Greetings, Void Hunters! sssthumb

This week we have released a small update and I know some of you might be curious about what is actually coming in the next MAJOR update instead... a few weeks ago we updated our roadmap and you might have seen it but might be wondering what all of that means...

So today we present to you our Content Sneak Peek #2!

[previewyoutube=5uEA675zJwo;full][/previewyoutube] You might still be curious about what these even mean... where will you find this map? What about the boss? Is there anything else coming? And to answer those and more questions... we will be releasing a Special Edition Dev Talk tomorrow on our YouTube channel! In this one we will be talking about everything we have learned this year with everything we added to the game, but more importantly, for the first time sharing more details about how we are using those learnings to create a new game mode! If you are interested check our announcement tomorrow for the video link, we will see you there! Also if you missed our FIRST Content Sneak Peek, you can find it in our Update Roadmap announcement below! https://steamcommunity.com/games/2066020/announcements/detail/4441207839043617810 We are super excited for the future of Soulstone Survivors and we hope to have you with us for the ride! Have a lovely day or night,
~ The Soulstone Team

[ 2024-12-20 15:23:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Void Hunters! sssthumb

As part of the Steam Winter Sale, Soulstone Survivors is now 35% off from December 19th to January 2nd!

My grandma used to send me cute "good morning" messages with birds and hearts... but after I gave her the gift of Soulstone Survivors, she sends me screenshots of her latest build captioned "get rekt, noob"! Soulstone Survivors, the perfect gift for the whole family! sssthumb https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ We hope you have tons of fun venturing into the void, Best wishes,
~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-12-19 16:03:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Void Hunters! sssthumb

While we continue working hard towards our next major update, we just made a major performance breakthrough, along with some critical fixes that we thought were worth an update of their own!

Major performance improvements:

• All skills that in any way relate to projectiles should be CONSIDERABLY faster. Most skills should be unchanged in regards to functionality, however a few skills have had the number of projectiles they use reduced, and the damage increased to compensate for the change;
• If you choose to set your special effects visibility to 0, now there will be an additional performance boost especially with projectile-heavy builds, however it should not be necessary;

If you are curious about how we achieved these performance gains, check out our latest devlog! https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2066020/view/595135124815740979

General Changes:

• Fixed a critical issue where in rare situations the game could start and freeze on a black screen;
• Fixed an issue where multiple Area skills (such as Void, Bloody Saw, etc) would not properly apply on hit/on crit and other types of passive effects you might have. This fix should make those skills considerably stronger;
• Fixed bug where when you unlock any skin, you also get the animation for unlocking the Engineer;
• Fixed an issue where the power ups that cause Burn, Doom, Poison and Bleed to cause instant damage were getting benefits from Disarray twice, and not tracking their damage properly;
• Fixed an issue where the Myrmidon might stop being able to gain and use Buff Status, which was related to how she gets buffed from her passive minions;
• Fixed issue where mouse cursor would be present in all gameplay menus on Linux (Steam Deck), such as Skill Selection screen and so on;
• The game now hides the gameplay UI and stops you from pausing the game while loading the content for the next map (for example, when you enter the Overlord Portal and the game is loading the next level);
• Fixed issue where Smoke Bomb would not log any hits even though it would apply negative effects;
• Fixed issue where Frost Totem and Mana Beam could not damage pillars;
• Fixed collider sizes of all enemies, many a which were considerably smaller than their visuals, sometimes leading to strange issues;
• Fixed issue where the player Profile Overview might show the fastest Unholy Cathedral match in the "Fastest Match" category, which should be reserved for Void Fields matches only;
• Fixed bug where the Pirate's ascension tooltip would conflict with the "replace options with passives" button;
• Fixed an issue where your currencies (such as Minor Soulstones) could be shown rounded up, causing issues such as when you have 5990 Minor Soulstones, showing as 6k;
• Fixed minor issue where Bloody Saw and Beacon of Light tooltips would show the incorrect damage interval.

We hope that this small update will make your experience smoother for the time being, but there is still A LOT coming to the game in the coming months! We got a new Content Sneak Peek coming this Friday (Dec 20th) so if you are interested make sure to keep an eye out! As always we wanted to thank you all very much for your support! Have a great day!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-12-18 23:44:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Void Hunters! sssthumb

We bid you welcome to yet another Soulstone Survivors Devlog! In this one we are going to dig a bit deeper into our first Content Sneak Peek (if you missed it check out the post below), talk a lilttle about the new game mode and share some massive performance gains coming soon! This is a good one, so grab your tea or coffee, get comfy and come with me! https://steamcommunity.com/games/2066020/announcements/detail/4441207839043617810

Special Edition Dev Talk

First, we wanted to announce that we are working on a special edition Dev Talk! We will share what we have learned so far from developing Soulstone Survivors, and more importantly, how we are using these lessons in the creation of the new future content! In this edition we will also share further details about what you can expect from our next game mode, which is going to be, by very far, the BIGGEST content update to the game ever!

Its coming out on our YouTube channel on December 21st, so keep an eye out!

Content Sneak Peek - Mhyzahet, Terror of the Sands

A couple of weeks ago we updated our public roadmap, and together with it our first sneak peek into a HUGE content update that is coming! There is A LOT more where that came from and we will reveal the next sneak peek next Friday, but today we wanted to look at bit closer at Mhyzahet, one of the new bosses coming to the game! [previewyoutube=xFY65Tz9vA8;full][/previewyoutube] Some of you noticed that this boss might not work exactly like the others do so I thought it would be fun to share a little bit more! First a little trivia: Did you know that all bosses in the game are named after the developers and people important to us? This time around is no different, for this one we decided to pay homage to Mhysa, an incredibly kind and awesome member of our Discord community, the author of the incredible Mhysas Guide to a Successful Survivor! The game wouldnt be the same without you Mhysa! Now, what can you expect from this encounter? Some of you noticed that this boss has a very specific place in the map a proper boss room! This is coming as a part of our new game mode, where after you complete well, lets say something for now =P, you gain access to the boss of the map, in this case, the Lair of Mhyzahet.
This new boss is special in more than one way. We want it to be a meaningful encounter, and with a set layout for the boss room, we can leverage the layout of the room to create more interesting skills. But not only you can expect a greater challenge, defeating this titanic creature will also grant you a new type of unique power up, from a pool of power ups that can only be found from this specific boss! There is a lot more to talk about, but if you want to learn more details about how this new game mode will work, make sure to check out our special edition Dev Talk mentioned above!

Projectile Performance

As you probably know by now, performance has been a big priority for us. We have made huge strides in multiple areas, but there is one that is currently the worst FPS killer the dreaded projectiles ssssad! Skills like Fan of Bombs currently can cause massive FPS drops if you abuse it with a lot of skill chains, multicast and cast frequency. For a long time we have been investigating what we could do to improve the situation and well, Ill let the video below speak for itself: [previewyoutube=tY4eMvcr38o;full][/previewyoutube] In the video we are showcasing Spreadshot with 10k Extra Cast chance and 10k Cast Frequency, also known as crazy numbers. First, we use the standard Spreadshot, which runs at an average of 13.8 FPS, or, in another words, using 72ms per frame (definitely not the slowest skill out there!). Then, we switch to the new and optimized Spreadshot in the exact same scenario, and it runs at an average of 47.8 FPS, or in another words, using 20.9ms per frame. The graph below illustrates these numbers with more precision:
Now let me give you a TL;DR: with the latest optimizations, we managed to make projectiles 70% faster to run than before. Not all projectiles will get the full treatment because it is an arduous process, but ALL projectiles will be a lot faster! This end result is a combination of 3 techniques: [olist]

Remade physics logic: we now use a different, multithreaded logic to simulate the physics for projectiles, which is much, much faster than before. It does come at a small loss of precision, but the gains are massive and worth it in a game like ours;

Remade visual effects: it might be hard to tell from the video because they look so similar, but a big part of the performance gain came from switching from the old Unity Particle System, to the new one. The new one is made to run in the GPU, so it has a smaller overhead in the CPU, which is most of the time the bottleneck. This is actually an arduous process because these systems are very different and we need to remake each projectile by hand, so we will probably implement this improvement slowly, only on the most dire projectiles;

Repositioning projectiles instead of disabling them: I dont want to get into too much detail here, but normally, when you are done with an object in a game, like an Enemy or a Projectile in this case, you turn it off, so that the Engine knows it doesnt need to care about it, but keeps the object in memory. Then, when you need a new Enemy or Projectile, you get this object again and place it in the position you want it, you turn it on again, telling the engine hey, remember that projectile? we want to use it again. This is known as object pooling and is pretty standard since it is a lot faster to reuse something than create something new. Now we noticed that just the act of enabling the projectile was causing a crazy high overhead, because the engine needs to re-register the projectile internally and do all sorts of stuff, and in this very specific case of projectiles, just moving them away into outter space, and then moving them back, WITHOUT disabling them made another huge performance difference. (PS: Dont do this at home kids, our architecture supports this well, but its not applicable for every game and architecture) [/olist]

Closing Thoughts

We are extremely excited about the future of Soulstone Survivors, we have been working for months in the background on a couple of massive features and it feels awesome to finally start to share more with you! Please do let us know your thoughts about what you see in the comments below, and I hope to see you in the next one! We hope you have a lovely day or night,
~ The Soulstone Team

[ 2024-12-13 22:48:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Void Hunters! sssthumb My name is Allan, I'm the lead developer of Soulstone Survivors and today I wanted to have a chat with you. This November marks a very special time for us here at Game Smithing, as Soulstone Survivors celebrates 2 years of Early Access ssslove, and on top of that, our recent reviews just hit the amazing mark of 95% positive on Steam which is the best gift we could ask for! So to start, I wanted to personally thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all the support you have given us so far! As a little thank you, we have prepared a couple things to share with you today that we hope you will enjoy!

First, it's a long time coming but today we are finally sharing our new Content Roadmap!

PS: You can also find the localized version of the roadmap in our game page, in all the languages we support. Now, while its certainly great to have a public roadmap to give you all a better sense of what to expect from the game moving forward... there is only so much we can show in the roadmap itself. We got a ton of stuff in the works, some of which we have been working on for quite a long time in the background and while we ourselves are super excited about it... we want to get you excited about it as well! With that in mind, starting here and now, we present to you our first...

Content Sneak Peek #1

Over the coming weeks and months we will be sharing small videos to showcase all the new stuff we are working on in secret for a while... I know some of you might feel like all we do these days is work in new characters and you want to see something different... so to begin with we prepared a little something for you: [previewyoutube=Wd_acmFQYgs;full][/previewyoutube] You might be wondering... is this another regular map? Is this a regular boss?? What else is coming??? When will this be released???? To find the answer to all of these questions... keep an eye out for out next Content Sneak Peek video! We plan to release those regularly moving forward as we prepare for what will be, BY VERY FAR, the biggest update the game has ever seen!

The journey so far

I also felt like this was a great time to reflect on the journey so far. When Soulstone Survivors came into Early Access on 7th November of 2022, our team was mainly composed of 3 people, Alex, Gama and me. For most of the time we still had our old jobs and we were working basically all night to get a cool game done. At that time we were also VERY lucky to have the amazing help of our friends Fernando, Tiago and Aruan, which were instrumental to get us to the finish line when we did. At that time we were still unsure of how the game would be received, what people would like, would NOT like... but we had built in our heads a plan for what the "full release" of the game would be, which then became our first public Roadmap (added as a thumbnail below, because its huge haha you can click on it to view its details):
As you can see, our vision for Soulstone Survivors was always for it to be a deep game, with tons of skills and ways to build your character, this was the pillar we were building the game upon. We wanted to add a lot of skills, characters, weapons, we knew we wanted to try playing with new game modes... but, we didnt want to promise anything we would not be able to make with our tiny team. So while it was already a lot of content to develop, we kept it simple, comfortable, something we thought "yeah we can do this over the next year if we really put our all into it, hopefully with the game release we will be able to support ourselves and get there". Then we released into Early Access, and we couldn't believe the reception the game had right from the start. There were literally thousands of players playing the game simultaneously, tons of people joining our Discord, participating in the Steam forums, interested in the game and sharing their experiences... and we just couldn't believe our eyes. We felt honored, humbled, overjoyed... and a minute later despair haha there were so many things to fix, to improve, to add... and while it was a TON of work, literally sleeping once every 3 days for a few weeks... we were just super excited to do it. Once the fires settled a little bit, we released a lot of hotfix updates and even some new content, we took a step back, a deep breath, and thought "what comes next?" We had our plans of what the game could be, of what we could build with our little team... but we also had all of these other cool ideas we dreamed of implementing, and you guy also had so many great ideas we knew would make a huge difference for the game, so we had to make a choice. Either we stick to the plan to hit full release around a year after the start of Early Access and deliver a pretty cool game, or, we could listen to you, to the community, and to our own hearts and aim to make Soulstone Survivors the best game it can be. I can safely say this was a pretty obvious choice for all of us. We immediatelly started hiring new developers to give us more hands as we had a lot of ambitious features and goals to tackle, and thats when we really started working on a lot of the features that you find in the game today, such as Character Ascensions, Character Skill Trees, major reworks on skill types... ah, way too many to mention!! Sometimes I think of what might have been... if we had stuck to the plan maybe today we would have the game fully released, we might even have a whole new game pretty much done (I'm looking at you Rogue Soulstone), but then I remember everything we added to the game that wouldnt be there... remember all the messages of support, of players thanking us for adding this or that... I look at the game we have today... and I know that we have made the right choice. There is still a lot of hard work ahead of us till get the to the full release and more work after that as well, and every day I feel lucky for this opportunity to work on a game I love, with an amazing team, the best community, and all the amazing people we met along the way. Here's to you, to Soulstone Survivors, and for all that's still coming! I hope you have a great day, and I'll see you all in the next one!
~ Allan and the Soulstone Team

[ 2024-11-30 23:08:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Void Hunters! Welcome to another Soulstone Survivors Devlog! This one is a week late as we have been hard at work on the new [REDACTED], but today we wanted to bring more details to you about a few cool changes we are working on!

Ascensions Rework

When we first introduced the Ascensions system, we wanted those to feel like impactful gameplay mechanics unique to each character, to further distinguish their playstyles. They intentionally have varying levels of reward and demand, some might basically happen automatically while others might be more involved, and we like that they feel different. However, with your feedback and our own testing we know that some ascensions felt just underwhelming or cumbersome to interact with. We have already improved in many ways quite a few of those powers, but there are two that are getting major overhaul to how they work in the next update.

Hound Masters Ascension

While we definitely want to make his dogs a main part of his ascension power, right now it is probably the least interesting ascension in how it works. You basically feed your dogs and they get stronger, which conceptually is fine, but in practice what happens is you feed them so much that it is never a decision, it is just about get a few beefs now and then and they will be fine. We wanted to keep the general concept, but make it more visually interesting and exciting to play with.

New Mechanics and Visuals

To begin with, we completely remade his Ascension bar, which now looks like this:
The overall concept is still very similar: your goal is to make sure your doggies are well fed, but heres how it works in the new system: You might have noticed that the doggie is on a sort of track. The doggies will always be walking towards the blue bowl, and your objective is to fill it with food (that still drops from the monsters) before the doggie gets to it! Whenever you pick up a piece of meat, it will show up on the blue bowl at the end of the track, and once its done, the doggie will rush to eat and will be very pleased to enjoy a nice meal, gaining a major buff and increasing in size:
He will then go back to his little house, but now that they are bigger they will get hungry faster so you have less time to fill the bowl again. If you do it, they will keep getting more and more buffs and growing bigger and bigger and becoming real killing machines however, should you fail to feed them in time before they are hungry, the doggie will be very sad indeed, and lose all its buffs and go back to his original size:
The ascension still has different power levels to it, which can go on forever. The higher the level, represented by the number above the doggie in the images, the bigger the buff the dogs receive to their stats and the larger and hungrier they will grow, which means they need to eat more frequently and eventually will go back to their original form. We believe that this new functionality will bring those surges in power you expect to see from an ascension, where at times they will be absolutely destroying everything, and then you get a lull period where you start to build up this momentum again. This also makes it so beefs are relevant for the whole match, and you might want to time them so you give your dogs a mega boost very quickly to deal with Lords of the Void, or just get them stronger more often and for longer with more balanced feeding. Allan also wanted to share a few words about this new mechanic: The Hound Master has always been one of my favourite characters and Im glad we are giving him and these little doggies they love they deserve. This rework is especially dear to me, as Ive recently lost my great friend Zippie, our little family doggo, the greatest little Westie we could have, that Alex referenced in the new UI so now every time I play, Ill remember my little buddy.

Legionnaires Ascension

When we first came up with the original Legionnaires ascension, we always knew it was a bit of a risk. We knew it would feel different from the others due to its ramp up which then becomes entirely passive, and while conceptually the idea sounded cool, building catapults that crush your enemies, in practice the ramp up is so gradual that once again, you never have that power surge we wanted to create with ascensions, so it was time for a major rework.

New mechanics and Visuals

Again, lets begin by checking out his new Ascension bar, that now looks like this:
Now, while you fight against the creatures of the void, you are going to come across wounded legionnaires. Your objective is to help them get back into shape to fight by your side. Once you have enough soldiers fighting at your side, you are able to call the full support of your army by carrying your war banner to battle!
But that is not all, of course. As the worth leader of a strong legion, enraged and encouraged, your lust for carnage will change even the scenery around you, transforming it into a deep red, where you will hear the sounds of the rough battles ahead, befitting of a legion commander. You will be given extra legionnaires to fight for you along with powerful buffs, while your army fires catapult boulders and bursts of arrows over the battlefield with a very high frequency, making it rain on your enemies. The ascension will have a set, fixed duration and will grant you a huge, and temporary, boost in power. Once it ends, the war banner disappears and all extra legionnaires along with it, and you can start forming a new legion once again. With these changes, we are not only bring the major swing in power you get from other ascensions, but also the epic feeling of being a legion commander and being in the middle of an all out war, making it as exciting as it should be!

Closing Thoughts

While we are excited about these changes to these two ascensions, we still have a lot of new stuff to share with you! You can check our post earlier today for a liiiittle sneak peek of what is coming up soon... https://steamcommunity.com/games/2066020/announcements/detail/4441207839043617780 We will also FINALLY publish our revised roadmap tomorrow alongside a proper content sneak peek of something a bit different so if you are interested in learning more about what is coming make sure to check it out! We hope you have a lovely day or night,
~ The Soulstone Team

[ 2024-11-29 23:16:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, Void Hunters!

Our recent reviews just reached the unbelievable mark of 95% positive reviews :ssslove:!

We know that this came to be thanks to the Steam Awards and the Labour of Love category, which makes us even more honored to think that with so many amazing games and teams out there, some of you chose to cast your vote on our game! We really wanted to thank you from the bottom of your hearts for your support and your kind words all around! It has been an immense pleasure to work on this game for the past two years of Early Access for all of us and this is truly only the beginning of this journey! We still have so much to build and show you, and we are extremely excited for the future of Soulstone Survivors!

If you enjoy Soulstone Survivors and like the work we have done so far please consider voting for it on the Labour of Love category for the Steam Awards 2024!

Speaking of Labour of Love and... future content... I guess the least I can do as a little thank you is share a very vague screenshot of a really cool new [REDACTED] coming to the game... can you guess what this one might be?? :ssshot:
We got a new Devlog coming later today sharing details about a couple of cool new features, and this weekend we plan to FINALLY post our updated Roadmap here on Steam as well with more details about what the above might be... so if you are interested keep your eye out! We hope you are having a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-11-29 21:18:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! With the release of EA Update 14 - Cursed Fleet, we ended up discovering a few issues that range from small annoyances to possibly game breaking issues. We released a hotfix the same day fixing part of the more annoying issues, and today we are releasing another Hotfix update which deals with the following bugs and issues:

• Fixed a critical issue where if you went into either the Endless or Overlord portals, the game would not keep track of your progress on the map you started your run in, making it confusing to progress into curses and maps;
• Fixed an issue where if you had an abnormal hotkey setup, the game could break in unexpected ways;
• Fixed a rare issue with the new XP Crystal system which potentially could cause crashes in certain platforms and devices;
• Fixed an issue where the animation that plays when you complete a Skill Tree would not play as intended;
• Fixed an issue where the Cursed Captain's Ghost Ship ascension would scale incorrectly in certain situations when you got the Power Up that increases your critical chance while the ship is active;
• Fixed an issue where the Physics CPU Limit option would not be possible to navigate to using a controller;
• Fixed an issue where the weapon achivement description would show a placeholder text;
• Fixed an error with colliders having negative scale (should be harmless but annoying);

If you do still run into any issues with this version, please contact us at support@gamesmithing.com or directly on our Discord!

We appreciate all the support and the patience, and hopefully this small update will make the experience smoother for all of you! Hope you have a great day,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-11-12 13:34:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ahoy, Void Hunters!! We bid yer welcome onboard of our latest update the Cursed Fleet. Were excited to share some pirate concept art and character insights, reworked ascensions, and more!

As we progress further into development, we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Development Process: The Cursed Captain

In our Devlog #9, we shared sketches and discussed the principles that guide our character design. This time, we're thrilled to reveal some of the actual work that goes into creating our newest Void Hunter: The Cursed Captain!

Cursed Captain - Visuals

When the team decided on what the new character would be, Alex went ahead and created these awesome concepts below:

Our aptly named 3D Artist, Colombo then transformed the concept into the playable character we get to enjoy, but this also came with its challenges. To create the menu animation, which shows the character using a rope to drop down to the scene, Colombo used a script/plugin called SpringMagic which simplifies doing this kind of real life physics simulation. Unfortunately this simulation doesnt create keyframes, making it impossible to export the file and use it in the game engine. So, to circumvent this, there is a lot of manual testing, tweaking and thinkery involved to make it work. For the Captain, it was even more challenging because he is holding the rope, so Colombo couldnt let the simulation make the rope move, rotate, or twist freely; otherwise, the characters hands and feet would follow and distort the entire character: [previewyoutube=nKd_ZYXnqvU;full][/previewyoutube] So, even after simulating the rope, there were a lot of adjustments to be made by hand which ultimately resulted in the cool animation we see today: [previewyoutube=MlmXtCcEZ1E;full][/previewyoutube]

Cursed Captain - Ascension

When we design these characters, we also try to keep our player bases desires in mind while trying to create something that both feels good, is fun to play and has its own quirks for you to test out and explore, but of course, this always comes without its own challenges. While we were thinking of the captains ascension, we wanted to make something that felt epic and impactful so the Ghost Ship sailing across the map blasting monsters was the first idea we had, but due to limitations such as the top-down view, visual pollution and constant player movement, we had to go through different iterations before getting to the version we have in the game now. Our first idea as you can also see in our Devlog #9, was to make the ship circle the player from just out of the screen and shoot in a straight line, but it didnt feel quite right. We took a lot of time discussing how much screen time the boat was getting and how we did not want the boat to look like it was directly linked or connected to the player, as you can see in the video below: [previewyoutube=Y-yzZR6vEPE;full][/previewyoutube] The main challenge here was trying to make the movement of the boat feel natural, while having it visible sometimes but not ALL the time (as it gets in the way). We had to come up with a movement logic where the boat was always nearby, but if you saw it, it looked like it was sailing naturally, which means no hard turns, no weird stops but if it sailed naturally all the time, it would be very hard to see the boat, as it would make very large turns and sail away most of the time. The solution was to make the ship kind of loop around, trying to get close to the player all the time, so it is always turning to try to get to a certain distance from you, but when it is off screen, it speeds up based on how far away it is from you, so you don't see the boat turning around at 500mph to come back to you if you happen to intercept it somewhere in the map. Since the ship would be far away, we had to change its attack to be in an arc, so that it could have global range and still make an impact. Check out the difference in the video below: [previewyoutube=8efVx6AFySQ;full][/previewyoutube] While thinking of what uniqueness the pirate could bring to the game alongside its ascension, of course rum immediately came to our minds (figuratively, maybe a little literally too) and thus was born the Pirate Rum rune! Alongside a new type of Versatility runes, which we are internally calling the meme type. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to play the game drunk and probably throw up here ya go: [previewyoutube=6ie7DoX9Vwk;full][/previewyoutube] What will we do with the drunken sailor early in the morniiing? Way hay and up she rises!

Cursed Captain - Character identity

When designing a new character, once we have the theme and the ascension ready, its time to think of the skills and how they will give the character a unique playstyle but also play well with existing skills, which is easier said than done when we already have hundreds of skills in the game. For the Captain, in addition to a few new skill behaviors such as Plunder Shot that gives you Ammunition when the projectile hits enemies and Cursed Shot that is a projectile that hits the same target multiple times, we also wanted to bring something that tied together the theme of the character and its mechanics. We already have a few instances of exclusive traits such as the Assassin that has Backstab, so we started thinking of what would be fitting for this character but also interesting for other characters, and that is how Cursed came to be. It works essentially like Electrified or Radiance, in this case you get X stacks of this buff to summon a ghostly tentacle, which strongly reinforces the theme of the character and brings the presence of the ghost tentacles to every weapon, becoming almost synonymous with the Captain. Check out the video below for some cursed gameplay: [previewyoutube=ZPJBF54FJR4;full][/previewyoutube] Gunpowder is also a new trait being introduced to the game, where a skill is no longer launched automatically, but instead, it consumes your Ammunition buff and is launched 5 times. We really like the concept of Ammunition, but if you made an ammunition stacking build before, you probably have had situations where you just stacked too much and couldn't spend all your ammunition. It is also sad when an uninspiring skill ends up consuming ammunition instead of your heavy hitter, and Gunpowder allowed us to create a sort of "Ammunition finisher" skill, that is super powerful and synergizes really well with a lot of what is already in the game, such as Ammo Box, and also opens up opportunities for other similar effects in the future, skills that depend on something to be used instead of just being automatically casted. Check out this video below of gunpowder gameplay: [previewyoutube=d6OlH5croYM;full][/previewyoutube] We hope that the cursed captain brings interesting and fun new gameplay for all to enjoy! We hope you all have fun with it. And as always, wed love to hear your thoughts! Let us know in the comments! We hope you are having a lovely day or night,
~ The Soulstone Team

[ 2024-11-08 17:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

The Cursed Fleet is finally here as our 14th major update! Explore new builds with the Cursed Captain, runes, artifact powers, skills, and a lot more!

2 Years Anniversary Celebration

Soulstone Survivors is completing 2 years of Early Access today!! We still cannot believe how far the game has come, with 14 MAJOR updates and more content than we can mention here! To celebrate we are giving a 30% discount on the game and creating a new bundle with the awesome Atomic Picnic, a third person Action Roguelite with crazy smooth visuals and gameplay that just released TODAY, check out the bundle to get it at an extra 10% off!! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/43804 You will also find some cool anniversary decorations in the game's menu from November 7th to December 9th!

New Character - The Cursed Captain

The cursed fleet is here, and with it the new Void Hunter, the Cursed Captain! With a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in another, the Captain has a unique combination of melee and ranged attacks, combined with the powers harnessed from his eternal curse. Now you can craft new weapons, unlock unique skills, runes and command your own Ghost Ship into battle!

New Buff - Cursed

Along with the Cursed Captain we are introducing a new buff to the game! Accumulate stacks of Cursed to summon a powerful ghostly tentacle to fight for you for a limited time!

New Skill Trait - Gunpowder

We are also introducing a new Skill Trait to the game called Gunpowder! Currently exclusive to the new Gunpowder Burst skill, these skills are not used on a cooldown, instead they stop all your other skills from consuming Ammunition, being used every time you accumulate 20 Ammunition for a crazy burst of damage!

New Artifact Powers

You can now unlock the Artifact Powers for the Cursed Captain, Pyromancer and Arcane Weaver by upgrading their weapons to the Artifact rarity!

New Blacksmith UI

Over time the Blacksmith UI became more and more cluttered with recipes, skill details, artifact power and so on, and it was time to tidy up the workshop! The new revised UI aims to clean up the visuals considerably, making this screen a lot less overwhelming than before while still allowing you to see all the information you need.

