Name | Heavenly Peaks Cultivation | ||
Developer | My Big Little Brother | ||
Publisher | Ren's Den | ||
Tags | |||
Release | 2023-01-29 | ||
Steam | |||
News | |||
Controls | Keyboard Mouse | ||
Players online |  n/a  | ||
Steam Rating | n/a | ||
Steam store | |||
Public Linux depots | [2.34 G] |
In regards to the project, I'd also like to announce that development is entering hiatus. I spent the last 8 months of this year trying to fund development to avoid this, however it's now unavoidable. Rather than rely fully on support from Patrons, I'll focus on procuring as much of the estimated 30,000$ to do the project justice. With that in mind, let me say thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project thus far. Every bit has and continues to help. In an ideal situation, I'll return to development around this summer and if that changes, I'll let everyone know. - My Big "Little" Brother |
When I first started this project, I had no idea of the changes that would occur within myself because of it. Working on this has been like real life cultivation. The number of times my outer shell has crumbled, allowing me to grow anew are innumerable. Today is no exception. |
Stancing remains the same, but I've improved the effects of each stance.
As I mentioned, battle is turn based with one major caveat. You can take multiple actions each turn. This is called ACT and it's affected by the number of companions that you've bought along with you. For example, if you bring Yenay and Mai your maximum ACT is 3. Most actions require the use of 1 or more ACT. In this way you can chain together attacks, skills or some of the other new features to deal with your opponent. Martial, Spirit and Weapon strikes have all been enhanced as well.
Skills carry these secondary effects in addition to their normal use. Skills also have the benefit of inflicting extra stun against foes. These new changes give you the ability to tackle opponents with strategy in mind. Enemies also have resistances and weaknesses, which can make them more easily stunned (or not). Attacking a weakness or a stunned enemy also deals more damage. Companion roles during combat have been revamped, each offers a specific type of strike damage and a unique special skill that can be triggered once every 3 rounds. For example, Mai can deal a high damage strike while Yenay will create a barrier to ward off some damage for you. [Note: The image below utilizes placeholder visuals. The final battle system will look different, but all of the core elements are represented in this image.] Starting with Chapter 1, two new additions to the game's battle system will also be available - Hidden Weapons and the Sword Array. These two offer the player a means to turn the tables against especially powerful foes. Sword Array makes use of flying swords to perform a powerful strikes, defend or be more aggressive during combat with extra hits. Hidden Weapons are versatile and powerful, allowing you to perform many actions like poisoning, disruption, defense, healing and buffing your character. The game's inventory has been a pain for a while, but that all has changed recently. In order to more easily manage your Dimension Ring, items of the same type all stack. When you click on an entry, you can then see all of the items of that particular type in a different window. I lowered the quality of items from 1-999 to 1-9, this should decrease clutter as well. Finally, I've added some methods to sort, clear and dump items. As of today I'm also taking a look at crafting and planning to add another feature called the Dragon Orb. This is a special item that allows you to strip traits from materials and place them on crafts of your choosing. So, basically you can customize the items you make with the Dragon Orb. But Wait -- there's more.... Those are the changes to pre-existing elements of the game, now we will delve into the features I recently programmed into the game (within the last 10-12 weeks). A major reason the stats and their secondary effects were enhanced is due to your path of cultivation - aka, the Dao that you choose. Dao is "the way" you choose to live as a cultivator on the immortal path. In this game, there are 6(7?) different paths you can choose.
