Hello to you, reader of this announcement! The full release is still planned for October, and we will be ready for a full experience of The Nightwatch by then, fully tested and balanced for you to enjoy. The sandbox version of the demo was "fine" to try and have a taste of what the game is, but the content is very limited and doesn't offer any real objective. Not much from the full game has been communicated except on the Discord server, and I'm here to try and resolve that by listing what is already done, what is worked on and what is still planned. I will be saying "we" during this article, but as many know I'm the only developer planning and working on the game.

1- What is done

Gameloop and incremental difficulty.

As any survivors-like, the gameloop is defined by the objective. Will it be to survive 10 minutes ? Kill a boss ? Kill multiple bosses ? It will depend on the difficulty you are at. The difficulty will be increased gradually by succeeding in previous runs, and the objective will change accordingly at important steps of the difficulty. Starting slowly by just surviving 5-10 min as introduction to understand and discover the game, to having to kill multiple bosses in a single run.

Bosses

The initial release of the game will have 3 bosses. Each related to a common ennemy in the game. 2 out of the 3 are designed and implemented, the 3rd one is currently designed by the same artist who did the other enemies. The first one is the Tentacle boss :
- This fight will be a typical bullet hell fight, with waves of bullet and tentacles attacking when the player comes close to them
- Defeating a boss will either finish the run if it was the objective, or reward a powerful trinket before returning in the main room with the enemy waves. To reach a boss, you will need to find the challenge runestone which will start a challenge fight that will open a portal to the boss room. To help you find objectives, arrows pointing to them will be displayed at the start of the run, and help the player understand that they shouldn't be too static in the center of the room, but walk and explore.

New "Eye" enemy

This enemy comes in group, with very small health, and explodes on death dealing damage to the other enemies in its range.

Clarity and animations

- Animations have been added to the game, visual indicators when an enemy is poisoned, burned or bleeding. - Upscaled animations have been replaced with new original sprites. - Player's light radius have been sharpened and increased. - Global visibility and contrast with darkness have been reworked to make it more appealing and clear.

Trinkets and general balance

- Now that the gameloop is set and worked on, balance is easier to maintain. Enemy health, speed, spawn rate and spawn location have been reworked for a smoother start and harder endgame. - 20+ trinkets are added from the demo, and we still have some time to add and test many more.

2- What is worked on

Second boss

The 2nd bossfight is currently in its balance phase, tweaking the difficulty and accessibility. This boss is the Imp boss. Watching the player fight from its throne and sending waves of imps to the player. We will send more informations on the fight when we are happy with the final result and feel of the fight.

Second Character

We are working on the second character, which would be the strict minimum for the full release. Difficulty progression will be linked to the character and will enable different gameplay than the bow and arrow.

A new trailer!

Now that a lot have been worked on, the old trailer is starting to get a bit obsolete. A new one will be uploaded as soon as possible to reflect the new changes and hopefully hype up new (and current) players.

2- What is planned

Third boss

The design is still in its experimental phase, but what we do know is that this enemy will be related to the new "Eye" enemy.

More, more and more trinkets

We really need to add as many trinkets as we can, as long as they are balanced and work well with the game.

More, more and more events

Same as the trinkets, we want the procedural generation to be as "random" as we can, with extremely rare events you can find on the map that will drastically change the gameplay if you choose to interact with them.

Steam achievements

Every trinket unlock, secret actions or player achievement need to have its related steam achievement. I for sure missed a lot of the new features that are currently implemented or worked on, but I really want to keep surprises and some mystery to what you will be able to find in the dark rooms of the Wizard tower. Can't wait to hear from interested players and I will answer any questions you might have on the state of the development or what will be in the full game. Don't forget to join Astrow Games discord if you want to follow the weekly updates, or just to hang out : https://discord.gg/cXDnxMbyzc May you survive the night ! Astrow