Hey there, fellow Catz! Exciting news today. ZpellCatz now has a release date and we're transitioning from closed beta to open beta.



Release Date Announcement

ZpellCatz will be released on June 5, 2024 here on Steam.




Join the Open Beta

The closed beta of ZpellCatz ends today, but we are smoothly transitioning into open beta. A big thank you to everyone who participated in the closed beta and provided feedback. You have helped ZpellCatz become a lot better.

The open beta starts today and will end a few days before release. Everyone is invited to take part in the beta test via Steam Playtest, so check it out and please give feedback.

Want to join the open beta? Visit ZpellCatz' Steam page and click "Request Access". Check out this screenshot:



Stay up to Date

Never miss an update? Follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Hey there, fellow Catz! A new version of the ZpellCatz closed beta is available now. This version features a UI overhaul, a new tailor NPC and lots of balance changes. As with any new beta version, more players are invited. So, check your e-mails / Steam client if you've registered for access.

Also, there'll be an exciting announcement regarding ZpellCatz next week. Stay tuned!

New Features

The UI and especially the menus needed some polish. Nearly every UI screen has been updated in the version and I really like the new style. Have a look at the updated skill and inventory screens:





A new NPC joined the Greencat Village: Halge, the tailor. Halge offers a service to change the appearance of cat heroes. And the best part? The service is free of charge! So change your look as often as you want to.



This version also feature a ton of balance changes. As I've added more and more late game content over the last few weeks, it's become increasingly clear which classes were significantly stronger than others. After this round of balance changes, the power levels of each class should be in the same ball park.

"The Look" Update (0.101.3) April '24

*** New Features ***
- Added a tailor NPC to be able to change the visual appearance
- UI overhoal

*** General ***
- Quest items and essence no longer have notifiers
- Dungeon generation: added more shortcuts (bonus room connections)
- Dungeon generation: adjusted shape algorithm of "cave" and "tunnel" dungeons
- Adjusted item spawn animation for rooms
- Loca text adjustments

*** Audio ***
- Changed collect gem sound

*** Skills ***
- Rebalanced nearly all class skills and path skills to be viable in late game content

*** Epic Items ***
- 'Iron Forehead': +8-12% nature damage
- 'Skull of the Titan': +8-12% lux damage
- 'Shield Enhancer': +8-12% all damage
- 'Protective Branch': +1-2 to 'Gaia Rush'
- 'Tough Leather': +5-10% fire damage
- 'The Blocker': +5-10% lux damage
- 'Safeguard': +5-10% nature damage
- 'Stroll': +4-8% nature damage
- 'Rushing Spur': +4-8% storm damage
- 'Progress': +4-8% fire damage
- 'Hand of the Guardian': increased stats
- 'Permafrost': Removed fire res, added storm to cold conversion, increased stats
- 'Storm Runners': Added storm pierce to buff effect
- Added bonus damage as cold to 'Frost Burn'
- Added bonus damage as cold to 'Eternal Snow'
- Added bonus damage as fire to 'Eternal Flame'
- Added bonus damage as lux to 'Eternal Light'
- Added bonus damage as storm to 'Eternal Storm'
- Added bonus damage as nature to 'Eternal Grassland'
- Added bonus damage as dark to 'Eternal Darkness'

*** Enemies ***
- Early enemies are more dangerous / interesting now

*** Balance ***
- Increased the soft cap / cap of various stats (this is a buff)
- Trippled EXP gained from bosses
- Slightly increased EXP gained from enemies (level 15+)
- Increased sell value for items
- Adjusted merchant offer costs
- Reduced duration of enemy 'Root' buff
- Enemy mod 'Totem' now summons 2 totems near the center of the screen
- Rebalanced defense for players and enemies, defense now slightly increases blocked damage
- Reduced gem upgrade costs of rare gems (still higher than normal gems' costs)
- Rebalanced all gems
- Rebalanced blacksmith's "polish" and "blue chaos" values

*** Bug Fixes ***
- Fixed stat sorting issues in craft epic item tooltip (blacksmith)
- Fixed a bug where arena room drops were too low
- Fixed a bug where slowing curses could cause a complete cooldown time stop
- Fixed a bug that sometimes generated 'Palace' shaped dungeons with not enough rooms

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Stay up to Date

Never miss an update? Follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Happy new year, fellow Catz! 2024 starts with a lot of new features for ZpellCatz: Highscore, (shared) stash, new game modes and lots of minor changes. In addition, the demo / prologue has been updated so that Familiars and local multiplayer are now available there. As with any new beta version, more players are invited. So, check your e-mails / Steam client if you've registered for access.