Further Performance improvements

We continue on our journey to improve the games performance across the board. With this update we are bringing a few big updates once again, improving the collision detection of some skills, changing how we update scripts for faster runtime, but the biggest change is related to the XP Crystals! We had shown this video in a previous Devlog (which we recommend you check out), but take a look at the difference! Before: [previewyoutube=MKSInQXA5Cg;full][/previewyoutube] After: [previewyoutube=k7FKuWT4bu8;full][/previewyoutube]

General changes and fixes:

• Added new Corrupted Demon Hunter and Corrupted Cursed Captain enemies;
• Added more stats of the Unholy Cathedral to the Profile tab, highlighting your best matches and graphs;
• Fixed a critical issue where if you had an error with part of your save files, you could have a weapon that was upgraded, but was still showing as locked, putting the game in a bugged scenario;
• Fixed an issue where the Divine Legacy rune would not guarantee high rarity power ups if you banished all legendary power ups. It should try to always offer the highest rarity possible;
• Fixed an issue where skills would not count as sources of buffs or debuffs after being used once, causing the game to not show you the power ups it should;
• Fixed an issue where summon skills would count as multiple sources of the same buff/debuff, causing inconsistent behaviours especially once removed;
• Fixed an issue where Pillars were not classed as Elite, and therefore not prioritized by Cunning summons;
• Fixed an issue where Egg Shooter would not scale with cast frequency and multicast properly, which will make it much more powerful now;
• Fixed an issue where Fan of Bombs and other similar skills like Carnage would not work properly with VERY high cast frequency and multicast chance, being much more powerful now;
• Fixed an issue where the Death Knight would get Swift power ups, despite being unable to dash;
• Fixed an issue where the visibility slider would impact the amount of summoned entities by skills such as Spider Cocoon (spawning less than intended);
• Fixed an issue where Rolling Boulder had 20 seconds cooldown, instead of the intended 6, making it a lot worse than intended;
• Fixed an issue where with the Ready for Battle rune, more skills would be offered in the Unholy Cathedral than intended, causing errors;
• Fixed an issue where Reroll did not use the input cooldown in the level up screen, leading to accidental rerolls;
• Fixed multiple gamepad related issues in the skill tree which could lead to inconsistent navigation;
• Fixed an issue where the Ascended skin would disappear from your skill tree if you reset a characters skill tree;
• Fixed an issue where if you restarted a match after completing its objective, but before entering a portal, could cause issues;
• Fixed an issue where certain skills would stop hitting small enemies due to how they were scaling with Area;
• Fixed an issue where Keythaiz Lightning Bomb attack would deal damage in an area larger than the visual would indicate;
• Fixed an issue where the Profile matches tab wouldnt work as intended if there were matches with corrupted saved data;
• Fixed an issue with lighting in the Low and Very Low presets, which were causing strange artifacts;
• Fixed an issue where Void would not cause Doom damage, only direct damage instead;
• Fixed an issue where the game could be showing the incorrect skill tooltip in the skill replacement window during level up;
• Fixed an issue where the number of Lords of the Void eliminated in the Unholy Cathedral was not showing correctly;
• Fixed an issue where the Elementalist Fire Foxes are now properly removed across Unholy Cathedral cycles;
• Fixed an issue where the Unholy Cathedral tooltip would show Rare materials instead of Common and Uncommon materials (visual error only);
• Fixed an issue where Elemental Flow rune was twice as effective as it should be (100% faster tick rate on negative effects instead of 50%). Implementation has been fixed, but effect has been increased to compensate for the fix;
• Removed the Area skill type from Scent of Blood since it is not applied in an area;

EDIT: Hotfix Update 14f2:

• Added option to enable or disable the Physics CPU Limit option. It is enabled by default as it usually makes the game run smoother, but can be experimented with on a case by case scenario. We recommend leaving this option ENABLED;
• Fixed a few gamepad navigation issues on the Skill Tree;
• Fixed sensitivity of the scroll wheel in the new Blacksmith Materials tab;
• Minor fix to the layout of the Runes tab;
• Fixed issue where Lord of the Void materials would not display tooltips consistently;

We hope you will enjoy this update while we continue working hard for the next one! There is still a TON of stuff coming, so keep an eye out! We will make an announcement here on Steam with an updated roadmap so you have a better idea of what to expect!

Community Event: Meme-off

Did you know we are currently holding a meme-off community event? Check out our Discord community and share your joys and frustrations as memes to win gift cards and game keys! If you want to learn more head over to our Discord!

Finally, if you would like to receive updates like this one via email, we would also like to invite you to our new mailing list! We are still to send our first email, but that will be a great way to get news about the game and overall studio if you are interested in what we might have store in the future!

As always we wanted to thank you all very much for your support! Have a great day!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-11-07 18:03:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Void Hunters!

We thought it was about time we laid off the monster-fighting for a little bit and gathered around a campfire for a lighthearted

Soulstone Survivors Meme-Off!

Ready to unleash your inner thoughts through your stand-up comedian persona? Ok, maybe not all of your thoughts Then join us on our discord server to know more by clicking the link for a community meme event dedicated to all things Soulstone Survivors with a chance to get steam gift cards or a game key as prizes!

The Prizes:

1st place - 20$ STEAM GIFT CARD 2nd place - 15$ STEAM GIFT CARD 3rd place - 10$ STEAM GIFT CARD 4th place - Soulstone Survivors Game Key, chosen randomly between all participants 5th place - Soulstone Survivors Game Key, chosen randomly between all participants

Event Date: Friday, 1 November 2024 - Friday, 15 November 2024 Winners Revealed: Monday, 18 November 2024

[ 2024-11-01 17:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to another Soulstone Survivors devlog! Today we got some interesting stuff to share. A sneak peak of a new character, a new debuff, new soundtrack and more!

As we progress further into development, we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Sneak Peeks

Colombo and Alex have been working on some new, interesting stuff. Lets just say that this one is a boney one can you guess which character this will be? Let us know in the comments! [previewyoutube=ZLE7aebGnfQ;full][/previewyoutube] We also thought it would be really cool to share another little secret. After working on this new feature, Lucas has reported he has been having some weird dreams finding a lot of black cats on the street we still have no idea why

Options Reorganized

Over time we have added a ton of options for you to play with in the Options menu and it was getting pretty cluttered, so for the next update Juan has worked on reorganizing and fixing a few minor issues with this panel, check it out: [previewyoutube=AF6pVWlDJg8;full][/previewyoutube]

New Death Soundtrack

We are also fans of Gamas work here at the Game Smithing office and he has been cooking up a new soundtrack for the sad moment in the game where you get unalived, and he wanted to share a small sample of what he got in the works: [previewyoutube=BCvxGbbiEQo;full][/previewyoutube]

Behind The Scenes of Void Hunters Design

Since you all seemed to enjoy our beautiful sketch of the Unholy Cathedral boss and fight, we though of sharing even more sketches! This time around, we wanted to talk about how we approach character design! At this stage in the game, when designing a new character we generally start by first looking at what skill types and fantasies are under represented in the existing characters, to help us guide the theme and what sort of mechanics will be expected.
What if the thing went around and as you move it keeps its distance? Once those are defined, we make a high level decision about the theme and name of the class this Void Hunter will represent and what weapons it will use, but still subject to change. Once we are happy, the first thing we decide is the characters ascension, which helps us nail down exactly what the general theme of the character will be both for gameplay mechanics and visuals. For the Demon Hunter, for example, we wanted a Void Hunter that uses ranged weapons but also dips into chaotic magic, so the class felt like an obvious answer. Our theme for the Demon Hunter is a Void Hunter that through his mastery of hunting the most corrupted demons of the void, learned to harness this same power and even control said demons to do his bidding, but still resists the temptation to become corrupted himself.
then maybe the thing makes these cross yellow lines (that I dont want to spoil what they represent) go that direction? / ah yeah, that would be awesome! After that is out of the way, we start talking about the skills themselves. At this point we already know what skill types each weapon will have, and these will have a big impact not only on the visual theme of the skill but also in what the skill does, mechanically speaking. Designing skills is actually quite challenging, since we have to be mindful of our games limitations, such as the top down point of view, auto casted skills, crazy scaling over a match, performance implications and how often each skill gets used, etc. At this point we try to come up with unique mechanics that feel refreshing to play with, but that also can fill gaps in our huge roster of skills, thinking not only of how the skills will work but how they compliment the existing content in the game. This is usually a very long process, and in the end we hope it turns out to be a fun new character! This was all we had for today! Hope you enjoyed what we had to show. Keep an eye out for news, I have a feeling you wont regret it. Let us know what you would like us to talk about next! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-10-25 17:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that together with our friends at Bolt Blaster Games we are making a Soulstone Survivors x The Spell Brigade bundle on Steam! We hope you will have a lot of fun playing both of the games!

Here is a link where you can find the Soulstone Brigade bundle and learn more about the games!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46037/Soulstone_Brigade/ As always, thank you very much for your support! Have a great day!
~Soulstone Survivors Team

[ 2024-10-23 17:00:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to another Soulstone Survivors devlog! Today we got some cool stuff to share with you about performance but also about how we work together as a team, so if you are curious about game development this might be a cool one for you!

As we get progress further into development, we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Reducing quantity of particle systems

Almost every special effect you see in the game, such as explosions, trails, slashes are made out of multiple particle systems. We can create really cool visual effects with them, however they can really become a hit to performance. Fellipe, one of our programmers has come up with a cool solution: normally if you want to play the same effect in two different positions, you will have two separate particle effects, one in each position, doing their own thing. However, there is a way that we can essentially play just one effect, in two (or many) different positions at the same time. When you are talking about 1 or 2 particle effects this wont make much of a difference, but when you are talking about thousands of arrows hitting enemies such as in Storm of Arrows we can convert literally dozens of thousands of particle systems into a single one that is played thousands of times, allowing Unity to perform additional internal optimizations to their rendering and processing. Check out the difference it makes with the two videos below: Before [previewyoutube=mZlXrbOzm3s;full][/previewyoutube] After [previewyoutube=-TugJeAsnNM;full][/previewyoutube] With the new changes, we have one single Particle System, and every time we need to play said effect, we can do so a lot more efficiently without changing anything in the visuals of said effects.

New Projectile Type

Juan and Lucas have been working on a new projectile type, which we are internally calling swarming projectiles. Check out this video of the new projectile type in action! The skill in the video uses placeholder visuals but you can expect it to make an appearance very soon! [previewyoutube=et_q6V9VZIk;full][/previewyoutube]

Build Tools

If you are a game developer or just interested in how the sausage gets made, this section will certainly be interesting to you. As you may know, we currently support 3 versions of the game: Full, Prologue and the Demo. For each of these versions, we currently support 3 platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux. This means that we often have to make 9 builds of our project to test everything before submitting it to Steam. Each of these builds have a different set of configuration parameters. Needless to say, making a batch of builds is not only time-consuming but also error-prone. To solve this issue, weve recently developed an internal build tool to help us manage and automate this process:
With this tool we are now able to configure and build many builds all 9 configurations in fact at once, with just one click. The tool takes care of the game configuration for the given flavor, distribution channel and flags. If you are interested in more behind-the-scenes stuff, do let us know, wed love to share more of this stuff with you!

Behind the scenes of Mhthaeus Design

We thought it would be really cool to show the really simple sketch we made in our initial design discussion of how the Unholy Cathedral boss and fight would work. We gather the team together and we start throwing ideas out, thinking of how the arena must be shaped, how skills interact with each other, how the boss skills will interact with the different void hunters (such as the Death Knight that doesnt have dodge) and then we start pulling back and filtering into mechanics that seem like will work well together! Check out the beautiful art below by Allan, our not artist! (please dont bully us for our amazing drawing skills =P and don't mind the Portuguese!)
This was all we had for today folks! Hope you enjoyed what we had to show. Keep an eye out for news, it might be worth your while... Let us know what you would like us to talk about next! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-10-11 17:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to another Soulstone Survivors devlog! Last week we released our latest update, Embrace of Chaos so right now you can see in-game some of the work we have been working on for a while, but there is still a lot of work in progress going on for the next few updates!

As a reminder we also wanted to invite you to sign up to our new mailing list, we haven't even used it yet haha but if you are interested in our games, thats the place to be!

While we continue to focus heavily on more performance changes, we are still not ready to show some of the cooler things we are doing, however there is more to the game than performance! Check these out!

New Character Sneak Peek

We have been hard at work developing our next, upcoming character! We already have a lot of its functionality ready, still developing new code for some skills, new runes... and we think a lot of you will be excited for this one! We still want to make it a surprise though, so... can you guess what the next character is judging only from these props here?? Let us know your guess in the comments! [previewyoutube=9QD1dPPAKi4;full][/previewyoutube]

Demon Hunter Behind the Scenes

In the process of making the little videoclip intro for the demon hunter, Colombo, our 3D artists, faced some unique scaling issues to make everything work properly, check out this behind the scenes of the process of making the intro for the demon hunter: [previewyoutube=MpdjyMxAixA;full][/previewyoutube] We also thought it would be cool to show some amazing concept art of the Demon Hunter, done by Alex, our 2D artist, check it out!
And that's all we can show for this one! We have been putting a lot of work into the new content that will be coming to the game not only in this next update but a couple of future ones, so we don't want to reveal too much too soon! We are working on a new State of the Game video to be published next week where we will discuss everything that is going on in more detail so if you are interested keep an eye out here and on our YouTube channel! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-09-27 17:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

Feel the Embrace of Chaos as our 13th major update lands with a new character! Not only that but it also comes with new Artifact Powers and huge performance improvements!

New Character - The Demon Hunter

• The Demon Hunter has arrived, a master of ranged combat and chaos itself. Armed with dual crossbows, they bring a new level of lethality to the Void Hunters. Their swift, critical strikes are as unpredictable as they are devastating, making them the ultimate predator of the void. You can now craft his new weapons and use the new unique skills, runes and of course try his powerful new Ascension!

New Artifact Powers

• You can now unlock the Artifact Powers for the Demon Hunter, Hound Master and Spellblade by upgrading their weapons to the Artifact rarity!

Major Performance reworks

While last update saw a few localized performance improvements, this time around we have a few major system refactors that were in the works for a long time making their way into the game. These should considerably improve the FPS of the game in most scenarios, especially very late game such as high Endless and Overlord. Heres a quick summary of those changes:

• Negative effects almost entirely refactored to use every last bit of performance possible. Should make a big difference for builds that rely heavily on them;
• New collision detection system for almost every skill in the game. Should provide major improvements in very hectic scenarios. Will have close to no affect for projectile heavy skills, like Storm of Arrows, but all others should be considerably faster;
• Considerably reduced the disc size of the game for faster download;
• Considerably reduced amount of memory used by the game, which not only should make it overall faster but more stable especially in late game scenarios;

General changes and fixes:

• Changed how Brittle is calculated under the hood. It no longer benefits from your stats and skill modifiers twice, being now more in line with all other damage increasing negative effects in the game;
• New intro animation for the existing hidden bosses;
• Fixed an issue that cased the negative effect Wound to not work (currently applied only by one of the Hound Masters dogs);
• Fixed Spinning Staff tooltip which was scaling incorrectly;
• Player target areas (blue circles) no longer show in Endless and Overlord cycles, to reduce the visual clutter;
• Added a counter of the number of summoned units to the Artifact Power interface;
• Fixed an issue where in a very specific scenario the Endless/Overlord completion percentage would not be saved properly in your player profile;
• Fixed a pathfinding issue for enemies in the Dungeon of Despair;
• Fixed an issue where Lord of the Void statues could be lying down;
• Fixed an issue where if your health went negative in the Unholy Cathedral with unique power ups, the display could bug and end up showing a very high number instead;
• Fixed an issue where the Assassin mission text was not being localized;
• Fixed an issue in the Unholy Cathedral where buffs from the previous cycle would not be reset when starting a new cycle;
• Fixed an issue where Chaos Golems would not be able to move in the second stage of the Unholy Cathedral;
• Fixed an issue where skills that had sub projectiles like Surprise Gift or Noxious Shot would count as more than 1 source of their respective negative effects;
• Fixed an issue were in very specific scenarios skills like Icy Veins would not work at all, leading to strange errors;
• Multiple small fixes and improvements in the UI;

We hope you will enjoy this update as we are already working hard on new content for the next one! Performance has been a big focus for us but there is still a bunch of stuff coming! We will update our roadmap shortly after this update, where we will discuss in more detail what is coming, what plans changed and the path forward, so if you would like to check it out keep an eye out for our announcements here!

Community Event: Big Damage

To celebrate the new update we will also be running an old favourite in our Discord community, the Big Damage event! Come up with the build that deals the most damage possible in 10 minutes, send your results and win gift cards and game keys! If you want to learn more head over to our Discord! Finally, if you would like to receive updates like this one via email, we would also like to invite you to our new mailing list! We are still to send our first email, but that will be a great way to get news about the game and overall studio if you are interested in what we might have store in the future! As always we wanted to thank you all very much for your support! Have a great day!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-09-23 20:14:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to the sixth Soulstone Survivors devlog!! You are about to witness some work in progress of a new skill, performance improvements and some changes to how the crafting UI looks.

Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Performance Improvements - XP Crystals

Before we get to the good stuff, lets get the usual performance update out of the way. This time around we are going to be looking at changes made to the XP crystals. During a match, players can sometimes accumulate many hundreds or even thousands of XP crystals laying around on the map and this can lead to significant performance degradation. Luckily, the XP crystals have a very well defined behavior which is very suitable for some pretty neat optimizations. Check out the results we got from said optimizations:

Before

[previewyoutube=MKSInQXA5Cg;full][/previewyoutube]

After

[previewyoutube=k7FKuWT4bu8;full][/previewyoutube] In these videos you can see me spawning 100k XP crystals on a 50 meter radius around the player. Before the changes, my machine could barely handle it, running the game at single-digit FPS whereas after the changes it has no problem at all, reaching over 100 FPS. Now for the nerds in all of us, a big, but not the only reason why these crystals are so much lighter now is the rendering. Before we were using vanilla Unity rendering techniques (i.e.: mesh renderers). But now, put it a different way, we tell the GPU: here, render 100k copies of this object, as opposed to render some here, some other here, another there. Now, we manually render all of the crystals using GPU instancing, which allows us to render every crystal at once, reducing the overhead. Check out these visual examples below:

Unity Vanilla Rendering

The New Approach

The top version is Unitys vanilla rendering: it takes 3 draw-calls to render the crystals; where the bottom gif with the new approach only takes 1 draw-call to render all of them.

New Upcoming Skill

We have also been working on some new skills recently and our artists have been doing an awesome job on those and we often need new 3D models for them. Check out this 3D model for an upcoming new skill: [previewyoutube=b2fISRjvexg;full][/previewyoutube]

Visual Changes in the Blacksmith UI

Lucas, one of our programmers has been working on how the crafting tab currently looks, to improve its readability. Check out the screenshot below to see how that is going:
And this was all we had to show for this Devlog! We have been hard at work to improve performance, UI visibility and new skills. But keep an eye out for news because we have some really cool stuff coming... Let us know what you would like us to talk about next! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-09-13 20:14:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to the fifth Soulstone Survivors Devlog! Today we are breaking the rules!! We are always working on quite a few things at the same time, and we usually avoid showing stuff that is still very early or experimental or super placeholder, but today in addition to the usual stuff, we wanted to share a little something we have been working on in the background, so if you are interested in learning more, this devlog is for you!

Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Performance Improvements

But first lets talk a bit about the boring but crucial stuff! As you might know we have been putting a lot of effort into improving the games overall performance and we believe most of you will notice a considerable difference with the next update! Lets take a look at the numbers we got so far.

Build sizes

Improving the memory footprint of the game has been a big focus for us. It helps the game run faster, prevents crashes related to memory, and has one extra benefit: much smaller build sizes! Here is a comparison of what Update 11 vs Update 13 (the next update) looks like:
As you can see, a zipped build of our game went from 3.46GB to 1.44GB. This means that downloading the game is faster and it takes less space on your machine. And this includes a bunch of new content weve added to the game since!

Memory footprint

Now lets take a look at the actual memory being used shall we? All of the data was captured running at native 4k, all graphics maxed out: Before:
After:
The images above show a profile capture of 2 runs. These captures show 2000 frames worth of data captured at around the 10 min mark into a curse 62 run with the Engineer. The total memory usage went down from 3.09GB to 2.55GB, approximately 20% less memory than before. As the match progresses deeper and deeper into endless, that difference is greater and greater since a lot of the optimizations have been made with crazy scenarios in mind.

Frame-time performance

We have also made some frame-time improvements that will hopefully make a noticeable different when we release the next update. Heres a comparison of whatve accomplished so far on the perf side: Capture 1 Specs: i9-14900HX (32 cpus) 2.2ghz, 64gb ram | RTX 4090 Laptop 16gb vrm
Capture 2 Specs: Ryzen 9 3900XT 8 CPUs 3.8ghz, 32gb ram | RX 7900 XT 20gb vram
To read the data above, Left Median represents the median time in milliseconds per frame on the previous update, and Right Median the time on the next update. Each image represents the comparison between two runs with the same build, in very similar gameplay scenarios. As you can see from the data, in a very high end spec PC the game ran 13.06% faster, while in another, still very good PC, the game ran 38.75% faster. Since the game can be very taxing on your CPU, the improvements you will see will depend a lot on your specs, especially on your processor, and will also vary between characters and builds, but you can expect to see double-digit frame-time improvements in general. Once Update 13 is live, wed love to hear your experience regarding performance, so if you see improvements or lack thereof wed love to hear from you on steam forums or discord.

Player skill target area

A new quality of life improvement that has been requested many, many times is also making its way into the game. We now hide the players skill target areas (the blue circles) in endless and overlord cycles. While these markers are useful in the beginning of a match when you are trying to make the most of your skills, they get redundant later on when you are pretty much blowing the whole map at once, so this change should improve overall visibility. Check out this comparison clip down below: [previewyoutube=kKBZ8bl4iU8;full][/previewyoutube]

And finally

the new, experimental and STILL IN DEVELOPMENT thing we are working on! As you may know from our previous videos and devlogs, new game modes are something we have been working on for a while, with the Unholy Cathedral being the first one to appear but definitely not the only one in the works! The clip below doesnt show much and might look a bit boring haha, but dont be fooled by its simplicity! What we are developing is essentially a tool that allows us to create structured, hand made content, not just for one, but possibly different game modes in the future. [previewyoutube=qHhjM7EwdDA;full][/previewyoutube] Its still VERY EARLY and in an experimental stage, changing a little every day as we develop new maps and challenges, but if you pay attention to the little details in the video you might get some ideas of the type of stuff that is in the works. We often say there is still a lot coming to the game, and trust me when I say its not just characters and skills! We are excited about all the possibilities that this system is already opening up, and who knows, maybe we will share some more sneak peeks at a later date of the sort of stuff we are creating with it! This was all we had to show for todays Devlog! Performance has been a big priority for us recently, but we also have been working on some pretty cool new stuff... Let us know what you would like us to talk about next and what you are currently excited to get your hands on! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-30 20:16:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to our fourth Soulstone Survivors Devlog! As we continue to work on delivering the next major update, In this devlog you are going to catch a glimpse of some exciting sneak peeks and some stuff we have been working on.

Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Sneak Peek: New character

Alex, one of our artists has been working on some pretty amazing new concept art for our next upcoming character we don't want to spoil the surprise too much at this stage but... check these new weapons out! What do you reckon this character could be?

Sneak Peek: New projectile skill behavior

Fellipe just finished creating some new projectile behaviors, that you may or may not see soon with some new content that is coming... PS, visuals are placeholder! [previewyoutube=IRxc03D4SyA;full][/previewyoutube]

Performance: Stuttering and fps issues

Our last update brought with it a few performance improvements specially around memory, but some players noticed a decrease in performance. We have been hard at work using every tool at our disposal to investigate, replicate and fix these issues, and for the next update we already have a few major changes that should bring considerable performance improvements, we will talk more about those in the next devlog! However, one curious issue we finally addressed that could cause a bit of "random" stuttering, is related to the destructible objects in the scenario and minerals. To alleviate this, we considerably simplified their colliders and fragments, and made the code controlling those parts a lot simpler, making those essentially free during gameplay. Here is a before and after image of what this looks like.

Here you can check out a video of how it was before and how it is now in-game. [previewyoutube=rGT46wL-DrE;full][/previewyoutube]

Quality of life: Locked power ups

Lucas has been working on something that the players have been asking for. Your locked skills and power ups will no longer be consumed by replacing your choices with passive power-ups (but will still be consumed in every other scenario, like rerolls, etc). You can check that out in the video below: [previewyoutube=420-6QcQgkI;full][/previewyoutube]

The Unholy Cathedral soundtrack

Now that the Unholy Cathedral is released, Gama, our sound expert, wanted to share a few more details about everything that went into its creation, so here are a few words directly from Gama: "The Cathedral music theme was defined to be an obscure kind of church music, filled with organs and voices. Here is a little video to illustrate these:" [previewyoutube=ffeSFNfyWNg;full][/previewyoutube] "As we have 5 different cycles before facing the final boss, we created 5 different music arrangements. With each cycle the music grows in complexity, to try and help convey the idea that the stakes are getting higher. Heres a small sample of the dynamic music for the normal music working:" [previewyoutube=DGMhRd9859I;full][/previewyoutube] "For the first time we also played with a spacial soundtrack, with an extra organ layer which is attached to the actual organ located inside the cathedral, so if you walk around the scenario and into the altar, you will hear more and more of this layer." [previewyoutube=LEEtkQN63Oo;full][/previewyoutube] "We got plenty of other ideas to explore for the new content we are developing and Im excited to see how those will turn out!" Pssss, too soon to be sharing stuff about that Gama! Ahem... I guess it's better we finish this devlog here! Is there anything you would like us to talk about? Let us know in the comments below! There is still a ton of exciting stuff coming and I personally think it's going to be legendary! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-22 17:03:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We just released EA Update 12h, which should address any remaining crashing issues. As you may imagine by now, these are not trivial issues and not easy to detect, as they do not affect most of the player base and we ourselves are not able to reproduce them consistently, so we would appreciate the continued feedback if you are still experiencing crashes with the latest build.

If you do still have problems, please contact us at support@gamesmithing.com or directly on our Discord, as we will need more details such as log and save files to try and reproduce these problems locally.

We appreciate the help and the patience and apologise for the repeated updated, trust me when I say it is not a pleasant experience for us either haha but we will keep working until we root out any remaining problems. Hope you have a great day,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-07 23:53:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Once again we have just released EA Update 12g, another small hotfix update for the Unholy Cathedral update released this Monday. This is a small update that addresses the following:

- Fixed issue with certain enemies, bosses and effects causing stutters in certain situations (that could seem random);

- Fixed issue that would cause the game to crash in specific scenarios related to Poison effects (would also seem very random, not happen every time you use poison, but from our tests should be the issue some of you are having); - Fixed an issue where you could lock an active skill in the Unholy Cathedral, and end up not being able to equip it if you were full of skills already; - Fixed a small issue with Explosive Goblins causing errors; Once again this version should greatly increase the performance issues some of you are feeling. This time around the culprit were configuration issues in very specific prefabs, which is why they wouldnt happen reliably depending on map and time of a match. If you still experience issues after playing on this version, please do let us know! Hope you have a great day,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-07 15:40:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We have just released EA Update 12d this time around, which is yet another small hotfix update for the Unholy Cathedral update released last night. This is a small update that addresses the following:

- Fixed issue with abnormal effects causing stutters in certain situations;

This version should greatly increase the performance issues some of you are feeling, which was related to untimely memory allocations. If you still experience issues after playing on this version, please do let us know! Hope you have a great day,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-06 19:56:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We have just released EA Update 12c, a small hotfix update for the Unholy Cathedral update released last night. This is a small update that addresses the following: - Fixed an issue where the game could crash with certain character and rune combinations when trying to level up; - Fixed an issue where Bumble, the secret boss, would not spawn properly; - Fixed audio issues for Mac users; - Made a change that should reduce stuttering for those experiencing it. We are working on another change that will go live later today as we believe we have identified an issue that occurs on certain devices; Please as always do let us know if you run into any issues with the latest update, we are watching and working to address any of the issues that appear as fast as we can! Hope you have a great day,
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-06 11:35:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

To celebrate our new major update, the Unholy Cathedral, we have not just one, but two special discounts for you and your friends!

Soulstone Survivors is now 35% off for a week, and you can get it even cheaper with our new Zombies n' Soulstones bundle together with Yet Another Zombie Survivors, another amazing bullet heaven with a lot of depth! Check out the bundle below:
As always, thank you very much for your support! Have a great weekend!
~Soulstone Survivors Team

[ 2024-08-05 18:05:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

The Unholy Cathedral, our 12th major update is finally here, and this update brings a lot of new content and improvements, including a new game mode, major ascensions changes and a lot of performance improvements!

[previewyoutube=7eKdF_SEEAA;full][/previewyoutube]

New Game Mode - The Unholy Cathedral

• Venture into the Unholy Cathedral and face a challenge like none before! You will need to master each character, exploring all the possible builds and variations that they bring, all culminating into an epic battle against the heretic himself!

Major Ascension improvements

• While Ascensions are meant to be different, our goal is to make sure that all ascensions are incredible power boosts during a match and always interesting to go after. With that goal we have implemented major improvements to a few ascensions that were in dire need, you can check out all the changes below!

New Artifact Powers

• The Barbarian and the Sentinel now have access to brand new powers with their Artifact Weapons! These powerful skills become available whenever you upgrade their weapons to the Artifact rarity and can provide a significant boost to power! More artifact powers will be coming with future updates!

Performance improvements (more still coming)

• This update brings the first step into a ton of upcoming performance improvements. Hopefully you will notice that the gameplay is smoother including in deeper endless runs. The game should use considerably less memory an overall feel better to play. There are still major performance improvements coming (such as the collision detection we mentioned in our devlog, which is still not present in this update), so keep an eye for the next update!

New Skill Trait: Cunning

• Multiple Summon skills now have the new Cunning trait, where units summoned prioritize high value targets such as Elite enemies and Lords of the Void. This trait is now commonly found in most damage focused summon skills and should make summoning skills even more powerful than before.

