Greetings, Void Hunters! sssthumb

Our 14th major update, the Cursed Fleet has been available for the full game for a few weeks and is now being ported to the Prologue, which is now in sync with the latest improvements of the main game, including HUGE performance improvements that should make the experience of Prologue smooth as butter. In the main game this update also brought a new Void Hunter, the Cursed Captain!
If you have not checked out the full game yet now is a great time to get started! Your progress in the Prologue is carried over to the main game so rest assured that all of your soulstones, weapons and skill tree will be there! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ This update once again brings a ton of major core improvements to the game, including the biggest performance improvements we have had so far! You can view the full list of changes here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/2066020/announcements/detail/4473856395596267910 We continue adding a ton of new content to the full game and we hope you will give it a try! We hope you enjoy the game and if you have any feedback or suggestions, you can join our Discord Server and speak directly with the devs!
Best wishes, - Soulstone Team

[ 2024-12-18 23:45:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!

Our 13th major update just hit, the Embrace of Chaos! This update brings the Prologue in sync with the latest improvements of the main game, including major performance improvements that should make the experience of Prologue even smoother while also adding a new Void Hunter to the main game, the Demon Hunter!
If you have not checked out the full game yet now is a great time to get started! Your progress in the Prologue is carried over to the main game so rest assured that all of your soulstones, weapons and skill tree will be there! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ This update brings a ton of major core improvements to the game which will be felt both here in the Prologue and the main game, including smaller game size, better performance, and overall smoother gameplay. You can view the full list of changes here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/2066020/announcements/detail/4677640474189763976 We continue adding a ton of new content to the full game and we hope you will give it a try! We hope you enjoy the game and if you have any feedback or suggestions, you can join our Discord Server and speak directly with the devs!
Best wishes, - Soulstone Team

[ 2024-09-23 20:47:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!

We are bringing you today a new update, Tides of the Void! This update brings the Prologue in sync with the latest improvements of the main game and marks the debug of a new Void Hunter to the main game, the Myrmidon!
If you have not checked out the full game yet, we will be a part of the Summer Sale very shortly so it is a great time to get started! Your progress in the Prologue is carried over to the main game so rest assured that all of your soulstones, weapons and skill tree will be there! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ While here in Prologue land the Myrmidon will not make an appearance, this update does bring a lot of fixes and improvements across the game that will also make the experience of the Prologue more enjoyable! You can view the full list of changes here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2066020/view/4174354971168780818 We continue adding a ton of new content to the full game and we hope you will give it a try! We hope you enjoy the game and if you have any feedback or suggestions, you can join our Discord Server and speak directly with the devs!
Best wishes, - Soulstone Team

[ 2024-06-27 14:15:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!

Today we are once again bringing the Prologue back in sync with the main game with the latest update, Master of Machines, which introduces a new Void Hunter to the main game, the Engineer! [previewyoutube=Dh6TQSgs618;full][/previewyoutube] While the Engineer will not make an appearance in the Prologue, this update also brings quite a few usability improvements and fixes that should make your experience considerably smoother! If you have not checked out the full game yet, it is a great time to get started! Your progress in the Prologue is carried over to the main game so rest assured that all of your soulstones, weapons and skill tree will be there! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ We continue adding a ton of new content to the full game and we hope you will give it a try! We hope you enjoy the game and if you have any feedback or suggestions, you can join our Discord Server and speak directly with the devs!
Best wishes, - Soulstone Team

[ 2024-05-13 16:59:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!

Today we are bringing the Prologue back in sync with the main game with the latest update, A New Beginning!
This update not only brings a ton of improvements all around the game, it also revamps many of the systems and skills in the game. In the Prologue, this means gaining access to a bunch of new skills, power-ups and systems so that it is once again in line with the main game. The Prologue is now also restricted to two characters, the Barbarian and the Pyromance, which offer a good introduction to two of the many playstyles available in the full game. This update marks an important milestone for Soulstone Survivors so if you have not checked out the full game yet, it is a great time to get started! Your progress in the Prologue is carried over to the main game so rest assured that all of your soulstones, weapons and skill tree will be there! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ We continue adding a ton of new content to the full game and we hope you will give it a try! We hope you enjoy the game and if you have any feedback or suggestions, you can join our Discord Server and speak directly with the devs!
Best wishes, - Soulstone Team

[ 2024-04-10 20:13:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Survivors!

It's been a while since our last update to Prologue, as we are focused on developing the main game. But the time has come, with the latest Arms of the Ascended Update, we decided to push this update into the Prologue as well! There are just too many changes since our last Prologue update, but here is a short general list of what you can find in this new update:

• Loads of visual improvements in the UI all across the game;
• Considerably increased performance, the game should once again be consierably faster;
• Literally hundreds of bug fixes with skills, calculations, and balance changes;
• New and improved sound effects;
• Loads of improvements for the controller support in the game;
• Considerable fixes and improvements for Mac and Linux platforms;

