Posted July 10, 2018 by Wheeze
Content Restructure
The initial idea was that you played through a "theme" or a "chapter" which consisted of 3-4 levels with new unlocks between each one and a boss fight after that.
Now there is a hub area. In this hub area is where you craft your spells, equip your passives, collect your rewards and go to your next level. There is now a level selector in the center of this hub where you select a level from a list. The themes of each level is now shuffled to alleviate some of the visual fatigue.
Each level has a pre-defined reward and a list of "level affixes". Level Affixes are abilities/effects applied to all monsters in the level. For example "Explosive" means all monsters explode on death, "Teleporting" means monsters maintain a certain distance from you by teleporting if they are too far away. You can see how these two affixes combined can be deadly. But now I can make sure the player has unlocked components of the spell crafting system to overcome that challenge.
New Character Models
The player and all the monsters in the game now have new character models and animations that fit better into the visual style that I'm going for.
Health Shards Removed
Monsters no longer drop health shards when killed. This means that each point of damage taken is more meaningful. The only way to get health back is by finding a health pool in the level which heals you to 100%. This has had a huge impact on how the game feels and makes the game feel a lot more dangerous and makes you play in a more methodical manner.