New Features

A stash has been added to the Market Hall. It has 6 pages, 2 personal ones (per cat hero) and 4 shared ones. The shared pages are, well, shared amongst all heroes, allowing you to give items from one cat to another. Each page has 30 item slots, so you now have enough space to store every tier 1 and tier 2 epic item (if you want to do that for whatever reason :-D ).



One of the features that I always enjoyed while playing Legends of Pixelia is now also available in ZpellCatz: Highscores! The score is calculated the moment you defeat a boss and there is a distinct highscore table per dungeon. Only dungeons with a boss room have a highscore table.

There's also a web version of the highscore table available if you want to share your excellent score with others.



Up for a challenge? There are new game modes available that increase the difficulty of ZpellCatz. Game modes can be selected when creating a cat hero and they are permanent. You get a small bonus to your dungeon score for beating a boss with active game modes selected.

- Hardcore: Your typical permadeath option as you know it from every other ARPG
- Cat-core: Similar to hardcore, but you have 7 lives instead of 1
- Challenging: Enemies have greatly increased stats, designed for players that love to grind

Do cats have 7 lives or 9 lives? This varies from country to country. In the culture I grew up in, cats have 7 lives. And since 7 is a wonderful number, we'll take that. :-)



Familiars and local multiplayer are coming to the demo / prologue. So if you don't have beta access (yet), feel free to toy around with Familiars in Autuna.



Requesting Beta Access

Want to join the closed beta? Visit ZpellCatz' Steam page and click "Request Access". Check out this screenshot:



"Sharing is Caring" Update (0.100.0) January '24

*** New Features ***
- Added a (shared) stash to the market hall
- Added a highscore system for dungeons with bosses
- Added new game modes 'Challenging', 'Hardcore' and 'Cat-core'

*** General ***
- Decreased 'Dark Wave' damage by 5%
- Decreased 'Frailty' damage by 5%
- Increased soft cap of elemental resistances from 35% to 40% (this is a buff)
- Renamed Bashu's 'Inner Light' to 'Inner Glow' to reduce confusion with a Twilight tree skill of the same name
- Minor loca text adjustments

*** Items ***
- Increased rare and epic item drop chance for lower levels
- Slightly buffed stats for 'Hunting Call'
- Buffed all items of merchant offer page 2

*** Gems ***
- Buffed rare gems
- Buffed low performing gems
- Reduced the level requirement for some gems sold by the merchant

*** Dungeons ***
- Main quest dungeons 2 - 6 now drop more fishsticks / dust
- 'Temple Ruins' boss now always drops a normal quality jewelry (ring or necklace)
- 'Mushroom Cavern': Minor wall design adjustments

*** Enemies ***
- Reduced defense and healing of zombie type enemies, increased their HP to compensate
- 'Flame Temple' boss: -20% fire totem damage, -40% full screen totem damage
- 'Temple Ruins' zombie miniboss: +25% HP / healing, increased spell aoe
- 'Temple Ruins' heron miniboss: +25% damage, +20% faster cast, increased spell aoe
- 'Dark Sanctuary' boss: +27% magic circle damage

*** Pumpkin Prologue ***
- Added Familiars and local multiplayer
- Adjusted exp curve to easier reach level 7 and level 8
- Increased enemy levels for prologue dungeons by 1 (each)
- Increased enemy HP and damage due to Familiars being available now
- 'Pumpkin Ruins' boss: +14% HP

Full Changelog

Stay up to Date

Never miss an update? Follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Hey there, fellow Catz! Familiars got some love in this new version of the ZpellCatz closed beta and local multiplayer is finally here. As with any new beta version, more players are invited. So, check your e-mails / Steam client if you've registered for access.

New Features

Local multiplayer is here! Connect a gamepad / joystick and enjoy playing together with your friends and family.