Ascension changes:

• The Necromancer and all of its summons now gain multiplicative stats based on how many abominations are currently active, making it considerably stronger than before;
• The Death Knight and all of its summons now gain multiplicative stats based on how many Ebon Knights are currently active, making it considerably stronger than before;
• The Beastmasters footprints now have a tracker even when they are on your screen, making them much easier to find. They are now also closer to each other, and avoid being too close to walls;
• The Beastmaster now requires 8 footprints, down from 10, to spawn exotic beasts. Exotic Beasts now have the Cunning trait as well, making them considerably stronger than before;
• The Pyromancer now gains concentration twice as fast, and loses half as much when taking damage;
• The Pyromancers skill Draconic Flames can now be aimed, instead of being fired at a random target, making it considerably stronger than before;
• The Chaoswalkers altars now have a much smaller and smoother collision profile, and should not get in the way as much as before;
• The Chaoswalker now gains Chaos Energy twice as fast;

General changes and fixes:

• Added new options in the Fight panel to allow you to disable individual pieces of your meta progression, so you can customize how you play;
• Changed the Engineer individual skill tree node from granting Mineral drop bonuses to granting Attack Speed (making it so engineer no longer have a slight increase in material gains compared to other characters);
• Fixed an issue where Dazed was not having any effect on enemies, should now work as intended;
• Fixed an issue where Distracted and Debilitated were not being calculated properly, making them more effective than they should be especially in endless and overlord runs;
• Fixed an issue where you would get more Artifact Power than intended with every Endless or Overlord map;
• Fixed an issue where multiple instances of a certain Synergy power up would count as multiple sources of a debuff, for example, picking Hypothermia twice would count as two sources of Disarray, when it should only count as one;
• Fixed an issue where the More Details key bind would not work as intended. Requires a new key bind to be set to fix the issue if you had this problem;
• Fixed an issue where skill tree nodes that boosted your ascension could fail to load (not common but could happen);
• Implemented visual improvements for a few skills that would very early entirely hide red damage areas, such as Blizzard and Ice Vortex;
• Fixed an issue with a Myrmidons skill tree node granting much more critical chance than it should;
• Fixed the damage areas of a few basic and elite enemies that were unable to cause damage;
• Fixed an issue where Electrified could be consumed without properly releasing its burst of energy;
• Fixed an issue where the Hound Master dogs would not properly receive stats from the skill tree;
• Fixed an issue where certain effects would remain in the scene indefinitely;
• Changed the name of the underlying skills related to Icy Veins, Purity, Electrified and Radiance to reflect the name of the buff, so it is easier to understand;
• Minor fixes all across the game;
• Added the Cunning trait to the following Summon skills:
  • Death Knights Ebon Knights
  • Beastmasters Exotic Beasts
  • Beastmasters Wolves (Skill Tree)
  • Monkey Kings Black Clones
  • Myrmidons Loyal Servants
  • Hound Masters Dogs
  • Chaos Totem
  • Cobra Totem
  • EZ Mechanical Spider
  • EZ Sentry
  • Fiery Blades
  • Frost Totem
  • Summon Assassin Enclave
  • Summon Ballista
  • Summon Helper Elves
  • Summon Infantry
  • Summon Putrid Hounds
  • Summon Skeletal Archers
  • Summon Skeletal Warrior
  • Summon Spider Queen
  • Summon War Tiger

We hope you will enjoy all the new content added with this update and do let us know in the comments below what you think!

If you'd like to keep up to date with major updates and other big announcements from us, we also want to invite you to sign up to our new mailing list!

Thank you all very much for your support and we hope to see you in the next one, there is a lot of cool stuff still in the oven! Have a great day!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-05 17:47:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Its now already our third Soulstone Survivors devlog (which feels crazy how fast time goes by!), and everyone at the studio continues to work hard to deliver our next upcoming update! There is a lot going on in preparation for the next update and today we want to share some of the cool stuff coming soon, but without spoiling too much!

As we get closer and closer to the next update, we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

New Summon Trait: Cunning

In the next update, a lot of summon skills, especially the ones more focused on dealing damage, will have the new Cunning trait. The units summoned by these skills will prioritize high value targets, such as Lords of the Void and Elite enemies, making them excellent at bringing down threats. You can notice in the video below that our wolves, tigers and queen spiders immediately switch targets to the Lord of the Void as soon as it spawns, and then go back to their usual massacre afterwards. The moose which are tanks without the Cunning trait, continue as they were. [previewyoutube=E5HFkuc4vqw;full][/previewyoutube] A few words from Allan: We have received requests since the beginning of time to make summons easier to manage, but we don't want to add any sort of direct control or make a more complicated control scheme. This trait which we can sprinkle onto specific summons felt like a good middle ground, where you probably still want a few regular summons to deal with the hordes and a few specialized at eliminating bosses.

Major Ascension Improvements

Another big change coming in the next update in terms of gameplay are much needed ascension improvements. We know that across all characters some ascensions feel a lot better than others, and we think you will enjoy the changes coming. Here are a few examples, with a few others being worked on.

Necromancer:

Now, in addition to being excellent tanks for the Necromancer and spreading a ton of poison all around, each abomination active also grants multiplicative stats to the Necromancer and all of its followers, including other summons, drastically increasing their effect. [previewyoutube=la0X3FFVyfE;full][/previewyoutube]

Pyromancer

Now the Pyromancer generates twice as much concentration passively and loses less concentration when hit, making her power available much more often, but that's not all! You can now aim the Draconic Flames, making it exceptional at killing Lords of the Void and highly resistant targets. [previewyoutube=3XlzodqZZjw;full][/previewyoutube]

Beastmaster

Possibly the one where the difference will be most felt, the Beastmaster now requires 8 footprints down from 10, they spawn closer to each other making the path a lot easier to follow, and they have trackers visible even while on screen, making them much easier to find. The footprints now also avoid spawning too close to walls to avoid being hidden behind the scenario, and the Exotic Beasts now also have the new Cunning trait, making them extremely efficient. [previewyoutube=WMGTz7-gMX4;full][/previewyoutube] Few words from Allan (again): We want ascensions to feel different to interact with. They are all meant to bring that rush of power that you actually feel during gameplay, but it is intentional that some of them require more involvement from the player and strategy, while others work almost automatically. We are also fine with the fact that certain ascensions might be better than others overall, but they all should feel rewarding to activate, and with the changes coming next update, I think we are getting closer to that goal.

Update Trailer: Behind The Scenes

Alex has been working on some pretty amazing scenes, which include interesting camerawork, some unique character animations and a lot more! Check out a little bit of the behind the scenes and maybe a bit of an exclusive sneak peek on whats coming soon: [previewyoutube=aGLHQVrW2Ig;full][/previewyoutube]

Myrmidon Concept Art

In our previous update, Alex also made some incredible concepts for our newest character, the Myrmidon. Check them out!

There is a bunch of exciting stuff we are working on right now but this is what we can show in todays Devlog! We are super excited to see what everyone will think of the upcoming update and for the future of Soulstone Survivors! Let us know in the comments which of these excites you the most and, if there is anything else you are curious about and would like us to showcase! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
-Soulstone Team

[ 2024-08-02 23:30:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to our second Soulstone Survivors Devlog!

This has been another busy week at the studio and while some stuff is still a secret we want to keep secret, we are super excited to share some of the cool stuff we are working on!

Dev Talk #3

We have recently released our 3rd Dev Talk on YouTube!! In these videos we talk about various aspects of the development of the game in detail and you might even catch some early sneak peeks about upcoming content in there! We have three of them up and running and you can expect more of them to come. Check it out below: [previewyoutube=bFJXt4mAixM;full][/previewyoutube]

New Soundtrack

As we have showed in our previous Devlog, Gama has now finished the new soundtrack that is coming with some exciting new content for the game (which we dont want to spoil just yet!), and we wanted to show you all a bit of the process of what it is like to record and edit it. This is @lizett.tt with her amazing voice, recording a part of the vocals that went into this track: [previewyoutube=R2tdgKckcLg;full][/previewyoutube] And this is Gama himself, jamming to the beats in style: [previewyoutube=hXmqzgEq2h0;full][/previewyoutube] A few words from Gama In this track, I recorded 2 singers, a girl from Ukraine and a guy from Belarus. Then, I recorded them several times and created a small choir. The main elements were the voice and the organ, heard in our last devlog, that fit very well with the next upcoming gameplay theme in mind.

Automated Testing Framework

[previewyoutube=choLI8Ha0DQ;full][/previewyoutube] This is our brand new automated testing framework. Because of the sheer volume of player characters, enemies, summons, skills and so on, it is virtually impossible for us to manually test every combination of them to ensure the game is stable. To help with this, Max, one of our programmers has been working on this tool which runs a whole lot of tests and tries to identify if something is not right. For example: we spawn/recycle every last entity in the game; cast every last skill; ask entities to move around the map, etc. If anything goes wrong, the system can tell us what went wrong for example: an entity was unable to move in the expected time given its configured speed. Or an exception was thrown when spawning this entity. These are essentially sanity checks which should catch most simple errors before they make their way to you folks. Over time, we plan to improve the tool to test more sophisticated scenarios and identify harder issues.

Memory Analysis and Improvements

Anderson, one of our programmers has been working on improving the memory consumption of the game. After a ton of memory profiling and analyzing a lot of data, we found a few surprising results and a few big wins we can address with changes to the code base, so hopefully we will be able to considerably reduce memory usage over the next few updates.

Character Concepts

Alex, our 2D artist has worked on a lot of the cool stuff we see in-game. He is currently working on some new super secret stuff, but today we wanted to showcase some of the Concept Art he has done for the Engineer character!



Still talking about the art of the game, (Fernando) Colombo, our 3D artist also turns these stunning concepts into what we see in-game! Check it out: [previewyoutube=FaknWWFxzrk;full][/previewyoutube]

Damage Area Visibility Improvements

Lucas, one of our programmers has been looking into an issue that has been pestering our players for a long time. Some of our skills VFX, more specifically Ice Vortex, Blizzard, Frozen Shard, Poison Puddle, Weaking Shot and Napalm Blast were overlapping with the damage areas which would make them hard to see at times. Weve implemented a few changes to the shader code, and you can check out the before and after below:
A few words from Lucas "Damage areas being overlapped by VFX has always been an issue of the game and it can make the game way more difficult than it should be. With our push towards more production quality and polish, we are also working on these kinds of quirky problems.

Meta Progression Toggle

Juan has now finished the implementation of this new feature that allows you to toggle multiple parts of your meta progression. With new UI and other user experience improvements such as proper controller support and further testing to verify all is working well.
This was all we had to show for todays Devlog yall! It has been a blast to be able to continue developing the game alongside our player base and we are very excited for the future of the game. Let us know in the comments below which of these excites you the most and, if there is anything else you are curious about and would like us to showcase!

We also want to remind you about our new mailing list!, You can sign up by clicking here!

We hope you all have a great day, ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-07-19 21:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome to the first ever Soulstone Survivors Devlog!

With this new series, we want to bring you a bit closer to us, and share a little bit of everything that goes behind the scenes on the development of the game. We are working on a bunch of stuff but we made a special selection for today, so lets get started!

New Soundtrack and SFX

For the past few weeks, our sound expert and guru has been working on something GRAND!! To say the least. It does sound like Im getting married on Halloween or something. Take a listen to this snippet of what he has been cooking: [previewyoutube=ot6YivpIJTs;full][/previewyoutube] A few words from Gama In this part of the track that you just listened to, the voices are very evident, and might already give you a pretty good hint on what is coming, can you all guess what it could be? This track is the first time Ive used breakcore and drumnbass elements together, so it has been really interesting to compose! Gama has also been working on new sound effects for the Myrmidons ascension that will be coming with the next update, check it out: [previewyoutube=-lD2C7AwKWc;full][/previewyoutube]

Performance Improvements - Collision Detection

Given how insanely the game can scale, we are working on a new collision detection system to be used by most of the skills in the game. This new system is multithreaded and will make much better use of your CPU, and while it is still in early tests, it is showing considerable gains so far: [previewyoutube=pEKDatn5m_s;full][/previewyoutube] While you can definitely see the difference in the video above, keep in mind that "FPS" is not a great metric for speed. A much better metric is "time per frame", and using our internal performance analysis tool, we can have a better idea of the actual results:
In this test, we can see that the average time per frame was reduced from 210ms to 35ms, 83% faster than before. A few words from Allan Please keep in mind these are still early tests, and these results will vary greatly based on your device and what skills are being used, but I must say Im very excited with the results so far. Other folks on the team are working on different performance areas, so Im confident that over the next few updates we can score some big wins in this sense!

Quality of Life

Please, come in and dont mind the placeholders. With this new UI feature Juan has been working on, you will finally be able to enable and disable various features the game has to offer such as your skill tree, central skill tree, weapon stats and so on, giving you a lot more control over how you play the game. [previewyoutube=eDR4hdaBjqk;full][/previewyoutube] A few words from Juan You will be able to play without all the different modifiers, and it's interesting to see how this affects and changes the gameplay. With everything enabled, the character becomes considerably stronger. Regarding the implementation, it was more about identifying where all the resources were added to the player and then enabling/disabling them individually and making sure only the right stuff gets applied. In the end you only really notice the colossal difference, especially with the skill tree, when you're without it!

Better Communication

It has been quite a ride so far. The game has been changing a lot and we are continuing to work hard to deliver the best game we possibly can, but one crucial and very important change we want to make is to be more transparent and open with you, our community, about what we are currently working on, make sure that the curious minds can be satiated. This devlog is the first step in our masterplan, but not all of it! We are planning a bunch of different stuff, including regularly scheduled Q&As, State of The Game videos, and will also be starting a new mailing list!

You can sign up to our new mailing list clicking here, even though it will probably be a little bit before we send out the first edition!

And of course, if you would like to see more posts like this, or have other ideas of things you would like to know from us, do let us know in the comments! We read... everything!
We hope you have a great day, ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-07-05 17:58:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking part in The Steam Summer Sale! To celebrate this occasion we have a special offer for you, 30% off! Grab the copy for yourself or let your friends know about it before it ends on 11 July!

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/]
Stay informed about the latest news and updates via Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/
Best regards, ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-06-27 17:04:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

The Tides of the Void update is here, and with it, we are bringing many changes and fixes to the game! The new update is bringing a lot of changes to the gameplay, adding a new character, weapons, skills, and much more!
Here is a full list of changes for EA Update 11b:

New Character - The Myrmidon

• Hailing from the depths of the abyss, the Myrmidon joins the void hunters! This relentless warrior is unmatched when wielding the trident, and can harness the power of the tides to purge the corruption of the void, in a quest to prove herself worthy of her goddess! She comes equipped with new weapons, new unique skills, runes, and a powerful new Ascension!

New Artifact Power system

• In the previous update the Blacksmith learned the ancient skills necessary to improve your weapons. Now, the Void Hunters found a way to channel the full power of their Artifact weapons, unlocking powerful new skills that can obliterate enemies when charged up. Currently only available for the Myrmidon, you can unlock these powers by upgrading a weapon to the Artifact rarity. New powers coming with the next update!

General changes and fixes:

• Reworked Map selection screen, including a sneak peek of something that is coming sooooon.;
• Reduced the power of Skill Chain power ups from 8% / 10% / 12% to 6% / 8% / 10%;
• Fixed an issue with Icy Veins where it could incorrectly cause the skill that triggered it, to also be launched multiple times;
• Fixed an issue where Doom could expire before it timed out and dealt unexpected damage. It should now be considerably more reliable with the health bar;
• Fixed an issue where Burn, Bleed and Poison health bar overlays were not taking into consideration certain power ups and runes that increase the speed in which the negative effects cause damage. The health bar overlay should be considerably more reliable now;
• Created a new group on the Runes page for runes related to Buffs;
• Fixed an issue where certain elite enemies could disappear from the map inadvertently;
• Suicide summons such as the Frenzied Bunnies will no longer leave their bodies behind, as they could pile up a little too much in intensive scenarios;
• Fixed an issue where suicide summons could block themselves and stop themselves from exploding;
• Fixed tons of gamepad navigation issues all across the game which should offer a much smoother gamepad experience;
• Tons of SFX and sound improvements across the game;
• Static summons like Totems and Turrets now have smoother rotation;
• Fixed an issue where enemies could go inside a boulder in the Frozen Wasteland;
• Fixed an issue where the visual for the Corrupted Engineer was incorrect;
• Major localization review to increase consistency and quality of localization for every language. If you notice anything out of place that you think is incorrect, please do let us know!
• Fixed an issue where certain special effects could be wrongly positioned with the Engineer's ascension;
• Fixed a visual issue with the Legendary effect in the Level Up screen;
• Fixed an issue where Flamethrower and Pesticide Burst were unable to destroy neutral crystals (including healing crystals);
• Fixed a ton of visual issues related to enemies disappearing;
• Fixed an issue where the Blacksmith screen wouldn't update properly when crafting the last available weapon for a character;
• Fixed Arcane Weaver crystals sometimes having weird rotations;
• Fixed Elementalist Earth orb with a weird visual effect when collected;

As always we want to thank you so much for your support! There is still a lot coming to the game, as "Tides of the Void" is released we are already hard at work on the next major update and we have a few big surprises coming... so make sure to get the Myrmidon up to speed, as you will need all the help you can get! We hope you enjoy the update, and if you want to be among the first to learn more about the next update, Join us On Discord Have a great day!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-06-27 14:12:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We have just released Hotfix Update 10g2, which addresses the following issues:

• New sound effects for Engineer skills and ascension;
• New visual effect when upgrading a weapon;
• Fixed an error in the damage calculation of skills that cause damage based on the accumulated abnormal damage on the target (such as Bleed, Doom, etc). These skills were ignoring effects from other negative effects (such as Fragility, etc), and should now be considerably stronger;
• Fixed an issue where in a specific scenario where you had multiple summons and negative effect sources, that could lead the game into a situation where kills are not counted, bosses wouldn't drop loot, etc;
• Fixed an issue where certain bonuses would not show in certain Engineer skills, like "+ Damage" bonuses not appearing for Guided Missiles (visual fix only);
• Fixed the Devastating description used on the Portable Nuke skill;
• Fixed issue with achievements not being highlighted in a very specific scenario;
• Fixed typo in Extended Magazines rune which had a duplicated "%" symbol;
• Fixed an issue where the weapon name could show as "Character01";
• Fixed a few visual effects in the game throwing exceptions which could lead to performance degradation;

We hope that these changes will make your gameplay experience smoother and as always, if you run into any issues do let us know!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-05-17 20:09:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking a part in Endless Replayability Fest! To celebrate this occasion we have for you a special offer, 30% off! Grab the copy for yourself or let your friends know about it!

It is also a perfect moment to try the brand-new update!
Stay informed about the latest news and updates via Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/
~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-05-13 17:03:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are making a Soulstone Survivors x Gatekeeper bundle on Steam! This is a result of our cooperation with the Gravity Lagoon team, and we hope you will have a lot of fun playing both of the games! Gatekeeper is being released today, alongside our new patch so it is worth checking them up!

Here is a link where you can find the Shoot & Survive and learn more about the games!

As always, thank you very much for your support! Have a great weekend!
~Soulstone Survivors Team

[ 2024-05-13 15:20:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

Today we come to you with our 10th major update, the Master of Machines! Please welcome a brand new Void Hunter, the Engineer!

[previewyoutube=Dh6TQSgs618;full][/previewyoutube] This update brings quite a few major improvements that have been resquested by the community, so without further ado, here is the full list of changes for the Master of Machines update! New Character - The Engineer - The master of machines seeks Soulstones to power his latest creations! Use powerful turrets and mechanical allies to decimate the corrupt creatures of the Void! Supply yourself and your allies with endless ammunition and even launch portable nukes for ultimate destruction!


New Weapon Upgrade system - The Blacksmith has discovered new ancient techniques for improving your weapons of choice. After crafting all weapons available to a character, you can now upgrade these weapons to reach new, unprecedented levels of power.
Damage Breakdown improvements - The damage breakdown window now has two new additional tabs, where you can view the healing done from all sources and the damage done by your damaging passive skills, so you can take a deeper look to understand where your damage is coming from. General changes and fixes:

• New menu notifications to make it easier to know what is new that requires your attention, such as new runes, maps, etc;
• New achievements tab to make it easier to find which achievements you just unlocked and what rewards you got;
• Runes that grant bonuses when you are standing still no longer consider knockbacks as movement, only actual input;
• Added a new option to disable Buff Status icons during gameplay;
• New character stats to increase Mineral and Loot gains during a match (currently only used with the Engineer);
• New sound effects for weapon and character selection, as well as quite a few adjustments around skill sound effects;
• Visual effects adjustments on loads of skills;
• Added "Frontal" type to the skill "Flurry";
• Replaced the "Frontal" type from the skill "On Guard" with the Area type;
• Static summon skills like totems and others will now properly relocate when re-summoned, instead of being destroyed and re-created;
• Fixed a few issues in the Profile screen which could cause errors in rare scenarios;
• Fixed the area of the Elite Scorpion dealing damage in an area larger than intended;
• Fixed Living Weapon and Fiery Blades being easier to kill than intended;
• Fixed Jupiter Spear not having the "Chain" tag;
• Fixed Smoke Bomb becoming invisible if visibility settings were at the minimum;
• Fixed an issue where visibility settings would reset when restarting the game if they were at the minimum;
• Fixed issue where Wild Strike would give Bulwark when it should only give Finesse;
• Fixed issue where the Hound Master dogs would not be healed properly by picking up food;
• Fixed issue where Assassin Enclave skill would cause massive frame drops;
• Fixed issue where Poison Puddle would not add Poison-related passives to the pool of passive skills;
• Fixed issue where Twin Daggers and other skills would decrease visibility considerably even at very low visibility settings;
• Fixed issue where sometimes certain skills would not properly show in the Damage Breakdown popup;

Today we are also partnering with another amazing game, so if you are looking for more thrilling Action Roguelikes, don't miss out on the Shoot & Survive Bundle Bundle, featuring Gatekeeper, a newly released rogue-like with online co-op. Get it now with an extra 15% off! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39997/Shoot__Survive/ If you want to join our great community - Join us On Discord As always, we would like to thank you very much for your support and feedback! We continue working on loads of HUGE new features for 2024, and we are super excited about everything coming. And, if you run into any issues with the game, don't hesitate to reach out! We will see you in the next one!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-05-13 14:24:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are making a Soulstone Survivors x Pesticide Not Required bundle on Steam! This is a result of our cooperation with the Jampacked Games team, and we hope you will have a lot of fun playing both of the games!

Here is a link where you can find the Frog's Soulstone Bundle and learn more about the games!

As always, thank you very much for your support! Have a great weekend!
~Soulstone Survivors Team

[ 2024-04-11 17:44:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

Almost two weeks ago we introduced you to the "A New Beginning" update and after a couple of days of your feedback and suggestions, we decided to temporarily revert it to give ourselves time to work on some of the more crucial changes. Since then we focused on the main points brought to us by the community, tested these changes in the public alpha, gathered more feedback and we are now ready to bring the update back once again!
Since this is a bit of an atypical situation, in this announcement you will find the full list of changes of this update in comparison to the first release of the "New Beginning" update, however, we do recommend you also take a look at the original announcement of the "New Beginning" update if you haven't already. You can access it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2066020/view/4121429431236805606

Full list of changes from the previous "New Beginning" update:

• XP formula has been reverted back to what it was prior to the update;
• Both Curse and Endless scaling have been reverted to what they were prior to the update. Curses are still optional and use the new reward system. Overlord still works as in the original update, but with adjusted scaling to be similar to the old system;
• Removed block chance for Lords of the Void and Elites from curses, but increased the health and armor values to compensate;
• Lords of the Void still spawn one at a time, but the new Council of Lords curse works slightly different from before. Now it increases the number of active bosses by 1, and has 3 instances spread out across different tiers, so you can always have "all bosses enabled" regardless of the curse tier you are in;
• Curse Tier 7 now requires 6 curse intensity to be complete, making Ethereal Lords officially optional;
• Endless and Overlord still have limited scaling on Attack Speed and Movement Speed, and reduced the effects of Armor Penetration considerably as well;
• The central skill tree now gives you 10 rerolls/banishes/locks, up from 5;
• Dash cooldown reverted from 2.5 to 2 seconds. Movement speed is unchanged (as it was unchanged before as well);
• Most Summon skills have been buffed as they were performing worse than intended especially in higher curses;
• Removed distance based power ups from the pool, due to the challenge of informing exactly how they work;
• Added option to disable the new Death Effect;
• Changed how the Quality Standards rune works under the hood, it now gives you better chances of finding rare, epic and legendary power ups than without it;
• Fixed multiple issues regarding the "More Details" option on tooltips, which could be showing the incorrect scaling for multiple things like negative effects, buffs and what not in certain situations;
• Fixed an issue where entering a portal while mounted on the Panther and using the Ascended skin would soft-lock the game;
• Fixed an issue where the Matches tab of the Profile screen would not work for some players;
• Fixed an issue where Ethereal Bosses would not be removed in high Endless/Overlord cycles;
• Fixed an issue where certain ascension objects (like the Spellblade activation portal, or Beastmaster's tracks) could spawn inside a rock in the Scorching Valley;
• Fixed an issue where the Assassin's mission could take longer to be given to the player than intended;
• Fixed an issue where buffs such as Bloodlust would not benefit properly from some multiplicative bonuses such as Adaptive Empowerment rune;
• Fixed a couple of issues with gamepad navigation in the Profile screen;
• Fixed issue where selecting a power up could move the power up selection when using a controller;
• Fixed issue with the Vultures in the Frozen Wasteland, which could cause considerable performance degradation;
• Added Brutal to the description of Whirling Defense;
• Aelfraed now slows down during his Bladestorm;
• Achievements that reward Skins will now appear in the Characters tab;

Developer notes

First of all, we want to THANK YOU for all your support during this time. As a small team, it takes a lot of effort to be able to keep up with the community feedback in all channels, but it is something we have taken as a pillar of our development since the very beginning. It's not an easy task to process all this feedback and align it with our vision for the game, as very often different players will have opposite views on the same subject, but something we strive for at all times. This update brings changes to a lot of existing systems and skills, and we know that change can be hard. Soulstone Survivors is still in Early Access, and we could just leave things as they are and rush to 1.0, just adding the bare minimum content promised in our original roadmap and call it a day. It would definitely be the safest and easiest path for us and the game would "be done" by now, however, that is not how we want to move the company forward. Since the beginning of Early Access we have put a lot of effort into improving and expanding the existing systems in the game because we want the core, the foundation of the game to be as solid as it can be, and this update is no different. From here forward, you can expect pretty much all future updates to focus on new content. We are finally ready to look forward, there are still 7 new characters to come with yet another bunch of runes, skills and ascensions, game modes that alter considerably how you play the game, and tons of new challenges to be faced, loads of quality of life improvements... and with your help, Im sure we will get there. Thank you once again for your support and feedback, we always want to deliver the best possible game and by seeing all the great support you have given us we feel even more motivated to continue our work! Have a great day!
~Soulstone Steam

[ 2024-04-09 17:05:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, This is Allan, the lead developer of Soulstone Survivors. Today we are making a hard decision.

We are TEMPORARILY reverting the "New Beginning" update entirely, in response to the negative feedback of the update. If you like the update, please check the instructions of how to access it below.

What happened?

On the 28/03 we released the New Beginning update, which brings a bunch of new systems and changes all across the game. Many of the changes were not well received, so while we are working on addressing the feedback, we have reverted the game to the previous version.

What about the new character, runes, etc?

These will all be reintroduced to the game as soon as we fix the issues with the new update. This was a massive update, and while we are working all day long to address the feedback, it will take some time until everything is addressed.

What happens to my skill tree? I had already purchased nodes in the Monkey King skill tree!

These are still kept, and when the update is reintroduced, you will not have lost any progress. The only change will be the runes. If you had any of the new runes equipped, it will be automatically unequipped.

When can we expect those changes?

When they are ready. We will not risk promising a date now, as the most important thing is getting the update to the place where it needs to be. If you want to help us in this process and voice your concerns, we will probably start alpha testing these chances to the update on our Discord very soon. As mentioned we are working around the clock, but it is hard to know exactly how long this process will take.

Playing the "New Beginning" update

While we work on addressing the issues with the new update, you can still play it in a new branch on Steam called "newbeginning". To access it, you must do the following: 1 - Right click the game name on your Steam Library and go to Properties:
2- Click on "Betas", and then click on "New Beginning";

Developer notes

I won't lie, this is a very hard decision for me and the whole team. We are a small company, pouring our hearts and souls into this game, sacrificing pretty much all of our personal lives to make this game as good as it can be, but at the end of the day, we are human, and we can make mistakes. We took a chance to try and make the game better, but we clearly did not hit the mark, at least not to all of you. All that is left to do is learn from the experience, and move forward. We will continue giving our best to make Soulstone Survivors the best game it can be, and must ask for a bit more patience before we are ready to re-release this update and all the new content it brough with it. I really apologise for the confusion and inconvenience, and it really breaks my heart to be writing this message today instead of watching all of you enjoying the game, and I hope we will be able to make right by you on the next one.
Allan Smith

[ 2024-03-30 15:07:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

The New Beginning update is here, and with it, we are bringing many changes and fixes to the game! The new update is bringing massive changes to the gameplay, adding a new character, element, weapons, skills, and much more! But before that, we want to invite you to participate in our Discord event called Big Damage! Join us On Discord to learn about it! Here is a short video that contains a lot of new mechanics: [previewyoutube=e_cDYpCv3LE;full][/previewyoutube] Here is the full list of changes for this update: New Character: The Monkey King - The first new character to join the game, the Monkey King is a master of the martial arts and has access to Slam, Earth, Holy, Electric, and Bomb skills, with 4 new weapons, 3 new runes, and his new ascension Twilight Harmony.
New Skill Type: Earth - Earth skills focus on allowing you to hit massive areas with potent effects while providing good defensive options to keep you in the fight.
New Ascension - Twilight Harmony - The Monkey King may follow the way between black and white, day and night, finding balance by collecting orbs of energy, which can be used to create powerful clones to fight at his side.
New Skills and a massive overhaul of existing skills - This update not only brings 50 entirely new skills but also changes how almost ALL the existing 250 skills in the game work, with a ton of new effects, synergies, and combos to explore.
New System: Stackable Buffs - As part of the skill overhaul we are introducing a new system, Stackable Buffs, which can be gained from casting skills, certain power-ups, and more, and allow you to explore countless new builds! New weapons and major changes to all characters: - Every character now has access to 5 skill types, down from 7, and each of their weapons is focused on one of these elements, focusing and changing the play style of most characters considerably. With this change many weapons have to be reworked from the ground up, so check out the existing weapons as well!