When you select a Dao, the effectiveness of your growth is augmented - depending on the Dao. For example, if you choose "Way Of The Fist" then martial trainings become easier and more effective. At the same time, your requirements for moving to the next cultivation realm (aka realm shifting) are dependent upon your Dao. Once again using Way of The Fist as an example, you would need to do more physical training types in order to realm shift from Realm 1 to Realm 2. In other words, matching the growth methods to your Dao are crucial to advancing your cultivation. Up until the 4th realm you can freely change your Dao and some other aspects of your character but Dao can't be mentioned without explaining Testament and Chronicle. These two factors influence growth and progression to a great degree. Testament is a temporary record of your actions between cultivation realms. Your Testament determines how easy / difficult it will be to breakthrough. Meanwhile, Chronicle is a permanent record of your growth methods. Chronicle affects deeper aspects of growth, such as which skills you can acquire, what Inner and Breath Arts you can learn and more. Dao, Testament and Chronicle all work together to provide deep cultivation options. Next are the Foundation Field, Inner Arts and Breath Arts. Breath Arts are useful during training and meditation - they offer various benefits like increased qi gains, faster fitness gains for training types, etc. Inner Arts are internal abilities that enhance your character and are closely linked to your Foundation Field. Early on your player will have the chance to "build a foundation" which will affect growth permanently for the remainder of your path. This is called the "Foundation Field" and making use of it can make your character powerful. Generally, your player would consume materials or crafted items - upon doing so you must then refine and absorb them through meditation. Doing this will open more of your meridians or affect other parts of your being, allowing you to slot Inner Arts and gain permanent benefits. Here are a few examples of the Foundation Field's benefits :
So essentially, by making use of the Foundation Field you can improve your character and prepare to accept Inner Arts, which work as follows: Each Inner Art you acquire has a cost in order to equip it. In order to slot the inner art and make use of it, you need to have space. This "space" is called Inner Talent. Example: Inner Talent - 0/9 Iron Skin - Reduce all damage received by 5%. Cost (2) In the example above, after having equipped Iron Skin, you would have used 2 points of your Inner Talent (2 of 9). In this way you can slot multiple Inner Arts according to your liking. The Foundation Field and Inner Arts are both usable until you reach the 4th realm, at which point all of your choices become permanent. Likewise, at this point your Dao can no longer be changed. This falls in line with the traditional understanding of cultivation paths which, if you don't know is explained briefly below:
The number of realms in the game has been changed to accommodate the info above with a few changes of my own. Around Core Formation stage (4th+ Realm), Breath Arts , Dao and the Chronicle carry more weight. If , for example you've chosen Way Of The Fist, but trained a bit too much to increase your Qi related stats or abilities, then you may not be able to acquire the most powerful skills and abilities that the Way of The Fist has to offer. In other words, if you want to draw out the best builds and absolute power - you can. Likewise, if you just want to throw something together and not worry too much, you're also free to do that as well. The cultivation system in Heavenly Peaks allows for that freedom without interrupting your gameplay too much. There are probably many other smaller things I've neglected to include here - as I said there are numerous fixes and improvements. For now, let's end it here. It's taken me about 3 solid hours to write all this up and I'm terribly hungry. >_> I am more active in the Discord Channel, so if you'd like to keep track of what's going on more frequently - join there. The next update I post to Steam will be once I've completed version 2.0.9 of the game (it will be an update to the current version - no new story content, but all of the features I've listed here, save for the ones that won't get unlocked until later in the story). Thanks for reading this far if you have. I have one final request, and it's simple in nature. If you enjoy the game, consider donating to it's development. Doing so will:
Realistically speaking if 10% of the players so far donated just 5$ (which is less than 1/2 of the cost of the full project at current), it would cover 50% of the project's total estimated budget. Are you gonna be in that 10%? You know you wannaaaaaa!. All jokes aside all contributions are deeply appreciated, so if you have 5, 10, 50 or 1.2 million dollars to spare , give it some serious thought. At this point, funding is literally the only thing holding back development of the game. See you at 2.0.9. - My Big Little Brother Join Discord Visit The Tip Jar |
First, I want to start this by saying a special thanks to all of the players here on Steam. As a solo dev, it is deeply flattering when something I've worked so diligently on is well received. This post will be a bit long, but I hope you stick with it.
If you've read this far - I just have two remaining questions - Did you enjoy the current version of the project and can you see it's potential? Do you believe this eastern fantasy adventure could be better with proper resources? If you've answered yes to either of those questions then consider donating to Heavenly Peaks' funding - no matter how large or small the amount. My hope is that together we can achieve a better version of Heavenly Peaks. Thanks for taking the time to read, if you've come this far. I'll always keep working on my end, but I hope to see you on the Immortal Mountain. P.S. You can use any of the links below to contribute to the project if you so choose. Heavenly Peaks Crowd Funding Page Buy Me A Coffee Patreon - My Big 'Little' Brother |
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Fixed an issue where you could receive an error while crafting "VPGrid overfull". |
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I fixed the version display - rather than 2.0.7, this is actually 1.54 (the public build). This was pointed out by a few people in the discord channel so thanks for that. |
Fixed an error where some recently added Mai events would repeat, preventing you from continuing her storyline (and possibly preventing you from progressing the game). |
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