Dev Blog #1 (September 2023)
28 SEPTEMBER 2023
Hello, Tacticians!
We hope you all had a very nice summertime!
At Gemelli, following a very busy month of July with our Alpha playtest and parsing through all the feedback, we took some time to recharge in August. Now we are back and going full steam ahead to develop Skygard Arena!
We have decided that we wanted to share more information on the development of Skygard Arena with you on a regular basis. So, starting today, we will be sharing a monthly devblog with updates on our progress, exclusive sneak peeks of the game and some behind-the-scenes content!
Let’s dive right in!
Hero rework: Jorn, Eternal Guard
During the Alpha, both we and our players were not fully satisfied with the gameplay of Jorn, our bulky Lizard. It was frustrating to play with him: his close combat-oriented skillset made him overly dependent on getting to melee range without any gap closers, making him easy pickings for long-range heroes.
But he was also frustrating to play against! His Taunt ability was very confusing and he could heal himself by insane amounts every turn thanks to his passive Scaly Regerenation.
So we have made a couple of changes:
✅ We have added the Wild Charge ability to Jorn’s kit to give him the opportunity to gap close enemies.
✅ We have simplified how Taunt works and made it much less frustrating.
✅ We have capped the number of stacks of Scaly Regeneration he could accumulate in one round.
✅ We have removed the purely defensive ultimate spell Bastion for a much more agressive self-buff that synergizes with Bleed!
By doing so, we think we have shifted some his gameplay from a slow, tedious tank to a more aggressive bulky bruiser. Playing Jorn should feel much more explosive now!
If you'd like to play around with Jorn's new kit and share your feedback with us, make sure to join the official Discord, we are holding regular Community Playtests when we have something new to test!
User Interface Upgrade
We are working on a major upgrade of the user interface for the Lobby, Teambuilder and Hero Editor interfaces of the game. The new version will be clearer and much more pleasing to the eye!
Hero Editor v1 / Alpha Version
Hero Editor v2
Item System Rework
We got a lot of feedback regarding our itemization system during the Alpha.
Players loved certain aspects of the system:
Same budget for both players which guarantees a level playing field;
Lots of different options / builds for your characters;
Legendary and epic items that feel unique and game-changing;
Yet they also rightly criticized the overall complexity of the system, with 20 items to choose, a lot of numbers and lots of restrictions.
So we listened to your feedback, went back to the drawing board and simplified the item system:
Heroes now have 3 item slots instead of 4;
We have removed the equipment restrictions based on Armor, Accessory and Weapon slots: you have more freedom to equip the item you want;
The cost of the items has been scaled down by ~100x and total budget moved from 6,000 to 50.
We had the opportunity to playtest these changes and the result was really positive!
Between now and the release, we will focus on individual item design as well as UI / graphic upgrade for the item cards. Stay tuned!
Did someone say “demo”?
We will also be participating in a major gaming consumer show in France in a couple of weeks, with a on-site demo of the game… We will be sharing more information very soon!
That’s it for September! Feel free to give us feedback on this new format through Discord or by email 🙂
See you in the Arena,
Alexandre
Gemelli Games - CEO
