December Development Update - Roadmap Adjustments, Elements, and Elites

Progress Update

Hello and happy New Year! I did not get as much done as I wanted in November, and thus missed that development update. I got mostly back on track in December - the stuff I've been working on has breathed new life into my motivation. We're still pretty far out from a release, but I grow more certain of what that release will look like each day.

November's Directional Crisis

I briefly mentioned in the Discord channel that I had to re-assess my plans during November. I didn't get a lot of time, and in the time I did get, I wasn't able to push myself to get the things I wanted to do done. And as it turns out, that's because I didn't want to do them. This is, in hindsight, an easy conclusion to come to, but at the time it felt like I was making a sacrifice.

    Essentially, I was too intent on sticking to a roadmap I laid out many months ago, and getting the second planned area, The Mines, done. I ultimately didn't like most of my ideas for the mines, so every time I would boot up Unity I would just zone out and despair at all the work that had to be done for this area that wasn't even that interesting to me. Scrapping the mines was necessary, and I was able to salvage a reasonable amount of what I had done in that time.

    The Mines are out, now, leaving the following regions

• Forest
• Ice Caves
• The Magma Forge
• Demonic region - unsure on specifics yet

    All of which are fairly "fun" regions to design, in my mind. Furthermore, I plan on releasing into Early Access with only the first 3 regions, and really dedicating time to the final one to make sure it flows right. So with my current target just being Forest -> Ice Caves -> Magma Forge, that significantly shortens the timeframe until I can "release" the game, and in turn should keep me motivated a bit better.

Elements

If my progress during December could be summarized in one word, it would be 'Elemental'. My intent has always been to give Aetherdale a rich elemental combat system, and I've finally gotten started on really fleshing that out. Which elements you bring into combat will now be a point of strategic significance, as each element has unique effects now. These effects are triggered by "Elemental Status Chance". For now, you get a small amount of elemental status chance by default, but eventually, traits, weapons, and perhaps even trinkets will provide ways to increase this chance.

    When an elemental status effect is triggered, one of the following things will happen, depending on the element you're using:

• Fire: the target's armor will be reduced
• Water: the target will be slowed
• Nature: the target's damage will be reduced
• Storm: the target will have a stacking % chance to get stunned each time they get hit
• Light: the target will take more damage needs to be re-assessed, too similar to Fire
• Dark: the target will receive a damage-over-time effect that increases with their missing health

    Beware that enemies also get these elemental statuses - if an enemy hits you with elemental damage, you may be on the receiving end of one of these effects.

    This system may be fleshed out further with player-specific effects to balance combat better, or with upgraded versions of effects. But as of now the elemental status system is just about complete.

Elites

A Burning Rock Elemental, and an Electric Rock Elemental

The standard set of enemies now rarely comes in different flavors, in the form of Elite enemies. These guys are bigger, harder to kill, and more capable of killing you, than their standard counterparts. As of now there is one type of Elite for each element, each with unique effects.

    Elites aren't completed yet, but they're coming along a lot quicker than I thought they would, so I figured they'd be worth including as a December achievement. Here are some details about existing Elites, so far:

• Storm Elites (called "Electric <enemy name>") will call down lightning at random around them
• Water Elites ("Aqueuos <enemy name>") get a bubble shield that has a chance to "absorb" your attacks, mitigating them completely
• All Elemental Elites take reduced elemental damage, and even less from their own element.
• All Elemental Elites will apply the status effect of their element on hit, meaning you should try to avoid getting hit by them at all costs.

Playtesting Results

I've observed a few people playtest Aetherdale lately, which was immensely helpful in assessing where the game is, and where it needs to go. Apart from a multitude of bugs that were unearthed, many of which are fixed, I noticed a few harder-to-fix, more philosophical struggles that Aetherdale has.

    The biggest of these, in my mind, is the difference between Wraith form, and Idol form. During playtests, I tried assessing why players were using the form they were using, and why - and apart from moment to moment preference, or simply using the form they were already in, I couldn't come up with a good pattern. This presents a design flaw - one that I deem to be an existential challenge to Aetherdale.

    When conceptualizing this game, splitting the player's identity into two different forms was a decision I made without understanding its magnitude. But if you're going to give a player two forms they can alternate between, you had better be able to justify doing so, with significant mechanical differences, or specific use cases. Aetherdale wasn't there yet, and still largely isn't, so that's a thing I've been working on.

    I still don't have the full solution in mind yet - I think a lot of subtle changes need to be made so that the decision of which form to use is situational. I've made a few adjustments though that have started the game in that direction:

• The Crossbow - the Wraith now gets a crossbow as the default weapon. This change does a good amount towards setting the Wraith up as a ranged attacker, and the Idol form as a melee attacker, but will not be sufficient forever, as longer-range Idols get introduced
• Idols now use energy, not cooldowns - Idol abilities used to be on fixed cooldowns, but this just incentivized waiting until a cooldown was ready, swapping into Idol form to use it, then swapping back, especially if you had a good Wraith weapon. Now there's more of an option to hang out in Idol form until your energy comes back and keep using the ability you want. It needs more tweaking, perhaps increased energy regen while in Idol form.
• Idol health no longer drains over time, but is drastically reduced, and Idols have a recharge period if they die. This did a few things
• Either form can be used indefinitely as a "buffer" to protect the other while it recharges
• Idol no longer feels inherently limited, which incentivized not even bothering with it
• Risk/reward of Idol form is now tied to player skill - whether you get KO'd out of Idol form is now directly correlated to your ability to avoid/manage incoming damage.

Closing Thoughts

The lesson to be learned from the final quarter of 2024, I think, is that each problem is an opportunity. Things I would once overhaul fundamental parts of the game to fix, are starting to look more nuanced than they once would have. My challenges in completing The Mines, for example, was not an issue with motivation, or my ability to complete an area. It was, in some sense, an opportunity all along - to remove weaker content and boil the game down a bit. It's now a more concise vision, and one that will play better when it's finished.

    Similarly, where it seemed like there was a fundamental issue in establishing differences between the Wraith and Idol forms, there was in fact, an opportunity, to introduce more much-needed game mechanics.

    Anyways, thank you for reading my development update. See you next year.