As we approach the completion of the Beneath mode it's getting harder to find things we want to show and talk about. Maintaining mystery so you can discover how to progress through the game while playing it is very important. Unfortunately since the time spent developing it has been very (very) long, it has meant we haven't been providing a lot of updates on progress and information about it. In this post we'll cover some of the elements of Beneath you'll encounter quite often, give some information on the back story and setting of Beneath and talk about our plans for release.

Challenge Rooms

As you make your way through earlier areas of Beneath, you'll sometimes come across gated rooms that will seal you in once you enter them. They will not release you until you either succeed or fail the task they set out. If you complete a room you'll gain a significant amount of Gold, Energy and a selection of some of the more powerful weapons, but you'll risk taking damage or dying. There are a few different types of Challenge Rooms, such as the one that requires you to kill all the enemies in the room without taking any damage.

Shard Lords

For the most part the story of Beneath and of Paint the Town Red overall will be told implicitly through environmental details. When you start playing Beneath it is many years since the conflict you're in began. Your goal is to defeat the Elder Gods that rule the dimensions beneath the surface. A lesser one of these gods that came to the surface has already been killed before you begin. The heart an Elder God shatters into powerful shards when they are killed.
The humans use a shard to mutate the soldiers that get sent Beneath to give them powers. These are the characters you will play as and each 'run' you will be able to choose from a a selection of classes each with different powers. There are also many monsters that found shards and used them to become powerful beings known as Shard Lords. Defeating these elite enemies will allow you to amass these Shards of a Fallen God to spend on permanent upgrades that will increase your ability to progress through Beneath. These upgrades are separate from the other permanent upgrades you'll acquire using the Energy gained by defeating regular enemies.

Shops

As we've talked about previously, with the exception of some later areas there will be a shop in each level. These shops will sell weapons in exchange for Gold. Sometimes they might also contain a special item. Some shops will also contain a creature selling permanent upgrades in exchange for Energy. These permanent upgrade shops will also be available in the transition zones between areas. Shops are shielded so that monsters cannot enter, giving you a temporary reprieve. Don't spend too long browsing though, as that will give you less time to avoid the Pursuer.

Pursuer

Pursuers are immortal entities created to cleanse the world beneath of invaders from above. After the surface war humans sent large forces underground, a front-line that slowly progressed towards the nearest Elder God. The creation of the Pursuers stopped this effort as they sucked the life from all human forces. In the earlier levels of Beneath you'll see the remains of this assault. Now only a single human (or up to 4 in co-op) can remain undetected beneath for a short length of time. If you spend too long in one level you'll be warned the Pursuer has arrived. They are not corporeal, will move through walls and cannot be killed. If one arrives it is time to find an exit, especially if you're one of the slower classes.

Road to Release

We have all features in and working for Beneath, just some have placeholder art and sound effects. All levels of the mode are complete, as well as all weapons, enemies, upgrades and powers. 2 of the 4 bosses in the game still need to be finished as well as various UI elements, sound effects and music. We're also working on tweaking balance and progression. Recognizing we're in Early Access, some of this doesn't need to be 100% complete for an initial release of the mode. Once Beneath is fully completable with no major missing elements we'll release it. Within a month after that update we should have added the co-op multiplayer and finished anything that was incomplete. There are obviously many improvements still to make to other areas of the game, especially bug fixes and multiplayer and performance improvements, and these will be coming after Beneath is released. There will be more Arena challenges featuring enemies and weapons from Beneath and another main Scenario. That will take us to 1.0 at which point the game will leave Early Access. We will continue to add more to the game after 1.0 with more Scenarios and content for the Level Editor planned. Thank you all very much for your patience in waiting for Beneath. We haven't been able to reduce the scope at all as that would have diminished the mode to where all the time and effort we've put into it would have been wasted, so it has taken a long time to get done. We'll post an update once we've finished enough of what's left to be able to give a firm release date for the update.

[ 2018-10-15 06:11:05 CET ] [ Original post ]