Labyrinths of Elfhame 2nd Alpha

 It’s been a hot minute since June, and Labyrinths of Elfhame is really shaping up to be an excellent strategy game. In the past few months I’ve been primarily focused on adding more polish to the visual presentation of the game, as well as a more consistent experience. Special thanks to everyone who gave feedback for the last build and helped hunt for bugs. I couldn’t do this without you, and I’m eternally grateful for all of you.

Following this alpha build (of course after squashing new bugs found during it) I’m planning to focus my attention in a few key areas:

• Continuing to polish art. This means more unique projectile animations, character sprites, tower idle/attack animations, background art, and enemies.
• Adding Threli, the final character needed for the story
• Beginning work on the campaign
• Adding LAN support to build an appropriately abstract network synchronization model that can then be applied to different platform’s p2p networking for the game’s eventual release.

Patch Notes:

UI:

• Added contextual button prompts to tower information menu
• Fixed bug where minimap didn’t display tiles correctly in start new game flow
• Updated main menu screen with new art and particle effects
• Fixed spacing issue with bottom menu element
• Updated feedback buttons to point to a new form for the new build

All characters:

• Fixed a bug where pressing the bumper would cause the tower information menu to appear
• Added squash/stretch animation to walk cycle
• Added light object on tower highlight to more clearly show which tile the character is on
• Added effect that flies toward other player’s pings in multiplayer to facilitate better communication on larger maps

General Gameplay:

• Added the skeleton of a basic weather system that spawns clouds that fly across the screen.
• Changed path particle effect to be more attention grabbing
• Additional tile textures that create a more varied game map
• Added a 4th map

Towers:

• Every tower now uses a variation of the same base tower class, reducing bugs that came from previously bespoke tower classes (such as Jezebel’s and Dignos’)
• Added random enemy selection option
• More towers now have an idle animation that plays all the time
• All projectiles now have a timer that will request a new enemy if the enemy they were targeting dies before it’s able to fly away from the tower

Jezebel:

• Changed Lord of Blades crit multiplier from 3x to 2x
• Changed sound effect on Raven Assassin and Lord of Blades to create a more unique and less monotonous soundscape.

Dignos:

• Reworked charge mechanic to de-couple from attack speed increases. Capacitor towers now gain 1 charge every 3 seconds, regardless of if enemies are in range or not. Charges are also expended one at a time instead of all at once.
  • Reminder that the charge damage formula is charge multiplied by tower damage (this number is then fed into any appropriate crit multipliers). So a charge of 4 will multiply that hit’s damage by 4, and decrease charge to 3 for the next hit, etc...
• Added new UI element to charge towers to indicate charge level
• Added projectile launch sound to lightning rod
• Changed Lightning Rod enemy selection to random

Pitcairn:

• Added new tower: Earth Splitter. Earth splitter applies the same stun status effect as the Boulder Thrower in an AOE. This finally means that every character has at least 3 towers.

Icarus:

• Gust tower now has a new projectile type: bounce. It will bounce twice after its initial hit.
• Removed Cyclone tower. Even obtaining a single cyclone tower would make the game impossible to lose, especially if it was combined with updraft towers.
• Changed Tempest enemy selection to random

Once again, thank you  to everyone for your continued support of Labyrinths. I'm so excited for what the next few months will bring!