Massive Rune rebalance - A large chunk of runes has been rebalanced to be more in line with each other, making a ton more combinations possible and interesting to play with. Existing rune presets have been reset. New Power Ups - Tons of new power-ups were added to the game, focusing on incentivizing builds that would not have been possible before. Countless new combinations are to be discovered!
Enemies rebalanced from the ground up - Major changes to the scaling of enemies, Lords of the Void, new Danger Level added to each zone, and Endless mode scaling entirely revamped, all to bring a more interesting challenge to the game.
Curses Reworked - All curses are now optional, and you can pick and choose which ones to play with to progress to the next curse level. Customize the game and play whoever you want. Tanky Lords? Tons of Elites? Rain of fire from the void? You choose! Overlord Arena: Mode Reworked - In order to make Overlord mode more interesting and different from Endless mode its being entirely reworked. Enter the Overlord Arena, if you dare! This mode is for those of you seeking a fast-paced challenge!
Tons of UI and usability improvements - Loads of new additions, improvements, and UI reworks all across the game to make the experience smoother. Easter Season - Seasonal decorations on the menu and maps to celebrate Easter! Menu decorations will be enabled until 15/04, and its a great time to find the secrets in the Caves of Dhal Zhog! (Secret is unchanged, and available permanently independent of the decorations) Runes:

• New Rune: Battle Proficiency, gives you a chance to gain Prowess whenever you cast any skill;
• New Rune: Immortality, gives you one extra charge of Death Protection;
• New Rune: Focused Mind, reduces the number of skill slots by 3, but increases damage caused by 80%;
• Multiple balance changes to adapt to the new balance of most things in the game, as can be seen in more detail at the bottom of this list;

Skill Tree:

• Changes to a few nodes in multiple skill trees, mostly related to hit effects changing to stackable buff effects;
• Central skill tree has had its overall power considerably reduced, but its total cost is also reduced by approximately 35%;

Characters:

• Increased the cooldown of Dash from 2 to 2.5 seconds;
• Changed the experience formula, most of the time you will have a few less levels than before in a match, especially in long endless runs;
• Every character now has access to 5 skill types naturally, down from 7. This change makes the playstyle of each character more unique;
• Revised the weapons of multiple characters, as now each weapon will be related to one of the elements that the character has access to. A total of 12 weapons have been reworked or entirely changed to accommodate for this design change;

Skills:

• Most skill types now have entirely new "identities", for example, Electric no longer focuses on applying Dazed, instead it focuses on granting Electrified, a new type of stackable buff. Almost all skills in the game have had one or another change to their functionality and the full list can be seen at the bottom of this list;
• More than 50 new skills added to the game. These come in all shapes and forms, including generic skills, weapon skills, character skills and so on;

Negative Effects:

• Vulnerable and Paralysis are removed from the game;
• Melting is also removed, replaced by the new Shattered which reduces armor but does not cause damage over time;
• Rot is merged into Poison, so every Poison now can spread to other enemies;
• Cursed is merged with Doom, so every Doom now can cause damage to an area;
• Hemorrhage is merged with Bleed, so every Bleed now can cause damage when the target moves;
• Removed the "upgraded" relationship between all negative effects, for example, Disoriented is no longer related to Dazed. The same is true for all other negative effects;

Traits:

• New Trait - Devastating: Direct damage caused is multiplied by 3;
• New Trait - Piercing: Projectiles deal extra damage for each target they pierce;
• New Trait - Precise: Increases the damage based on how far you are from the target;
• New Trait - Brutal: Increases the damage based on how close you are to the target;
• New Trait - Impactful: Increases the damage based on how close the target is to the point of impact (such as from a Bomb);

Stackable Buffs:

• These new stackable buffs can be found in multiple skills across the game and can be used to grant you massive powers and define new builds to try. The newly available buffs are:
• Resilience - Increases armor power;
• Prowess - Increases damage modifier;
• Form - Increases critical damage chance;
• Haste - Increases movement speed;
• Finesse - Increases multi-cast modifier;
• Bulwark - Increases block power;
• Aptitude - Increases critical damage;
• Vigor - Increases max health;
• Colossal - Increases area modifier;
• Swiftness - Increases cast frequency modifier;
• Retaliation - Whenever you are hit, consume stacks of Retaliation to reduce the damage received and cast one of your skills back at the attacker instantly;
• Radiance - Whenever you cast a skill, consume stacks of Radiance to release a powerful beam of energy in the direction you are aiming at;
• Electrified - Whenever you cast a skill, consume stacks of Charged to release multiple jolts of electricity that move in random directions;
• Purity - Whenever you cast a skill, consume stacks of Purity to release a wave of holy light;
• Ammunition - Whenever you cast a skill, consume stacks of Ammunition to add 5 charges of multi cast to the skill being used;
• Icy Veins - Whenever you cast a skill, consume stacks of Icy Veins to launch frozen icicles towards random enemies;

Ascensions:

• New Ascension - Monkey King - Twilight Harmony: Collect Night and Day orbs to summon powerful clones to fight for you for a limited time;
• Most ascensions have had their values changed to adapt to the new balance of the game. In general, ascensions that grant multiplicative buffs are now less powerful, while ascensions that interact with summons or direct skills have had their power increased significantly. This change aims at bringing the different power levels of ascensions a bit closer;
• Sentinel now has a tracker pointing towards the Panther whenever it is active;
• Elementalist ascension has been adjusted to reflect the 5 skill types that the character has access to;

Power-Ups:

• New Power Up Type - Debuff Modifiers, allowing you to increase the efficiency of Burn, Poison, Doom and Bleed effects considerably in different ways;
• New Power Up Type - Distance-based powerful bonuses to allow for specialized melee or ranged builds;
• New Power Up Type - Stackable Buff Synergies, allowing you to make the most of the new buff effects;
• New Power Up Type - Skill Chain, which allows for one skill type to trigger another skill type, making many new builds not only viable but extremely strong;
• New Power Up Type - Cross Type Powers, which increases the power of skills based on how many skills of a certain type you have, once again allowing for some new and interesting combinations;
• New Power-Up Type - Ascension power-ups that can bring your ascension even further, empowering each ascension in a different way;
• New Power Up - New versions of negative effects on hit and on critical strikes that can help DoT builds specialize even further;

Enemies:

• New Danger Level: Each map now has its own Danger Level which makes its enemies more resistant, and creates a more defined difficulty progression between maps;
• Significant changes to the pacing, attributes and challenge level of all enemies in all maps, too many to list. Overall enemies should feel more resistant, but the game a lot more manageable in relation to red zones, in great part due to the changes to the Curses as listed below;
• Lords of the Void now appear encased in statues, and only when infused start to fight, giving you a few seconds to prepare for the fight;
• Elimination Objectives now only start counting when all Lords of the Void are eliminated, to avoid multiple groups of Lords accumulating at the same time;
• The health of Lords of the Void is no longer related to the time of a match, in general making it harder for very fast builds but easier for slower builds;
• Elite enemies in general should now feel considerably more resistant and appear in mixed groups, however they appear less often;
• Multiple fixes and changes to enemies that previously could be causing more damage than expected or with areas larger than expected;

Curses:

• All curses are now optional, allowing you to customize your matches however you want;
• Rewards for curses are now reworked. Instead of each individual curse granting a certain bonus and having an additional bonus for the group of curses, now the rewards are based on how many curses in a tier are selected;
• You no longer need lower tier curses enabled to gain bonuses from curses in higher tiers;
• Certain curses are marked as Elite Curses. These modifiers are more intense and will require more attention and reaction to be dealt with, but are entirely optional;
• Revenge of the Void now has a considerably smaller chance of releasing meteors whenever you kill enemies;
• Corrupted Void Hunters are now much more powerful, but appear in pre-determined moments in a match;
• Pillars of Despair now appear with a smaller frequency;
• New curses such as Ethereal Lords and Council of Lords introduced to allow you to further customize the challenge level you want to face;
• Increased the bonuses you can get for Minor Soulstones, Common and Uncommon minerals by activating curses;

Endless and Overlord:

• Both modes have had their scalings entirely reworked from the ground up. Enemies will have considerably less health, and both attack and movement speed are limited to a certain amount;
• A new enemy attribute is introduced, Armor Penetration, which will gradually ignore more and more of your armor power and block chance;
• Endless mode offers a more streamlined experience, where you continue fighting from map to map with ever increasing difficulty, but with a much more manageable enemy scaling;
• Overlord mode offers a greater challenge, focusing on Elite enemies and powerful Lords of the Void, and takes place in the new Overlord Arena. This mode is bound to keep you on your toes;

General:

• Trackers are now larger when they appear and slowly reduce in size to help give you a better sense of where the notification is pointing towards;
• New Death screen and effects introduced;
• You can now zoom out to view the entire Skill Tree and scrolling in general is more reliable;
• Fixed issue where runes would still be highlighted when switching presets;
• Fixed weapon description layout in the Blacksmith which sometimes could be overlapping;
• Fixed an issue where mine skills would be calculating multicast twice for their initial damage;
• Fixed an issue where certain skills could target enemies outside of the screen;
• Fixed an issue where certain channeling skills would not scale their projectiles and frequency of release properly;
• Tons of fixes to multiple skills with minor configuration issues;
• Tons of small UI improvements all across the game;
• Tons of fixes for gamepad interactions all across the game;
• Tons of fixes for sound effects and new sounds added to the game;

Balance Changes: Given that this update changed the balance of almost everything in the game, we decided to keep these changes separate from the core changes above, the list is a bit too extensive for this announcement (it literally cannot fit!), so here you can find the rune changes below, and a link in the bottom to view the skill and power up changes on Discord! Runes:

• Reroll Mastery now grants 1 extra reroll every 5 levels, instead of every 10 levels;
• Center of Attention now grants a 5% bonus area, down from 15%;
• Immovable Object now grants 20% bonus damage, down from 30%;
• Overwhelming Chaos maximum damage is now 220%, down from 250%;
• Last Resort now grants 20% bonus damage, down from 30%;
• Purity now grants 20% bonus damage, down from 50%;
• Purity damage reduction per negative effect is now 4%, down from 5%;
• Adaptive Empowerment now grants 10% bonus damage per fire skill, down from 20%;
• Synchrony now grants 0.7% bonus damage per skill type, up to a maximum of 20%, down 2% and 60% respectively;
• Head Start now grants 20% bonus damage, down from 30%. Other attributes unchanged;
• Multi Cast Mastery now grants a smaller bonus to multi cast chains;
• Critical Mastery now adds 25% of your critical chance as critical damage, down from 100%;
• Controlled Chaos is now Epic and costs 3 Runic Power, up from Rare with a cost 2;
• Death Touch is now considerably stronger;
• Impaler is now considerably stronger;
• Glass Cannon now grants 40% bonus damage and reduces health by 70%, down from 50% and 75% respectively;
• Oscillating Power now grants variable bonus damage from -10% to 30%, down from -20% to 80% respectively;
• Executioner now grants 4% bonus damage per negative effect, with a maximum of 20%, down from not having a maximum;
• Pulse of Agony now grants 0.5% bonus attack speed up to a maximum of 20%, down from 1% and 30% respectively;
• Generalist now grants 1.5% bonus damage per different skill type, down from 4%;
• Amplified Power now grants 0.1% bonus damage for every 500 minor soulstones to a maximum of 25%, down from 0.5% and 50% respectively;
• Lords Bane now grants 25% bonus damage whenever a Lord of the Void is active, instead of scaling with each Lord of the Void;
• Decapitator now may execute enemies with 40% health, up from 25%;
• Recklessness now grants 0.3% bonus damage per missing health point to a maximum of 30%, down from 0.4% and 70% respectively;
• Adrenaline now grants a 0.25% bonus attack speed per missing health point to a maximum of 25%, down from 0.4% and 60% respectively;
• Focus Fire now grants 30% bonus damage and reduces area by 15%, down from 60% and 30% respectively;
• Sacrificed Growth maximum damage bonus is now 25% and the experience penalty is 10%, down from 80% and 20% respectively;
• Vulnerable Exploit maximum bonus damage is now 25%, down from 50%;
• Searing Intensity maximum bonus damage is now 25%, down from 50%;
• Versatile Strength now grants 0.6% bonus damage per power-up type up to a maximum of 24%, down from 3% and 90% respectively;
• Commanding Presence now grants 25% bonus damage, down from 40%;
• Synergetic now increases the chance of synergies happening by 50% multiplicatively, instead of 25% additively (effectively unchanged from the existing values for negative effects);

If you want to see all the changes to all skills, Join us On Discord As always, we would like to thank you very much for your support and feedback! We continue working on loads of HUGE new features in 2024 and we are super excited about all that is coming. And, if you run into any issues with the game, don't hesitate to reach out! We will see you in the next one!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-03-28 17:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking part in The Steam Spring Sale! To celebrate this occasion we have a special offer for you, 30% off! Grab the copy for yourself or let your friends know about it before it ends on 21 March!

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/]
Stay informed about the latest news and updates via Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/
Best regards, ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-03-14 17:00:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

The next update is just around the corner, and today we wanted to share more details about what is coming to the game very soon!

We prepared a video to go over a high level of the main changes coming, you can check it out now!

[previewyoutube=DeNmS8hgNEc;full][/previewyoutube] For a quite TL;DR here's some of the stuff we discuss in the video:

• New Character: The Monkey King;
• New Element: Earth;
• A total of 50 new skills spread amont multiple types and characters;
• Revamped skill type "core essences", with over 200 skills getting reworked;
• New stackable buffs system which allows for some crazy new builds;
• Tons of new Power Ups that incentivise even more builds;
• Major changes to the pacing of the game, with enemy scaling, curses and more being reworked;
• And there is a lot more stuff and general improvements all around the game!

We know It's been a while since the last major update, but we truly hope it will be worth the wait! We expect the game will offer a whole new experience after this update, supporting a ton more playstyles and builds than it does today! We hope this video gets you as excited as we are for all the stuff coming, as always we want to thank you all for your amazing support so far, and we will see you in the next one!
Have a great day! ~Soulstone Team PS: We are still not promising a specific date because this update is huuuuuuge and we want to make sure we got it just right before releasing it, and we don't want to rush it out to meet an arbitrary date just because we said so, but I promise we are giving it our everything to get this update in your hands as soon as possible, and we are hoping for "sooner than you think"!

[ 2024-03-09 18:33:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking a part in Made in Brazil Event! To celebrate this occasion we have for you a special offer, 25% off! Grab the copy for yourself or let your friends know about it!

Stay informed about the latest news and updates via Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ And if you want to check other cool games made by Brazilian devs, you can check out the event page here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/MadeinBrazilSale Best regards, ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2024-02-14 19:34:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are super excited to share some exciting news for the next update!

We have been teasing for a bit that a new character would be joining the ranks of the Void Hunters, and today we want you to welcome the Monkey King!

[previewyoutube=pZZaMOZcvy8;full][/previewyoutube] Earlier today we had our second ever Dev Q&A, where we shared a ton of details about what to expect from the next update! We will be posting the recording to YouTube over the next few days, so if you would like to know more about all that is coming, subscribe to our channel! We wanted to thank you all for your support and patience so far, this next update is going to be the largest update we ever created and we cannot wait to know what you'll think, but we hope you are as excited as we are!
Have a great day! ~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-02-09 20:53:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are coming to you with some exciting news!

We want to invite you to our Q&A that will happen on the 9th of February at 5 PM GMT! You can start asking questions at this very moment! You only need to join our Discord channel and go to the #soulstone-ama channel!

During the Q&A we will also officially announce the new character coming to Soulstone Survivors, so make sure to tune in!

We are also running a Speedrun Event, you can come and participate by joining our Discord Server! We cant wait to answer all of your questions and share more exciting news about the next update!
Have a great day! ~Soulstone Team

[ 2024-01-26 18:18:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

Allan here, the lead developer of Soulstone Survivors! We are coming to you today with our second Dev Chat! This time around we talk about a status update about where the game is and how things we mentioned in the previous video are progressing, but more importantly, we share a lot of juicy details about HUGE new upcoming features!
Here is a list of everything we cover in the video (and you can find timestamps in the video itself to jump to the topics you are most interested in):

Status Update:

• Update: Sneaky Void Presence - Done
• Update: Accidental Portals - Done
• Update: Power-Up Info - Done
• Update: Rune Improvements - Done
• Update: UI/Gamepad Improvements - Better, WIP
• Update: Ascensions - Better, WIP
• Update: Game Visibility - Better, WIP
• Update: Match History - Done
• Update: Resource Sink - Planned
• Update: More Bosses - WIP
• Update: In-Game Wiki - Planned
• Update: Material Trading - TBD
• Update: UI Scaling - TBD
• Update: Difficulty/Balance - WIP

New Content:

• New Content: More Power-Ups
• New Content: New Character
• New Content: Game Modes

New Game Mode:

• New Game Mode: Mastery
• New Game Mode: Double-Edge Sword
• New Game Mode: Challenge
• New Game Mode: Sandbox
• New Game Mode: Raids/Dungeons

If you enjoy this type of video and would like to see more videos like these, please do let us know! We also would like to take the opportunity to wish you amazing holidays and an awesome new year! We cannot thank you all enough for this amazing year, it has been a privilege working on the game and I am SUPER excited about everything thats coming this next year! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server!
WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS! ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2023-12-22 20:43:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking a part in The Steam Winter Sale! To celebrate this occasion we have for you a special offer, 25% off! Grab the copy for yourself or let your friends know about it before it ends on 4 January!

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/]
Stay informed about the latest news and updates via Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/
Best regards, ~ Soulstone Team

[ 2023-12-21 18:04:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

The Arms of the Ascended update is here, and with it, we are bringing many changes and fixes to the game! Celebrate the holiday season with us, with new menu decorations from Dec 18th to Jan 5th! But before we jump into the contents of this update, we want share a couple of news with you: Firstly, we want to invite you to participate in our Discord event called Big Damage! Join us On Discord to learn about it! Secondly, this Friday (22/12/2023) we will release a new Dev Chat video on YouTube, sharing some exciting news for 2024 and TONS of information about the new content coming to the game! Subscribe to our YouTube to get a notification when its out! Game Smithing's YouTube
With all of that out of the way, here is the full list of changes for this update:

Character Appearances:

• New character appearances can now be unlocked in-game! With 14 new appearances in this update (1 for each character), we hope those will serve as a token of your achievements! Future content will bring new appearances for you to unlock, but rest assured ALL appearances will ALWAYS be unlockable in-game, there will never be in-game purchases in Soulstone Survivors!

New Save System:

• We completely revamped the save system in the game to increase its resilience to file corruption. The game always kept track of a backup file in case the game was interrupted while making a new save, but now the game will use a "ring save" system, keeping up to 10 versions to fall back to in case of corruption.

Gamepad Improvements:

• This update brings considerable improvements to gamepad usability in the game, such as being able to navigate and view tooltips of Passives and Active skills and your character sheet while in the Pause menu, and many fixes with bugged interactions across the game.

Enemies:

• Allaxiz buff now only increases his own attack and movement speed;
• Fixed Gammuth's Fireball being affected by the visibility slider (again);

General:

• The game now displays a sort of hint/timer to reflect why the Endless and Overlord portal might not appear at the end of a match if you take too long;
• Fixed an issue where you might hear the sound of the special event in the Caverns map starting without interacting with it;
• Added slider in the general options to change the intensity of the "low health" visual overlay;
• Fixed an issue where Summoned units would not inherit some of your character's Skill Tree nodes (such as on-hit chances);
• Fixed Cave Bear skill tooltip which had values scaling incorrectly;
• Added new keybinding for the "More Details" hotkey;
• Fixed an issue where the "More Details" hotkey would be inconsistent during gameplay and in menus;
• Fixed a couple of character tooltips in Skill Tree not working as intended;
• Fixed a small issue with a controller on Blacksmith which could cause the controller to lose focus;
• Fixed Meteor tooltip to properly show the Burn damage it applies;
• Fixed tooltips that could stay on screen when you paused the game;
• Improved performance of the "Mineral Harvest" rune by simplifying how minerals are awarded to the player;
• Fixed issue with gamepad navigation on skill trees, where in certain situations you would be unable to select a character-specific node;
• Fixed issue where Elemental Orbs could be spawned in the air, being impossible to collect;
• Fixed issue where locked skills in the Skill List menu could be showing the wrong information to unlock;
• Fixed issue where skills that scaled based on Health (such as Body Slam) would not take the "All or Nothing" rune into consideration for their calculation;
• Fixed issue where Mastery runes would show the wrong skills in the Runes screen when switching between presets (visual issue only);
• Fixed issue where Mastery runes would not store the skills used in your Profile;
• Fixed issue where if you play with a gamepad, but select a skill with the mouse, the gamepad input could stop working to select further skills;
• Fixed issue where if you had Mouse Only mode, it could prevent you from opening the Level Up screen with the gamepad;

As always, we would like to thank you very much for your support and feedback! We continue working on loads of HUGE new features for 2024 and we are super excited about all that is coming and to share more with you this Friday! And, if you run into any issues with the game, don't hesitate to reach out! We will see you in the next one!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2023-12-18 19:45:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are making a Soulstone Survivors x Extremely Powerful Capybaras bundle on Steam! This is a result of our cooperation with the Studio Bravarda team, and we hope you will find a lot of fun playing both of the games!

Here is a link where you can find the Capybara Soulstone Bundle and learn more about the games!

As always, thank you very much for your support! Have a great weekend!
~Soulstone Survivors Team

[ 2023-12-12 19:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!:cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are making a Deaths Soulstone Bundle on Steam! This is a result of our cooperation with the Death Must Die team, and we hope you will find a lot of fun playing both of the games!

Here is a link where you can find the Deaths Soulstone Bundle and learn more about the games!

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/36990/Deaths_Soulstone/]
As always, thank you very much for your support! Have a great weekend!
~Soulstone Survivors Team

[ 2023-12-01 15:58:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! :cozyroe:

While we continue working towards the next major update (and this will be a huge one), we wanted to address some of the issues that have come to our attention with our last update! This small hotfix addresses a few issues that hopefully will make your experience smoother until the next update is out!

But before jumping into this update, if you enjoy Soulstone Survivors and our work, it would mean the world for us if you could nominate us in the Labor of Love Steam Awards category!

With that said, here is the full list of changes for this update:

• Fixed Turkish support, which was incorrectly still disabled in-game;
• Fixed an issue that was preventing On Hit Passive Skills (such as Frailty) from properly accumulating when picked multiple times;
• Fixed Backstab which was causing the backstab effects when in front of targets;
• Fixed Frost Strike not counting the number of hits;
• Fixed an issue where using the Gambler rune and the Lock mechanic, it was possible to choose active skills;
• Fixed a few enemy effects that would not appear in the ground if the visual effect setting was turned to the minimum, but still would cause damage;
• Fixed/reworked a few more VFXs of multiple skills;
• Added new sounds effects for enemies;
• Fixed small visual issues across the game;
• Fixed small issues with a couple of Skill Tree nodes yielding incorrect benefits;
• Changed the default hotkeys for multiple actions related to the Level Up screen:
• Select Skill from "Space" to "E";
• Reroll from "Q" to "R";
• Banish from "E" to "F";
• Lock from "R" to "C";
• Skip Active Skills from "Y" to "G";
• Toggle Active Skills remains on "T";
• More Details (Keyboard) from "F" to "Q";
• More Details (Gamepad) from "D-Pad Up" to "Left Trigger";

As always, we would like to thank you very much for your support and feedback, and if you run into any issues with the game, don't hesitate in reaching out! We will see you in the next one!
~Soulstone Team

[ 2023-11-28 11:27:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!:cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking part in The Steam Awards! Working on the game this past year has been a wild ride so far, with quite a few major updates and more changes than we can count, and I get excited to think that it is just the beginning! On this occasion we would like to thank you for all your support that you have given us. If you love and enjoy our game we would be more than thankful for your vote!

You can nominate us in the category Labor of Love!

Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server!
Best regards, ~Soulstone Team

[ 2023-11-22 15:32:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!:cozyroe:

We are happy to announce that we are taking a part in The Steam Autumn Sale! To celebrate this occasion we have for you a special offer, 25% off week-long deal! Grab the copy for yourself or let your friends know about it before it ends on 28 November!

Stay informed about the latest news and updates via Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones Survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/
Best regards, - Soulstone Team

[ 2023-11-21 18:34:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We have just released a small hotfix update which will deal with a few annoying problems in the game that would lead to multiple exceptions, which in turn would degrade the game's performance in certain scenarios. We hope that this small update makes your experience smoother! Full change list for version v0.11.037i:

• Fixed issue with Corrupted Pyromancer not working as intended, which would lead to considerable performance reduction and massive spam of errors;
• Static defense skills, such as Totems, Ballistae and Volcanos will now be alive for a minimum of 5 seconds. This prevents them being despawned to move closer to your before they are able to attack and should make those skills better in extreme scenarios;
• Fixed quite a few issues with VFXs, references and invisible errors that would degrade performance and lead to weird behaviour;

Thank you very much for your support, and we see you in the next one! =)
~ Soulstone Team

[ 2023-11-12 12:59:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've just released update v0.11.037h that will bring new improvements and changes that should make the game much more enjoyable. We are introducing new language support, improving gamepad navigation, and more! If you would like to learn more about the game and our amazing community join here Discord! Below is the full list of changes: Skills:

• Fixed Meteor Shower skill which will now work normally;
• Fixed Aura of Chaos applying more Disarray than intended;
• Fixed Murder of Crows to no longer apply random negative effects;
• Fiery Blades no longer receives Duration upgrades, instead it receives Critical Chance upgrades;

Enemies:

• Fixed a navigation issue on the Dungeon of Despair where enemies and mouse-only mode would not perform as expected in certain areas;
• Treant will now display a damaged area when attacking since it is a large area;
• Fixed incorrect name for the Elite Goblin Warlock;
• Fixed Skeleton Reaper Scythe attack being affected by visibility slider;

General:

• Added Italian language support;
• Added the option to disable Vignette and Ambient Occlusion effects in the Graphics Options menu;
• Improved gamepad navigation on Profile tab;
• Added support to rename rune presets in the Fight menu;
• Boss Health bars and Objectives panel are now hidden in the Level Up screen;
• Fixed an issue where when equipping multiple Mastery runes you would need to select a different rune - and come back to view the equip button again;
• Fixed tooltip of "Negative Effect icons" in General Options menu;
• Fixed possible issue on the Profile page where if you had invalid matches, the screen would not display as - expected;
• Fixed damage breakdown in the pause menu and ending screen now showing the correct values, accumulating all stages of the match;
• Fixed issue with Polish fonts not displaying correctly;
• Fixed an issue where Duration and Quantity modifiers to skills could not be showing properly in their tooltips;
• Fixed Beastmaster ascension tracker which would not disappear when the match ended;

We hope you will enjoy the update, thank you for all your support and feedback!
~ Soulstone Team

[ 2023-11-10 20:21:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, Survivors! :cozyroe:

It's hard to believe but Soulstone Survivors is already completing 1 year of Early Access! A lot has changed and there is still much to come! We are so happy to have you with us for this incredible journey, and to celebrate the occasion we want to present to you the Anniversary Update! Have fun with the new special decorations from Nov 6th to Dec 10th and make sure to check out the Speedrun Challenge we are hosting to celebrate the update! Now lets jump into it! [hr][/hr]

New content and features:

Steam Trading Cards:

Earn Steam Trading Cards by just playing the game, complete the set, and earn unique badges, Steam Profile backgrounds, and emotes!

Major Runes rework:

You can now have up to 5 rune presets for each character, and now have two types of rune slots, Versatility and Tenacity:

• Versatility - 3 slots: These are runes that allow you to customize your build and what powers you can have access to in a match, those include all Mastery, Affinity, and Inclination runes, Gambler, and so on. These runes no longer have a Runic Power cost and are limited only by the number of Versatility slots;
• Tenacity - 4 slots: These are runes that increase your fighting power one way or another, be it by increasing your damage, movement speed, defenses, and so on. These runes still cost Runic Power and are also limited by the number of Tenacity slots;

Mastery Runes rework:

In addition to the changes above, Mastery runes now allow you to choose UP TO 5 skills from the desired skill type. Whenever you equip a Mastery rune you are guaranteed to have the selected skills in your pool of skills during a match; (Dev notes: We want players to experiment with as many builds as possible, and we know that prior to this change players would often prefer focusing their limited runic power into runes that directly make you more powerful instead of trying to experiment with varied and possibly whacky builds. We hope that with this change (and the changes listed below) you will have more freedom to create any builds you can dream of more predictably.)

