Wanderlust Adventures FAQ

Is Wanderlust Adventures available for platforms other than Steam and Windows?

Not at this time.

Game runs at a low framerate but I have a good computer.

1) If you have connected a gamepad to play the game, keep it connected during play. You may even have to plug in more than one controller if they've both been connected to your computer before.
2) Wanderlust Adventures uses your CPU to process graphics. Make sure you have at least 2.0Ghz Processor.
3) Close windows/applications/browsers running video (Twitch.tv, Youtube, etc.).

Nobody can connect to my games or I cannot connect to theirs.

1) Make sure both the host and client have Steam set to ONLINE MODE.
2) If they cannot find your game - or you have trouble finding games - make sure no Firewalls are running (or Adventures.exe is an exception).

"Cannot go that way..."

1) This is a video memory issue. Try updating video drivers, or changing settings on any applications that modify video for your PC (Nvidia, AMD, SLI, etc.).

"Error defining external function"

1) This is an error with one of the dlls for the game. Either a dll is missing, or is being prevented from communicating with the game executable. Disabling anti-virus programs or running the game as administrator may help.

"Trying to use non-existing surface"

1) This is a video driver issue. Try rolling back or updating your video drivers.

Game exhibits strange graphical behaviors.

1) Close other programs that use video or audio (internet browsers, etc).
2) Update video or sound drivers if possible.
3) Turn off special graphics options for your graphics card (e.g. "AMD Gaming Evolved")
4) Turn off "Custom Colors" in Visual Options Menu.

Game crashes or does not start up.

1) Run Steam "as administrator".
2) Close other programs that use video or audio (internet browsers, etc).
3) Update video or sound drivers if possible.
4) Re-install .Net Framework and MS Redistributable Packs.

How do I use a gamepad/controller?

Simply connect a controller to the game and use F1 to toggle gamepads on/off. The game should detect a controller if it was plugged in prior to loading up the game. Only Xbox controllers are officially supported.

How do I resize the game window?

Either in the OPTIONS MENU or by hitting F11.

Can I make videos of Wanderlust Adventures and share them with other gamers?

Of course!

Will there ever be 'trading' in Wanderlust Adventures?

We currently have no plans to add trading into the game for a number of reasons:
1) It would be too easy to duplicate items since characters are stored locally.
2) Players would create characters simply to store their items.
3) Players would create games just to trade items instead of play the game.
4) Most importantly, the earned acquisition of wealth and power is an essential driving force in the progression of the game; being able to trade would undermine this.

Can we play Wanderlust Adventures LAN? Splitscreen?

Yes but you must still connect through Steam. Wanderlust Adventures does not support a splitscreen option.

I have a question not listed here in the F.A.Q.! What do I do?

The best way to reach us to ask a question not listed here is email us at contact@yetitrunk.com

"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

"Wanderlust Adventures" - Zombie Ambush Preview

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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Spooky ghouls!
Greeting fellow Yetis!

We are still alive, and moving at a steady pace. We just wanted to show you a quick preview of a zombie (ghoul) ambush! If you are wanting to actively follow the development of Wanderlust Adventures, you can watch it live with Matt, Jason, and Lauren. Drop each of us a follow and it will alert you when we go live (almost daily).

We also want to quickly welcome Power Up Audio. They have done a fantastic job on creating dynamic SFX for WA! You can get a glimpse of some of their amazing work in the video above.

 Stay tuned for a blog post in the coming days/weeks with a detailed list of all the new changes!



Until next time!

 ~ Yeti Trunk

"Wanderlust: Adventures" Developer's Log - 14

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; most of them are mockups or early prototypes.

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We spent the last week reworking/finishing the Sorcerer class (formally known as the Elementalist). The first thing we wanted to do was get rid of the spell wheel. This has been, by far, the most confusing element for many new players, and we would like to alleviate that initial frustration.

tldr; massive changes to old Elementalist (now Sorcerer) class, new hit and number effects, and new spell icons!

"Will this change make the class less skill based?"
We still want the ranged caster class to require skill - and the Rebirth-Rune System did accommodate this - but we also want to relieve some of the frustrations of people who just wanted to focus on having fun. To that end, we decided to get rid of Rebirth's Rune System and replace it with a simple element 'wheel'. Players can now hold shift to bring up the 4 elements (fire, ice, earth, energy). Left or Right clicking an element will assign that element to the mouse key pressed. This will give players access to a wider range of spells at any given time, requiring skill to successfully utilize them at the right time.

