"Wanderlust Adventures" - Developer's Log 20

Please keep in mind that all of the images in Developer's Logs are for Wanderlust Adventures, a new title being worked on by Yeti Trunk, and are a Work In Progress; some of them are mockups or early prototypes.

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Hey everyone, we have been working very hard to get Wanderlust Adventures (WA) near completion! We felt it was a good time to fill everyone in - who hasn't watched our development streams - on the changes that we have made to WA in the last several months. Hang in there, because this is a massive update!

Trailer Reveal

We spent a good week working closely with Power Up Audio and Chris Christodoulou to produce our reveal trailer for WA. We are super excited with the trailer and we feel it does a great job of summarizing the WA experience! It also shows off a variety of areas, sounds, enemies, and features that are explained in more detail below. If you enjoy the trailer, please feel free to help us spread the word!

So, without further ado, we present the Wanderlust Adventures 'Debut Trailer' [1:36]:

Official Soundtrack Release

Chris worked extremely hard finalizing the OST for WA, and we couldn't be happier with it! It goes over so many emotions and feelings that we feel it truly captures the essence of WA. And the best part of it all, you can listen and purchase it now! Help support Chris and his musical endeavors!

Preview the OST here:

Purchase/share the OST here

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So now that the trailer and OST release is out of the way, let me go into more details about some of the changes/new features we have added into WA.

Hom Ron Remake

Jason spent a good amount of time revamping the main hub in the game, Hom Ron. This is the first place that players will experience and explore in the game, so we wanted it to feel really special and memorable. Jason has given the town a unique color scheme to help differentiate it from the golden dunes outside of its walls.

Enhanced Gamepad Support

Matt recently spent time finalizing and revamping in-game support for gamepads. A lot of fine tuning went into making every menu and character class feel smooth with a gamepad (Xbox 360 standard). Jason also updated the xbox/gamepad icon prompts on the screen. 

Most of the time allocated to working on gamepad support was spent fine-tuning the Sorcerer control scheme. Many options were added that will permit users to fully customize how they control their aiming cursor (i.e. relative positioning, variable cursor speeds) with their gamepad.

We did however remove the ability to map individual keys on the gamepad; we did this for many reasons, but mainly that trying to code key-mapping support all pc gamepads would be extremely challenging and cumbersome. Not to mention many players who use gamepads on PC tend to use Joy2Key or other gamepad mapping software that allows for greater compatibility than we could ever code ourselves. Alternatively, we have added a few gamepad presets that should help facilitate any users preference.

New Enemy Health Bars

Long gone are the days of not knowing how many hits a Blood Slime has left! Matt and Jason worked on creating HUD elements for targeted enemies. Not only does this allow us to name enemies, but it also allows players to know exactly how much damage they are doing in relation to the enemies health. We feel this has helped combat feel a lot more engaging and fluid, and the player is no longer detached from the enemies they are interacting with.

New Main Menu

Jason revamped the title screen for WA. We really wanted the title screen to feel 'epic'; The player is about to embark on a grand adventure! Jason added a depth element that we believe gives that grand-adventure feeling to the player right when they start the game.

New Sorcerer Aura Spells

After much play-testing and feedback from our alpha testers, we decided to remove the Sorcerer walls (fire wall, ice wall, vine wall, and energy wall) from the game and replace them with Auras. We found that players just didn't utilize the walls because they were too situation-specific.

Auras create an elemental status effect in the area, as follows:

• Fire Trap: Enemies are burnt over time; players are buffed with fire damage.
• Ice Trap: Enemies are frozen over time; players are buffed with ice damage.
• Energy Trap: Enemies are damaged and their attacks are slowed over time; players are buffed with energy damage.
• Earth Trap: Enemies are slowed; players are buffed with additional damage.

Outpost Quests

These are some of the main story mechanics in the game, so finishing them was a huge step in WA's development. In addition to adventuring all over the place, players may choose to lend a hand to the outpost in their particular area in order to progress the game story.

"Renowned" Mini Bosses

We wanted to give the players a bit of an extra challenge, so we decided to work on a way that we could turn regular enemies into bosses. We liked how Diablo handled this, so we created Renowned enemies. These are represented by an emerald skull above an enemies head and a random affix aura around them. Not only do these have more health and damage, but the random affixes they posses are applied to all of the enemies around them. Just simply fighting a Renowned Cactus with an ice affix changes the fight completely.

This has allowed us to add optional bosses throughout the world that will reward players for exploring and taking on greater challenges. In epic mode, this will allow us to scale difficulty up just by giving them an additional affix, or pairing bosses up with other renowned bosses.

The Arena

Matt and Jason have added The Arena into WA, which has "The Crawl Challenge" (much like The Crawl Mode in Wanderlust: Rebirth). The Arena Crawl Challenge is simpler compared to "The Crawl" in Wanderlust Rebirth, but at the same time more engaging and quicker-paced. Now, players stay in a special hand-crafted room where waves of enemies pour in. The battle area is surrounded by spiked walls which can damage enemies or players who are hit into them. After each round, a chest spawns, and the next wave begins shortly after the chest is opened (players no longer swap between maps).

Additionally, on every 3rd wave, a "Renowned" Mini Boss will spawn, making each round increasingly difficult.