Match History screen:

You can now view a list of your previous matches, including skills used, times, damage per skill, and so on, along with an overview of your account and character comparisons! The game already recorded most information about your matches so you can see retroactive stats (missing a few details that will be included only on matches in the new version). We would love to see your account overviews so please do share your screenshots with us!

New enemies:

The Dungeon of Despair is now infested with undead! All enemies have been completely revamped with 19 new enemies between regular and elite versions, along with an entirely new soundtrack! There are also a few new enemies in the Scorching Valley and the Whispering Grove!

Power Up visibility rework:

Completely revamped tooltips and descriptions of all skills and power-ups in the game, to drastically reduce the amount of text while showing more details than before. These changes make it easy to know whether you already have a version of a certain power, how it improves with multiple pickups, and so on. We also reduced considerably the number of powers in the bottom left corner of the screen, focusing the information as much as possible;

Chaos Skills rework:

Chaos skills no longer are capable of applying every negative effect in the game. You will find that they now cause random damage (more than before), and also one of these two things:

• Apply Disarray: a new negative effect that increases all damage received by a random value between -0.5% and 2.5% per stack for 8 seconds, where damage can never be reduced below 1.
• Have the Chaotic trait, which gives you a chance to cast another random skill instantly when this skill is used. (Dev notes: Chaos skills are all about randomness and unpredictable effects, however, their ability to apply all types of negative effects becomes so powerful, especially on longer matches, that they can single handedly replace almost all skills in the game and still grant all the benefits. This harms build variety and makes many skills worthless in comparison, so we hope that these changes above will make Chaos skills no longer suppress other skills in the game, but still be very interesting to mix and match with various skill types in the game, offering new strategies to create broken builds and more interesting decisions.)

Damage Breakdown during match:

We have finally added a way for you to view the damage breakdown of your skills during a match, without having to wait till the end of a match to see how skills are performing. Simply pause the game and check!

Visibility improvements:

While this will be a continuous work, with this update we have revisited the visual effects of loads of skills to make it so they are less invasive, in order to improve overall visibility. In addition to that, you can now adjust the Special Effect Visibility slider with hotkeys, making it a lot easier to adjust up and down. We will continue working with the goal that one day this visibility slider won't be necessary, but until we get there, we want your experience to be as smooth as possible.

Character changes:

• Reduced Chaoswalker Altar interaction time from 1 to 0.5 seconds;
• Divine Inspiration (Paladin's Ascension) slightly reworked: now if you miss the inspiration buff for any reason, a holy sphere will be left behind in its place. This sphere lasts for 20 seconds, and yields a diminishing amount of inspiration over time. (Dev notes: while ascensions are meant to have different levels of interaction and difficulty, we felt that the Paladin's could be quite punishing. This change still rewards you for being in the right place, at the right time, but offers a "consolation prize" if for any reason you are unable to reach the holy light in time);

Skill changes:

• Renamed Chaos Bomb into Chaotic Explosion;
• Renamed Poison Bomb into Poison Puddle;
• Removed the Bomb tag from Acid Rain, Avalanche, Chaotic Explosion and Poison Puddle; (Dev notes: the bomb tag was massively overcrowded in comparison with all other tags, not only diluting the pool of skills but adding thematically inaccurate skills to various characters)

Rune changes:

• Misfortune's Embrace now applies only damaging negative effects randomly, between Burn, Bleed, Poison and Doom, with 250% of the potency as before (no longer applies all effects randomly);

General changes:

• New language supported: Traditional Chinese, with Italian and Turkish coming very soon!
• Portals now need to be interacted with for a second before they activate, to avoid accidental activation;
• Added special visuals to the Void Presence's attack so it can be easily distinguishable from regular enemy attacks;
• Fixed an issue where when selecting a skill in the level up panel, it would not consider your existing powers that would improve that skill if that skill was selected (for example, a Nature skill will now show its damage taking into account your existing +Nature Damage powers, if any);
• Added new key bind to enable/disable auto aim with a click (default middle mouse button), in addition to a small visual indicator next to the Dash icon;
• You can now pick Powers in the level-up screen with the keys 1, 2, 3 for faster navigation;
• Added option to hide the negative effects display from health bars;
• Skill List popup will now show what achievement is required for each skill in its tooltip;
• Improved interaction on the skill tree with the mouse to make it faster to purchase nodes with double clicking;
• Made the rotation of all units smoother;
• Hidden Skill Bar while the Replace Skills popup is active to avoid confusion;
• You can now select a character in the Character screen by double-clicking its picture;
• Adjusted multiple configuration errors with enemies in all maps, such as incorrect experience numbers, incorrect rate of spawn in certain cases, and so on, which would influence the pacing of the game seemingly at random;
• Made updates to the Dungeon of Despair visuals;
• Added new menu animations to celebrate the anniversary;
• Fixed issue where you could have curses that increased the frequency of Corrupted Void Hunters without spawning any void hunters;
• Fixed issue where corpses in some cases could rotate towards you;[h1 id="Anchor"]
  
• New animation and effects for Arcane Weaver in the menu;
• Fixed interactions between Ready for Battle, Unconventional Start, and Affinity runes;

[h1 id="Anchor"]
[hr][/hr] [h2 id"Anchor"]New Speedrun Challenge
To celebrate the anniversary were hosting a speedrun challenge on our Discord server! Play on the map youre most comfortable with be as fast as you can! But don't worry too much, every participant has a chance to win! Were giving the following PRIZES to the 5 people with the best times:

• 1st place - 20$
• 2nd place - 15$
• 3rd place - 10$
• 4th place - Game Key
• 5th place - Game Key

The 4th and 5th place will be picked randomly from all participants so everyone has a chance to win!

Join our Discord and go to the speedrun-event channel for more info.

[hr][/hr]

Developer notes

We want to say a big thank you for the last year, it was an amazing journey. We are thankful to you for all the support you have given us and we hope to continue delivering the game we all love so much. There is still a lot of new content coming, and a ton of other improvements as well, but we hope you will have fun with the new update and as always, if you have any feedback or issues, let us know!
~ Soulstone Team

[ 2023-11-06 20:43:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, Survivors! :cozyroe: Allan here, the lead developer of Soulstone Survivors! As we have discussed before, we want to be more transparent with the community and we thought it would be a good idea to share a little bit about what are the most requested features, and a bit about our plans on how we are working to address them. To that end, weve prepared a video where we go through many improvement points to the game and even some sneak peeks about the next Soulstone Survivors update! [previewyoutube=zveEJzeuO_0;full][/previewyoutube] Here is a list of the topics we talk about in more detail on the video, going through each one of them and talking a bit about what steps we are taking to address them:

GAME PROBLEMS

[olist]

Game is too hard/dodge fest: The most requested change in the game, where the end game has way too many enemy attacks and how it limits the way you can play the game;

Endless Balance: How runs can become stale, where you are either immortal or instantly killed without being able to react;

Game Visibility: How the game can be very hard to navigate with the spam of skills, how some skills are very intrusive causing visibility problems even early in the game;

Power Up Infos: How the information displayed on the Level Up screen and Power Up list can be hard to navigate or incomplete, leading to confusion;

Struggle with Ascension: How some ascensions can be hard to interact, how this is linked with the issues above and what are our goals with ascensions;

Rune Balance and Limitations: How you might feel like you cannot experiment as much as you would like due to how they are structured and the limitations they have;

General UI improvements: How there are constantly more and more ways to improve usability in the game, and how even small changes can end up compounding to make big improvements to the game;

Sneaky Void Presence: How the Void Presence can sneak up on you under the chaos of the game and ruin a run in a way that feel unfair;

Entering the home portal by accident: How you can accidentally end a great run by entering portals at the wrong time and how frustrating that can be;

Overall Skill Balance and Chaos revamp: How there are many underpowered skills that never get used, while others become mandatory, and a note about the upcoming change to how Chaos skills work and why.[/olist]

GAME FEATURES

[olist]

Endless Resource Sink: Being able to spend extra resources into a system that offers interesting choices (unfortunately we did not go into much detail about this one in the video, but it is definitely in our plans!);

More Bosses: Something will definitely do and already have some cool plans in this regard;

In-game Wiki: A way to view details about the game, its functionalities and so on, basically a way to understand how the game works in more detail;

Better UI customization: Being able to scale the UI, disable and enable elements, make it your own;

Trade Materials: A way to exchange resources you have for resources you need, and how that could improve the experience.[/olist] If you would like to see more videos like this, as regular updates to where the game is going, what we are addressing and how, please do let us know! In the meantime we hope that this video will shed some light on these topics and of course, if you have other concerns with the game, other changes you would like implemented or doesnt agree with what was said in the video, don't hesitate to leave a comment below, or on Discord, or YouTube, or Email, or the forums! Thank you very much for all the feedback, support and patience! =)
~ Soulstone Team

[ 2023-10-27 20:17:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, Survivors! :cozyroe: We've been hard at work behind the scenes, and we're thrilled to announce a new hotfix for Soulstone Survivors! This small update fixes some annoying issues related with some ascensions that we hope will already make the experience a lot smoother, until the next major patch hits!
Speaking of which, rest assured that the next major update to the game is well underway, and we really hope youll be as excited for it as we are when it comes! So, make sure that you keep your eyes peeled on our socials and in Discord for more information about whats coming next in Soulstone Survivors.

Full change list for version v0.10.036a:

• The Arcane Weaver's Mana Crystals are now collected instantly by walking over them;
• The Sentinel's Panther Bond no longer decays when you are far away from the Panther;
• The Hound Master's Beefs are no longer affected by your pick up range, as you are still meant to find and collect the beefs manually;
• Reduced memory usage of multiple textures along with a few performance improvements;
• Added a limit to the number of Mines all "Mine" type skills can have active at any one time;
• Fixed an issue where skills that target random enemies could target invulnerable enemies such as the Void Presence;
• Fixed an issue where the Legionnaire's Catapults would target invalid targets such as the Void Presence;
• Fixed an issue where the Panther Bond connection would be affected by the Special Effects Visibility slider;
• Fixed an issue where the Legionnaire's Catapult Blueprints would become invisible if special effect visibility was low;
• Fixed an issue where if you reduced the cost of the Legionnaire's Catapults through the skill tree, the price reduction would not properly show in the UI;
• Fixed an issue where the Legionnaire's catapult part item would not be glowing if visual effect visibility was too low;
• Fixed an issue where the Chaoswalker's Orbs would not be glowing if visual effect visibility was too low;
• Fixed an issue where the Hound Master's Beefs would not be glowing if visual effect visibility was too low;
• Fixed an issue where the Necromancer's Body Parts would not be glowing if visual effect visibility was too low;
• Fixed an issue where the Assassin's Tasks might still be active after a match ended;
• Reduced the opacity of the ground effect of the Spellblade's Rift;
• Fixed the damage area of the Void Presence which was slightly larger than the red circle;
• Fixed an issue where buffs could appear gigantic on certain enemies and allies, causing a lot of screen clutter;
• Fixed an issue where in certain maps, enemies would spawn slower than intended especially in the beginning of the match;
• Fixed an issue where Fiery Blades and Spider Cocoon descriptions would not update properly with the Extra Help rune;
• Fixed an issue where Synergy type power ups would not specify that they also work with the upgraded versions of negative effects;
• Multiple fixes around skill tree nodes, including small visual issues, incorrect values being displayed, purchase order, etc;
• Multiple new sound effects across the game;
• Fixed Frostborn warrior icons on the Death Recap screen;
• The Kobold Demolisher enemy no longer causes damage to itself with one of its attacks;

EDIT: Last night when this update was released, we encountered an issue with Mac users where their save files would seem to be wiped. We have just released a correction for that issue and save files should be restored to their correct versions for Mac users, so if you do encounter this or any other errors, please do let us know, we really apologise for the inconvenience! Thats all for now! We hope to start sharing more details of all the stuff we are working on in the background soon, but until then, we hope you enjoy these fixes and improvements! Thank you so much once again for everyones feedback!
- Dev team

[ 2023-10-20 20:09:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Survivors! We know youve been waiting a long time for this, and today, finally, we bring you the biggest update so far, Frostborn Wrath!
But before we get into the nitty and gritty of the patch notes, to celebrate the newly released update, we will be holding our first ever Live Developer Q&A this Tuesday, September 12th at 5 pm UTC ! If you have burning questions youd like to ask directly to the developers, join us on Discord to participate, we will even give away a few Steam Gift Cards to the coolest questions we get!
Now, here is the full list of changes of what is waiting for you in this update!

New Character Skill Trees!

Unlock new unique powers with Prestige levels for the remaining characters: Chaoswalker, Beastmaster, Assassin, Elementalist, Legionnaire, Necromancer and Death Knight;

More Void Hunter Ascensions:

Discover the hidden powers and exclusive mechanics of the remaining characters, bringing their powers to the next level. This update includes the ascension powers for the following characters: Chaoswalker, Beastmaster, Assassin, Elementalist, Legionnaire, Necromancer and Death Knight;

7 New craftable weapons:

In this update, we have introduced new craftable weapons for the following characters! Chaoswalker: Azramiel's Blessing Beastmaster: Widow's Embrace Assassin: Tempest Edge Elementalist: Scepter of Darkness Legionnaire: Vulcan's Impaler Necromancer: Grimtalon's Scourge Death Knight: Wintersorrow

14 new active skills:

You can now find the following active skills, exclusive to the new weapons! Chaoswalker: Ripple of Light, Sanctified Orb Beastmaster: Spider Cocoon, Summon Spider Queen Assassin: Lightning Stab, Lightning Surge Elementalist: Shadow Cut, Dark Torrent Legionnaire: Piercing Flames, Incinerating Spear Necromancer: Murder of Crows, Carrion Crows Death Knight: Frost Strike, Glacial Affinity

22 new runes:

Even more new special runes can be unlocked through the Skill Tree of each character, bringing even more ways to customize each run;

New Enemies:

The Frozen Wasteland is now filled with new dangers and powerful foes. All enemies have been completely revamped with 19 new enemies between regular and elite versions, along with an entirely new soundtrack!

New Skill List menu:

Now, you can finally check the list of all skills a character has access to via the Characters menu!

New Negative Effects overlay:

Now you can head on to the Settings menu and enable overlays on heath bars for each negative effect that causes damage in the game, such as Doom, Burn, etc; [hr][/hr]

Skill Changes:

• Changed the order of the Spellblade Riftwalker skills so Energy Pulse is the last skill, and Arcane Comets is the second skill to be used;
• Summon Skeletal Archer damage reduced from 200 to 140;
• Summon Helper Elves damage reduced from 150 to 100;
• Summon Skeletal Mage damage reduced from 350 to 180;
• Frenzied Bunnies' negative effect power was reduced by approximately 15%;
• Skill Tree nodes that grant stats when you take damage now have limits to their bonuses;

[hr][/hr]

General changes and fixes:

• Player movement will now be more responsive, for example, when changing directions;
• The scenario will now become transparent when it would be blocking your view of your own character and immediate proximity;
• All loot, currencies, materials, prestige,are saved every time you go through an endless portal, instead of only when the match ended;
• You can now use the keyboard to learn skills in the Level Up panel;
• You can now see the Weapon Special skill on the Blacksmith menu before crafting a new weapon;
• Arcane Weaver's Mana Crystals can now be collected instantly;
• Skill Tree nodes that grant stats when you take damage now have limits to their bonuses;
• Changed damage numbers at the ending screen to use text notation, so they are not as long and hard to see as before;
• Crystal Eggs in the Caves of Dhal Zhog now have a loading bar to display how long it takes to pick one up;
• Added option to General Options so you can configure the minimum delay for picking up skills in the Level Up screen (to prevent accidental skill picks);
• Fixed an issue where the Spellblade Riftwalker skills had multiple tags, receiving more bonuses than they should;
• Fixed issue where Synergy-type power-ups would not apply rune effects properly, such as Gangrene and Pulse of Agony;
• Fixed an issue where Fissure Strike would aim under the crosshair, with an incorrect angle;
• Fixed soundtrack not reverting from Boss to Regular;
• Fixed an issue where you could die as the Level Up screen would appear;
• Fixed an issue where a few enemies would deal much more damage than intended, especially in endless modes;
• Fixed issue where when changing resolutions with a gamepad, the game would lose track of the controller;
• Loads of other small fixes all across the game;

[hr][/hr]

Developer Notes

While this update finally introduces the Ascensions and unique mechanics for the remaining characters, there is still a lot coming to the game. This was the longest time we went without an update, as it involved a lot of work and testing to make sure that the new features are cool and fun to interact with, but I wanted to reiterate that we are still fully committed to making Soulstone Survivors the best game it can be, and we continue working more than full time on it to make sure we can deliver cool stuff, as fast as we can. We have been wanting to host a Live Q&A for a long time, and it's been hard to find the time to do it with so much going on for this update (and some for the next update as well!), but we want you to know that we are always listening, and we believe that a Live Q&A will be awesome! A great way to talk about all the stuff that is in the game right now, the new stuff from the update, but also about all the suggestions we get, and some of the new stuff we already have in the works for the next update. Since the beginning weve been developing Soulstone Survivors very closely to the community, with the feedback that all of you have given us, and we want to improve on that, and we hope that you will join us this September 12th, at 5 pm UTC on Discord! We are a bit nervous haha but excited about being able to chat directly with everyone live! We hope you will enjoy all the new stuff in this update, as always thank you very much for your support and patience, we continue giving our all to make sure the game is as good as it can be and we wouldnt be able to do it without you! - Dev Team

[ 2023-09-08 20:54:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, Survivors! :cozyroe: We've been busy working away behind the curtain, and we're back with a hotfix for Soulstone Survivors! As per the feedback we received from you, we have been working on addressing some major issues encountered in the Path of Ascension update. This update will address those issues and make the experience considerably smoother!
The next major update to the game is well underway, and were sure youll love it when it drops. So, make sure that you keep your eyes peeled on our socials and in Discord for more information about whats coming next in Soulstone Survivors.

Full change list for version v0.10.034:

• Summoned units should now benefit from runes as expected, for example, runes that give you a bonus based on your health or on your level will use your attributes for the calculation instead of the summoned unit's attributes;
• Most summoned units can no longer be directly targeted by enemies, so enemies will prefer targeting you. The following summoned units will still attract attention from enemies: Chaos Golem, Battle Moose and Cave Bear;
• Now that summoned units properly inherit all of the player's attributes, they no longer receive a hidden damage bonus based on the curse intensity. They still receive defensive benefits based on curse intensity;
• Fixed an issue where with the Vulnerable Target rune, summoned units could potentially do infinite damage;
• Fixed an issue where with the Focus Fire rune, summoned units could become unable to hit enemies;
• Fixed an issue where with the Purity rune, summoned units could start healing the enemies;
• Fixed an issue where Skill Affinity runes could proc every level when used in combination with Summoning skills;
• Fixed an issue where the Singular Focus rune, when used in conjunction with the Divine Legacy rune, could cause the game to freeze due to the lack of available legendary powers;
• Fixed an issue where certain Runes would be applied multiple times to high quantity summons such as Frenzied Bunnies;
• Fixed an issue where Riftwalker (Spellblade) and Wrathful Focus (Pyromancer) ascensions would not be able to multicast;
• Removed the ranged web attack from the basic spider;
• Fixed the tooltip descriptions in the Skill Tree to mention that certain skill trees are not available in the current version;
• Fixed an issue where zooming in/out of the skill tree could cause strange visual artifacts;
• Fixed an issue where the gamepad could lose focus of the game when hovering over newly unlocked achievements;
• Fixed an issue where Bloodlust's cooldown would not work as intended while mounting a Panther;
• Fixed an issue where the maximum number of hounds for the Hound Master should be 5, instead of 4 (with skill tree upgrades);
• Fixed an issue where the Spellblade's Rift could appear inside a rock in the Scorching Valley;
• Cobra Totems damage increased from 150 to 300;
• Frenzied Bunnies negative effect power increased by approximately 25%;
• Volcano Eruption damage increased from 150 to 200;
• Summon Plague Rats Rot damage increased from 600 to 1000;
• Shockwave Totem damage increased from 100 to 200;
• Summon Putrid Hounds damage increased from 200 to 300;
• Summon Skeletal Mage damage increased from 500 to 600 ;
• Summon Swamp Boar damage increased from 100 to 200;
• Summon Swamp Boar Rot damage increased from 300 to 400;
• Summon Ballista damage increased from 120 to 200 ;

Thats all for now! Thank you so much once again for everyones feedback!

- Dev team

[ 2023-06-28 16:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya Survivors! :cozyroe: First and foremost, we would like to thank you for all the love & feedback that you gave our latest game update, Path of Ascension! It wouldnt have been a success if it wasnt for all of you. That said, we did hear your amazing feedback and suggestions. As per the feedback collected after the update was released, we encountered several bugs, and below are the details of the fixes were releasing with this following update.

• Added a way to override Auto Aim behavior. By default, you can hold the Right Mouse Button or the Right Analog Stick;
• Added tooltips to the Skill Tree to give a little bit more information about the new functionalities;
• The Hound Master's dogs now properly scale with character's stats, weapon stats, runes, skill tree progression, and curse intensity, which should result in a considerable increase in their power;
• Fixed an issue where the Hound Master's Hound's Feast would grant twice the bonus it should grant;
• Synergy power-ups can now be officially picked up multiple times;
• Multiple new sound effects for enemies;
• Increased the following range of Fiery Blades, so they have more autonomy to attack enemies further away before they come back to you;
• Runes Unwavering Persistence now recovers 10 health every 5 seconds, up from 5;
• Rune's Unwavering Persistence no longer accumulates healing over time, working as intended;
• Rune Healing Flow now recovers 15 health for every 100 enemies killed, up from 10;
• Imminent Wisdom (Spellblade's Riftwalker power) now also affects summoned units;
• Fixed an issue where the Spellblade's skill tree would be unlocked earlier than it should be;
• Fixed an issue where it would be possible to craft a weapon without materials;
• Fixed issue where Exorcism would not be able to critically heal the caster;
• Changed Nature's Guardian tooltip to say +1 dash count, instead of +100% dash count;
• The Cupid in the Whispering Grove is no longer targetable by summoned units;
• Fixed issue where the Ascension tooltip could show together with the Endless/Overlord tooltip;
• Fixed issue where in Bumble's Lair, characters would be "offset" from their real positions;
• Fixed issue where mounting the Panther could cause your character to be "offset" from its real position;
• Fixed an issue where Affinity runes, when used with Unconvenional Start rune, would trigger twice;
• Fixed an issue where the Void Presence could activate mines and traps;
• Fixed multiple issues related to the navigation with a controller in the skill tree and across the menus, where the game could lose focus of which object was selected;
• Fixed an issue where certain debuff effects such as Piercing Shout would show in an incorrect position on multiple enemies;
• Fixed the Paladin's skill tree shared node that increased healing received from crystals to work as intended;
• Fixed an issue where the Spellblade Riftwalker's Rift could open on top of a specific mountain in the Scorching Valley;
• Fixed an issue where summoned units would incorrectly gain massive damage and health bonuses when you picked up upgrades for their skills;
• Fixed an issue where Noxious Shot could fire sub-projectiles without limit, causing a major performance impact;
• Fixed an issue where Bolt Barrage would not appear as an option when using the Singular Focus rune;
• Fixed issue where the tooltip for the Hunger mechanic was not showing the correct values after some skill tree progression;
• Fixed issue where Rage tooltip was not showing the correct values after some skill tree progression;
• Fixed an issue where Mana Crystals and Crystal Eggs collect range would be affected by experience collect range;
• Fixed an issue where Divine Inspiration would scale with experience, collect range;
• Increased the base size of Divine Inspiration Sliver of Light;

Thats all for now! Thank you so much once again for everyones feedback!
- Dev Team

[ 2023-06-10 01:24:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya Survivors! :cozyroe: It's time for a long awaited update in Soulstone Survivors. Thank you for being patient with us while we've worked to put this together! Today we bring you one of the most significant updates to the game yet! Path of Ascension.

Here is what is waiting for you:

• New Feature: Character Skill Tree!:

  
  You can now find character-specific nodes in the Skill Tree, which can be unlocked using skill points earned from Prestige levels, with loads of new types of skill tree effects and over 200 new nodes to learn. This update brings the skill trees for the following characters: Barbarian, Pyromancer, Hound Master, Spellblade, Arcane Weaver, Sentinel, and Paladin, with the remaining characters coming in the next update!
  

• Void Hunter Ascension:

  
  Unlock and upgrade entirely new character-exclusive mechanics through the new Character Skill Tree, ascending your powers to new levels.
  This update includes the ascension powers for the following characters: Barbarian, Pyromancer, Hound Master, Spellblade, Arcane Weaver, Sentinel, and Paladin, with the remaining characters coming in the next update!
  
  
  

• 7 New craftable weapons:

  
  In this update, we have introduced new craftable weapons for the following characters! Barbarian Bloodgod's Legacy Hound Master Dragonfire Scattergun
  Pyromancer Damnatus, Spire of Shadows Spellblade Scorching Edge
  Arcane WeaverGlacies, Rod of Eternal Ice Sentinel Noxious Longbow
  Paladin Dawnbreaker's Mace
  

• 14 new active skills:

  
  Along with the new craftable weapons, we have added new active skills! Barbarian Heavy Strike, Ground Slam Hound Master Bolt Barrage, Cyclone Shot Pyromancer Dark Swarm, Gathering Shadows Spellblade Firestorm, Fiery Blades Arcane Weaver Frost Beam, Ice Shield SentinelNoxious Shot, Venomous Volley Paladin Fissure Strike, Staggering Blow
  
  

• 21 new runes:

  
  These new special runes are unlocked through the Skill Tree of each character and can offer different ways to customize your characters for every match.
  

• New Enemies:

  
  The Caves of Dhal Zhog enemies have been completely revamped, and it now has 19 new enemies between regular and elite versions, along with an entirely new soundtrack!
  
  

• New Corrupted Void Hunters:

  
  The 7 remaining Corrupted Void Hunters joined the fray, and now if you have the Overwhelming Corruption curses active, you may find the Hound Master, the Beastmaster, the Necromancer, the Legionnaire, the Pyromancer, the Sentinel, or the Assassin.

• New Feature - Auto Aim

  
  Now you can toggle auto-aim from the options menu so that all skills that normally need to be aimed are automatically fired at the closest enemy.

[hr][/hr]

Additional changes have been made to Skills & Runes, along with some additional features that we pushed for this update. Details will be listed below!

Miscellaneous updates:



• Skills that buff you will now show a duration effect in their skill icons, so it is easier to track their durations;
• Skills that summon minions will now show the amount of minions active in their skill icons, so it is easier to track how many minions you have;
• You can now rotate your character in the main menu of the game;
• Rich presence support is added. The game should be visible in Discord activity status, provided youve got the game activity enabled in your user settings.