Familiars have been rebalanced, slightly shifting power from the cat hero to the Familiar with this update. They are no longer pure sources of passive stats through their talents. Also, the talents now provide a higher bonus to the Familiar and a smaller one to the cat hero. Lets see if talent choice will be more interesting now.



Requesting Beta Access

Want to join the closed beta? Visit ZpellCatz' Steam page and click "Request Access". Check out this screenshot:



"Very Familiar" Update (0.99.0) November '23

*** Familiars ***
- Familiar base stats have been rebalanced
- Familiars now gain stats from gems in your casket
- Familiars now have innate 'Life after Kill' that scales with level
- Familiar talents now give big stat bonuses to Familiars and small ones to cat heroes
- Familiar offensive skill cooldowns and damage increased (net buff)
- Loki is now available from the start of the game
- Increased Familiar base movement speed by 25%
- Familiars are now able to collect items
- Familiars controlled by AI now auto collect coins (and other items accidentally)

*** General ***
- Slightly increased enemy HP for low level (1-3) enemies due to Loki being available from the start
- Skill UI now shows a blue border for skills with max allocated skill points
- Adjusted enemy movement speed animation for slower enemies
- Adjusted room enemy bonus mod distribution to reduce the same mods appearing too often throughout a dungeon

*** Epic Items ***
- Added all resistances to 'Protective Branch'

*** Druid ***
- Increased life on hit bonus for 'Glaring Light'
- Increased mind gained by 'Radiance'
- Increased stats gained by 'Shield Mastery'
- 'Growth' no longer grants vitality, added life after kill
- Added vitality to 'Photosynthesis'
- Increased stats gained by 'Sylph's Gift'

*** Tranquility ***
- Increased mind gained by 'Herbal Guard'
- Incrased stats gained by 'Adaption'

*** Bug Fixes ***
- Fixed an AI movement issue
- Fixed missing audio for "Thorns" enemy bonus mod

Full Changelog

Stay up to Date

Never miss an update? Follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Hey there, fellow Catz! A new version of the ZpellCatz closed beta is ready to be played. As with any new beta version, more players are invited. So, check your e-mails / Steam client if you've registered for access.

New Features

Having trouble to adjust the audio volumes to match your system in ZpellCatz 0.97.0? Audio volumes can now be controlled via slider to allow finer adjustments.



Cats shouldn't die with health potions left in their belt. A new "low on health" indicator helps players to notice that their cat hero is heavily injured. The indicator starts showing up at 50% HP and is getting more and more intense the lower the health percentage left.



It's sometimes easy to miss that your cat hero has skill points left or that you've just found a new gem. This version introduces pause menu notifiers for all kinds of stuff. Please give feedback which notifiers are helpful and which are annoying.
:-D



Requesting Beta Access

Want to join the closed beta? Visit ZpellCatz' Steam page and click "Request Access". Check out this screenshot:



"Your Voice" Update (0.98.0) September '23

*** Audio ***
- Audio volumes can now be controlled via slider to allow finer adjustments
- NOTE: If you adjusted the audio volumes previously, you have to increase your volumes in this version

*** General ***
- Increased movement animation speed
- Dungeon clear quests: dungeon clear accomplishment is now also saved for non-active quests
- Renamed "Talent to select" notification to "Familiar talent"
- Added a "low on health" indicator (red screen border) starting at 50% HP

*** Spells ***
- "Frailty" now deals damage within the whole circle, not with the pentagram shots only

*** Pause Menu UI ***
- Added notifiers to the pause menu for all kinds of stuff (points available, new item, ...)
- Added a "sort inventory" button to the pause menu
- Opening the quest menu now displays a recently updated quest by default
- Skill entries now have colored text whenever you have bonus points

** Bug Fixes ***
- Potion hover now shows the correct amount of charges
- Fixed multiple overlay issues when teleporting to town or returning to main menu

*** Special Thanks ***
- Thanks for your feedback / bug reports: Chamosmile, Denzi, Dysman, Godspeed, Quinque, ZoneMaster,

Full Changelog

Stay up to Date

Never miss an update? Follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Hey there, fellow Catz! The ZpellCatz closed beta has started, a new Familiar joins the game and epic item web documentation is ready to browse.