We have been pushing Soulstone Survivors forward with everything we have, and if you have not checked out the main game yet, you can always jump to it from the link below. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ The Prologue is just a tiny fraction of everything you can find in the main game, and we continue adding more and more features and content to explore! We hope you enjoy the game and if you have any feedback or suggestions, you can join our Discord Server and speak directly with the devs! At any rate, we hope that this update will considerably improve your experience with the Prologue!
Best wishes, - Soulstone Team

[ 2023-12-18 19:45:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! It's been a long time since our last update to the Prologue, as we have been focusing very hard on making the main game as good as it can be. But this time around, with the release of our latest update to the main game, Omen of Spring, we thought it was a great time to make an update and bring the Prologue up to speed! To be honest, the number of changes from the last version in the Prologue are just too many to keep track of, BUT, to make a very very short list of what you can expect: - Loads of visual improvements in the UI all across the game; - Considerably increased performance, game should be A LOT lighter now; - LIterally hundreds of bug fixes with skills, calculations, balance changes; - New and improved sound effects and tracks; - Loads of improvements for the controller support in the game; - Considerable fixes and improvements for Mac and Linux platforms; We have been pushing Soulstone Survivors forward with everything we have, and if you have not checked out the main game yet, you can always jump to it from the link below. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ Since the Early Access release in November 2022, we have added a load of new skills, weapons, systems, secrets, enemies, bosses... and we got many more updates coming in the following months, so if you want to help us in the ride from Early Access to Full Release, we would love to have your opinion and know what you think! At any rate, we hope that this update will improve your experience with the Prologue! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2023-02-15 01:14:52 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 ]

Hello everyone! Today marks the end of our pre-release event which was going on in our Discord community (https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT), but while it was going on we are hard at work, finishing the last details of the Early Access version that is coming on November 7th! With that said, we prepared another update for the Prologue, bringing a lot of the fixes that we have implemented in our internal versions, some more performance improvements, and finally, support for Mac and Linux systems!

**IMPORTANT**

If you play on the Steam Deck, with the addition of the Linux support, we finally managed to circumvent the issue that was causing Steam Cloud to not sync on the Deck properly. From this point forward, if you are playing with the Linux version, it should work normally and sync your save files across all devices. HOWEVER, since this will allow the deck to synchronize the files for the first time, we expect it is possible your existing save files on the deck, might be overridden. So please, if you have any issues with your save files, send us an e-mail at support@gamesmithing.com and we will be able to assist you directly to recover your progress.

Full change list for version v0.8.026g:

General changes:

- Added support for Mac and Linux; (PS: If you play on the Steam Deck, read the message above!!!) - Now all skill effects are properly affected by the Effect Opacity setting, including models; - Minimum Effect Opacity can now go very very low to almost not visible at all; - Made it so certain effects, such as the End portal and Boss Skills are not affected by Effect Opacity settings; - Fixed an issue where health bars would not show if the unit had negative effects but was at full health; - Fixed issue where units would often get stuck in the top left corner of The Whispering Grove; - Colummeth's Ice Shards no longer collide with the player; - Fixed issue where multiple skills would leave some sort of effect behind if they were replaced by another skill; - Fixed possible localization issues that could cause certain systems to not start the game; - Fixed issue where the Summon tag would not appear in the skill's types; - Implemented considerable code changes to help with performance in very busy scenarios; - Fixed multiple small issues that would cause silent errors, and should help improve the performance of the game; - Fixed an issue where in very extreme cases, health bars would stop being responsive; - Fixed an issue where crafting a weapon would not show its special effect; - Fixed an issue where in certain specific cases, certain skills would pile up multiple sounds effects at once; - Added commas to Boss health numbers (things can get crazy =P); - Chaos Golem now has a limit of 3 units active; - Increased the damage of Smite from 630 to 650; - Reduced the cooldown of Smite from 8 to 7 seconds; - Increased the average damage of Chaos Bomb from 500 to 700; - Reduced the cooldown of Chaos Bomb from 8 to 6.5 seconds; - Increased the average damage of Death Claw from 300 to 500; - Reduced the cooldown of Death Claw from 8 to 7 seconds; - Considerably Increased the area of Festering Strike; - Increased the damage of Festering Strike from 30 to 100; - Increased the damage of Shadow Bolt from 160 to 210; With that out of the way, we wanted to once again thank you all for your incredible support. We cannot believe we are this close to the beginning of Early Access, and this is still just the beginning of the journey! We love working on the game and still have a ton of plans, but we really really hope that those of you that chose to get a copy of the early access game, will enjoy all that is coming! Additionally, I wanted to apologise once again for any inconvenience that might happen now with the save files in the Steam Deck. We've been fighting with this Cloud Save issue for a long time and this was the only solution we could find after long talks with Steam, and hopefully, we will be able to assist in making sure no one loses their progress once Early Access starts. And for now, that's it! We are always here, so let us know if you run into any issues, and hopefully, we will see you all when the Early Access begins! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-04 20:36:10 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 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 is to join our Discord: https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT Now, together with this event, we also released update v0.8.025a! 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 19:26:21 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:

- 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 17:48:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We have just released version v0.7.022g to both the Prologue and the Demo! Before we get into the changes, we just wanted to remind everyone that you can download the Demo which has 3 extra characters to the Prologue so it should be worth a try =) To get it, simply go to the main game page linked below, and click Download Demo! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ Now, to talk about the update, 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 Poison Bolt 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%; - 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 13:24:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We are happy to announce that the demo is now available! We wrote an announcement with more details you can find here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2066020/view/3291591738142374624 The demo will be available starting now up until October 12! Make sure to head over to the main game page and get it to play with the 3 new characters! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ In addition to the demo release, we also made a minor update to the Prologue which brings a few more minor fixes. Here is the list of changes: - Added Skill Bar highlight when you select a skill in the Level Up screen, so you can easily see how many skill types are shared between skills; - Added Frontal tag to Poison Bolt; - Changed the formatting of the DPS counter on the details page so it is in-line with the other numbers; We hope you enjoy trying out the new characters and remember, the Demo is a separate game and needs to be downloaded from the main page of the game! Do let us know if you run into any issues with either the prologue or demo, we are always here =) Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-22 02:29:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Our update yesterday did not hit the spot. Firstly, we changed the name of most of the stats in the game, to address a clarity issue that was only really noticeable for more hardcore players, but ended up introducing clarity issues for most of the other players. This change has been addressed yesterday a few hours after the original patch, and hopefully you are already finding it easier to process what the stats do and how they work. Secondly, we changed the skill tags to a different system. The new system intentionally had indirect tags that did not describe the skills, so we can create different groups for different synergies. We knew that losing the "descriptiveness" was a negative side of the change, but we believed it would lead to more interesting synergies down the line. And this update is all about this change. First, here is the full list of changes for this update, and then I will speak a bit more about the tags:

Patch v0.7.022e - September 21, 2022

General changes:

- Reworked tags to once again be descriptive, being closely related to the mechanics of the skill; - With the rework, skills now have 3-4 tags, and to compensate for the additional tags, power-ups that improve skills by type will only show if you have 2 or more skills with a certain tag, which will help with making sure you get more power-ups relevant to the skills you are trying to buff; - Fixed an issue where the Skill Tree bonus Minor Soulstones perk was not working at all for the first 4 points, and then working too much for the last point. Now you will receive the intended bonus; - Fixed issue where the "Skill Modifiers" in the tooltip for skills such as Bloodlust, was not showing the buff potency stat properly; - Re-enabled Festering Strike which was innadivertently removed from the game; So, to talk a bit more about the tags, why did we touch them in the first place? The main problem we had, is that with too few tags, too many skills are grouped together. With the current version, where you only have say... 5 melee skills, it is alright, that is a good group size. But, in the full game, with literally hundreds of skills, the "melee" or "physical" or "instant" groups would be huge, including probably over 100 skills in a single group only. This basically defeats the purpose of tags in the first place, which is to give you upgrades for skills that should work well together, but not to all your skills, all of the time. Going after skills based on their tags so you can build a deck of 6 "Fire" skills, that is a really cool playstyle that we want to support, but it must feel like a bit of a challenge to have 6 Fire Skills, maybe it doesn't happen every game, and when it does, it is really cool. With overly broad tags such as "Melee", in the old system, it would be very very common to get all 6 skills with the same tags. And this is the problem we wanted to address. So how does the new system work? Basically, we broken down some tags into more tags. Melee is no longer melee, but Swing for slashes of all kinds, Slam for impacts and mace-like attacks, and Thrust for stab/piercing melee attacks. Ranged is no longer ranged, instead, it is now Projectile for skills that fire actual projectiles (arrows, bolts, etc), Bomb for bomb type skills and Blast for explosive type skills. A few other tags have been added to describe skills, such as Burst when a skill fires a burst of things, Chain when a skill chains between enemies, Frontal when a skill can be aimed and fires in front of you, and so on. With the additional tags, we also had to include more tags, so skills now have, on average, 3 or 4 tags. This means you would have more tags in your skills, and that it would be hard to get upgrades that are "skill by type" that were actually relevant to the skills you are trying to buff. With this problem in mind, we changed so now you can only get these upgrades for tags that appear in 2 or more skills in your currently active skills. This way, we can have more tags, but still only give you upgrades for the skills you really care about. I do believe the new system will help with the original problem for future content, while also maintaining the original system descriptiveness. We are listening to your feedback, and clearly with this last update, we were simply wrong in the path we took, despite having run a test period prior to its release. I really appreciate the patience and support, even when things go wrong, and we are always here to listen and act as fast as we can, to make sure the game is always going in the right direction. Thank you all once again for playing the game, and let us know what you think of the latest changes! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-21 15:29:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! This minor update is a hotfix to version v0.7.022c, where a few skills were causing the game to stop when you level up, due to localization errors. In addition to that, we have reverted the changes to the attribute names, which are now mostly the same as they were before. In short, the changes are: - Fixed Options menu popup not opening properly if using the Keyboard hotkey; - Changed attribute names back to percentages and their old names mostly, adjusting all necessary labels and texts; - Fixed localization of skills that were causing the game to freeze when levelling up in certain languages; We have addressed the wording on all relevant power-ups to still make it clear that upgrades are now additive, instead of multiplicative. I wanted to comment on the controversial changes from the last update in a bit more detail: 1) About the attribute renaming: the reason we even touched on this, is the change from multiplicative to additive. I will speak about that in the next paragraph, but we wanted to move away from percentages, because even though those are nice when looking in isolation, they are not nice when you have to increase them. If you have 200% extra critical damage, and you get a power-up that says "Increase extra critical damage by 50%", are you left with 250%, or 300%? This was a very common question and issue as players start getting more into the game, and we thought of moving into a "rate" system, where this logic is clearer. We heard you that this was not well received, so we reverted the naming, and for the power-ups to maintain the correctness, we changed texts such as: "Increase extra critical damage by 50%" -> "Increase extra critical damage by an additional 50%" One of the exceptions of attribute names is attack speed -> cast frequency modifier. This change was kept since attack speed was confusing for a lot of players, which thought that attack speed may only apply to their basic attacks or weapon-related skills. We hope that with these changes now we will be able to keep the messaging clear and attributes easy to understand but also communicate the inner working of the game more clearly. 2) About the multiplicative vs additive: Up until the last update, if you had 200% extra critical damage, and got a power-up for an extra 50%, you would go to 300% extra critical damage. This was the case for all attributes in the game, and while it can be fun to over stack a single attribute and get to crazy high values, it also makes any other strategy that is NOT accumulating a single attribute feel much much worse. In addition to that, the multiplicative scaling causes direct problems with future features, such as the Affixes system in which matches will last longer due to the increased difficulty, and other game modes such as the Endless mode. The issue is, with multiplicative scaling, your power increases exponentially, and to compensate for that, everything else would need to scale exponentially, enemy health, damage, etc, which would lead to a balancing problem where unless you stacked just ONE attribute, you would not be effective. This change was necessary for the health of the game in general. We are keeping an eye on the current values and how they feel, on the power levels and how the game plays, after all in the end what matters is that it is fun to play. We can always boost numbers back up and come up with different strategies for faster scaling, so bear with us for now, though from our testing and early feedback, it does not seem like values are too small. Also important to note, the current game can be seen as easy by a lot of the players, especially after you have some Skill Tree progression, but remember, this is not the final challenge of the game, rather the opposite, this is the "easiest" setting in the game. And once again, with multiplicative stats, we would need to scale everything based on multiplicative scaling, which would mean that unless you focused heavily on one attribute only, you would be at a disadvantage. Our main goal with Soulstone Survivors is to make sure that as many builds as possible are viable and fun to play with, and Multiplicative scaling goes directly against that since it benefits focusing on a single skill, on a single attribute, much more than variety. And of course, you still CAN focus on a single attribute and skill, it is still a VERY good strategy, it is just more on line with playing more varied builds. 3) About the Skill Tags name changes: we are aware of your concerns for these changes as well. The issue here comes exactly from attaching Tags, to skill descriptions. With hundreds of skills coming to the game, having over a hundred sharing the "projectile" or "ranged" or "melee" tag, makes it so focusing your build on THOSE tags is optimal. If we changed the tags to describe the actions of the skills, for example, Swing, Slam, Thrust, Blast, Projectile, Bomb... we run into another issue. If we create a skill that we think would be an amazing synergy with "Bomb" type skills, but the skill itself is not "a bomb", say it is a buff, or a summon, or firing a net, or a melee strike... suddenly this skill will suffer in the synergy because it cannot share tags and make sense at the same time. We can always return to the previous format and think of ways to change them in different directions, but we truly believe his will come at the cost of build variety and differentiation between play styles. The tags serve the purpose of grouping skills together, but also of the purpose of separating skills. One thing, for example, we were not happy with, and still need more work to address, is that most of the time having "mixed element" builds is not ideal, you are incentivised to focus on a certain tag. With skills-sharing tags like they did before, this was exacerbated, and we are taking steps (not only the renaming but new power-ups, runes and effects) to make sure that mixed-element builds are as good as single-element builds. We will keep an eye on how these changes continue to develop and might revert this change, or at least change the names into more logical groupings. To finish this way too long message, I just wanted to say that we are listening, and I hope that by now you know we are doing our best to create the best game we can. We are bound to make mistakes, and we are not afraid of going back and fixing them. We want what is best for the game and we always count on your help, feedback and support to move forward. Thank you all for your attention, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-20 19:55:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! It's been a little while since our last update, but we've been working super hard on content for the full release! This brings us to the first topic in this announcement: on September 22, we will be bringing the Demo back online, and this time around with a total of 6 characters to try! The demo will be available for A LIMITED TIME ONLY, and you can check more details in the following video: [previewyoutube=AYI5pbEmQMg;full][/previewyoutube] Today we have also made a huge update to the Prologue, this time around introducing some considerable systematic changes to the game to prepare it for the full version and all the content that is coming with it, as well as some improvements to the quality of life and a whole lot of balance improvements! We expect a few of the changes in this version to be controversial at first =P, but still, overall, we expect the game experience to be smoother, the power progression to be from one side more controlled, but still very rewarding, and we expect that some under-used skills will now be able to shine through with the balance changes. Without further ado:

Patch v0.7.022c - September 20, 2022

General changes:

- Added "Damage Details" page at the end of a match, so you can see more details about how skills are performing; - Added "Skill Modifiers" to the skill tooltips, so you can see all modifiers that are applied to that skill in addition to your attributes; - Multiple visual and sound effect changes across the game; - New Soundtrack for The Whispering Grove (forest map); - Added option to enable/disable tooltips during gameplay; - Visual effects for when you change weapons to improve feedback; - Added new Status Effects such as Melting, Rot, Cursed, etc, which are, for now, linked only to a few skills such as Flamethrower; - Made fix so some projectiles don't go in weird directions; - Changed how skills such as Flamethrower multicast, by adding more projectiles and increasing the rate of fire; - Made it so Minerals and Health Crystals can now take status effects; - Fixed an issue where summoned units such as the Skeletal Archers were benefited 3 times by Skill Tag upgrades;

System changes:

- ALL power-up effects are now Additive, instead of Multiplicative. This change makes it so the power curve during a match is more linear, instead of exponential. Together with this change, most stats have had their names adjusted and are no longer percentages, to make the inner workings clearer; - With the change above, ALL power-ups have had their values adjusted, so the power levels should still feel similar to before; - Major refactor to Skill Tags. All skills have had their tags revisited, and many new tags were created to divide skills into different groups and to be rid of overly generic tags. The intention behind this change is to accommodate the number of skills planned for the full game, and make sure that certain tags are not overly powerful in comparison to others;

Balance changes:

- Increased Blizzard damage from 400 to 625; - Reduced damage of Buckshot from 120 to 100; - Increased Chain Lightning damage from 170 to 180; - Reduced Chaos Bomb damage from 1-600 to 1-500, but considerably increased the power of the random effects; - Combustion no longer deals instant damage, but Burn damage increased from 40 to 60; - Reduced Death Claw damage from 1-1000 to 1-300, but considerably increased the power of the random effects; - Increased Double Slash bleed damage from 50 to 100; - Decreased Festering Strike damage from 150 to 30; - Decreased Festering Strike poison damage from 400 to 90; - Reduced Festering Strike cooldown from 8 to 1.6 seconds; - Increased Fire Slash burn damage from 100 to 170; - Reduced damage from Fire Wall from 450 to 400; - Considerably increased the area of Fire Wall; - Flamethrower now applies Melting instead of Burn; - Flamethrower no longer deals instant damage, but now applies Melting, dealing 75 damage up from 30 and reducing armor; - Increased Flame Wave burn damage from 300 to 400; - Increased Frost Bolt damage from 300 to 330; - Increased base damage for Frozen Warhammer from 180 to 300; - Frozen Warhammer now scales off of Slow and Paralysis; - Increased Glacier damage from 600 to 650; - Increased Ground Slam damage from 250 to 300; - Reduced Ground Slam cooldowm from 8 to 6; - Increased Ground Slam bleed damage from 300 to 500; - Reduced duration of Intimidating Shout from 12 to 6 seconds; - Lightning Bolt now fires 3 large missiles in a cone, each dealing 280 damage; - Reduced Meteor damage from 500 to 400; - Increased Mortar Shot damage from 20 to 30; - Increased Mortar Shot bleed damage from 25 to 60; - Increased Piercing Shout armor reduction from 30 to 50; - Increased Piercing Shout cooldown from 12 to 15 seconds; - Poison Bolt now fires 5 missiles in a cone, each dealing 130 poison damage; - Increased Poison Bomb poison damage from 400 to 500, and also increased tick damage considerably; - Reduced Power Blast damage from 400 to 150; - Power Blast now applies Disoriented instead of Dazed; - Shadow Bolt now fires 7 bolts in a large cone, each dealing 160 Doom damage; - Reduced Shadow Spike initial damage from 250 to 230; - Reduced Smite damage from 700 to 450; - Increased Subdue bleed based damage from 5 to 10; - Changed Stomp damage to 400; - Reduced Templars Verdict cooldown from 7 to 5 seconds; - Reduced Templars Verdict damage from 300 to 280; - Throw Axe now applies Hemorrhage instead of Bleed; - Reduced Throw Axe damage from 350 to 100; - Increased Throw Axe Hemorrhage damage from 200 to 300; - Increased Thrust bleed damage from 100 to 500; - Increased area of effect of Thunder Clap by 14%; - Increased Thunder Clap damage from 350 to 550; - Reduced Thunder Strike damage from 600 to 500; - Reduced Void damage from 480 to 240 (which was the intended damage, the tooltip was already showing the correct value); - Increased area of effect of Whirlwind by 12.5%; - Increased damage of Whirlwind from 90 to 110; We really hope that you enjoy those changes, and we can't wait to share more details about all the future content we are working on! As mentioned in the video, we will share a roadmap of all you can expect for the full version really soon, so stay tuned, but until then, we hope you will also enjoy the Demo and the 3 returning characters! If you have any feedback, questions or anything I can help with, please do not hesitate to leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as I can! Thank you all very much for your support, for the feedback, and for being amazing =) Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-20 15:23:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We just released update v0.6.021e! This time around we wanted to address the elephant in the room... the controller support, which was quite frankly terrible until now! With this update, the menu navigation and overall usability of the controller should be a million times better, and we apologise for taking so long to get those changes out! There are likely still improvements to be made but we are happy with the changes and hope that they will make your experience smoother =) Without further ado, here are the full list of changes for this update:

Patch v0.6.021e - September 03, 2022

General changes:

- Drastically improved gamepad usability on menus and across the game; - Changed default controller key binds for Dash and Level Up to be Left Shoulder and Right Shoulder; - Changed Buff Duration power-ups to be multiplicative; - Made it so Major Soulstones are collected instantly; - Fixed issue where Combustion was not able to multicast or stack with itself; - Fixed issue where keybindings would show as "Space" when first opened for the gamepad; - Changed the visuals of the Dash Charge counter;

Balance changes:

- Removed environmental shadow meteor showers; - Reduced the number of Goblin Bombers; - Reduced Combustion damage from 20 to 12; - Reduced Combustion burn damage from 60 to 40; - Increased Dash cooldown from 1.2 to 2.0; I also wanted to take the opportunity and comment on two other changes in this patch: Combustion, while it has had its damage reduced, the Multi Cast fix will make it far superior to what it used to be most of the time. It is very common to be able to double or even triple cast fire spells in general, so the nerf was needed otherwise Combustion would be miles ahead of most other skills in the game. Also about the Dash cooldown, this is still reminiscent of the change from the last patch, where Dashes now count the cooldown starting from the first use. With the previous version, dashes were way too easily available and very quickly you can get a second dash from the Skill Tree, and since it has invulnerability frames, the sheer mobility and defensive ability of dashes provided were a bit over-tuned. We believe this change will bring it more in line with the intended use, which should take a bit more consideration. To offset that, however, we have reduced the number of Goblin Bombers and deactivated the environmental Shadow Meteors, as we know those are two pain points for a lot of players. The Affixes System in the full version will likely bring the Goblin Bombers back haha, and we have plans for new types of environmental challenges that will replace the Shadow Meteors in the full version. With all that said, keep in mind that the prologue is just a tiny bit of all that is coming to the game! There are literally hundreds of skills still coming, characters, challenges, runes... so make no mistake, there are still big changes to numbers and systems coming in the future! We will share more details about the plans for the full release very soon, and we hope to see you all in the next update! =) Thank you for playing the game, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-09-03 18:05:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! These last few days since the Prologue release have been mind-blowingly amazing, with so many new people getting to try the game and sharing super valuable feedback with us! I'd like to first of all thank you all very much for the amazing support, we are working 24/7 trying to make this game as good as it can be for the full release, and having you all by our side has been absolutely critical for that goal! =) Update v0.6.021d is now the 4th official patch in a little over 4 days of the Prologue, not counting the small hotfixes here and there, and you can be sure that many more are still coming! In the background we are also heavy at work on new content, new skills, new bosses... and who knows, maybe some of that will make its way into the prologue in the future? =) But, without further ado, here are the latest changes:

Full change list for version v0.6.021d:

General changes:

- Added Cursor Color and Saturation to Graphic Settings; - Added a new Dash counter under your character so you can easily see if and how many dashes you currently have available, and their cooldown; - Auto Level Up is now turned on by default for new players; - Dash default hotkey has been changed to Space; - Fixing Fire Shield exploding on scenario and allies; - Fixed summons attacking Ice Orbs from Colummeth; - Fixed summoned units staying around after you remove the Summon skill; - Minor changes to level up interface to try and improve the visibility of the "Replace" button; - Fixed Glacier leaving behind the impact zone after impact; - Fixed Light debuff icon never disappearing; - Fixed issue where playing with a lot of summons could negate the system that makes waves spawn faster; - Added a cursor sample in the General Settings menu so you can see what your cursor will look like; - Increased default cursor size for new players; - Minor Soulstones no longer display particles on you when you collect them;

Balance changes:

- Increased Dash cooldown from 0.8 to 1.2, but now the cooldown starts counting from your first Dash; - Dogs are no longer targetable by AI enemies, however, they will still take area of effect damage; - Skeletal Mages base health decreased from 400 to 80; - Skeletal Mages base damage reduced from 550 to 500; - Skeletal Archers base health decreased from 250 to 60; - Skeletal Archers base damage reduced from 300 to 200; - Skeletal Archers base movement speed reduced from 7 to 6; - Skeletal Warrior base health increased from 120 to 150; - Skeletal Warrior base armor reduced from 200 to 150; - Chaos Golem base damage increased from 1-1000 to 1-2000; - Chaos Golem base armor reduced from 200 to 150; - Death Claw damage increased from 1-600 to 1-1000; - Chaos Bomb damage increased from 1-400 to 1-600; - Lightning Bolt cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Throw Axe now has the Instant tag in exchange for the Projectile tag; - Throw Axe damage increased from 200 to 350; - Power Blast damage reduced from 480 to 400; - Burning effect now lasts for 8 seconds, down from 10, and causes damage every 0.8 seconds, down from 1; - Bleed effect now lasts 10 seconds, down from 15, and causes damage every 2 seconds, down from 3; - Poison effect now lasts 15 seconds, down from 25, and causes damage every 3 seconds, down from 5; We hope that these changes will address some more concerns that have been reported by a lot of players and can make your playing experience smoother =) Thank you all once again for the support and being amazing, Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-08-31 17:53:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Today I am glad to bring you a small patch with BIG improvements! Version v0.6.021c finally fixes the issue of enemies disappearing, but also brings Vsync and other much-awaited graphic options, such as being able to make spell effects more transparent for better gameplay clarity! Here is the full (and tiny) list of changes:

Patch v0.6.021c - August 29, 2022

Full change list for version v0.6.021c:

- Fixed issue with enemies disappearing out of nowhere, and more often than they should; - Added graphic settings to fade out spell effects; - Added graphic settings to enable/disable Vsync; - Considerable performance optimizations; We also have some balance changes coming very soon (we're looking at you skeletal archers), but, did you know there is a tournament currently going on, hosted by our community in Discord? If you'd like to know more be sure to join us! You can do so with the following Discord invite: https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT As always I'd like to thank you all very much for the support so far, and I cannot wait to show you all what we have in store =) Hope you all enjoy the game and the update! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-08-29 19:21:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! I'd like to begin by thanking all of you for your amazing support and feedback! The response to the Prologue has been amazing so far, and that only fills us with energy and excitement to make even cooler stuff! This has been a crazy journey so far, and I would just like to say how much we appreciate all the help we are getting! This is the first-ever update to Soulstone Survivors: Prologue, which if you've been around for the Demo, you know will not be the last! This day 1 patch seeks to bring more balance to the force... of all skills, that is. It also brings some much needed fixes a lot of you have been waiting for, so without further ado:

Full change list for version v0.6.021b:

General changes:

- Summons now receive all your power-ups when they are spawned, with the exception of Fire Shield; - Fixed issue where Summoned units would reduce the number of enemies alive; - Fixed issue where bosses would not have the intended skills for the tier they are spawned; - Fixed issue where Alexi and Elite Snakes would throw their poison volleys directly at you, not where the marker is; - Projectiles that travel back to you now continuously increase their speed while flying back to the caster (Throw Axe); - All summons and companions will now look for targets more frequently; - Fixed Double Slash bleed description which was stating the wrong duration; - Fixed Templar's Verdict description which was mentioning Confusion, when in fact it does not directly interact with confusion; - Fixed issue where the Uncommon Agile power-up would show as Rare after collected; - Fixed issue where the Hound Master would leave his hat and gun behind;

Balance changes:

- Dogs follow their master much more closely; - Skeletal Archers and Mages can now attack while moving; - All melee summons and companions start with extra armor; - Firelord's Ire (Pyromancer second weapon) no longer reduces health and armor, instead, it reduces the critical multiplier and damage multiplier slightly; - Fragility now increases all damage taken by 3%, down from 4%; - Merciless critical multiplier increased from 4/8/12% to 6/12/18%; - Resilient armor power increased from 4/8/12 to 6/12/18%; - Combustion area increased by 25%; - Combustion duration increased from 4 to 6 seconds; - Combustion damage increased from 10 to 20, and Burn damage increased from 10 to 60, but the tick cooldown also increased from 0.25 to 0.5; - Flamethrower damage increased from 10 to 30, and Burn damage increased from 20 to 30; - Flamethrower duration increased from 5 to 6 seconds; - Fire Walk burn damage increased from 50 to 70; - Mortar Shot now fires 5 bombs; - Mortar Shot damage per bomb was reduced from 80 to 20, and Bleed from 100 to 25; - Bombardment individual bomb area of effect reduced by 50%; - Bombardment is now the special skill of the first Hound Master weapon; - Buckshot damage reduced from 150 to 120; - Power Blast damage increased from 400 to 480; - Power Blast effective range increased from 11 to 15; - Power Blast is now the special skill of the second Hound Master weapon; - Stomp now applies 3 stacks of Fragility, up from 2, to compensate for the Fragility change; - Throw Axe projectile speed will continuously increase while it is following you back; - Chain Lightning damage reduced from 200 to 170; - Meteor Shower individual meteor area of effect reduced by 50%; - Lightning Bolt damage increased from 500 to 700; - Lightning Bolt damage area increased by 12%; - Shadow Bolt damage area increased by 12%; - Poison Bolt poison damage increased from 500 to 600; - Bloodlust, Shield Wall and Might will no longer apply on-hit effects; - Colummeth Ice Shards are now very resistant to damage and immune to abnormal effects; - Colummeth Ice Shards are now too heavy to be pulled or pushed; - Colummeth now spawns 2 Ice Shards per spawn instead of 1; - Colummeth now will start casting spells faster; - Considerably reduced the damage of all Colummeth skills, as they were scaling too much in later stages of the game; - Increased the health of Alexi to match that of Colummeth; We expect that these changes address a lot of your concerns such as the bosses attacking you incorrectly and causing unexpected damage, Colummeth dealing very high damage which was unintended, and Summon skills being a lot stronger than before, plus making some skills a lot more valuable than before. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment down below and let us know what you think! We hope you will enjoy the changes and the game! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-08-28 08:14:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! We are extremely happy to share that Soulstone Survivors: Prologue is now released! This is your chance to have a first look at what the game is all about: Unlocking characters, crafting weapons, decimating hordes of enemies and discovering game-breaking synergies! While the prologue offers an early experience of the game, there is so much more that is coming to the full version! If you like what you see in the prologue, you should leave the full game a wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/ Now, some of you probably know that up until this point, there was a Demo for the game that is no longer available. If you are one of the players that had a chance to experience it first hand, you might be wondering... but, what is new with the Prologue? We made an announcement all about that that you can find here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2066020/view/3344505862352513151 But! In this announcement we also wanted to share the full list of changes from the last version of the Demo, to the first version of the Prologue! It's quite a lot, but here is a list of the key changes you can experience in the prologue right now:

New Characters:

- The Barbarian: Equipped with two war axes, the barbarian excells at melee combat. Starting skill: Whirlwind - The Pyromancer: A master of fire that can set the world ablaze in his wake. Starting skill: Fire Slash - The Hound Master: An experienced hunter with his loyal hunting hounds. Starting skill: Mortar Shot

New Skills:

The Barbarian - Barbaric Cleavers:

- Whirlwind: You spin with your weapons, causing damage to all enemies around you. - Stomp: You stomp the ground, causing damage and applying Stun and Fragility to all enemies around you.

The Barbarian - Tribal War Axes:

- Double Slash: You slash forward two times, causing damage and applying Bleed. - Throw Axe: Throws an axe forward hitting enemies in a line, and then coming back to your current position, causing damage and applying Bleed every time it goes through enemies.

The Pyromancer - Pyromancer's Firestarter:

- Fire Slash: Sends a fiery slash forward, causing damage and applying Burn. - Fire Walk: For the next few seconds, leave a trail of fire behind you, applying Burn every fraction of second to enemies standing in the fire.

The Pyromancer - Firelord's Ire:

- Combustion: You emit an aura of fire for a few seconds, causing damage and applying Burn to enemies that stay near you every fraction of a second. - Flamethrower: You launch a continuous pillar of flames forward for a few seconds, causing damage and applying Burn every fraction of a second to enemies that are caught in its path.

The Hound Master - Rusted Blaster:

- Mortar Shot: Fires a mortar shot in an area in front of you, causing damage and applying Bleed. - Power Blast: Fires a powerful blast in a line in front of you, causing damage and applying Stun and Dazed.

The Hound Master - Riflemen's Vengeance:

- Buckshot: Fires a blast of pellets in a cone in front of you, causing damage and applying Fragility. - Bombardment: Calls down a bombardment around your current position. Each bomb deals damage in a large area.

General Skills:

- Blizzard: Conjures a blizzard over a random enemy, hitting enemies multiple times, causing damage and applying Chill with every hit. - Shadow Spikes: Shadow spikes are summoned from the ground in a straight line towards a random enemy, causing damage and applying Doom. - Templar's Verdict: Inflict your judgement at a random enemy's position, causing damage to enemies in the area. Damage is multiplied by 3 on critical strikes. - Chain Lightning: Hurls a lightning bolt at a random enemy, causing damage, applying Dazed and then jumping to 5 additional nearby targets if possible. - Death Claw: Conjures a chaotic death claw at the feet of a random enemy, causing a random amount of damage and applying powerful effects. - Summon Chaos Golem: Summons a chaos golem to fight for you. - Summon Skeletal Archer: Summon 2 skeletal archers to fight for you. - Summon Skeletal Mage: Summons a skeletal mage to fight for you.

New Power-Ups:

- Venomous: Chance to apply Poison with all attacks; - Weakness: Chance to apply Fragility with all attacks; - Desperation: Chance to apply Burn every time you apply Dazed; - Thermal Shock: Chance to apply Chill every time you apply Burn;

New Boss:

- Colummeth, the Incarnation of Ice.

Key changes:

- Changed how some projectiles detect enemies to avoid multiple hits in the same target, but enlarged the detection area of said projectiles to compensate for the change; - End game scoreboard now counts only Effective Damage (no overkill damage) into the skill damage calculations (so you might notice that all numbers in general are lower than before); - Doom now will show stacks like other debuffs. This was necessary to make sure we can track the damage caused properly; - Overhead damage and damage in the scoreboard are easier to read; - New soundtrack for the desert map. More coming! - Added new companion system for doggos; - Increased area of effect of all buffs considerably; - On-hit power-ups no longer accumulate the percentage, only the actual effect; - Changed tags of a few skills, so most of them have at least 3 tags; - Increased the delay before the first elite enemy shows up; - Most enemy tracking attacks such as the Elite Troll Shockwave will now track you slowly; And this is all just the beginning! We have so much more content planned for the full release, including tons of new skills, the Affixes system for unique challenges and rewards, unlocks, runes, bosses... and we hope that you will be with us in this journey from now to the full release! =) Thank you all for the amazing support so far, it has been absolutely amazing being able to talk and interact with so many players and learn from you! We can't wait to share and continue building the game with you =) Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-08-27 02:40:21 CET ] [ Original post ]