Runes Changes:



• Focus Fire rune is now Epic. It costs 3 runic power ( up from 2). Additionally, we have increased their damage by 60%( up from 40%) and have reduced the area by 30% ( up from 20%);
• We have increased the damage from Executioner rune by 4% per different negative effect ( down from 5%);
• Generalist rune is now Epic, costs 3 Runic Power (up from 2), increases damage by 4% per different skill tag (down from 5%);
• All "Inclination" type runes (extra chance to get skills of a certain type) are now Uncommon and cost 1 runic power (down from 3);
• All "Mastery" type runes (extra skills available from a certain type) now add up to 8 skills of the type specified (up from 6);
• Reroll Mastery rune is now Uncommon, costs 1 runic power ( down from 3), and gives you 1 extra reroll for every 10 levels (up from every 5 levels);
• Surefooted rune is now Uncommon, costs 1 runic power ( down from 2), but still has the same effects, reducing damage taken by 15% and the force of pushback effects;

Skill Changes:



• Exorcism now heals the caster for 3 if you hit 4 or more enemies, instead of 0.5 per enemy hit;
• Arcane Spark damage increasedfrom 160 to 200 ;
• Chromatic Bolt negative effect strength increased by approximately 25%;
• Chromatic Bolt cooldown reduced from 7 to 5.5 seconds;
• Magic Missiles damage increased from 30 to 45;
• Spreadshot damage increased from 40 to 55;
• Spreadshot cooldown reduced from 1.2 to 1.1 seconds;
• Spreadshot range increased by 25%;
• Ricochet Shot damage increased from 100 to 180;
• Ricochet Shot cooldown reduced from 5 to 4 seconds;
• Disengage damage increased from 450 to 500;
• Chaos Bolt's maximum damage increased from 240 to 280;
• Chaos Bolt's negative effect strength increased by approximately 25%;
• Chaos Bolts range increased by 20%;
• Frost Bolts damage increased from 300 to 340;
• Frost Bolts cooldown was reduced from 1 to 0.9 seconds;
• Bladed Chakram damage increased from 120 to 200; / Stacks to apply 5 -> 4 / Total Damage 90 -> 130
• Bladed Chakram rot damage increased from 450 to 520;
• Shoot damage increased from 50 to 80;
• Shoot now applies 2 stacks of Fragility, up from 1;
• Buckshot damage increased from 100 to 140;
• Buckshot cooldown reduced from 2 to 1.8;
• Shadow Bolt cooldown reduced from 8 to 6.5;
• Shadow Bolt now fires 8 projectiles, up from 7;
• Bombardment damage increased from 220 to 250;
• Plague Rats rot damage was reduced from 600 to 480;
• Carnage damage was reduced from 350 to 300;
• Carnage cooldown increased from 5 to 5.5; / Stacks to apply 5 -> 4 / Total Damage 100 -> 110
• Carnage bleed damage was reduced from 500 to 440;

General Changes and Fixes:



• Added new sound effects when collecting experience orbs;
• Skills will now be highlighted in your skill bar when highlighting power-ups for specific skills;
• Added a General option for the game to pause when it loses focus (such as when alt-tabbing);
• Fixed issue where sometimes the player would not be able to craft a weapon even when they had all the required materials and resources;
• Fixed issue where dashing with certain characters in certain positions would cause flashes in the screen;
• Fixed issue where the range calculation for certain projectiles made them travel much further away than they should, for skills such as Chromatic Bolt;
• Fixed issue where the DPS of skills in the ending screen could be bugged by picking and removing multiple instances of the same skill;
• Fixed issue where in a very specific scenario, you could potentially get 2 of the same synergy power-ups;
• Fixed issue where Weapons Expert would not properly give you the secondary skill of a weapon;
• Fixed issue where meteors could keep falling even after you finished the level;
• Fixed issue where the Skip Active Skills checkbox would not persist if enabled during any type of endless cycle;
• Fixed tooltip issue with damage for summoned units such as Plague Rats and Frenzied Bunnies;
• Fixed issues where certain destructible scenario objects could persist in very specific situations;
• Fixed issue where healing that healed 0 health would still show a number;
• Fixed issue where the Summon Ballista would not bring the ballista closer to you when re-summoned;
• Fixed tooltip of Sugar Rush, which was not properly adjusting the values;
• Fixed issue where Prestige would appear as if counted twice in the ending screen in certain situations;
• Fixed multiple minor UI issues around the game;

[hr][/hr] [h4]Thats all for now! Thank you so much, guys![/h4] - Dev Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/

[ 2023-06-03 11:07:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!cozyroe As we are finishing the last touches of the biggest update for the game yet (by far!!), we wanted to celebrate the occasion and offer a special,25% off week-long deal, so you can grab Soulstone Survivors and prepare for the new content to come! The sale ends on June 5th, so now is a great time to try the game out!
Stay informed about the latest news and updates via our Facebook and Twitter pages! Dont forget to join our Discord server to discuss and share your achievements related to Soulstones survivors! Come join us at Game Smithing Official Discord server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/
Kind regards, - The Dev Team

[ 2023-05-29 17:28:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya Survivors!!!cozyroe We know its been a while since you heard from us, and we hope youve been enjoying the game in the time weve been hidden away. Were sure everyone is eager to hear what weve been working on and were happy to let you know the next update to Soulstone Survivors is well on the way!
Well have a more thorough update for you when the time comes but for now, make sure that you are following our socials, you never know what we might be cooking up over there, and remember to keep your eyes peeled for the next announcement here on Steam.csgostar As much as wed love to give you more details right now, we dont want to give away too much, so for now heres a little something to keep you going.
Weve been working on some new weapons for you to play with, but rest assured there is much, much more to come in this update! Thank you all for your continued support! Best Wishes
- The Dev Team

[ 2023-05-19 18:12:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Today we are happy to announce the new update, Kobold's Treasure! This time around a new secret can be found, and if you are up to the task, you may unlock new unique active skills!
This update also brings some smaller fixes and improvements which you can read more about below:

New content and features:

- Kobold's Treasure Event: 06 Apr - 16 Apr Find the forgotten prisoner and reveal his secret! Challenge will be permanently available in-game. - 3 new seasonal active skills: Unlocked with hidden achievements.

General changes and fixes:

- Volcano Eruption now works like other Totems, being recreated close to you when the skill is re-cast and the limit is reached; - New sound effects and polishing touches; - Fixed multiple sources of damage not showing properly in the Death Recap screen; - Fixed multiple effects not properly reacting to the visibility slider option; - Fixed Orbs of Destruction Burn name not being colored; - Pillars now will use the Elite health bar; - Fixed issue where if you paused the game just as you went through a portal, you could stay in a black screen (you could still unpause and continue); - Fixed requirements for all synergy power-ups, as they were ignoring certain skills; - Dogs should no longer disappear in the main menu; Enjoy the special decorations of the Kobold's Treasure event, which runs from Apr 06th until Apr 16th! The secret challenge and active skills are permanent and can be completed at ANY time!

Developer notes

While this is a smaller update to celebrate yet another seasonal event, in the background, we continue working on the next major update, in which we are aiming to bring a new major feature to the game that has been a long time coming, so keep an eye out! We hope that for now you will enjoy the new secret challenge available in the game, and as always, if you have any feedback or run into any issues with the game, do let us know! Thank you very much for your support, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2023-04-06 22:40:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! After the Scorching Sands update this last Friday (you can read the full list of changes here), we received a few reports of new bugs and issues that we wanted to address as soon as possible. Today we are rolling out a new hotfix update that addresses the following: - Minerals now spawn relative to the progression of a match, so the amount of minerals you are able to gather in a single cycle should be more consistent, rewarding faster playthroughs rather than longer playthroughs; - Increased the chance of Uncommon ores spawning during a match; Developer notes: The previous system would spawn minerals at a fixed time interval, and based on how far along you were in a match (for example, how many bosses you had killed), the game would favour spawning rarer and rarer minerals. However, this functionality caused a problem, where the most efficient way to farm for materials would be to eliminate 4 out of 5 bosses, and keep running around, avoiding to kill the last boss, in order to farm as many high grade minerals as possible. Now, minerals spawn based on the percentage progression of a map, so if you manage to finish a level in 5 minutes, you will get the same amount of minerals as if you completed that level in 30 minutes, rewarding faster playthroughs which are way more interesting than just running around and trying NOT to kill enemies. In addition to that, Uncommon Gems were rarer than intended, making crafting new weapons challenging for new players. - New in-game achievements were not properly syncing with Steam Achievements (this was fixed a few hours after the update); - Fixed an issue where summoned units with a timer such as the Summon Infantry skill did not have their timers reset when they were to be re-summoned in the new system; - Added more error logging to try and help detect the error around not being able to craft a weapon when you already have all the materials and resources to craft it (if you run into this issue again, please do let us know!); - Fixed a very rare occurrence where it might have been possible for your own Rot stacks to spread to you, causing massive damage on yourself; - Fixed the count of negative effects on Bosses not showing on Mac OS; - Fixed issue with the Elite Snake projectile not interacting properly with the visibility slider; - Fixed Ice Bomb and Lightning Bomb from Colummeth and Keythaiz having no name or icon on Death Recap interface; And that's it! While those are relatively small changes, we expect that the Mineral gathering rate will be greatly improved all across the board, and should incentivise a more interesting playstyle than it did before. As always do let us know if you run into any issues with the game, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2023-03-27 20:34:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! I am very happy to announce that we have just released a new update for Soulstone Survivors, the Scorching Sands update! This time around we are adding the remaining rare weapons to the game, offering new play styles for many characters, in addition to a complete refactor of the enemies of the Scorching Valley map, and finally a one-hand only control scheme using the mouse which has been a long time coming, among many other changes!








As with the last update, this time around our focus has been in not only adding new content in the form of a lot of new enemies, weapons and skills, but to also work on some areas that have been pending for a while. A big one is having a mouse-only control scheme to support playing the game with one hand only, which we have promised a long time ago and finally managed to get it in! This update also brings some other quality of life improvements such as the Death Recap screen, UI improvements and overall should make the game experience even smoother! We are already working hard on some bigger features that will be coming with the next few updates, and as always, we will talk a little bit about what is coming and an overall update on the game and where we are as a team, so if you are interested, check the end of this post! But first... here is the full list of changes!

New content and features:

- 7 New craftable weapons: Chaoswalker: Firewalker's Spire Beastmaster: Bonecrusher Assassin: Grenadier's Mark Elementalist: Scepter of Flame Legionnaire: Fang of Vipernus Necromancer: Noxious Reaper Death Knight: Last Sentence - 14 new active skills: Chaoswalker: Orbs of Destruction, Volcano Eruption Beastmaster: Brutal Slam, Summon Cave Bear Assassin: Debilitating Bomb, Fan of Bombs Elementalist: Ray of Fire, Heat Explosion Legionnaire: Corrosive Spear, Purging Slam Necromancer: Plague Rats, Putrefy Death Knight: Ravaging Strike, Carnage - New enemies: The Scorching Valley enemies have been completely revamped and it now has 17 new enemies between regular and elite versions! As mentioned in our last update, all other maps will also be reworked over the next updates until all enemies are unique per map. - New feature - Mouse Only input: Now it is possible to control your character only with your mouse if you so wish! Just go into the General Settings menu and turn on "Mouse Only", so you can click to move and dash. - New feature - Death Recap: If you are defeated, you can now view the Death Recap window, which shows the last few damage sources you received before being eliminated, which should make it easier for you to understand what caused your demise and prepare for it next time;

Rune changes:

- Synergetic rune now increases the chance of finding synergy type of effects considerably more than before, and has had its extra chance increased from 20% to 25%;

Skill changes:

- Summoned units now receive your power-ups instantly whenever you level up, as opposed to only when they spawned; - Skills that summon units will no longer kill the units in order to summon new units. They will now fully heal the existing units instead, which should considerably improve the interaction between Cast Frequency and Summon skills; - Summoned units now inherit the character attributes, skill tree nodes and runes selected by the player (previously they only inherited your in-game power-ups); - Fixed issue where synergy power-ups were not scaling properly with your damage modifiers, dealing considerably less damage than expected; - Bear Trap, Explosive Trap, Mine Field, Shrapnel Mine and Void Trap have had their triggering area increased by 100%; - Acid Rain rot damage increased from 100 to 150; - Arcane Orb now fires 25% less additional projectiles; - Arcane Slash cooldown reduced from 1.4 to 1.1 seconds; - Avalanche damage reduced from 90 to 80; - Bladed Chakram cooldown reduced from 6 to 4 seconds; - Camor's Arrow damage increased from 3000 to 4000; - Camor's Arrow bleed damage increased from 600 to 800; - Carnage damage reduced from 450 to 350; - Carnage bleed damage reduced from 720 to 500; - Chaos Bolt random negative effect potency increased by approximately 60%; - Chaos Bolt main projectile now also applies negative effects; - Chaos Totem random negative effect potency increased by approximately 30%; - Chaos Totem main projectile now also applies negative effects; - Chromatic Bolt cooldown increased from 6 to 7 seconds; - Combustion burn damage increased from 70 to 140; - Demolish now sends its shockwaves in predetermined angles instead of random angles; - Demolish shockwave damage increased from 100 to 150; - Demolish shockwave hemorrhage damage increased from 150 to 250; - Double Slash bleed damage increased from 100 to 200; - Fire Wall's cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds; - Fire Wall's burn damage increased from 680 to 1200; - Flamethrower's cooldown reduced from 11 to 7 seconds; - Flamethrower's melting damage increased from 75 to 150; - Flame Wave's cooldown reduced from 8 to 4 seconds; - Holy Fire damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Light Beam cooldown increased from 10 to 11 seconds; - Light Beam total damage reduced from 280 to 200; - Meteor's cooldown reduced from 6 to 3 seconds; - Obliterate cooldown increased from 1.5 to 1.7 seconds; - Poison Bolt poison damage increased from 180 to 300; - Poison Bomb periodic poison application damage increased from 150 to 250; - Poison Bomb area increased by 33%; - Ravaging Strike cooldown increased from 1.3 to 1.6 seconds; - Reap cooldown increased from 6 to 7 seconds; - Reap Doom damage increased from 200% to 250%; - Scent of Blood cooldown increased from 34 to 38 seconds; - Scent of Blood duration reduced from 10 to 8 seconds; - Severe Cold now travels a total of 40 meters, down from 60; - Shadow Bolt doom damage increased from 210 to 300; - Shadow Grasp area increased by 20%; - Shadow Orb now fires 25% less additional projectiles; - Shadow Spike cooldown reduced from 6 to 5 seconds; - Shadow Spike damage increased from 230 to 250; - Shockwave damage increased from 250 to 400; - Shockwave Totem hemorrhage damage increased from 200 to 300; - Suction Bomb's area increased by 25%; - Threshing Blast cooldown reduced from 6.5 to 5.5 seconds; - Throw Axe hemorrhage damage increased from 300 to 500; - Thrust bleed damage increased from 120 to 200; - Thrust tooltip no shows the correct damage, from 90 to 120 (actual damage unchanged); - Thundering Slash extra damage per stack reduced from 25 to 20; - Venomous Strike damage increased from 120 to 150;

General changes and fixes:

- Proper controller support added to the Curses interface; - 14 new achievements, related to the new weapons and skills introduced in this update; - New soundtracks for the Scorching Valley map; - End Game interface has received multiple visual changes in addition to the Death Recap button; - Dashes no longer accumulate with your current speed, having a more stable and predictable travel distance; - Fixed an issue where in very specific scenarios, when you took an endless portal, certain power-ups would not work as expected; - Fixed an issue with certain projectile skills both from the player and enemies, where they could incorrectly be causing damage twice in the same target; - Fixed Ray of Doom not counting properly the number of enemies hit during a match; - Fixed an issue where certain skills such as Flamethrower, Flurry and Bladestorm were limited by the framerate of the game, meaning they would deal less damage than expected in extreme scenarios; - Fixed Arcane Blade tooltip displaying the wrong damage number; - Fixed a few issues with Arcane Shield damage calculations, which in some cases would deal less damage than expected; - Fixed an issue with Arcane Shield where the health of the shield itself could "critically strike", having considerably more health than intended; - Fixed Arcane Shield tooltip which had the wrong parameters being affected by the Potency modifiers; - Increased the visual indicator of Aelfraed's Shield Bash skill; - Fixed a visual issue where sometimes a new skill would not show instantly in the Power Up list; - Fixed a visual issue where some gameplay labels would not appear on Mac OS; - Multiple localization issues have been addressed; - Fixed tons of minor issues and polishing touches across the game;

Community Events:

Every couple of weeks we run suggestion events on our Discord (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT), where the top community picks make their way into the game, so if you want to help us shape the future of the game, be sure to check these out! In addition to that, today we are making the first ever Community Build Highlight! We pick a cool build submitted by the community, try it ourselves and showcase it on our official YouTube channel! You can check out the first highlighted build below, the Bear Enchanter! [previewyoutube=XIcokjOoM8w;full][/previewyoutube] If you'd like to see more build highlights, or submit your own build, drop us a comment on the video above and check out the description to see how to participate! And, if you have suggestions how it might be cooler to continue this series, let us know!

Developer notes

As always, in the bottom of every update we like to go a little bit into detail about what is coming to the game, what is going on with our team and what you can expect moving forward!

Map Diversity

This update takes another step into ensuring that each map plays and feels different from each other. We are continuously adding new enemies until all maps have unique challenges and will continue doing so not only with enemies but with bosses and challenges that are exclusive to each map as we continue moving forward.

But again... what about our excess resouces?

As mentioned in the previous update, we do have a system in the works which will allow you to use those precious materials to enhance and customise even more your builds and characters. We were hoping that we would have been able to get this new system implemented into this update, but unfortunately, we still have a few things left to do on our end, and we decided to postpone it until the next major update. It is still our number one priority for new content in the game, and you can rest assured that it is coming!

New Game Modes

Another major feature that we are starting to develop and add into the game are new game modes. We see the current version of Soulstone Survivors as a very solid foundation, but, with soooo many possibilities to explore that it is hard to contain our excitement! We believe that with the basis we have today, one of the coolest ways we can continue expanding the game is adding new ways to play the game, some of them can be simple rule changes, some of them can be considerably different game modes with different objectives, ways to gain power and entirely new ways to build your characters from the ground up with every match. The idea is that you will be able to play only the way you want to, and no game modes would be mandatory, as we believe Soulstone Survivors is all about having a good time and exploring crazy power and builds in just a few minutes.

New Developers

As of the middle of March, we finally finished our hiring process, and I am happy to announce that new developers will be starting with us in the beginning of April! We met a ton of amazing people along this long process that took over two months and literally hundreds of hours of work, and I am super excited to have new folks joining our team! These extra hands will allow us to not only speed up development of new content but also start working on more ambitious features that we had on hold for a while, so expect some big news in the coming months!

Next Steps

I hope that all the above gives a little glimpse about future content and directions we want to go with the game. We will continue releasing major updates not only as we move towards the full release, but honestly, we have so many ideas that we can try and create that we see all we have today as just the beginning. We are in it for the long haul, and we are taking steps to make sure we can keep supporting the game for years and years to come. And finally, to close off this wall of text haha, I just wanted to once again thank you, very very much for the support so far. We are extremely lucky to have such an amazing community with us and we don't take that for granted even for a moment and will continue working as hard as we can to make the game as good as it can be. Thank you for inspiring us, we hope you will enjoy this update, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2023-03-24 18:34:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We have just released a minor hotfix update after yesterday's big update Omen of Spring (read more about it here), and in reality it is only to fix 3 issues: - Crafting the 3rd Spellblade weapon would not grant the achievement on Steam; - Heartrending Strike would remove all stacks of Bleed, but not convert them into Hemorrhage; - Lock feature would sometimes work inconsistently, sometimes being consumed, but without locking the item; And that's it! I thought it was a good idea to make an announcement just in case you find it weird you get a minor update on your side! As always do let us know if you run into any issues with the game, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2023-02-14 21:24:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

With the release of the newest update, Omen of Spring (you can read all about it here), a new secret has been found. Are you brave enough to disturb the unknown forces of the void in exchange for power? Enjoy the special decorations of the Ritual of Love event, which runs from Feb 13th until Feb 26th and introduces 3 new unique Seasonal Skills that once unlocked, are available forever! PS: The secret will be available permanently, even after the event is over!

[ 2023-02-13 14:56:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! I am happy to announce the newest Soulstone Survivors update, Omen of Spring! It has been a long time coming, but it's finally here, with new skills, weapons, secrets, and a ton of quality of life improvements and features that were in our list for a long time! Here is the highlight of what you can find inside!









The focus of this update is not only adding new content to the game, but start acting on the topics we mentioned previously. First, we continue adding new weapons and skills that offer new playstyles, along with major balance changes and even the redesign of a negative effect. Second, we are starting to build the diversity of enemies per map we have promised for a while, starting with the Whispering Grove but soon expanding to all maps. And then finally, adding new challenges and continuously improving the existing content, interfaces and visuals of the game. There is still a lot coming and a lot of hard work ahead of us, and we will talk a little bit about next steps at the end of this post, but first... here is the full list of changes!

New content and features:

- Ritual of Love Event: 13 Feb - 26 Feb Find new secrets in the heart of the woods and unlock unique skills, if you can! Secret will be permanently available in-game. - 7 New craftable weapons: Barbarian: Tempest Battle Axes Pyromancer: Shard of Chaos Hound Master: Heartseeking Rifle Spellblade: Icelord's Blade Arcane Weaver: Benedictio, Staff of Dawn Sentinel: Misery's End Paladin: Arcane Scepter of Light - 17 new active skills: Barbarian: Thundering Slash, Overcharged Strike Pyromancer: Chaotic Inferno, Chaos Eruption Hound Master: Precise Shot, Threshing Blast Spellblade: Arctic Assault, Frozen Blade Arcane Weaver: Sacred Orb, Celestial Retribution Sentinel: Obscure Arrow, Void Trap Paladin: Radiant Light, Arcane Mace All characters: Secret 1, Secret 2, Secret 3 - New enemies: The Whispering Grove now has unique regular and elite enemies, together with a new spawning system that should help bring more variety to each run. Over the next few updates, all other maps will also be reworked until all enemies are unique per map. - New feature - Lock Power: You can now purchase from the Skill Tree the ability to Lock power-ups a few times per run, so if you get more than one amazing choice in a single level up, you can lock one, pick the other, and then on your next level up, learn the power-up you locked before; - Exposed and Vulnerable redesigned: Increases direct damage taken by up to 8% for 6 seconds. Bonus is proportional to the damage caused by each attack. Vulnerable also multiplies that bonus by 2 on critical strikes. Developer's note: The intention with these effects was always to focus on heavy hitting, slower attacks, but with the current mechanics they are too unpredictable and hard to use. We believe this implementation will provide a good synergy that can make heavy hitting skills such as Glacier, Savage Strike and others perform much better, while offering virtually no improvement for fast hitting skills such as Beams, Flurry, etc;

Rune changes:

- Mastery runes can no longer grant you skills from weapons you have not unlocked yet; - Made it so Critical Mastery rune now also considers bonuses from Dazed and Disoriented into its extra critical damage calculation;

Skill changes:

- Made it so you can now cause a multi-critical attack if your critical chance is high enough, applying the critical damage modifier multiple times; - Fixed an issue where Brittle would not apply to negative effects such as Burn, Poison, etc; - Brittle is no longer over-influenced by skills that scale with different attributes, such as Shield Bash, and now provides the intended damage bonus; - Smoke Bomb is no longer affected by Damage and Critical modifiers, since the skill does not cause damage; - Fire Orb, Ground Slam and Heavy Strike are no longer available and might return officially at a later date; - Arcane Beam damage per tick reduced from 50 to 30; - Arcane Beam now applies Exposed with every tick; - Arcane Blade damage per stack reduced from 50 to 30; - Arcane Missiles now applies Exposed; - Meteor damage increased from 400 to 500; - Meteor Burn damage increased from 200 to 250; - Meteor cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Meteor Shower damage increased from 100 to 300; - Meteor Shower Burn damage reduced from 200 to 180; - Meteor Shower cooldown reduced from 10 to 8 seconds; - Fire Wall Burn damage increased from 480 to 680; - Fire Wall cooldow reduced from 11 to 10 seconds; - Fire Bolt damage increased from 200 to 250; - Fire Bolt Burn damage increased from 300 to 360; - Flame Wave damage increased from 150 to 300;

Enemy changes:

- Made it so the reach of Gammuth's Flamethrower damage area is aligned with its visual area; - Fixed an issue where the Elite Snake's poison spit might not hit the player when it should; - Fixed an issue where enemy Void Hunters could become unresponsive if they were stunned by certain skills;

General changes and fixes:

- New additional soundtrack for The Whispering Grove; - New toggle added to Level Up screen so you can automatically skip Active Skills once you have created your perfect build; - Added option to disable New Objective Warning messages such as "Eliminate a Lord"; - The game will now let you know how many hidden achievements you still have to complete in the Achievements screen (but not how to complete them); - Achievements Screen controller navigation now properly implemented, together with other improvements such as filtering for only incomplete achievements; - You can now purchase skills from the skill tree by double clicking with the mouse; - Fixed an issue where multiple player skills were not affected by effect visibility settings properly; - Fixed an issue where Beam and a few other skills in extreme scenarios could become framerate limited, dealing less damage than they should; - Fixed an issue where the Corrupted Death Knight's Poison Bomb would not show on the ground if you had your visual effects set to the minimum; - Fixed issue where Bumble's Frost Aura would not appear if you had your visual effects set to the minimum; - Fixed Scroll area in Crafting panel which was going over the designated area; - Fixed a few instances where Tooltips could remaing on-screen indefinitely; - Fixed an issue where if conditions were right, you could pull scenery objects from the Dungeon of Despair that shouldn't be movable; - Fixed an issue where the Winter Holiday Defeat sound effec would play outside of the event window; - Multiple UI improvements across the game;

Community Events in Discord:

We are back to running community events in our Discord (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT)! These include feedback events where players send in suggestions about a theme for the game, such as new skills, new runes, new characters... and vote on the suggestions they would like to see in the game, and the top rated suggestion gets implemented in the game! We are also planning a Developer Q&A and of course, we are always hanging out, so come and have a chat with us if you got any questions or would like to know more!

Developer notes

As usual, we aim to include a brief section discussing the update's details, so without further ado, let's delve into a few topics!

Growing Team

This update is landing a little bit later than what we had initially planned, but for a good reason! As we have mentioned in our previous update, we are working very hard on expanding our team a little bit more to allow us not only to deliver bigger and better updates, but to start thinking about more ambitious features we might have ruled out at first. Since last update we received over 500 job applicants (which is mindblowing!) and spoke to so many awesome people already, that its hard NOT to get excited about the future of the game! However what that means right now is that we are investing quite a lot of time into finding the right people, but truly believe this time will pay for itself very quickly in the months to come! Still on this subject, we are happy to welcome our first new team member, Juan Paixao, a brillian programmer that started with us for a little over a couple of weeks and is already responsible for a lot of the improvements in this update! It's great to have you on the team man!

Map Diversity

This update brings the first step towards improving the gameplay diversity between the maps with new common and elite enemies in the Whispering Grove, but our goal is that every map will have a completely unique set of enemies. As we have mentioned before, this is an ongoing work that will be done little by little with every update to the game, so rest assured that these enemies are just the beginning!

What about our excess resouces?

We know that some of you are out there hoarding thousands, even millions of soulstones and materials and thinking... but what do I do with all this stuff? And... we might have something for you, soon! We have a completely new system in the works that will give you a good use for those materials, and... ah you know what, we will talk about it in more details on a post of its own =P but rest assured that we are working on it!

Next steps

As mentioned above, our next big priority for systems is a way for you to spend your excess resources that does not feel grindy, but instead gives you something cool to try and experiment with. We are hoping to officially introduce this system in the next update which we are aiming for some time in March, along with new skills, weapons and enemies as we continue to move towards the completion of our roadmap and more! There is still a lot we want to add to the game, so many ways we can continue exploring, and you can rest assured that we are still super excited about all that is coming. I know that sometimes we are a bit quiet, and that some people will get nervous about when the next update is going to be... but we are at it! We are growing the team and taking the steps so that we can continuously support Soulstone Survivors for as long as we can, and we are always around, here, on Discord, should you get any questions! Finally, I just wanted to thank you all for the amazing support once again, developing Soulstone Survivors has been an amazing journey so far, with a lot of hard work and late nights, but just getting all the amazing messages, emails, telling us stories about things you like (or dont like!) about the game... make all the effort worth it a thousand times! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2023-02-13 14:41:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! I know some of you thought this day would never come, but it's finally here! I am glad to bring to you today Soulstone Survivors Winterfall Update! And with it the first batch of new content added to the game!







While this update clearly had a focus on new weapons and skills, the new content added also required multiple systems that have been built from the ground up to allow us to develop new content a lot faster! For everything we build for the game, we have modularity in mind, and with every new block we create we get new tools to develop and expand the game, hopefully in fun ways! While we have the flashy images above, this is far from the full list of changes for this version, which you can find below!