Closed Beta Start

The closed beta has started! So, check your e-mails / discord messages / Steam client if you've registered for access. Did you receive a key / access? Have fun playing and please give feedback!

Ways to give feedback:

- Join my Discord server: https://discord.gg/D6CkrUu
- ZpellCatz playtest Steam discussions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2423250/discussions/
- There's a "Feedback" button ingame (main menu & pause menu beneath "System")



You didn't receive a key / access? Do net fret. Chances are good that you'll be able to join the beta with the next version.

New Familiar: Bemoth

Bemoth gladly leaves his dark and cold crypt to wreck cursed enemies with you.



Bemoth will hatch after finishing (main quest) dungeon 2. His active skills and passive talents focus on curses. A great fit for heroes with the Twilight path.



Want to know more about Familiars? Check out this info post about Familiars (Oct '22). Note: Familiars can't be controlled by players yet (coming soon).

Web Docs: Epic Items

Not sure which epic item you should craft with your hard-earned fish sticks? Want to get an idea of what kind of items could be waiting inside of the next treasure room? Check out the freshly published web documentation featuring all tier 1 and tier 2 epic items.

- Tier 1 Epic Items (Guide)
- Tier 2 Epic Items (Guide)



Stay up to Date

Never miss an update? Follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Hey there, fellow Catz! A new version of the demo / prologue is ready to be played and the ZpellCatz closed beta starts soon.

"Ready for Beta" Update (0.97.0) August '23

*** General ***
- Fixed a "Load Game" menu selection issue
- Adjusted class combination names
- Minor dialogue adjustments
- Added clouds to the main menu screen

*** Gameplay Changes ***
- Equipment can no longer be changed while there are enemies nearby

*** Input ***
- Mouse buttons (middle, right, mb4, mb5, scroll up, scroll down) can now be used to cast skills (and other input if you want to)
- Gamepad button "B" now also closes ingame menus

*** UI ***
- Replaced the "requirements too high" graphic with a simple X
- Quest menu texts now show important words in yellow color
- Adjusted shop NPC UIs (merchant, blacksmith)
- Notifications are now hidden when the desired action is taken

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Closed Beta Start

The closed beta starts on September 1, 2023 at 16:00 CEST.

More info about the upcoming beta can be found in the previous news post.

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to announce the start of ZpellCatz' closed beta. Want to know more about the beta or join the playtest yourself? Read on.

Closed Beta Start

The closed beta starts on September 1, 2023 at 16:00 CEST.

Living in another time zone? This might help: (I'm not affiliated with worldtimebuddy).



How to Join?

It's important to request beta access before September if you want to have a chance to play on Sept 1. Visit ZpellCatz' Steam page and click "Request Access". Feeling lost? Check out this screenshot:



Note: About 50% of the requesters will get access right away, the rest has to wait for the next beta patch.
Why? Because playtesters are a very, very valuable resource. The beta will grow over the next few months and I would be really glad to receive feedback from fresh players every patch. Always grating access to about 50% of the requesters should result in a constant stream of new players (and hopefully new feedback ^^ ). Let's see if the plan works. So, if you weren't lucky on Sept 1, chances are good that you'll be able to join the beta with the next version.

What to Expect?

ZpellCatz isn't 100% finished yet, but there's enough content to play for some hours. Overview:

Available content:

• All hero classes (Mage, Druid, Shaman)
  
• All path classes (Fury, Tranquility, Twilight)
  
• Acts 1 - 3 (main quests, side quests, story, NPC dialogues)
  
• All craftable tier 1 and tier 2 epic items (about 120)
  
• 2 Familiars (Bashu & Loki - AI controlled only at the moment)
  

• Acts 4 - 6 (story, NPC dialogues)
  
• A special dungeon + boss for the final main quest
  
• "End Game" system implementation (after the story / main quests)
  
• 3 Familiars (unlocked in later acts)
  
• Two player coop (Familiars can't be controlled by players yet)
  
• "Hardcore" (perma death) mode
  
• Stash / shared stash
  
• Digital Deluxe version content
  

• Join my Discord server: https://discord.gg/D6CkrUu
  
• ZpellCatz playtest Steam discussions: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2423250/discussions/
  
• There's a "Feedback" button ingame (main menu & pause menu beneath "System")
  

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about the progress of the last months and the changes of the new version (prologue / demo).

