a review is the most helpful thing you could do! Anyways, to the patch notes!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1714240/Soul_Stalker/

- Fixed a bug that made some players unable to cap framerate.

- Fixed bug that made it such that weapon/trinket tooltips were sometimes selected by an invisible cursor in combat.
- The shrinking Elite bounds' smallest size is now double the size.
- Made it such that Penny has a minimum movement speed, no matter how many coins she has.
- Made it such that Act 1 enemies yield approximately 30% less currency.
- Made it such that Act 2 enemies yield approximately 55% less currency.
- Fixed bug that caused dashing Elites to receive knockback.
- Fixed bug that caused Third Eye not to heal on crit if you have the Overcrit trinket.
- Increased Act 1 Elite Health by 33%.
- Increased Act 1 Boss by 100%.
- Fixed bug that made Cloud Saves not work properly.
- Fixed bug that made it such that achievements would sometimes unlock improperly on reload.
- Made it such that cursor speed on controller is no longer dependent on screen size, and moves just as quickly on all screen sizes.
- Made Frozen Fish increase Critical Chance by 11% instead of 15%.
- Made Frozen Fish 40% more expensive.
- Made Frozen Fish 25% more uncommon.
- Made Furyhelm increase Power by 12% instead of 15%.
- Made Furyhelm 25% more uncommon.
- Made Furyhelm 12% more expensive.
- Made Gold Crown 25% more uncommon.
- Made Infected Explosions 50% more uncommon.
- Made Overcrit 5% more uncommon.
- Made Overcrit 100% more expensive.
- Made Profit Chest 25% more unncommon.
- Made Profit Chest 100% more expensive.
- Made Stinky Cheese 40% more unccommon.
- Made Target 100% more common.
- Made Third eye 40% more uncommon.

As you can see, there are tons of substantial technical fixes, and lots of balance changes as well. The balance changes are primarily made to make the game slightly harder since some players have felt that it's a bit too easy, but if the community decides that the previous difficulty was better we can revert the changes!

Oh, and remember to leave a review if you're enjoying Soul Stalker!

Anyways, that's it for this update and I'll see you for the next one!

- Conrad, Lead Developer

[ENH] Improved the design of Museum UI
[ENH] Enhanced Monsters Selection UI and Combat UI
[NEW] Introduced 4 new initial monsters (2 Earth and 2 Water) to allow Water Monsters to evolve faster in the early game.


[FIX] Fixed issues related to Auto-Planting.
[FIX] Fixed issues related to Auto-Farming Lotus Seeds.

[NEW] The game is now more Idle-friendly.
[NEW] Automation added for collecting Elemental Lotus Seeds.
[NEW] Plant automation is now functioning properly.
[ENH] Monsters now drop more Elemental Essence.
[FIX] Removed notification when auto-planting.
[FIX] Corrected auto-recovery life amount when in battle.

• Some abilities can now receive Attribute Upgrades (Summoned Flame, Shield of Frost)
  
• Partial rebalancing of various perks and weapons
  
• Summoned Flame retrigger bugfix
  
• Spawn right to Hall of Relics (no more separate Shop main menu item either)
  
• Shorten death animation delay for enemies (faster loot!)

Special thanks to all of the kind playtesters on the Discord!

• Removed some debug printing that might slow the game down at unnecessary points
  
• Re-optimized some functions to be more efficient
  
• Among those is the auto upgrade checks that wasn't very well optimized.
  
• Fixed a big oversight on the weapon charge times. (This special effect may be changed to my original idea, but we'll see how this works out)

Just a few fixes to improve a little performance while I fix the upgrade values

Hi all,

Firstly, thankyou for your patience. Our dedicated small team continue to work on our next update which includes VR implementation, 4K, trueSky and TFS 6.0.

We hope to have a major announcement soon.

Here are a number of great new WIP images and a look at the build of a new fighter coming to TFS 6.0.


























Regards,

TFS team

Since its release, Season 4: Infection has been winning over hearts and Iratus has been taking over minds. Although the reception of Season 4 has been great, there’s still plenty to do and we haven’t slowed down or lost sight of that fact.



To help illustrate that point, let’s take a look at some of the additions, improvements, and bug fixes landing next week with the upcoming August Update!