New content:

- Holiday Event: 22 Dec - 05 Jan Guaranteed to find Bumble's Lair for a limited time to unlock secret achievements! Lair will be harder to find after the event. - 8 New craftable weapons: Paladin: Harbinger of Justice Chaoswalker: Artifact of Corruption Assassin: Curved Daggers Legionnaire: Jupiter's Reach Beastmaster: Nature's Fury Elementalist: Scepter of Frost Necromancer: Life Harvester Death Knight: Greatsword of Doom - 19 new active skills: Paladin: Hammer of Justice, Penance Assassin: Twin Daggers, Smoke Bomb Death Knight: Unholy Aura, Reap Necromancer: Unholy Bolt, Ancient Curse Legionnaire: Jupiter's Spear, Summon Infantry Beastmaster: Wild Strike, Summon Swamp Boar Elementalist: Severe Cold, Freezing Blow Chaoswalker: Seeking Chaos, Aura of Chaos All characters: Secret1, Secret2, Secret3

Rune changes:

- Now you can also pick starting skills multiple times with Singular Focus; - Starting skills can now be selected by other characters with the use of a Mastery rune; - Fixed issue where Mastery runes sometimes would yield inconsistent results, often adding less than 6 skills to the pool; - Mastery runes will not add the same skill twice if you have two masteries that would apply for the same skill, it will always try to add unique skills if possible;

Skill changes:

- Added new Seasonal skill type; - Smoke Bomb is now an Assassin class skill, and Backstab is now a weapon skill; - Changed how skills that deal extra damage on critical strike work to be an actual multiplier on top of the damage, instead of additional Critical Damage Modifier, increasing their effectiveness considerably; - Increased the speed-up rate of Arcane Conjuration and Call Lightning skills so they don't accumulate as much; - Paralysis extra direct damage per stack increased from 0.5% to 1%; - Arcane Blade cooldown reduced from 10 to 8.5 seconds; - Arcane Rift cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds; - Arcane Disk damage increased from 450 to 480; - Arcane Disk cooldown reduced from 5.5 to 5.2 seconds; - Backstab damage increased from 150 to 300; - Backstab now also applies a 800 damage hemorrhage if you are behind the target; - Beacon of Light area increased by 40%; - Beacon of Light damage increased from 52 to 80; - Bladed Chakram damage increased from 50 to 120; - Bladed Chakram rot damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Bladed Chakram cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Blizzard damage increased from 625 to 875; - Bomb Barrage damage increased from 70 to 85; - Chain Lightning cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds; - Chain Lightning damage increased from 230 to 400; - Chain Lightning jumps increased from 5 to 7; - Chaos Bolt projectile moves slower and can fire more secondary bolts; - Chaos Bomb maximum damage increased from 700 to 1000; - Chaos Totem projectiles move slower and can fire more secondary bolts; - Combustion Burn damage increased from 60 to 70; - Death Claw maximum damage increased from 500 to 1000; - Demolish damage increased from 200 to 300; - Demolish wave damage increased from 50 to 100; - Fire Shield damage increased from 40 to 50; - Fire Shield burn damage increased from 100 to 120; - Firewall burn damage increased from 400 to 480; - Firewall cooldown reduced from 12 to 11 seconds; - Frostbolt cooldown reduced from 2 to 1 second; - Frostbolt damage reduced from 330 to 300; - Glacier damage increased from 650 to 900; - Glacier area increased by 30%; - Heroic Strike now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Holy Fire now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Ice Vortex now applies approximately 30% less stacks of Slow; - Intimidating Shout cooldown reduced from 20 to 18 seconds; - Intimidating Shout duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds; - Lightning Bolt cooldown reduced from 6 to 5 seconds; - Lightning Bolt damage increased from 310 to 700; - Lightning Bolt Dazed increased from 8% to 10%; - Poison Bomb damage increased from 40 to 100; - Poison Bomb poison damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Poison Bomb cooldown reduced from 5 to 4; - Scent of Blood cooldown increased from 30 to 34 seconds; - Shield Bash skill no longer stuns targets, which is the intended behaviour; - Shrapnel Bomb damage increased from 200 to 270; - Shrapnel Bomb sub-projectile damage increased from 30 to 45; - Smite cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Sniper Shot now properly multiplies damage by 5 on critical strikes; - Summon Battle Moose Horn attack damage reduced from 300 to 150; - Summon War Tiger bite attack no longer applies a Bleed for 300 damage, but still applies Wounds; - Summon War Tiger claw attack no longer applies Fragility, but still applies Bleed for 300 damage; - Summon War Tiger claw attack damage reduced from 150 to 80; - Templar's Verdict area increased by 30%; - Templar's Verdict now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Thrust damage increased from 60 to 90; - Thunder Clap area increased by 25%; - Thunder Clap cooldown reduced from 9 to 5 seconds; - Thunder Clap damage increased from 610 to 1100; - Thunder Strike cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds; - Thunder Strike damage increased from 500 to 1300; - Venomous Strike damage increased from 70 to 120; - Venomous Strike poison damage reduced from 250 to 220; - Weakening Grenade damage increased from 240 to 350; - Weakening Grenade cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Whirlwind damage increased from 110 to 140; - Whirlwind cooldown reduced from 1.5 to 1.4 seconds;

Enemy changes:

Corrupted Paladin: - Templar's Verdict damage reduced from 25 to 20; - Templar's Verdict charge time increased from 1.2 to 2 seconds; - Holy Fire charge time increased from 1.2 to 2 seconds; - Holy Fire projectile spread reduced considerably; - Holy Fire projectile speed reduced considerably; - Holy Fire damage reduced from 15 to 8; Corrupted Death Knight: - Obliterate charge time increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds; - Shadow Spikes charge time increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds; Lords of the Void: - Added minimum cooldown to most Lord of the Void skills, so at very high levels they will still use all of their skills instead of always prioritising the same skill;

General changes and fixes:

- Attempt fix for issue where on certain MacOS machines the mouse can be invisible/bugged; - Created all game achievements on Steam, they should reflect on your account when you log into the game for the first time; - Further performance improvements that might assist in certain scenarios; - Fixed issue where certain skill such as Lightning Bolt could fire their projectiles into the ground, becoming considerably less effective; - Fixed issue where Doom and Cursed would not consider Exposed when calculating whether or not they have enough damage to execute the target; - Fixed issue where Vulnerable effect was consuming 75% of its charges, instead of 25% as intended; - Fixed an issue where Burn effects would deal 20% less damage than intended; - Fixed an issue where Synergy effects that from one negative effect could apply another, were not scaling with your stats or skill modifiers; - Removed invisibile objects from the Caves of Dhal Zhog which would cause strange pathing; - Fixed issue with skills such as Storm of Arrows where lower FPS would cause them to pile up too many projectiles, being less effective; - Fixed issue where with a controller it was possible to spend resources to craft the same item multiple times without any benefits; - Bosses are now virtually immune to pushback effects to reduce some strange behaviour that could happen in extreme scenarios; - Fixed issue where Arcane Blade would not count how many targets it hit; - Fixed issue where the Corrupted Spellblade Arcane Overload skill could flash the entire screen with its effect; - Fixed issue where the Corrupted Death Knight Poison Bomb would leave an invisible pool of poison in the ground if your special visibility was too low. It is no longer affected by this setting; - Hit special effects will play up until Endless cycle 2. Previously, they would not play in any Endless/Overlord level to improve performance; - Fixed an issue where if you Restarted a match by either the pause menu or end game screen from within an Endless level, you would restart in the current map, instead of the original map; - Fixed issue where Totems would not scale with Curse Intensity like other summon skills do; - Fixed Discord's "time alive" to count endless levels time as well; - Multiple tooltip and skill description fixes where values might not represent the actual skill values; - Multiple UI and visual fixes and improvements across the game; - New seasonal soundtrack and sound effects; - Tons of small bug fixes across all areas.

Developer notes

As always, we wanted to add a small section below talking about the ins and outs of the update, so lets just jump right in into a few topics!

Update delay

As you all know, this update took us about a week longer than we had anticipated, and I know we just came into Early Access, that we have all been burned with games that just got abandoned before being fully realised, so I completely understand how it feels to be on the player's side of the equation in these situations. I know these might be just words for you, but trust me when I say we are in it for the long haul, for the game, for the pride we have in what we are creating with your help, and for the pleasure it is that is developing this game. Thanks to all your amazing support so far, the Early Access release has been incredible, reaching more people than we could have ever hoped for, and now more than ever, we feel we have a duty of making this game as good as it can be, but regardless of how things are going so far, we are still a tiny team, which allows us to move very quickly in some ways, but also makes it so the personal lives of each of us have a huge impact in how fast the team as a whole can work. This last month wasn't easy, and the personal challenges we faced ended up slowing development for a while, but thankfully that is now behind us.

Getting more help

With that said, we are starting to take the steps towards a more healthy future. We are currently looking for extra help, trying to grow our team a little bit and to fill the role of Unity C# developer and potentially the help of another artist so we can at the same time tackle bigger features (and oh boy are there some big features coming) AND continue adding content in the multiple areas of the game at the same time, such as more weapons, skills, runes, skill tree, etc. We have a ton of plans for the game, and by growing a little bit with a likeminded team I'm sure we will be able to do a lot more, so if you have some experience (specially coding) and genuinely love working with games, playing roguelites, talking design and getting your hands dirty, feel free to send us your your CV at jobs@gamesmithing.com !

Next steps for the game

In this status update we talk a bit about what we see as some of the main priorities we want to tackle on the game in the near future. As you can see from this update, we are tackling these bit by bit. You can expect new weapons and skills very frequently, as for us offering as many ways to play the game will always be one of the pillars of the game, but two of the big features we will start tackling soon are "Map Differentiation" and "Interesting ways to spend your resources". Both are large features with their own challenges and but we expect to take steps towards both of these in the first quarter of 2023. We recognize especially the latter as a major point of concern with players hoarding thousands of major soulstones, and we want to reinforce that it is very high in our priorities list.

But what about X skill that is crap, or Y skill that is OP, or that crazy bug?

Even though this update just came out, we still have a looong list of tasks to take care of. This update brought quite a few balance changes bringing some underperforming skills more in line, but not all of them. We haven't had the time to sit and test all skills just yet on all the different builds they can be used in, so we are aware there are still some that are lagging behind, and some that are extremely strong right now. We are also aware of quite a few bugs and missing features like the crappy controller navigation for curses and achievements, but we have to pick our battles. Those will all come, in time, and hopefully with a bit more help we will also be able to tackle these more quickly in the near future, but keep your feedback coming, reporting the errors here or in our Discord https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT is always an immense help!

Next update when...?

As also mentioned before, we believe a cadence of monthly updates allows us to develop significant new content with quality, so we are planning the next update for the end of Jan/beginning of Feb. With the holidays coming it is time for everyone to be with their families and take a small break, recharge the batteries and come back for full power in the first week of Jan, but we are still around and we might sneak in a hotfix or two this next week. With that said, I ask you for a little patience if we are at times quiet, usually the quieter we are, the busier we are trying to catch up and making sure all is working well. We will try to do better next year with more transparency from our side, which is something we can do, another advantage of being so small, but it is just hard to juggle all the tasks, we hope you understand! And with that particularly big wall of text behind us haha, I just want to say that we really, REALLY appreciate your support, we don't take the amazing community the game has for granted and without you there definitely would be no game, so thank you all once again! If you have any questions, or run into any issues, do let us know and we will do our best to try and sort out the issues, and we hope you enjoy the update! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-12-22 01:44:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! It's been now 8 days since our last update, which for us feels like a lot of time, so we thought it would be a good idea to take a moment and share a little bit about our future plans and the content we are working on for the next major update. We want to be as transparent with you as we can (while trying to not spoil too much the content that is coming =P), and while this is a bit of a wall of text haha I hope it brings some clarity into what is coming in the future.

Release schedule

First, while we like to do frequent and small updates to make sure that the experience is as smooth as possible, now that we are working on new content, it makes more sense to have a longer release schedule so we can work on more expressive features to make more of an impact in the game. Our current plan is to release the next major update around the second week of December, and from that point on, release content updates monthly, which gives us enough time to work on cool stuff, make sure it all works well, and release quality content frequently. In between those major updates, we will continue making hotfixes, balance and smaller improvement patches whenever necessary.

General improvements in our radar

With the last patch, we addressed a lot of the most pressing issues with the game, including hundreds of bugs large and small, refactoring game modes, making sure the game is more resilient and that the initial Early Access experience was as smooth as we could make it. However, there are still quite a few quality of life and fixes pending for the next version. We are still evaluating which fixes and improvements we will be able to get done in time, but very high in our priority list are some controller navigation improvements, accessibility options which include mouse-only control schemes and color-blind options, more UI improvements, and of course quite a few bugs reported by the community are in our radar as well. I don't think we will be able to finish all of these in time, but know that these are important issues to fix for us and they are definitely coming sooner rather than later.

Balance changes

For the beginning of Early Access, our focus was on making sure that all classes and play styles were fun to experiment with and were viable to play with. The game offers quite a few tools that make it so certain builds will always be superior or even broken depending a bit on your luck, however, we are well aware that certain classes and play styles have a hard time in the more challenging content in the game, such as high Curse levels. For next update, we want to take a close look at skills and play styles that are struggling to keep up. We will never be able to make all builds of all characters with all runes be equally strong, but that is not the intention really. Some classes will always be more challenging in certain scenarios, and we believe that this variety is good for the game, given this is a single player experience (so far, who knows =P), however, we want as much variety as possible, and for that, we need to make sure that ALL skills can be viable one way or another. This will be a constant effort, and we will make sure to take it one step at a time with each update coming in the future.

New weapons and skills

Probably the part of the game that has received the least attention so far, are the weapons. We currently have a total of 20 weapons including the basic ones, but that is only a fraction of our goal. Our plan is to continuously add new weapons until each character has at least 5 weapons to choose from, and we are very far from that goal at the moment. With that said, we are already working on a lot of new skills and weapons, and while I still won't reveal what those look like just now, rest assured you will get quite a few new ones with the next update!

Map differentiation

Another big shortcoming of the current version of the game for us is that all maps play pretty much the same. The resources offer some incentive to play on different maps, but, our goal is to have enough enemy diversity and different challenges per map that it actually feels different to play on different scenarios. This is a big endeavour and will likely take multiple updates to get where we want it to be, as it will involve creating lots of new enemies, new skills for those enemies and making sure that they lead to interesting gameplay scenarios that actually feel different from each other (we don't want to just make green goblins in the Whispering Grove and blue goblins in the Frozen Wasteland), but it is something that is already in the works in the background. It will take some testing, but its a very high priority for us.

New challenges

In addition to the above, one of the areas we want to continue expanding the game for a long time still, is in creating new challenges. Those will come in multiple shapes and forms, with new bosses, new game modes, and quite a few... secret encounters to find along the way. I wont go into too much detail at this time, but what I will say is that we have one of those planned for the next update, and we are developing these in a way that will make future content easier and faster to develop as well.

Interesting ways to spend your resources

While new weapons and characters will require materials and soulstones to be crafted, those are finite and we don't want them to feel grindy or to take too long to unlock. We have other features planned such as expanding the skill tree, giving more meaning to prestige levels and so on, so there is still a lot coming that will consume resources, however, we are currently planning another major feature that should offer nearly endless ways to spend resources, in exchange for cool bonuses and variations to your gameplay and classes. This is a major feature that will not come with the next update which is still in the drawing board, and it is a challenging feature to design because we want it to feel rewarding and impactful, but not mandatory and grindy, which is a hard balance to strike. However, we thought it was important to communicate that we recognise this as yet another big shortcoming with the current version of the game, and it will definitely be addressed in the updates to come.

Future content and goals

Our number one goal with Soulstone Survivors, is to make sure that there were hundreds, thousands of ways you could play the game and have fun with. We feel like we currently have a really good start, but there are still many more features coming that will expand your choices and overall power level in different ways moving forward. Our next goal, is to offer enough variety of challenges, and activities to do in the game, to give you incentives to explore all of those ways to play the game. We believe we have a good basis right now, but there is still A LOT we can do in this sense, with enemy variety, unlockable challenges and so on. And our third and final goal with every feature we think for the game, is to create content that feels well connected with the rest of the game, and that offers very high replay value. Once again I think we are going in the right direction, and this is a pillar for all of the features that are still to come.

Conclusion

With this announcement, we wanted to shed some light into our vision for the game moving forward. As mentioned many times before, we see the Early Access as just the beginning of this journey, and with all of the above, we hope it shows you a little glimpse of the ideas we have in mind. Even when all of the above is implemented, there are still loads of different types of content we can explore in the game, and we have no intention of slowing down. We continue hard at work on our side, we continue reading feedback everywhere we can, we really appreciate all of the amazing ideas that you guys have shared with us and I'm sure many of them will find their way into the game at some point in time, and we are also looking into different ways we can interact with the community. Thank you very much for the amazing support, and we hope to have you along with us for the journey! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-26 18:30:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We have just released minor update v0.9.028e, which above everything else, comes to fix the Steam Achievements! With this update, most of your existing in-game achievements will be automatically replicated onto Steam when you start the game, however, there is one thing to note: at this time, we are limited to creating only 100 Steam Achievements, therefore, not all achievements exist on Steam yet! This is a Steam limitation to avoid shady games creating tons of fake achievements just to boost profiles up. We expect that as the days and weeks go by, we will be allowed to create more achievements and will continue expanding this list untill all of the existing (and future!) achievements exist both in-game and on Steam! This patch also brings some other fixes to annoying problems, as you can see in the full list of changes below!

Full change list for version v0.9.028e:

General changes:

- Steam Achievements working as intended, existing achievements and stats will be uploaded to Steam on the first time you load the game; - Fixed the visibility of attacks of all enemy Void Hunters, which are now mostly unaffected by visual effect opacity setting; - Fixed an issue where the enemy Paladin would not attack you with all of his skills; - Fixed an issue with multiple enemy Void Hunter skills, which were possibly firing skills in the wrong direction; - Increased the size of the area indicator for a few more boss skills which were slightly undersized; - Made the Void Presence attack not be affected by effect opacity settings; - Made it so the elite Troll shockwave skill is affected only partially by effect opacity; - Small change so that achievement percentages avoid being rounded up from 99.9999% to 100% in very specific cases; - Added Area tag to Arcane Power to be inline with other buffs; - Changed totem skills and ballista to no longer have Duration power ups, but instead have Damage power ups, which are more beneficial given the recently introduced summon limit; - To access Overlord Mode (the red portal) you now need to finish the match in less then 13 minutes, up from 12 (which was the intended value); - Added code to prevent a few seemingly harmless exceptions in the game; - Minor UI adjustments that could cause problems in a few languages; We hope that this patch will be welcome by those of you that love a little achievement hunting, and as mentioned above, rest assured that as soon as we are allowed to, we will create the remaining achievements on Steam. I also want to add that updates are not going to be just fixes and improvements! We are working in the background on new content that will be landing very very soon! We still have a little bit more to do, but we continue working day and night to create new stuff! We really appreciate the patience, and we hope that at least for now, these past updates have made the game experience smoother and more enjoyable for everyone! And as always, we would like to thank you all very much for all the help, support, testing and feedback! It is incredible to be able to count on this amazing community be it on Steam forums, Twitter, Discord... it really does make all the difference in the world! We hope you enjoy this little update, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-18 16:55:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We have just yesterday completed a week of Early Access, and today we are coming to our third, and this time MAJOR update! Patch v0.9.028c brings with it tons of fixes all around the game, but most importantly, it is all about performance and Endless mode which is now split into two, Endless and Overlord modes! Before talking in more detail about those, let's jump right into the list of changes for this patch, and as always we will talk a bit more about what is going on in the game down below!

Full change list for version v0.9.028c:

Main changes:

- Endless Mode is now split into two separate game modes, both of which have been extensively reworked in their functionality: -- Endless Mode: Level up quickly and fight across multiple scenarios with increasing difficulty with every cycle. Enemies will become tougher and more resistant and you can go on for as long as you manage! -- Overlord Mode: Face an increasing number of powerful Lords of the Void, which require less and less enemies per cycle until you are facing Lords all day long! Difficulty increases with every cycle, and so does the number of bosses. - Achievements that required Endless Cycles are now split between both modes. If you completed the achievements previously, they will still be completed (this may cause a small glitch with the switched achievement rewards); - Major performance improvements in all areas of the game, especially in very high intensity scenarios; - Overhead combat text has been changed to be incremental, so multiple hits on the same target will refresh and increase the number instead of generating a new text. You can switch between the previous and new styles in the General Settings, however, the previous style will lead to performance issues in high-intensity scenarios; - If Special effect visibility slider is all the way down, some visual effects will not be used at all which should improve performance considerably in certain scenarios;

General changes and fixes:

- Multiple fixes related to the error where you would not be able to pick any skill when levelling up. This is a rare issue and we have made multiple changes that should prevent it entirely, but let us know if you still see this error; - Implemented some changes to the saving system to try and make the system more resistant to corrupted files; - Added visual improvements to the Runes screen so it is easier to locate/remember where runes are placed; - Fixed issue where the Curse Intensity tooltip could stay on screen indefinitely; - Fixed issue where the currently selected rune would persist as selected even when you switched characters; - Fixed multiple minor localization issues; - Fixed minor visual issues on ultra-wide monitors; - Fixed issue where Prestige Stars would show incorrectly from level 100 to 110 (and other higher levels); - In any endless mode, certain visual effects will not play to help with performance; - When a target takes damage and is immune to damage, a Immune label will appear; - Objective notifications now will only show the latest notification, instead of building an endless queue; - Fixed an issue where FPS limit was resetting to the screen refresh rate with every start-up; - FPS limit slider is now capped at 120% of your monitor refresh rate; - Fixed issue where enemies would eventually have blue health bars if you had enough summons; - Removed "invisible pillars" in the Dungeon of Despair; - Fixed multiple "invisible exceptions" that would consume performance; - Fixed Overlord Mode tooltip displaying "5% extra bosses" instead of "5" extra bosses; - Fixed Curse Intensity tooltip showing big decimal numbers;

Enemy changes:

- Extended the damage area indicator of a few boss skills to better reflect the range of their skills; - Fixed issue where the Paladin Void Hunter (enemy) would not be targetable by minions; - Snake's poison bomb is no longer affected by Opacity settings; - Reduced health of Pillars of Despair by 30%; - Increased the cooldown of the Pillars of Despair skills by 100%; - Removed Stun effects from the attacks of all enemies; - Fixed an issue where enemies that should be immune to pushback were not immune; - Endless cycles now also reduce the effectiveness of Absorption shields (Arcane Shield); - Small spider attacks are now not affected by Effect Opacity options; - Fixed issue where the Void Presence would receive negative effects;

Skills and Runes changes:

- Fixed issue where the skill Disengage would not appear for the Sentinel's second bow; - Changed the tag from Spread Shot from Blast to Projectile; - Pending skill points during a match will now be kept if you go through an endless portal; - Fixed an issue where Call Lightning was applying Disoriented instead of Dazed; - Chromatic Bolt now fires in the direction you are aiming, as stated in the tooltip; - Holy Fire now has the Frontal tag; - Exorcism tooltip will now show 0.5 correctly instead of rounding up to 1; - Fixed issue where certain skills such as Mine Field and Explosive trap may not remove the objects from the world when the skill is removed; - Totems and Ballistas now have a proper summon quantity limit, but have had their damage increased; - Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas were not dealing the intended damage when they caused a critical strike; - Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas would block the movement of your minions; - Fixed issue where Totems and Ballistas would not apply on-hit effects; - Fixed issue where Purity rune would use the incorrect value to determine how many effects are in the target, yielding inconsistent results; - Fixed issue where Bladestorm and Flurry would not be used if there were no enemies nearby; - Fixed an issue where Shadow Nova would apply Exposed, which was not intended; - Shadow Step now grants 0.5 seconds of immunity after a teleport; - Surefooted rune now reduces the damage you take by 15% to replace the Stun immunity bonus; Now, with that huge list out of the way, to mention a little about the differences between Endless and Overlord modes, while they share a lot of similarities, Endless is more relaxed and allows for more free experimentation and scaling, while Overlord mode is intended as a more challenging mode so you can test your skills to see how far you will go. Both modes are different from the current implementation of Endless and have tons of tweaks in multiple areas, so we recommend you give them both a try and see what you think. To talk a little bit about performance, the changes in this update should be noticeable all around the game and involve major refactoring and changes in all major areas of the game. There are still a few places where we can squeeze in some more performance, but those will come in the following weeks. And speaking of the next steps, as expected, this first week was focused on fixes, improvements and adjustments, and not on new content. There is one major bug that is getting addressed next which is the link with Steam Achievements, which is not currently working. We expect to have a new patch shortly addressing that, and in the background, we have already started work on some new content that we expect will be coming to the game very soon as well which we hope you will enjoy! And with all of that said, I just wanted to once again thank you all for the amazing support so far! We have been working day and night to make sure that the game is as good as it can be, and a lot of the fixes in this update come from reports from the community! So thank you for helping us improve the game and for all the feedback so far! As mentioned before, this is just the beginning, we literally just completed the first week of Early Access, and there is still A LOT to come, both in terms of improvements AND new content! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-15 23:08:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We have just completed our second full day of Early Access and to celebrate we bring to you our second patch, version v0.9.027h! The focus for this version has been on reviewing and reworking the Endless Mode. I will talk a little bit more about it at the end of this post but first, here is the full list of changes for this version:

Full change list for version v0.9.027h:

General changes:

- Endless Mode rework: -- Entirely changed the scaling progression. You will level up slower, and enemies will have considerably less health, but be more dangerous; -- Extra Lords of the Void will join the battle, which will pose a much bigger challenge than before; -- Enemies are now more and more resistant to slowing effects, so you will have to stay alert; -- Reduced quantity of enemies needed per objective, but more time for you to fight the Lords; -- Overall we expect the new design to be more challenging, shorter, and a million times more performant; - Adjusted Achievements to reflect the change in difficulty of Endless Mode, requiring less Cycles for the same rewards; - Added slider in Graphics settings to control the FPS limit of the game; - Changed Player Area indicators (blue circles) to be a lot less intrusive, but still help you identify where your skills are landing; - Fixed issue where arrows pointing to towers or any other object would point in the wrong direction in certain cases; - Fixed an issue where the Blacksmith was very generous and would not verify for achievement completion before crafting weapons; - Fixed issue with Legionnaire and the Dogs becoming invisible in the menu; - Fixed an issue where Totem skills were not adjusting their tooltips according to Buff Duration power-ups; - Fixed issue where enemies would walk around destroyed objects in The Dungeon of Despair; - Fixed (fore real this time) the visibility of Demolish not being affected by Effect opacity setting; - Fixed issue where Piercing Shout would not appear as a skill for the Barbarian; - Fixed error with certain projectiles when you replace the skill, causing an error; - Fixed an issue where if you replaced Ice Vortex with another skill at certain point in time, its visual effect would stay forever; - Fixed an issue where locked character names would show up in the Blacksmith; - Small performance optimisations;

Balance changes:

- Aelfraed will now use Bladestorm from further away from you, and move slightly faster; - Reduced damage of Call Lightning from 120 to 80; - Reduced initial damage of Chromatic Bolt from 70 to 50; - Reduced damage of Ricochet Shot from 150 to 100; - Reduced damage of Storm of Arrows from 300 to 200; - Reduced damage of Chaos Golem from about 400 to about 250; - Holy Fire now fires 3 light waves in the direction you are aiming, instead of one;

About Endless Mode:

When you have a chance to try this new update, you will notice that it is very different from before, and I wanted to touch on what is our thought process for these changes. First, the performance issues. The game certainly started getting extremely slow at higher Endless Cycle levels, but unfortunately there are no optimisations in the world that would fix the problem. The problem is that with you being able to reach extremely high levels, 200, 400, 600... you scale your powers SO SO much, that you are firing hundreds if not thousands of skills and projectiles every second, that are as large as the map itself. In practice, this means millions of calculations for physics effects hits damage and everything else every second. There ARE optimisations to do in the game and we will get to them very soon, however, nothing we could do would make this level of craziness scale correctly, it is just too much. Second, while at first it is very cool to scale absurdly like before, seeing your skills covering the whole planet and all that haha, it leads to a stale gameplay loop. In the previous iteration it was very easy to become immortal, to hit the entire planet with every skill and then you are left watching as the numbers pop-up as in an idle game. It definitely has its charm (if it ran at a decent FPS), but it gets old really fast. Our intention for endless is that you eventually die from a very challenging scenario where YOU are pushed to the max together with your build, and not just your computer while you go have dinner and wait for the level to be over. We believe that with these changes and a more challenging gameplay, we are getting there. Third, we don't like Endless being extremely long matches. Since the challenge was basically non-existant, you could push endless until your computer exploded, which is not great. We want endless to finish in any amount of time between 20 and 40 minutes. It can go longer than that, but now that is an actual show of skill, not of patience. At times, if your build is not very good, we expect you will have a very hard time defeating the Lords of the Void and may end earlier than that, but that is ok, you can always try a new setup, new skills, new runes, and see how that works out for you. Finally, we are always open to change. We still want to make more adjustments to Endless mode and will continue working on it and all other features of the game, and hearing your opinion is critical for us. So please, do share what you think! Remember this is still Day 2 of Early Access haha (officially 3 I could say), so the road is just beginning, and we will continue working as hard as we ever have to make sure that the game continues getting better and better.

Whats next:

Having said all that, the work is far from done! We got a lot of other fixes to make and the next big one are the Steam Achievements not syncing. This is an error on our side and will require an update, but we are working on it, alongside many other smaller fixes that will be coming shortly. I wanted to thank you all very much for your support so far once again, we are blown away by the response to the game so far and I really, really hope we can make it as cool as possible for everyone! We will continue listening, continue working, and we still have A LOT to add to the game! This week we are focusing on these release issues but soon, very soon! Thank you all for the attention, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-09 19:57:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Before anything else, I would just like to say a HUGE thank you, to all of you that are supporting our work one way or another, grabbing a copy of course but with feedback, bug reports, and in general just being awesome human beings! I cannot believe how lucky we are to have such a welcoming and supportive community behind the game! I really do hope that the game brings you a lot of fun for a very long time, we hope you are enjoying the new content and rest assured that it is still just the beginning, after all, this is day ONE of Early Access! The path is long, but to take it with you will be an honor! Today we bring the first-ever Early Access update, it is not the most exciting for most of you haha, but will be very helpful to some of you that are facing some of the problems we just fixed! Without further ado:

Full change list for version v0.9.027g:

General changes:

- Fixed issue where certain players are not able to unlock the Barbarian character; - Fixed an issue where certain players would start the game with the Effect visibility slider all the way to 0; - Fixed issue where the Cursor on Linux would go invisible after you started a match, and then went to any menu such as pause or level up; - Fixed an issue where having lots of power-ups would go in front of the Options menu during gameplay; - Fixed issue where characters can equip other character weapons; - Increased the size of the Damage number in the ending screen to assist with the very small numbers; - Fixed issue where Achievements that yield Runic Power were displaying the wrong information; - Fixed Bloodlust cooldown calculation not working as intended, now Bloodlust properly no longer affects its own cooldown (or the cooldown of multiple instances of Bloodlust); - Fixed issue where the Demolish skill would not be affected by the Effect Opacity setting; - Fixed issue where Summon Ballista, when having its duration increased, would not show the increase in the tooltip; We wanted to get this patch out as soon as possible to make sure that players are not affected by some of the critical problems that have been fixed, but will continue working on further updates over the next few days to address other critical issues, the two main ones being Steam Achievements and Endless Mode.

