Devlog #15 - Spicing Things Up

Greetings Talented Summoners!

It's been a couple of weeks since the 0.5 update and we're so thankful for all of your feedback and suggestions. We've had a much bigger community response across the board this time which is really exciting to see.

I'm sure you're wondering what's next for Talented, so let me go right ahead and get you updated!

Next Steps

With the release of our 4th class, the Summoner, we're going to be taking a break from adding new classes for a few updates and focus purely on making the game (including the classes we already have) as good as it can be.

We're planning a full sweep across all areas of the game, with the goal being improving the look, feel and depth of our existing features as much as possible.

This process includes:

- UI Improvements
- Animation/Particle effect reworks
- Making underwhelming abilities or talents feel stronger (both visually and mechanically)
- Revisiting features that aren't quite doing their job well enough currently (looking at you Traits system)
- Fleshing out features (more talents/abilities incoming!)
- More UX/Helper features

Our first target is the core game (the part where you shoot stuff!).

Core Game Improvements

For the core game, we're starting by revisiting the user interface. The UI has grown more and more complex over time and can be difficult to read for player unfamiliar with Talented or the types of games it's inspired by.

Our aim is to give the Talented HUD a more modern feel while keeping the charm of the old school aesthetic. Here's the first few scribbles our lovely artist Ryue made:

From Ryue:

We are currently trying to improve the look of the main game. Reducing the UI to a minimum without losing information is one of our goals. We also want to add more depth to the environment. A Background and different details are planned to give you an idea and a feeling of where you are. We also want to make it more clear when rounds start or end so that’s easier for you to see when you just have to kill the monsters that are left. Another artistic focus will be on the animations. For example the change of HP- or MP-state, leveling up and crits to make them more satisfying.

And we've even made some progress implementing it into the game! Here's the very first prototype version of the top left stats area.

This new look even gives us room to increase the maximum HP and MP limits to 20 hearts/orbs.

Just a teaser for now, there's so much more to talk about next time. Things are coming along really quickly.