"How will I select and cast the various skill if all I am doing is selecting an element?"
Sorcerers now have to focus on having two elements selected at a time (left and right mouse button). Depending on what mouse key the element is selected on, you can do various spells. To accurately explain this, first I must talk about the new Stances for the Sorcerer.

Magic Stances and how they work:
The Sorcerer has 3 stances that they can freely swap between while holding the shift key: Offensive, Balanced, and Defensive.

• Offensive stance sets both mouse clicks to offensive kits. 

• Balanced stance sets left mouse click to an offensive kit, and the right mouse button to a defensive kit. 

• Defensive stance sets both mouse buttons to defensive kits. Any buffs the Sorcerer casts on a player will heal them while in this stance.

So, with stances in mind, once you have an element selected you can do a few things. With an offensive kit selected, you can click to shoot a bolt spell, or you can hold it down to charge a power spell (like meteor, chain lightning, etc). While charging, players move a bit slower, so they should try and combo these charges with stuns, freezes, slows, etc. With a defensive kit selected, players can click to cast a defensive spell or buff, and click-drag to draw walls.

So at all times, players of Wanderlust: Adventures will have quick access to 4 spells (instead of 2 like in Rebirth), and can easily swap between stances to accommodate their play style/the battle. In addition to your 4 spells accessible through your mouse keys, holding shift will also activate Magic Shield, which deflects all damage from magic spells, and even reflects projectile spells back towards the caster.

"So what are the current offensive/defensive spells?"
Here is the current list of offensive and defensive spells and what they do.

Offensive Kit:

• Fireball, Ice Shard, Spike, and Shock: The basic bolt spells that all players start with. These are easily spammed for quick CC and damage.

• Meteor: Fire charge ability. Drops a really big meteor in the location doing AOE fire damage.

• Ice Nova: Ice charge ability. Throws several giant ice crystals in the direction. On impact, they burst into a ring of ice, freezing targets.

• Boulder: Earth charge ability. Shoots a giant boulder that plows through enemies in a straight line.

• Chain Lightning: Energy charge ability. Throws a giant ball of energy. On impact, shocks all enemies in a large radius.

Defensive Kit:

• Dragon Breath: Spits a blast of fire in a cone, knocking enemies back and catching them on fire.

• Ice Shield: Casts an Ice Shield buff on players in an area. The buff gets removed after 1 hit, but freezes all enemies nearby, reduces damage by a large %, and making the player immune to ice and fire effects.

• Rock Ward: Casts a Rock Ward buff on players in an area. Rocks spin around the player. The rocks break on contact with a projectile or enemy, blocking the projectile or damaging the enemy. 

• Energize: Allows the user to teleport to a specified location, leaving an energy ring on the ground. Has a longer cooldown if the teleport is used, but you can cast the spell without teleporting.

• Fire Wall: Creates a wall of fire that catches enemies on fire that pass through it.  Any player that walks through the fire gains fire damage buff for the next few hits.

• Ice Wall: Creates a giant wall of ice that blocks projectiles and freezes enemies on contact. Any player that walks through the ice gains ice damage buff for the next few hits.

• Vine wall: Creates a line of vines. Any enemy that passes through it will be slowed. Any player that walks through the vines gain physical damage buff for the next few hits.

• Energy wall: Creates a wall of energy. Any enemy that passes through it will be knocked back. Any player that walks through the energy gains energy damage buff for the next few hits.

So with all that said, with the new stance system, players could dish out massive damage and support their team. Sorcerers will now be able to be a healing/buffing class if there is no Cleric in the game. On that note, we have recently been focusing on introducing an ability to heal for each and every character class; this allows for more variety in team composition and greatly enhances solo play.

click to enlarge

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Throughout development of Wanderlust: Adventures, we have addressed several concerns brought forth by players of Wanderlust: Rebirth, one of which was 'too much clutter during combat' or 'I cannot see anything or tell what is going on'. Here is a list of changes we have made to address this particular concern:

• Removed the Pow, Slash, Bam, etc. action captions that were on by default in WR. 

• Made damage numbers almost 50% smaller.

• Removed Block, Critical, Counter action captions. Replaced them with a larger (same size as Rebirth) white font on the floating numbers.