AI Upgrade

Last time, I talked about Familiars in ZpellCatz. Familiars can be controlled by a friend in local multiplayer or by an AI for moments when there are no friends sitting next to you. ^^
In order to be able to switch back and forth between those two control schemes, I had to upgrade the AI systems for better pathfinding.

The cool bonus: The enemy controlling AI also benefited from it! Enemies get stuck in corners less often and multiple melee enemies that hunt your cat hero do a better job at cooperating as a group.



Kudos to Cory Koseck (7ark) for their Unity-Passfinding repo. I used that one as a starting point and adjusted it to my needs. The red nodes on the image above show blocked paths, the blue nodes with green connections show possible paths.

Floor Visuals

One of the reasons that I started a crowdfunding campaign for ZpellCatz last October was to collect money in order to be able to polish the art a little bit. Thanks to the support it was possible to add some assets from matching "low poly / polygon" asset packs. One of these new additions are floor visuals!





The floor tiles are intentionally kept plain and monochromatic so as not to take the focus away from the combat action. But they look a lot better than the simple flat ground before.

Familiar Skill Trees

Next to the AI update mentioned before, I've also continued to work on the Familiars themselves. Today, lets have a look at the skill tree of them.

Each Familiar has a set of 4 active skills that unlock one by one over the first few levels. In addition to this, Familiars have passive skills called talents. Most talents affect the Familiar as well as your cat hero. Talents come in a "select A or B" fashion and can be respected for free in the village.

The first two available Familiars are Loki and Bashu. Loki uses high damage ranged spells (fire and nature element). The active skill "Heat Nova" also reduces the resistances of all enemies hit.



Loki's talents provide offensive stats like critical chance, spell power or faster cast.



In contrast, Bashu uses melee spells (lux and storm) and it is able to take a lot more damage than Loki. Two of Bashu's four active skills scale with max HP as well as spell power, so it's able to deal some damage even if you build it very defensively.



Bashu's talents provide defensive stats like block chance, life on hit or hit points.



Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

"Down to Earth" Update (0.96.0) February '23

*** General ***
- Fixed ingame texts
- Adjusted AI pathfinding to get stuck less often
- Minor pause menu UI adjustments
- Fixed strange tooltip positions near screen edges
- Added floor visuals

*** Quality of Life ***
- Double clicking a cat's save file now starts the game with that cat

*** Balance ***
- Fixed wolf and fox AI to feel more like "hit & run"
- Flathead enemies (zombies) now have increased defense / HP
- Early enemy types (stars, ducks, urchins) now use more interesting spells

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about Familiars and local multiplayer in ZpellCatz. Since both features are early in development at the moment, there's a high chance that some things change over time. But lets take a look at the current implementation.

Familiar Park

There's a Familiar Breeder NPC called Drac who has a small park in Greencat Village. When you visit the Familiar park early in the game, you see eggs lying around. Familiar eggs hatch when you make progress with the main quests of the story.



After finishing the first dungeon, the first two Familiars become available.



But what exactly do Familiars do? They are companions that support your cat hero on its adventure. Besides their own set of combat spells, they also have passive auras that increase your cat's stats.

The two early Familiars are Loki (the red one) and Bashu (yellow). Loki uses high damage ranged spells and grants an aura that increases the spell power of your cat. In contrast, Bashu uses melee spells and it is able to take a lot more damage than Loki. Bashu's aura grants some life on hit, so it's easier for your cat to survive. You can also choose to take no Familiar at all, if you want to.



Local Multiplayer

By default, Familiars are controlled by an AI. However, you have the option to let another person control it in local multiplayer. You can switch between AI control and human control of your Familiar whenever you want to (or have to).

The AI tries its best to support the player, but a second human controlling the Familiar will most likely be more efficient. So, there might be situations where inviting a friend to help with that one powerful boss can be a good idea. :-)

Will there be local multiplayer that supports loading two save files to play together with two cat heroes? There are no plans to support this at the moment. Only a handful of players actually use the local multiplayer functionality, that's the conclusion from observations of my last game, Legends of Pixelia. But thinking about game classics like Secret of Mana, I really wanted to support some kind of local co-op for ZpellCatz.