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Our newest map, Dredge, is entering Halo Infinite’s lineup next week! With inspiration directly from Halo: Reach’s popular map Countdown, this forged homage is sure to make a lasting impression. When diving into the map for the first time, players can expect a new take on the scenery and refreshed gameplay flow.

Starting next Wednesday, August 9, you’ll be able to play Dredge all day long in the Dredge 24/7 playlist!




You asked. We answered.

In addition to a new multiplayer map, the Halo Infinite team has really been focusing their efforts on top community requests. Let’s take a look at the feedback topics they went after!


After cracking open the code for Pelican vehicle deliveries in Big Team Battle (BTB), we found a few different systems that used specific markers that worked together to deliver vehicles. While predictable, the outcome was not quite the same as the consistent, symmetrical vehicle drops that Halo fans typically prefer.

To bring the Pelican deliveries closer in line with those expectations, we’ve improved the system to deliver the same vehicles on both sides of the map in the same wave.



Please note: due to different Pelican flight paths, there may be a difference in the exact timings of delivery.


In another effort to improve the BTB experience, the team also tackled a common piece of community feedback around intro cameras. Now, Big Team Battle matches will prioritize placing the members of your Fireteam in your in-game squad of four players. That means during the intro camera sequences at the start of each game, the line up shot with four Spartans will also prioritize showing members of your Fireteam.




There are not many feelings that can match the rewarding sensation of taking down an entire enemy team and hearing Jeff Steitzer say, “Extermination.”

With the introduction of the Elimination and Attrition game modes in Halo Infinite, there was a desire to help make that medal moment even more special by attributing it to Overkills that helped end a round. However, many of you expressed that this made it feel too tucked away and asked for it to return to all game modes – and that request was heard loud and clear.

We’re happy to say that with the launch of the August Update, the Extermination medal will be available in all multiplayer modes. We look forward to you all sharing clips of your favorite clean sweeps online!




While this topic was a bit more niche, we saw the posts and comments asking for improvements in this area and the team was happy to jump on it.

Our reasoning for going with static death cams was to help ensure a fair environment in which a team only gathered information that was earned. However, we heard the feedback around the static death cams and we went after it for this update.

Starting next week, after you’ve fallen in combat, you’ll be able to rotate your death cam to look around while spectating teammates – much like in previous titles. We expect this extra bit of freedom will encourage even better teamwork and improve communication while players wait to respawn.



Additionally, to help make sure you can spectate your teammate’s even faster, we’ve increased the speed at which you can cycle through players on your death cam. Now, with this additional layer of player agency, you should always be able to help a teammate in need.


Season 4 brought the first appearance of a placeable and scalable water object in Forge – the static water plane. Being a static object, it didn’t react to gameplay interactions such as footsteps, bullets, or explosions and was more applicable for map aesthetics. It was a big step forward for Forge, but we knew that having a reactive water plane would be the next big leap.

Next week, you’ll be able to take that leap with the addition of a scalable water plane in Forge. This new water object will react to players, vehicles, and projectiles just like it would on any of our dev maps!




In addition to the introduction of the reactive water plane, Forge will also get some extra love and polish in this update. A quality-of-life (QoL) update for our Forge menu folders means that creators will be able to expand and collapse all the folders in that section with a single action. Beyond that, the team went after numerous community-reported issues for the August Update.

The full list of those bug fixes will be available on the Halo Support team’s Patch Notes at https://aka.ms/HaloInfiniteUpdate and will go live with the update’s launch next week.



Much like all our updates, the focus of the August Update was to continue addressing top community requests across the board. In addition to the few topics we've covered above, we’ll have even more fixes for top community reported issues such as Personal AI voice resetting, bringing slide back to parity with its Season 3 behavior, multiple Observer and Theater bugs, and stability improvements for all platforms.

As a reminder, the full list of fixes – with additional context – will be available on Halo Support’s Patch Notes page (https://aka.ms/HaloInfiniteUpdate) when the update launches next week.

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While we know there will always be plenty more to go after, we’re excited to release this one and share these improvements with you. Thank you for your continued support and constructive feedback as we continue to update Halo Infinite!