• We are re-making all of the spell and hit effects. Instead of using colored, alpha transparency effects, we are going for a crisper, animated pixel look. We feel the color-blending was causing a lot of visual confusion during hectic battles, and the clean, animated pixel look fits much nicer with the game.

• No more overhead clouds in-game. Now, only cloud-shadows appear on the ground.

click to enlarge

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Finally, I have spent a bunch of this week revamping the spell icons in the game. I am aiming for a more detailed, illustrative look. You can see a few in the picture below:

click to enlarge

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This was a long update, but deservedly so since it's been over a month since our last log was published! Until next time!

~ Yeti Trunk

"Wanderlust: Adventures" Developer's Log - 13

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; most of them are mockups or early prototypes.

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The past week or so we have been crunching down on one of the core gameplay mechanics of Wanderlust: Adventures (WA), as well as finalizing the last 10 enemies and dungeon maps.

Lauren began animating some of the last remaining enemies, which should bring the total number of NEW enemies in WA to 30+, and that is not including some of the Wanderlust: Rebirth (WR) enemies we felt were good enough to be included in WA. We try to only add new enemies to the game that we can introduce new gameplay strategies through; we are not a big fan of color changing an enemy and having them do the exact same thing as their counterpart. This, we feel, is one of the main things that allow the Wanderlust series to be unique and always feel fresh as you continue through the game. Fighting a Bandit Potion Thrower will require an entirely different strategy than fighting a Bandit Marksman, etc.

Here goes a sneak peak at one of the enemies Lauren is working on, the Ghoul:

The Ghoul is a very slow moving enemy, but relies on massive packs of Ghouls to be extremely deadly. They are resilient to damage and immune to knock-back. Think of them as a giant moving wall of death!

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Next up, Matt has been working hard on adding Events (name tentative) to the game. There are several different types of Events in WA, these will help give players some slight direction in the game, while they explore the landscape and raid dungeons. There are two different types of events, Overworld events and Outpost events.

Today we will talk about two Overworld events, the Ambush events and Rescue events.

The Ambush event occurs randomly (a small % chance) when you are roaming around the overworld. Once triggered, an Ambush bar appears on the screen (similar to Crawl mode in WR). Waves of enemies will spawn attacking you, and the players must survive the attack and clear all enemies. These are a great source of items and tokens, but can also prove extremely deadly if the adventurers are not prepared.

click to enlarge

The Rescue event occurs randomly (a small % chance) when you are roaming around the overworld. Players will see an NPC cry for help, surrounded by enemies. Once the map is cleared, players can talk to the NPC and offer to escort them back to the nearest Outpost (will go into more detail on Outposts later). The good thing about these rescue events, they should compliment what you are doing at the time. So if you accept the rescue event, you can choose to have the NPC tag around while you finish what you are doing, and then transport him back to the nearest outpost for a bunch of EXP and tokens.

click to enlarge

Because both of these events happen dynamically while you travel, it is possible for them to 'overlap'. You could be exploring, find an NPC and choose to escort him back to the nearest Outpost. On the way there, an ambush could trigger. The simple escort now turns into a hectic survival match where players must try to protect the NPC at all costs.

We will go into detail about other types of events at a later time.

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I was super busy the last few weeks trying to finalize the random dungeon maps. I am proud to say that I managed to finish 326 dungeon maps. This is a HUGE number, considering they are all handcrafted. This really livened up the dungeons and really helped break up noticeable repeated maps. I will continue to add dungeon maps over time, but this should be the bulk of them for awhile.

 click to enlarge

I also began working on the last of the overworld maps and finalizing the look and feel of the mountain region. I can't show pictures of those though, can't spoil everything for you guys!

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Thanks for checking back with us, we should have some new stuff to show in the coming weeks!

~ Yeti Trunk

"Wanderlust: Adventures" Developer's Log - 12

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; most of them are mockups or early prototypes.

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Hey guys! We spent the last few weeks working on several different things and have made a lot of progress!

First, Lauren finished the promotional art for Wanderlust: Adventures, and we couldn't be happier with how it came out! We plan to use this image to hopefully help market the game when it comes to that. We were really aiming to describe Wanderlust: Adventures with just a picture; explore the world and create your own adventures, and I think she nailed it!

click to enlarge

I will likely make a few wallpaper variations once the website is launched, which should come relatively soon.