The problem with multiple save files is, that the game needs to be able to handle different quest states and would need to balance the game for cat heroes of vastly different power levels. For example, a level 3 cat playing together with a level 46 cat (with tons of epic items) - it would be extremely hard to balance the game so that both players would actually enjoy playing it... :-D

So, the compromise is to have a Familiar that's always the same level as your cat and to make it easy to switch between AI and human controls. A friend wants to join you on your adventure? Great, let them pick a Familiar of their choice and they can right away play together with you. Your friend notices that they don't like low poly style indie games in the middle of dungeon? No problem, switch the Familiar controls back to AI in order to be able to finish the dungeon (and let your friend continue to play sh**ty rip-off mobile games with AAA graphics, *cough* Immortal *cough*).

Anyway, let's see what it looks like playing cat and Familiar at the same time.



So, do you like having a Familiar as companion? What do you think about the idea for local multiplayer? Feel free to leave a comment here. I'd really love to hear your opinion.

Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about one of the NPCs in ZpellCatz: The Blacksmith.

Last time, I talked about the Merchant NPC. In contrast to the Merchant where you can acquire new items, the Blacksmith in ZpellCatz can't create new items. Instead, they are able to enhance or transform a given item. Lets have a look at the Blacksmith's services.

Sell Item

Get rid of items you no longer need and gain some Thalers (or other currencies). There's no difference whether you sell your items to the Merchant or to the Blacksmith.

Upgrade Rarity

There are normal, special, rare and epic items in ZpellCatz. The Blacksmith is able to upgrade a normal item to special rarity and also to upgrade a special item to a rare one. One of the design pillars of ZpellCatz is "Randomization vs. Reliability". That's why upgrading does not reroll stats. It keeps the old ones (reliability) and adds new random ones (randomization). Also, the level requirements stay the same. So, rarity upgrades are a riskless way to increase an item's overall power.



Craft Epic Items

Epic items are very powerful but they rarely drop. If you've had bad luck for a few dungeons, don't despair: The Blacksmith can help by crafting epics. In order to do so, they need an existing item to consume. The item type consumed defines the crafted epic item. For example, if you select to craft a tier 1 epic item and use a "Wizard Hat" as target item, the Blacksmith will always create the epic item "Black Magic". The stats of every epic item are always the same (reliability) but the rolled values vary (randomization).



Not every epic item in ZpellCatz can be crafted, but there are more than enough craftable ones to support any build possible. The Blacksmith can craft tier 1 (level 1-20) and tier 2 (level 20-44) epic items. Tier 3 (level 45) epic items can only be found, but these are late game items that you don't need at all for a normal playthrough.

Oh, one important thing: It's cheaper to craft epic items providing normal rarity items. So, don't mindlessly sell every white item. It might be a good base item for crafting.

Enchant Item

You may be wondering where to put your rare currencies if tier 3 epic items can't be crafted. That's where the late game services come into play. Enchant item is one of them. It adds a powerful stat to the given item randomly selected from a pool defined by its type (e.g. helms can roll hit points, weapons can roll dark damage, etc). You can reroll your enchantment stat by enchanting the item again (feel free to repeat the process until you are satisfied or completely broke :-D ).



Polish Item

Another way to spent your late game currencies is the "Polish Item" service. Polished items do not gain new stats, instead all existing (and future) stats are increased. Any item can only be polished once.



Chaos Enchantment

"Chaos Enchantment" is a very expensive service that has the potential to greatly increase the power of an item. Regarding the "Randomization vs. Reliability" design pillar, randomization clearly wins here. There are 5 types of chaos enchantments.

The dark grey type is the most common one. You get +7 to a stat picked from a special pool. +7 HP is an unlucky roll, whereas +7% HP is a lot better.



Another type of chaos enchantment is "Might of Enchantment". This type doubles the value of the stat gained from the regular "Enchant Item" service.



Next up is the "Strength of Origin" chaos enchantment. It randomly picks one of the base stats of an item (the white colored ones on the top) and doubles it.



The blue type is called "Force of Balance". It increases the values of all of the item's bonus stats (the ones displayed in blue, yellow or orange) by about 20%. This chaos enchantment is especially powerful for epic items since they tend to have lots of bonus stats.

