Combat Alpha Updates

Jon:

Our Combat Alpha has seen a great deal of progress. Radapus has been implemented, and through testing, he has become one of the most stylish and radical Mythren to play.

Some sneak peeks of parts of his moveset:

• Raddapus’ Jabs take him into the air, allowing him to immediately start his aerial jab combo by kicking the opponent with finesse.

• Raddapus can slide on his poison he launches out on the ground If Raddapus slides on his poison and presses Jab, he will fling some of the poison forward creating more poison puddles and dealing damage to the opponent if they hit. Making them the only character in the alpha currently with a dash attack.

• We’ve had multiple playtests with the developers and a few friends up to this point, and we’re gearing up to move towards the combat alpha’s release. We’re currently working on polishing up the interactions of the UI/UX and setting up some basic tutorials for the character’s move sets for the alpha’s release. Each character in the alpha features a distinct playstyle ranging from the easy to pick up Graccoon, to the more complex movekits of Keroair and Raddapus. We are excited to get them in the hands of more players so we can hear what they think of their playstyles and their move kits In the meantime here are some combos currently possible from our recent playtests! (*Subject to change in the alpha release, moves are still being tweaked)

Single Player Game Design Rework

Zane:

Hello, Zane here! Something we’ve come to realize with Mythren’s development is that our core game systems of Bond, Train, and Battle were not mixing together as intuitively as the team would have hoped, thus resulting in us attempting band-aid solutions to these problems. The game’s systems have constantly felt a bit too separated from each other and were never really intuitive to fully understand for playtesters. This was highlighted by the various vertical slice demos we had attempted to create. While the two major versions of these demos are playable from start to end there were very clear pain points in them but also very clear strong points found as well.

Here are some of the things we have learned from these demos:

• Navigation and platforming felt solid with our greybox level design. However, once switched from greybox to “arted up” the collisions all changed thus breaking the level design and game feel apart. Combat felt great and darkren and tamers created a nice balance between one another giving the player different levels of challenges between the two.

• A very clear pain point was how combat was initiated from the overworld. It often felt random to be dragged into combat thus playtesters had a general avoidance of combat when possible. While I believe letting the players have a choice in when they should engage in combat or not it shouldn’t be the default behavior seen in most players.

• The home island felt too separated from the exploration area and combat sections of the game. It felt like you had been thrusted into an entirely different game upon visiting the home island. While combat and exploration felt they belonged within the same game.

• The Pact rank-up conversation featured in the demo felt heartwarming and highlighted the strength of adapting Persona’s Social Link system and its potential for each of the individual Mythren.

• While the deadline present in the demo didn’t feel all too impactful, the final battle itself did feel quite exciting once it had started! This showed the promise tournaments have once built to full scale.

• Finally, it was clear people were far more interested in the Mythren/Tamer world rather than that of the human world.

• Considering both the strengths and weaknesses of these demos I have written out a new design doc for mythren. This has required systematic re-evaluation of every facet of the game's design and asking the question of what is at the heart and core of mythren and does it really serve to benefit that? By doing this I’ve reached something we are quite happy with and feels more focused than ever both design-wise and narratively speaking. Me, Aidan, and Javon have already started work on this new version of the project while the Jon, Drake, and Corey keep their focus on the combat system and multiplayer side of the game.

• Once we feel things are working as intended we’ll be ready to share what changes we’ve landed on for single-player. Giving a more in-depth analysis of these changes and why they were made via direct side-by-side comparisons where possible. Apologies if that means updates regarding single-player will be kept a bit vague for a while longer. I'd rather keep quiet on this than preemptively talk about a new mechanic, changes to an old one, or straight up the removal of previously mentioned features until we’ve confirmed they do work well in action compared to sounding good on paper. Hopefully the points I have mentioned can shed a bit of light towards the direction and modification I aim to bring with this rework. Now back to Jon for the rest of the newsletter.

Delayed Release

Jon:

If it wasn’t evident from the combat alpha delays, Mythren will definitely not be able to come out in 2024. Our initial estimates were based on more team member availability and the hope of being able to secure a publisher. We haven’t been able to secure one as of yet. Unfortunately, the state of the games industry makes securing a publisher harder than ever. In our efforts to secure a publisher our focus was scattered, and it lead to an inefficient development cycle. This however has helped us with time to understand what was and wasn’t working with the game design.

As always stated in our newsletters, everyone on the team works on this project in their free time. For the past year and a half, a large majority of the team has had their time taken up. While the project has been actively worked on by me (the Project Lead) each week, progress has been slower than initially anticipated. Combining that with creating a rollback netcode system from the ground up, we’ve had quite a few unanticipated delays throughout this time period.

We’ve been informed from members in the community that our communication on our is progress is lacking, and we agree. We’ll be implementing steps to better split the responsibility to make sure we’re actively giving you more progress updates.

On that note, Physical Rewards are a priority for us and those will be the number one priority right after the combat alpha is released and any major launch bugs have been addressed.

All that being said, the game’s vision is clearer than ever, in no small part thanks to Zane taking over and leading the single-player redesign, and we can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been cooking up throughout this year. It’s been stated multiple times, but we really do appreciate your patience with us. We are extremely committed to making sure Mythren gets completed, and not rushed due to our poor estimate on our initial timeline. We don’t want to make any specific promises on a new release window just yet, but the combat alpha should be in your hands soon (Some of you may have already ran some initial tests with it :) ).

See you in the next newsletter in April!

Community

Invisible Flow

(https://store.steampowered.com/app/2649470/INVISIBLE_FLOW/)

INVISIBLE FLOW throws you into a top-down mystery-solving journey, offering a dynamic story for adventure lovers and challenge seekers! Get ready your plane and fly to Lush Palm island!

Their kickstarter end date is on April 2nd, 2024