Dear Aspirants!
Time for the final preview on Gladiator's Revenge before releasing it tomorrow, November 23rd, along with a Daily Deal discount!
Gladiators Revenge: Preview 4
Loading screen Tips
The loading screen has been overhauled. You now have to press a key to continue, and a Tip will show. We have many tips written out that we sorted in two categories, Combat and Career Management Tips. (and they also all come in 11 languages now!)
The tips are more or less in order starting from simple mechanics and gameplay tips to more complex concepts. Every loading screen you automatically see the next tip, or you can cycle back and forth manually. When you enter battle, a combat tip appears and when you go back to the Career menu you get a management tip!
The tips in the battle screen have been removed and a bunch of unnecessary info in the tutorial has been cut. This is a major first step in streamlining the tutorial of the game so it's less front-heavy!
The Condemned
Last time we introduced the second backstory, Condemned. It has seen some more updates (making it even harder!) which you'll have to find out the hard way, and we have some custom art:
Since the Condemned is specific and late late game content (unlocked after a Lionslayer win, only in Lionslayer) we went a little crazy with it to give a distinct flavor!
Items & various!
We've added many small tweaks, improvements, balancing changes and UI improvements.
Better Hit Reactions
A "small" but very impactful change is that we discovered damage absorbed by armor also negated the physics hit effects. This was an accidental/unforeseen result of the physics/damage system. So in the late game with extremely strong armor, units would basically stop reacting to hits, which just feels bad to play. This has been changed so now if you do 5 damage to a character but 45 damage to their armor, they will still react closer to as if they took 50 damage. It's extremely noticeable and the game feels way better throughout, but especially against high tier opponents.
UI adjustments
We have some larger things like a backstory screen cleanup to small things like item tooltips now having a tier colour border!
Items now have a Properties section where we can list additional properties some Character traits need (bouncing board for more potential features later!)
Items galore!
Some more items have been finalised and we've also expanded the Veteran Aspirant subclasses to use these - same for the many new unit types.
Check out this Leather Cuirass and new Padded Armplate!
Would you say you're hooked?
All told, this update adds 50 new items, all of which are more classic gladiator gear, transforming the overall feeling of the game for sure.
Update on Steam Deck support
We've also quietly been working towards Steam Deck support. We had hoped to get full support in on this update as an extra surprise but that didn't work out.
Status now is, the game has gone from totally unplayable (maps didn't load, game freezes etc) to what should be fully playable now.
We still have a lot of QoL and UI problems to fix, which should be next, but in theory the game is playable on SD officially and we're hoping to get this verified by Steam so we go from "Unsupported" to "Playable"! The next and last step ("Verified") is our goal ASAP after that, but there are still some tricky technical challenges involved to get to proper support, so I can't give an ETA just yet. Just wanted to give an update on the status and plan!
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Thank you for your support these past 2 years, from the bottom of my heart! <3<3
As always,
We who are about to die salute you!
Jordy
