Another month! The last quarter of the year always goes by in a flash. During November, weve had a special focus on wrapping up the UX design process, implementing lessons weve learned throughout the alpha process and adding new storyline content to the game. There are always way too many dev milestones to list them all here, but lets check in on a few!

UX Design Goes Safehouse

The UX design phase is beginning to truly wind down as our implementation phase is rapidly ramping up. We have a huge amount of UI work to do to make the game as beautiful and flowy as the designs but it is going to be very worth it. Most recently, the UX design time has been focused on the Safehouse and here are some of the latest drafted wireframes (not the visual design, just design of elements, spacing, organization, flow -- that is, this is not intended to be beautiful at this stage).
Cleaning out your safehouse for expanded operation
Shopping and comparing weapons
It's just Business with Origami Joe, an underworld contact
Planning your next heist
A plan comes together - paying bribes, calling in favors, running legwork and more

New Storylines

The game is growing daily and is a voracious beast for more content. Storylines, recruits, and new maps are coming online as fast as we can handle them. Were very excited to be passing through some major milestones and assembling the most complicated story and heist content yet this month. November saw the addition of a new Deaddrop storyline from your Gun Runner and if the month had another day or two left in it, November would also see the Carnivore storyline about a corrupt cop (the update is in final tweaks and testing now...). The Undercutter storyline can proc with a friendly Gun Runner who pitches you a hard to beat one-time deal to acquire a powerful E-Rifle weapon (more below). These new storylines are also seeing your squads Face coming into their own as a powerful player in the strategy and story layer. The team's Face now appears prominently in your Roster, can access their Training and cannot multi-class. The Face is your team's negotiator, fixer and voice on the comms during missions. Their special skill tree is dedicated to the strategy layer and has no tactical abilities on it. In this new storyline, you'll have the option to use your Street-focused "Razor Bargain" ability to force the best deal even if it cuts a bit too deep. The new Carnivore storyline will introduce and see the first use of Milsec-focused Hardliner ability.
The old UI is functional but not great or pretty

E-Rifles and IO-Chargers

One of the latest storylines added introduces the first chance to get your hands on an E-Rifle. This hi-tech class of weapons are mid-ranged armor melters with limited full auto capability (3 shots) and a penchant for Pure Damage and killing drones. However, E-Rifles have a limited number of reloads on a mission (all stages of the mission, not just one) so carrying one is a known trade-off and puts a lot of weight on your other weapon to work in more situations than not. Tagging along with this new type of limited-ammo weapon, the new IO-Chargers went up for sale at your local Gun Runner which shakes up the item meta for Cyberswords and anyone planning to carry E-Rifles. The IO-Charger is a mobile battery unit capable of filling the current ammo bar of your weapon. For a blade with an IO-Batt, this completely recharges the blade and enables you to use another round of Talents which rely on these critical charges. For an E-Rifle or any other reload-limited weapon, the IO-Charger will refill the current ammo bar only. If you have 2/3 reloads for the E-Rifle, you can empty the first magazine and then reload it with IO-Charge to stay at 2/3 reloads. For anyone carrying a blade (Cybersword or not!) or an E-Rifle, an IO-Charger is very likely to be a requirement in your limited item carry.

Alpha Lessons: Downed becomes Bleeding Out

Weve learned so much over the 11 months of the alpha and are constantly reapplying that learning back to systems, features and content in the game. In November we had time to come back to an important system - what happens when one of your characters takes a deadly hit. Previously in the Alpha, this would knock you into a Downed state that required healing before you could take action again (you could heal yourself). We heard a lot from the alpha player about the reasons this wasnt fun and were excited to roll out the new Bleeding Out rules this month. If you take a hit that would potentially kill you (reaching 0 HP), you get a surge of HP (up to 30% of your total) but also a nasty debuff, naturally called Bleeding Out. As soon as you receive any healing, Bleeding Out is purged. Bleeding Out costs you 20 HP a Turn and will kill you if you are not healed - it is only a matter of Turns. The debuff also slaps you with a -2 AP and -2 MP penalty but most importantly allows you to take any action or use any Talent. You can run, shoot, Overwatch or throw a grenade. Our mercs go down fighting, thank you very much. Fun! But consider healing yourself quickly or calling an ally for help -- if you take another wound that brings you to 0 HP while you are Bleeding Out, you roll your Death Save and are likely to die (see your chosen Difficulty here).

Creative Surveys Deadline

We have set a deadline for the completion of the creative reward surveys. We will be sending a private Kickstarter update next to be sure everyone sees this. Throughout 2022, we have sent out Google Forms surveys to collect information for your Kickstarter rewards. Depending on your backer tier, you will have received naming surveys, recruitable character surveys, and/or Ally, Villain, and Heist surveys. If you have not received a survey, you believe you should have, please message us here, email andrew@tresebrothers.com or reach out to Liviana on Discord so we can make sure you get them. We want to do everything we can to make sure that your characters and stories are integrated into the main story beats of CKF as much as possible. To ensure this can occur, we will be closing all of these surveys at the end of the year 2022. If you have not yet filled them out, please do so before the end of the year. If you have any questions about how to fill out the surveys, did not receive your surveys via email, or need clarification on what we are looking for, please email andrew@tresebrothers.com or contact Liviana on Discord. This deadline does not include Encode Your Legend reward which has not yet been started and is slated for 2023.

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress

For completeness, we include the progress bar infographic in each and every update. If you have any questions about rewards or stretch goals, check out the graphic or reach out to us. Were continuing to work on Digital Artbook Assembly.