New NPCs (Lore/Tips)

Jason and Lauren spent a considerable amount of time placing unique NPCs around the world of Valandria. These NPCs will help inform the player of the world they are exploring and hint at secrets to be discovered throughout the lands. These NPCs may also give advice on how to best fight certain enemies or how to best use specific player skills.

Jason is still writing custom dialogue for each NPC, with already over 300 lines of dialogue in the Desert Area alone!

New Enemy Death Animations

We decided that it just wasn't satisfying when you slay an enemy and just have them fade away, so to address this, we gave every enemy a death animation. When you defeat a foe, their bodies fly through the air, carrying the momentum of your swing, leaving their bodies on the ground. This has really made combat a lot more satisfying!

SFX from Power Up Audio

Nearly everything you do in WA has custom made SFX thanks to Power Up Audio! Footstep sounds for every type of ground, ambient sounds that help capture the area around you, unique enemy grunts and attacks, etc. There are just way way too many examples to list here, but you can fully expect to have one of the best audible experiences a game can have.

You can even watch them play the game here

Steam Cards

Lauren finished drawing all of the art for the Steam Cards! She spent a lot of time making five really cool drawings of a few of the enemies in WA (Skeleton Assassin, Bone Golem, Naga, Sand Shark, and Succubus). We even had them printed to hand out during our PAX Prime trip!

Steam Networking Integration

Matt and Bart (of Staxel & Starbound) worked together briefly to integrate the Steam Networking API into WA. This will now allow users to play with their friends without port-forwarding! Every game you see, you can join! We are really excited to see how much this will drive the community on WA launch.

Lots of Art Remade/Refined

Jason has spent a significant amount of time going through older tilesets, sprites, and maps, revamping and remaking them. We are really trying to increase the overall quality of the game everywhere possible.

A good example of this is the entire desert region in the game. Jason went through each map adding newly created sand dunes to give the desert area some height and scale. Some maps got brick roads added and nearly all have had their tilesets tweaked and edited. This is likely a process that we will be doing until release to make sure everything looks as good as it can.

Fishing and Mining

Matt added fishing and mining into the game. Each area has a chance to spawn a fishing and/or mining map, however, there are two specific areas in the game that will always have fishing and mining. This will allow for people to go to these two locations if they want to fish/mine, while providing options to do it while adventuring if you get one of the random locations drawn.

Fishing and mining offer the following:

• Fishing: ability to find specialized companion gifts that will increase their XP
• Mining: ability to find gem shards that aid in crafting jewlery

Fishing and mining are completely optional, but it gives the player another avenue with which to obtain important items in the game.

Death Penalty

We really wanted to imbue WA with a sense of risk vs. reward. To address this, whenever your entire party dies in combat (or your character alone in single player) you will 'drop' a % of your XP upon returning to town; your 'body' is left in the area you were defeated. Players may return to where they died in order to gather their lost XP (similar to Dark Souls).

The penalty is not so drastic to make you dread dying, but it is enough to make you question going inside a dangerous dungeon or battling a Renowned Scorpion. Players cannot de-level when losing XP, so you may find yourself a bit more daring when you leveled up!

Shrines

We wanted to add a sense of wonder to the world, so you may now discover mysterious shrines randomly placed throughout the world and - if you meet certain criteria - activate them for interesting results!

New Class Skills

We decided early on that we didn't want to add any new classes to WA, because we spent a lot of time making sure each class had a purpose and that they didn't make each other obsolete. However, we knew that we wanted to give returning players something new to play with for each class, so we have added some new skills to each class, as well as refine and change some of the existing ones.

Aside from the Sorcerer (which we talked about here), here are some of the new additions:

• Warrior:
• Charge: the warrior quickly runs forward, stunning any enemies he hits.
• Whirlwind: the warrior quickly spins their weapon around, damaging enemies greatly over time.
• Crusader:
• Divine Hammer: the crusader summons a holy hammer that flies forwards through enemies dealing holy damage.
• Assassin:
• Ninja Star: the assassin quickly throws ninja stars forwards, dealing damage to enemies.

Max Level & 'Rebirth'

We felt it was important to allow players to continually play WA for as long as they wanted, without being restricted by a "level cap". To address this, Matt added the ability for a player to visit a certain NPC in the game when they are max level (25), and choose to 'Rebirth'. This puts the player back down to level 15, but they earn a permanent single skill point bonus. Players can choose to do this as many times as they want (every time they reach level 25).

This should really help extend the playtime of WA for players who really want to keep playing and still want to progress their characters.

New Sorcerer Spell Wheel

Matt and Jason worked hard over the past few weeks to finalize the look and functionality of the Sorcerer's spell wheel. It is still functionally the same as what we previously had, but now with the elements and stances clearly defined (and the ones you have selected).

It might not seem like a massive change/addition, but we feel it really helped bring the Sorcerer to the same level of polish and simplicity that the other classes share.

Opening Cinematic

Matt finished the opening cinematic to the game, which really helps give the player a purpose and direction in the game. Before this, players were just dropped into the main town with no clue where to go or what to do. This cinematic really compliments Chris' music in WA, and puts a grandiose twist on the beginning of the players adventure.

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As you can see, the entire team has been extremely busy creating, finalizing, polishing, and refining every element of Wanderlust Adventures. If you would like to stay up to date on the development of WA, feel free to follow Matt, Jason, and Lauren on twitch.tv!

Until next time,
~Yeti Trunk