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Matt spent this week coding and redesigning the server finder. We really wanted to refine how this menu was navigated, as well as display a bit more information. Now players can view the game name, difficulty the game is set to, players in the game, the day of the expedition, and where they are located on the world map.

click to enlarge

Long gone are refreshing the server list with F4 and navigating the server pages with F keys!

Matt also spent a lot of time recoding how enemies spawn so enemies spawn right when the players enter the room, removing the slight delay that they used to have.

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This week I managed to finish another enemy, leaving 10 more to create. Lauren will be joining me on finishing these last few enemies, leaving me more time for map creation. On that note, I have completed a total of 91 dungeon maps this week (172 total maps finished)! We are aiming for a total of 270+ swappable dungeon maps. This will hopefully leave plenty of variety, and if we feel we need more we can always add more!

Here goes an image of a few dungeon rooms with 2 different dungeon tilesets applied. The colorful rooms are how it looks when I create the rooms, and then the following images are what it looks like in game. Click to enlarge for the best detail.

click to enlarge for best detail

This method allows us to quickly create vast dungeons, all with unique looks and feels!

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That is it for this week, keep an eye out for the next dev log! Thanks for reading and hope to see you next time!
~Jason

~ Yeti Trunk

"Wanderlust: Adventures" Developer's Log - 8

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; most of them are mockups or early prototypes.

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Lauren here! I’m the artist responsible for the cover art and all of the illustrated graphics in Wanderlust:Rebirth. We’re dumping the hand drawn stuff this time around for a better overall gameplay experience, but I’m happy to say that I’m sticking around for Adventures!

I'm even happier to say that I get to do pixel art, which is a Link to the Past fan's dream come true. You've already seen the new clouds, my first contribution to Wanderlust: Adventures, and without question the most important part of the game*. In addition to that, we're going to have eight new playable characters to choose from (two new players, male and female, from each class), which I recently finished designing and creating skins for. That means every run cycle, attack animation, block, etc… 558 frames of animation are done and ready to be implemented into the game.

Here are just four of the new characters.

From left to right: Fighter, Alchemist, Cleric, Elementalist

And while I’m still feeling generous, a Soul Charge animation.

* Not really. You actually have the option of disabling them. :(

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Matt spent the last week implementing a new feature that should really extend the character customization in Wanderlust: Adventures; The Companion System! 

All players will start the game with the ability to hire a dog from the companion keeper, Leone. In the companion menu, you will see a series of ???, these are companions you have not yet found and unlocked. Players will have to venture out into the wild and hunt these enemies down for a chance to receive a Companion Contract drop (as pictured below).

 

Your dog companion is sad because you disabled clouds! Just kidding, he's dead.

Once the player has picked up a companion contract, they can take this to Leone in town and turn them in. The ??? in the companion list will now unlock and reveal the companion and the amount of tokens it will cost to purchase it. Once a companion is unlocked and paid for, you can freely equip/unequip it at will. These companions are profile based, so unlocking them on one character will allow you to use them on all characters you create/use from that point on.

After equipping a companion, players can venture out and level them up. To level up a companion, players must gift crafting materials such as bones, leather, sashes, etc., to award them experience points. Eventually a companion will level up, and he will stay that level for any character that uses him!

Gifting the dog some goodies!

Currently there are around 20 companions in the game, and we are going to add some more. We are aiming to have nearly every enemy that you can fight, be unlockable as a companion. This really allows for a whole new level of character customization and builds. 

Say you want to play solo but do not have a cleric, go hire a Goblin Shaman, you now have a support companion willing to heal you.

Playing an Elementalist and need someone to tank for you? Hire a bandit or Skeleton Warrior to tank some damage. 

Some companions will be best for looks, some will be great for utility (some that poison, catch enemies on fire, etc), some will be great for support. It is up to you and your play style to choose the right companion for the job!

One last side note, we added a tear drop icon that appears above dead player's/companion's heads when they die. This is a 'feature' we are bringing back from the very first Wanderlust that we feel will make it a bit more obvious which allies are downed.

Here are some shots that show the companions in action.

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Jason spent his week completing more maps, which brings the total number of maps currently in the over-world to 218! He also churned out 8 new enemy graphics. More maps and enemies to come!

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Phew! That is it for this update, keep an eye out for more logs!

~ Yeti Trunk