Radiant Sloth

DevLog #16 – Monoliths now drop Rewards!

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Hello everyone!

I am releasing today version 0.7c of the Destroy The Monoliths Playtest. It is available on Steam right now, so let’s review the changes in this post!

New rewards for destroying a monolith

When a monolith is destroyed, it shatters on the ground and leaves behind a ruined based. Previously, this was purely decorative. Now, this base is a structure and can be interacted with! It is some kind of better treasure. Most of the time, it will give resources, but can also rarely offer a relic! In the latter, the relic comes from the same relic pool that you pick from at the start of a mission. Effects are thus related to stats improvements.

New reward after destroying a monolith!

I think it now feels more satisfying to destroy the monolith and gives more incentive to go there to pick the reward. This lowers the initial difficulty of the game, but it makes sense considering the difficulty modifiers I am currently implementing (more on that later!).

Also, I tweaked a bit the XP system and increase the levels thresholds a bit. This means you now get fewer technologies per mission. I think the player was leveling up too fast so hopefully the balance is now better.

Nicer minimap

The minimap have been quite the same since the pre-alpha version. So I wanted to rework its visuals a little bit to better fit the rest of the game. I relooked all the markers and I think it now looks clearer and nicer. Tell me in the comments if you like it!

The minimap in the bottom left corner looks nicer!

New elite enemies for the full game

Along with some fixes, these are the only changes for v0.7c. All of this is available in the Playtest version, which will become the Demo version in the upcoming months. But I am also working hard on adding content for the full game. Recently, I started implementing the doomed relics, aka modifiers you can toggle in your world to increase the difficulty. As I already mentioned in previous devlogs, I am trying to come up with interesting features instead of solely playing with stats. One of these relic introduces elite minions that are stronger and have more powerful attack moves. I also want to add some sort of bosses in the future!

This elite minion has a powerful explosive attack!

What is next?

I am still finalizing the details but you can expect a demo to come out this summer. Destroy The Monoliths will be part of the Steam Strategy Fest from August 28th to September 4th! Playtest are very helpful to get feedback but have limited visibility within the store. So I’m very excited to release an official demo and have the game reach out a wider audience.

Meanwhile, I am still working on the full build, adding new maps, enemies, relics, buildings, weapons, music tracks, meta unlocks, achievements… There is still a lot to do! I will do some teasing in future devlogs, so stay tuned!

As always, the full changelog for today’s patch is below. I’m also including v0.7a and b that were mostly bug fixes or additions that did not make it in the initial v0.7. The game for instance got a lot more journal entries. I hope completionists will enjoy this!

Thanks for reading this devlog, and see you next time!

Full changelogs

v0.7c [2023-07-07]

Added

  • Added a structure for the base of a destroyed monolith that gives rewards
  • New caption in the world creation screen to make it clearer which content is unavailable in the playtest / demo version
  • Added many achievements

Changed

  • Reduced the number of technologies picked per mission
  • Relooked the minimap markers
  • Reduced slightly the amount of resources in treasures
  • Make the shields a bit more transparent in the enemies portraits in the journal

Fixed

  • Fixed mission info panel sometimes half out of the screen in the world map

v0.7b [2023-06-19]

Fixed

  • Fixed issues with the tech tree system where some technologies could appear again in the choices although they were already unlocked

v0.7a [2023-06-18]

Added

  • Added journal entries for weapons, relics, enemies and structures

Changed

  • Improved UI visuals of save slots
  • The mine turret does not require sight anymore and can shoot over obstacles
  • Made it clearer in the new world screen that the tutorial has fixed starting techs and will not take into account the options selected

Fixed

  • Fixed issues with the tutorial and the new multi-slots save systems

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