Steam Achievements

We are currently working into addressing the issue that is preventing the sync between Steam and the game, but it is our mistake. This is our highest priority right now and we expect to have it fixed very very soon. At any rate, all the progress you have, WILL carry over, so you are not wasting any progression right now.

Endless Mode

We know that when you go too deep into Endless Cycles, the game starts to slow down. This happens most of the time because of the CPU, which is having to make millions (literally) of physical collisions every frame to detect and push enemies around while calculating hundreds of thousands of negative effects being added every second. We still have a few big optimisation paths to work on which we will do over the course of Early Access, but I believe we were too generous in the Endless implementation. To have as open a development as we can, here are our thoughts for an endless rework in the next couple of days: - Today, when you go into a new endless cycle, we reset your experience but keep your levels. This means you level up very very quickly, and while cool, this is the root of all evil. We will likely reduce this quite a bit, which will make it harder to level up. You will still continue getting stronger, but at a more manageable rate; - Due to the excessive scaling you get from the excessive levels, enemies end up with excessive amounts of health. We HATE how tanky enemies get now, when the only challenge is your patience. Endless is meant as a different experience to the Curses, which are quite demanding in their own ways, but we don't want them to be excessively long, and especially excessively tanky. You should feel like the challenge is scaling, and not the health bars. - To build more interesting challenges, we are considering adding Random Curses with every endless level you progress into. This way, we can introduce challenges other than just scaling enemies, and making every tier of Endless different from the previous one. We will test how this feels to play, but we believe will make endless more interesting to play. With those changes, what we expect will happen is a considerable reduction in the CPU load from the currently extreme levels of scaling, you will still be very strong (but more limited than now), and challenge level will be more varied with different curses every Endless cycle. We will test those changes, and will likely make them public through the Alpha branch very soon as well, so if you'd like to give us more feedback and let us know what you think, the best place to to reach us out fast is to join our Discord! (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT) At any rate, I would like to thank you all once again for the amazing support, and the patience to deal with the pesky bugs you are finding, and to read this wall of text! haha Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-07 23:05:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! The day is finally here, and Early Access is now available!! You can finally try out all the new characters, skills, curses, achievements, endless... and create those game-breaking builds we love to see! We've prepared an Early Access release trailer to mark the occasion! [previewyoutube=DzzP5qbYrrQ;full][/previewyoutube] If you tried the Demo, or the Prologue, or you are completely new to the game and decide to give it a go, we truly hope you will have a good time with all the changes and new content available! You can find the Early Access in the link below: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ We would like to thank you all once again for all the support, the game would definitely not be the same without the amazing community we have here on Steam and on Discord! All the feedback, support messages and even criticism all helped to shape the game so far, and rest assured: the Early Access is just the beginning! And with all that said... we will see you in the void, Void Hunter! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-07 12:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! As we are getting closer and closer to the beginning of Early Access on November 7th, we wanted to do a little something in preparation for all that is coming. And with that in mind, we decided to run a small Pre-Release event where you have a chance of getting a Steam Key for Soulstone Survivors for free, in addition to a few other prizes! Together with this update v0.8.025a for the Prologue version which we will get into in a second, we set up a small Speedrunning tournament over in our Discord, where the fastest players will be eligible to earn the following prizes:

• 6x Soulstone Survivors Steam Keys;
• $30 Steam Gift card courtesy of @VyvLiveGaming on Twitch;
• Unique Discord roles to show how awesome you are;

If speedrunning is not your thing, not to worry! All participants will have a chance of getting a Steam Key regardless of their score! If you want to learn more, the first step downloading the Prologue, which you can find here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/ And the second step, is to join our Discord: https://discord.gg/q9gCH73r?event=1034911281452433419 Now, together with this event, we also released update v0.8.025a into the Prologue! This is a small update that focuses on fixing a few things while improving some skills that were in need of some love!

Full change list for version v0.8.025a:

General changes:

- Community Event: Steam Key Giveaway and Speedrun Tournament, join our Discord to learn more! - Fixed an issue where Tracking attacks (such as Alexi's Poison Volley or the Elite Snake Poison Spit) would have unreliable speeds. In general, you should feel those attacks slightly faster than before if you are far away from the target; - Fixed an issue where bosses would cast their skills without looking at you; - Fixed an issue where certain projectiles would remain forever in the game; - Fixed issue where the Effect Opacity option was not affecting ground effects such as cracks and whatnot; - Poison and Bleed now deal damage every second. Total damage and duration are still the same; - Increased the damage of Smite from 450 to 630; - Reduced the cooldown of Smite from 10 to 8 seconds; - Increased the damage of Templars Verdict from 280 to 480; - Increased the damage of Poison Bolt from 130 to 150 per bolt; - Reduced the damage from Skeletal Archers from 240 to 200 per projectile; - Increased the health of Skeletal Archers from 60 to 90; - Increased the health of Skeletal Mages from 80 to 120; We are super excited about all that is coming to the game in less than two weeks now, and we can't wait to know what you will all think of the new classes, skills and challenges you will find in the Early Access version, but until then, we hope you will have fun with the Prologue, and if you run into any issues, please do let us know! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-10-26 19:26:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! It's been a while since our last update, but rest assured that our silence is just because we are working extremely focused on ensuring that the Early Access will have a ton of content! Today we have made available version v0.8.024c, which brings with itself a lot of internal improvements for Early Access, including significant performance improvements, resolution fixes, the Prestige system which for now is very basic but is getting expanded very soon, multiple save files... and we have worked on SO much more in these last few weeks that we can't wait to share with you! But, without further ado, here is what you can expect in this update:

Full change list for version v0.8.024c:

General changes:

- End of Demo: We are taking the demo offline for good on October 24th, if you'd like to keep playing until the Early Access release on November 7th, please download the Prologue, your progress will be kept! - The Spellbreaker, Arcane Weaver and Sentinel are no longer available for play; - New feature: Prestige system, your characters will now earn prestige from every match and will level up permanently across matches. For now, there is no bonus for levelling up a character, but future plans will allow you to use those levels for good! - New feature: Multiple save files, now you can create multiple saves with different progression levels, or delete your saves if you so choose. Just please remember, deleting a save cannot be undone! - Major performance improvements that should make the game a lot smoother; - Remade Damage Numbers and Health Bars from the ground up to improve the performance of these systems; - Remade the system to spawn enemies, which now should offer a more constant flow of enemies while ensuring performance does not suffer major spikes; - Fixed multiple issues related to different resolutions which should offer a smoother experience, for example, on the Steam Deck; - Power Ups that enhance skills "by tag" will highlight the skills they will be empowering; - Enemies now become greyish when they die to help differentiate between alive and dead enemies; - Tons of new sound effects all across the game; - Fixed issue where certain tooltips could go outside of the screen; - Multiple visual tweaks all across the game; - Added Frontal tag to Frozen Warhammer; Now, as mentioned above, this is but a fraction of everything new we have added to the game these last few weeks, and we are now in the final touches before the Early Access starts! There is still a lot of work to be done, and even though there is a LOT of new things to try, the Early Access is just the beginning =) Please do let us know if you run into any issues with this latest version, we may be a bit quieter than usual, but we are here, we are listening, and we are working hard to make sure Soulstone Survivors will be the best it can be! Thank you all for trying the game out and for all the support so far, and I hope it will all be worth the wait! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-10-22 17:48:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Soulstone Survivors has a demo available for a limited time only with the Steam Next Fest, where you can try up to 6 characters for free! After the festival the demo is going offline, so now is the time to give the game a go if you haven't already! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ And to celebrate the festival which is booming, we will be running a Community Steam courtesy of @moorhuhnschlaechter and @VyvLiveGaming (find them on Twitch, they are awesome!), two Soulstone Survivors pro players and speed runners who will be playing the demo from the start, playing with a few of the characters, trying some skills, sharing some very good tips on how to play the game and even showing a little speed run action! We will be in chat to talk about the game and answer any questions you may have starting October 8th at 1pm BST / 5am PST, so grab a coffee, get comfortable and ask away! =) You can also jump straight into the game which is available now! We hope you will enjoy the game, have a good time, and we are always here for whatever you need! We'd also like to thank our amazing community for the support, having you all on the forums, on our discord, everywhere, is jus amazing! And a special thanks once again to @VyvLiveGaming and @moorhuhnschlaechter for helping us with the stream, you guys are awesome!! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-10-08 12:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! To mark the beginning of Steam Next Fest later today, it is with immense pleasure that we announce that Soulstone Survivors will be coming to Early Access on November 7th!! [previewyoutube=Uw0qod6patA;full][/previewyoutube] The little teaser above showcases a few seconds of gameplay from different new characters and a few new skills, but you might be wondering, is that all? Some new characters, a few new skills... and that's it? Not at all my friend! With the beginning of the Early Access, you will have access to all the main planned features in the game: Runes, Curses (map affixes), Achievements and Unlocks, literally 100 new skills, new characters, weapons... and to make sense of it all, we've also prepared a Development Roadmap, which outlines all you can expect to see in the game when Early Access hits, AND for the future of the game as well! The roadmap has been posted on the game's Steam page, be sure to check it out and of course, leave a wishlist and follow the game if you haven't already =) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ Over the next few weeks leading up to the release we will be sharing more details about each feature, but for now, I hope this gives you an idea of what to expect! The game is currently under heavy development and we plan to continue supporting Soulstone Survivors for a very long time, every day we get more and more excited with all the ways in which we can explore the game mechanics, so rest assured that this is just the beginning! If you've been following the game for a bit, you may know that we like to stay really close to the community, be it through the forums, the comments down here, and mainly through our Discord (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT), so if you've got questions or want to learn more about the game and the plans, come and join us, we'd love to chat! Thank you all for the amazing support so far, we truly hope that it will be worth the wait! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-10-03 12:31:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Soulstone Survivors is taking part on this Steam Next Fest and we wanted to kick it off in style! Courtesy of @VyvLiveGaming and @moorhuhnschlaechter (find them on Twitch, they are awesome!), two Soulstone Survivors pro players and speed runners, we will be running a Community Stream where they will be playing the demo from the start, playing with a few of the characters, trying some skills, sharing some very good tips on how to play the game and even showing a little speed run action! We will be in chat to talk about the game and answer any questions you may have starting October 3rd at 9pm BST / 1pm PST, so grab a coffee, get comfortable and ask away! =) You can also jump straight into the game which is available now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ We hope you will enjoy the game, have a good time, and we are always here for whatever you need! As always thanks everyone for the super amazing support, we are always amazed by how awesome you are =) and a special thanks once again to @moorhuhnschlaechter and @VyvLiveGaming for helping us with the stream, you guys are awesome!! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-10-02 13:10:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We have just released version v0.7.022g and this time around it is a minor patch that should address some of the issues reported by the community, including a few annoying issues such as arrows hitting your summons, Bloodlust with numbers being a bit weird, and some much-needed improvements like Death Protection actually having some feedback now! Without further ado:

Full change list for version v0.7.022g:

General changes:

- Added interface showing how many Death Protections you still have, and proper feedback when the Death Protection is triggered; - Improved localization into multiple languages for a large part of the game, more improvements coming very soon! - Whenever you use a reroll, the game will now guarantee that the new choices are not repeated; - Fixed issue where projectiles such as Shoot, Spreadshot, Poison Bolt, etc, would hit your allies, not causing damage but ending their trajectories; - Fixed Bloodlust scaling which was not working as intended; - Fixed parameters for tooltips possibly scaling multiplicatively instead of additively; - Fixed an issue where Glacier visual effect would not scale with the skill scale (damage area was working properly already); - Skills no longer count towards "Tag buffs" if they are not benefited by the buff. For example, Bloodlust no longer counts for "Chaos Multi Cast" power-up, since it does not benefit from multi casting;

Balance changes:

- Increased Death Protection invulnerability period from 1 to 2 seconds; - Wounds now has a 50% chance of doubling the effect applied during its duration; - Exposed now increases the next damage caused by 6% for each stack, down from 8%; - Reduced Arcane Explosion base damage from 350 to 300; - Increased Brutal Strikes bleed damage from 30 to 100, so it is more in line with other rare power-ups; - Increased Spontaneous Combustion burn damage from 50 to 60, so it is more in line with other common power-ups; - Increased Fateful Strikes doom damage from 15 to 40, so it is more in line with other common power-ups; - Increased Venomous poison damage from 70 to 80, so it is more in line with other common power-ups; - Increased Poisonous Blood poison damage from 40 to 130, so it is more in line with other rare power-ups; - Increased Desperation burn damage from 20 to 250, so it is more in line with other rare power-ups; - Increased Gangrene bleed damage from 20 to 150, so it is more in line with other rare power-ups; - Increased Debilitating Plague doom damage from 15 to 40, so it is more in line with other rare power-ups; - Bloodlust now correctly increases your cast frequency by an additional 40%, as the tooltip suggests; - Added Lasting tag to Poison Bomb; We hope you enjoy this minor update which should make a few play styles a bit more effective and fun to experiment with! We are working very hard on the full game now so the rate of updates is bound to slow down a little bit, and we will share the full roadmap veeery soon now, we are finishing preparing the materials, the images, and I cannot wait to show you all we have been working on in the background =) Thank you all for the support, patience and for trying the game out, the journey is very soon coming to a turning point and you will finally be able to play the real deal very soon now! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-24 13:24:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We are happy to announce the Demo for Soulstone Survivors is now back until October 12, and with it, for the first time ever, you will be able to play with a total of 6 characters! Over these last few weeks, the game has evolved quite a bit with the Prologue, and as we prepare to gear up for the Early Access release (which will be around the end of October/November!!), this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give you a taste of what else the game has to offer! Here are the 6 characters you can try right now in the demo:





As some of you may know, we currently also have a Prologue for Soulstone Survivors, which is in essence similar to the Demo. It may be confusing as to why we now have both online, and we made a video talking a little bit about it: [previewyoutube=AYI5pbEmQMg;full][/previewyoutube] As mentioned in the video, we will be participating in the Steam Next Fest, which runs from October 3rd until October 10th. After the festival is over, on October 12, the demo is going away for the last time, but the Prologue will remain, however, only with 3 characters available. We really apologise for the confusing times ahead, but we hope that you will be able to have a good time with the new characters, and most importantly that the full game will be worth the wait =) We will be sharing our full roadmap very soon, so stay tuned for news, and as always, if you have any feedback, questions, or would like to talk about anything, we are always listening, here, on our Discord (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT), on Youtube, everywhere =) Thank you all very much for the amazing support so far, and we hope you enjoy the demo! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-22 00:47:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! With only 3 days left of the demo, and the prologue about to begin, we just released yet another small update, v0.6.020c! This time around we are fixing some issues such as performance, skeleton scaling and clarity problems with some tooltips. We expect that the performance should improve for all players and highly recommend updating asap! Here is the full list of changes:

Patch v0.6.020c - August 23, 2022

Full change list for version v0.6.020c: - Fixed tooltips of Area and Attack Speed for skills that don't have Projectiles or aren't Attacks such as buffs; - Fixed the scaling of Skeletons, which now works as intended; - Performance improvements and changes that should make the game faster for the majority of players; - Changed Multi Cast chance decay factor from 0.5 to 0.4. This means bigger chains of multi casts will be rarer; - Redured Bloodlust attack speed from 30% to 20%; - Reduced Buff Potency powerup from 30%/45% to 20%/30%; - Changed Armor formula, now being capped at enemies taking a maximum of double the damage if you manage to bring their armor to 0. Any further reductions will be ignored; We hope you enjoy those changes and remember to wishlist the Prologue to be able to get it as soon as its online =) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/ Best wishes, - The Dev team

[ 2022-08-24 02:57:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We have just released version v0.6.020b! This is the last set of big changes coming to the Demo, in preparation for the Prologue! If you haven't wishlisted the prologue yet, that would be an amazing help for us! You can do so in the link below! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/ Alright, now for the changes! Since we changed a lot of the in-game formulas, pretty much all power-ups had their numbers tweaked! Some systems changed a bit, some performance improvements, overall this is actually quite a large patch! Do give the game a go through the Demo and let us know if you run into any issues! =)

Patch v0.6.020b - August 23, 2022

Full change list for version v0.6.020b: - Changed Double Cast into Multi Cast, which is now a percentage but can proc multiple times; - New power-up added for Multi Casts for all skills; - Changed almost all stats to be Multiplicative instead of Additive; - Considerable performance optimisations that should improve memory usage and overall CPU load; - Added confirmation popup when trying to restart a match or go back to menu; - Added support for French, German and Spanish, also improved all other language translations; - Fixed Dash visual glitch; - Fixed issue where Void would pull enemies from outside its influence area, and would be able to pull very heavy enemies; - Fixed issue where your allies could be removed from the game inadvertently; - Fixed Overhead Text from your minions; - Adjusted Sort Order of the Tracker panel (pointy arrows); Balance changes: - Increased Frozen Warhammer damage based on Chill from 8 to 15; - Increased Frozen Warhammer damage from 120 to 180; - Reduced cooldown of Frozen Warhammer from 7 to 6; - Reduced Piercing Shout duration from 6 to 5 seconds; - Piercing Shout now reduces armor by 30 (additive); - Reduced Shield Wall duration from 5 to 4 seconds; - Shield Wall now increases armor by 200 (additive); - Removed impact damage of Shadow Bolt (now it only applies Doom); - Summoned units now scale better (there is a known issue with this atm); - Bloodlust attack speed reduced from 40% to 30% (now multiplicative); - Bloodlust movement speed reduced from 25% to 20% (now multiplicative); - Might damage multiplier increased from 30% to 40% (now multiplicative); - Removed Power Up cap on On Hit effects; Thank you once again for all the help so far, and we hope to see you in the Prologue, there is still a lot to come and we can't wait to get it all out there! Best wishes, - The Dev team

[ 2022-08-23 11:54:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We've been teasing some big news for a while and, this is it! We would like to announce that on the 26th of August we are removing the demo from Steam, and starting the Prologue! Before anything else, you should head over to the Prologue Steam page and wishlist so you will know as soon as it's available! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/ Now, why is this big news? Because the Prologue is coming with a TON of new content available for free before the release of the game! Let me show you some of the new stuff you can expect to try in the Prologue:

New Characters and Weapons:

New skills to explore:

New Lord of the Void:

System improvements and fixes

May not be as flashy as the above but the Prologue will come with a bunch of overall improvements, fixes and optimisations currently not available in the demo!

But... Is this the full game then?

No, my friend, not even close! We have SO much more in store for the full version (which is coming hopefully by November!), so many new characters, weapons, the fabled Rune system which will shape the way you play the game, the feared Affixes system to make your runs extremely challenging and offer unique rewards, a LOT of new Lords of the Void and challenges to face, unlocks, achievements, endless mode... and the list goes on!

So we will now have 6 characters to play with?!

Not quite. We will be temporarily saying farewell to the Spellbreaker, the Sentinel and to the Arcane Weaver. If you played the Demo and unlocked those characters and their weapons, don't worry, your progress is safe! But, they will be taking some time off after killing Alexi so many times! We will also be removing some active skills from circulation for now. They are all coming back in the full release of the game, so if you haven't yet, give the Demo a go, tell your friends, and have some fun with the current content which will be available for only 1 week more!

Speaking of progress... will it carry over to the Prologue? Will the Prologue carry over to the full version?

Yes! When you download the Prologue, while you will have lost access to the 3 characters mentioned above, you will retain your Skill Tree, materials and Soulstones. You will have to unlock the new characters and weapons, and when you do, those will carry over to the full version of the game as well!

But, will the Prologue become the full version then?

No. The Prologue is just a free version of the game where you can enjoy some new content and keep up with the game development, but, if you just want to wait for the full release and play it once it's ready, this is where it will be. We recommend you Wishlist the full game below to make sure you are notified once the full game is available! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ We hope you are as excited to try the new content as we are for sharing it with you! We will keep updating the Prologue with fixes, and improvements, and will continuously share more and more details about the plans for the full game as time goes by! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out here, in the Steam forums, in Discord, or anywhere you might like, we are here for you =) Thank you very much for your attention, Best wishes, - The Dev Team

[ 2022-08-19 22:53:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Another update is now out, version v0.5.019c comes to solve some critical issues where saves could be corrupted without any sort of recourse, it brings arrows pointing to the portals, a.k.a. most requested feature ever hahaha and a lot of balance changes!

Patch v0.5.019c - August 11, 2022

General changes and fixes: - Added icons pointing towards the ending portal, Bosses, Major Soulstones and Healing Crystals if within range; - Made the game much more resilient to save file corruption, storing backups and self-correcting where possible; - Fixed small glitch where a material description would go out of frame; - Fixed issue where certain spell effects would be glitching with the floor; - Fixed issue where the game could lock you in the Level Up screen if you died at the same time; - Fixed music that is not playing after killing the first boss; - Fixed Flame Wave description which did not state it causes stun; - Fixed Ground Slam description in Portuguese; Balance changes: - Summoned Skeletons can no longer be knocked down; - Summoned Skeletons are now much more resistant to pushback; - Summon Skeleton damage increase is now an Uncommon power up, down from rare; - Arcane Explosion damage increase is now an Uncommon power up, down from rare; - Arcane Missiles now fires 2 missiles instead of one; - Arcane Explosion damage increased from 300 to 400; - Bloodlust attack speed bonus reduced from 50% to 40%; - Disengage damage increased from 350 to 450; - Fire Bolt initial damage increased from 140 to 200; - Fire Pillar burn damage increased from 400 to 500; - Fire Wall damage reduced from 600 to 500; - Fire Wall area reduced from radius 4 to 3; - Frost Bolt damage increased from 120 to 200; - Frozen Warhammer Chill scaling increased from 6 to 8; - Ground Slam damage increased from 100 to 250; - Meteor Shower initial damage reduced from 300 to 100; - Meteor Shower burn damage increased from 100 to 250; - Void damage reduced from 300 to 240; - Slash damage increased from 50 to 70; - Thunder Clap area has been halved, which was its originally intended size; - Uppercut damage increased from 300 to 500; - Reduced all Skill Area power-ups from 30% to 20%; - Reduced all Skill Type Area power-ups from 20% to 15%; Thanks everyone for the support, the help, the bug reporting, and for being absolutely awesome! We keep working hard to make the game better with every update, and it's only possible thanks to you! Best wishes, The dev team

[ 2022-08-11 03:50:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Wanted to share with you the changes for the minor update v0.5.019b that just came out this Monday, August 8th =) This is a small one focused on fixes but also brings some much awaited quality of life improvements! here is the full list of changes:

Patch v0.5.019a - August 5, 2022

General changes and fixes: - Added simple Quality Settings to the game to assist with performance. General optimisations still under development; - Fixed issue where if you leveled up just as you died, the game would go into a lock state; - Made it so saving progress is more resilient to possible corruption errors; - Attempted fix at Major Soulstones rarelly not being awarded to the player; - Fixed issue where elite enemies were spawning exactly in the same position; - Fixed Elite Snake and Spider not yield the correct amount of XP; - Fixed issue where Fire Shield was not scaled by Attack Speed; - Fixed Death Guard requirements in the skill tree, so it can be unlocked properly; - Cloud Save should now be working properly; - Fixed "Skill Cooldowns" description in the character stats panel; Thank you very much once again for your support, we continue hard at work and should be able to share some big news and updates very very soon! =) Best wishes, The dev team

[ 2022-08-10 11:33:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We have just released another really cool update for the Demo, we can't seem to stop ourselves! =P In this one among other things we decided to add more Elite enemies to the game, to bring some change of pace of how a run can go! Without further ado:

Patch v0.5.019a - August 5, 2022

General changes and fixes: - Added new Elite enemies across all tiers; - Made it so when you collect a Major Soulstone, you pull all existing XP crystals to you automatically; - Adjusted crosshair position for more precise aiming; - Added new menu animations for the Spellbreaker (others are coming); - Frozen Warhammer now properly applies chill; - Adjusted geometry and navigation in all maps; - Made Major Soulstones easier to collect; - Major Soulstones can now only spawn on valid terrain; - Fixed Void and Rain of Arrows not proccing effects with every damage tick; - Fixed Smite scaling its healing with Skill Modifiers; - Fixed issue with Charging areas staying on the ground when a unit dies until they complete; - Fixed Frozen Warhammer visuals which were showing the hit in the wrong place if you had a lot of Area modifiers; Balance changes: - Leviathan damage modifier reduced from 15/30/45 to 10/20/30; - Void pulling force reduced from 1500 to 1100; As always we want to thank you all for the amazing support, it's been crazy seeing so many people enjoy the game and we can't wait to show you all we have in store! =) Best wishes, The dev team

[ 2022-08-06 00:44:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We have just completed one week since the Demo release and we cannot believe the amazing feedback and support we received! It is absolutely mind blowing, and it has been a blast improving the game with your help! With that in mind we thought it would be cool to take this even further! I'm happy to announce our first ever community event, the Skill Weekend #1!

Skill Weekend #1

Starting today, August 5 2022, until August 7 2022, we are holding an event in our Discord to get input for new skills in the game! The top voted skills will make it into the game (and the demo!) and, once we have the interface in the game, will be forever credited to the user that suggested the skill! Here is how it works: 1 - Join our Discord at: https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT 2 - Send suggestions for new in-game Active Skills in the #skill-weekend-01 channel; 3 - Vote on suggestions using the emoji; 4 - Submissions and votes will be accepted until August 6, 5pm; 5 - The top voted suggestions go into a "final round" of voting; 6 - Top suggestions make it into the game, and the skills are credited to whoever made the suggestion in-game! PS: All previously suggested skills are still also being considered, we just thought this would be a fun way to get you all involved in the process a bit more directly! =) As always thank you all very much for the support and we hope that we will see you there! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-08-05 17:29:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! As some of you may know, we have been updating the demo for Soulstone Survivors quite often! We decided it would be a good idea to start posting the patch notes for those changes over here so you can all refer to it in a more convenient manner =) We are very active in discord and love discussing about the game, there are a ton of great folks over there and it has been a big source for the improvements and fixes we've been working on, so do consider joining us! =) Without further ado:

Patch v0.5.018i - August 2, 2022

General changes and fixes: - New Skill: Frozen Warhammer - New Power-up: Leviathan - Banish now banishes all powerups of a power up group if there is one; - You will no longer get two rarities of the same power up in a single level up; - Fixed Snake attack that did not have an area reticule and could cause extreme damage which was not intended; - Fixed sounds that should be SFXs, not being categorised as such; - Added new stat: Base Skill Cooldown; - Fixed issue with NaN and 0 damage numbers; - Fixed issue where the Sentinel's Executioner of Souls Damage Reduction bonus was incorrect; - Fixed issue where Skeletons would become invisible or disappear through the ground; - Changed Alexi's Poison Volley reticule to be more representative of the potential area of attack; Balance changes: - Magnetic now also has the benefits of Wise, and wise is no longer available; - Chaos bomb damage increased from 1-600 to 1-1200; - Disengage damage increased from 250 to 350; - Festering Strike poison damage increased from 200 to 400; - Fire Bolt burn damage increased from 80 to 150; - Fire Wall burn damage increased from 400 to 600; - Flame Wave initial damage increased from 100 to 150; - Frost Bolt cooldown reduced from 3 to 2 seconds; - Frost Bolt now will fire in the direction you are aiming at; - Frost Bolt damage increased from 60 to 120; - Glacier damage increased from 300 to 600; - Lightning Bolt damage increased from 300 to 500; - Meteor instant damage increased from 300 to 500; - Meteor burn damage increased from 100 to 200; - Meteor Shower now fires half the amount of meteors and visuals are considerably simpler; - Meteor Shower damage per meteor increased from 60 to 300; - Meteor Shower burn damage per meteor increased from 30 to 100; - Poison Bolt damage increased from 300 to 500; - Poison Bomb initial poison damage increased from 200 to 400; - Poison Bomb additional poison damage increased from 40 to 100; - Rain of Arrows damage increased from 160 to 480; - Smite damage increased from 400 to 700; - Summon Skeleton Skeleton's damage increased from 15 to 120; - Summon Skeleton Skeleton's health increased from 100 to 200; - Thunder Strike damage increased from 280 to 600; - Void pulling force increased from 1000 to 1500; - Void now applies Doom, causing a total of 420 damage if the target remains inside Void for the whole duration; - Fragility duration reduced from 10 to 6 seconds; - Fragility damage increase reduced from 5% to 4%; - Spontaneous Combustion chance increased from 15% to 20%; - Sponteanous Combustion damage increased from 30 to 40; - Touch of Ice chance increased from 15% to 20%; We got more changes coming soon so keep an eye out as we continue improving the game. Thank you all very much for the support and feedback, and we hope you enjoy your time in the game! Best wishes, The dev team

[ 2022-08-02 20:24:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are happy to share that Soulstone Survivors demo is available NOW! Pick your character, craft your weapons, choose a map and let the mayhem begin! While we are saving some extra cool stuff for the full version fo the game, we still will be adding a ton of new content to the demo, so if you have suggestions, feedback or impressions about the game, do let us know in our Discord (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT), we are always online and would love to have a chat! We hope you will enjoy the game as much as we do, and if you'd like to keep up to date with the game's development, wishlist the game here on Steam! Best wishes, The dev team

[ 2022-07-28 18:10:31 CET ] [ Original post ]