The rarest chaos enchantment type is the red one. The item receives a bonus stat picked from a list of extremely powerful stats. A lucky roll can upgrade your crafted tier 2 epic to the point where it can easily compete with tier 3 epic items.

Crafting a Late Game Tier 2 Epic

Okay, now that we know how the Blacksmith's services work, lets create a completely overpowered item. :-D

We pick the tier 2 epic item "Cruel Priest". Firstly, we need to find the appropriate base item. In order to create our picked item, we need a normal / special / rare "Silk Robe". The outcome is not affected by the rarity of the provided item. However, nearly all services are cheaper when we use a normal (white) base item. In contrast, most services are more expensive when the provided item is of epic rarity. That's why we want to use the "Craft Epic" service last.

To make the item really powerful, we want to find a normal "Silk Robe" with as high as possible base stats. Lets pick the one with the highest defense. 2 points of defense are more valuable than 3 points of spell power.



There are multiple possible enchantment rolls that would work on "Cruel Priest". I'd say the best match is the skill bonus for "Suffering".



Since we're not limited on rare currencies in this article, we want one of the very powerful red chaos enchantments. ^^

Stats like crit chance, curse duration or damage vs. cursed would be great. Lets pick crit chance. (Note: Since chaos enchantments are very expensive, you shouldn't reroll a chaos enchant at all. It'll be difficult enough to even have a chaos enchant on most of your items...)

Time to polish the item. This won't increase the power of the item a lot now, but the future stats from epic item craft will be increased, too!

Finally, lets craft the epic item itself! Unlike with the enchantments, we're not able to reroll the outcome. So we have to live with the result.



Now you see why the mentioned enchantments are good choices. In order to trigger the nice epic effect, we need to crit enemies cursed by "Suffering".

So, that's all the cool stuff the Blacksmith has to offer. If you've missed it, I already wrote an article about the Merchant NPC and there'll be another one soon covering the Jeweler. Want to get notified when new articles are released? Join my Discord and don't forget to follow & wishlist ZpellCatz here on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1447700/ZpellCatz/

Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

Hey there, fellow Catz. Want to watch the dev play the ZpellCatz demo? Want to win free Legends of Pixelia Steam keys? Then don't hesitate to join this live stream and key giveaway session. I'd be super happy to have you there!

Hey there, fellow Catz. Want to watch the dev play the ZpellCatz demo? Want to win free Legends of Pixelia Steam keys? Then don't hesitate to join this live stream and key giveaway session. I'd be super happy to have you there!

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about one of many possible late game builds in ZpellCatz: A Fury Shaman that is focused on "Lightning Totem".

Since the playable demo / prologue features some early gameplay, I thought it might be a good idea to show how late game builds could look like in ZpellCatz. We'll start with a Fury Shaman because it's the class combination that's playable in the demo / prologue.

Skills

In this build, we want to focus on the skill "Lightning Totem". Lets make it super strong! :-D

So, lets put some points in "Lightning Totem" (our main skill), "Frost Totem" (cold base damage), "Charged Soul" (storm damage%) and "Thunder Claw" (storm damage%, pierce storm).



We choose "Master of Totems" as the ultimate skill because it's a perfect match for our build. Ultimate skills provide some really great bonuses, but you can only select one of three (two based on the hero class and one based on the selected path). The three skills at the bottom of the skill window with an orange border around the icon, those are the ultimates.



Although the following abilities don't directly support our totem, we put points in "Chill" ("Ice Missiles" slows and weakens enemies), "Shock Nova" (active skill) and "Ring of Flames" (fire base damage to "Shock Nova"). We'll see in a moment why they are great for this build. In addition, I like to distribute 1 skill point in every skill in order to receive skill point bonuses from items / gems.



Items & Gems

A nice mix of tier 2 and tier 3 epic items is waiting for us. Lets start with the weapon: "Moonlight of Agony" (tier 2, not craftable). It grants lots of bonuses that directly support our build, especially the "Lightning Totem" cooldown reduction and the epic effect that increases the number of shots from 5 to 7.



For the boots slot, we choose "Stormy Havoc". It's a powerful tier 3 item designed for Fury Shamans that combines the skills "Lightning Totem" and "Shock Nova". Remember that we've put points in the skill "Shock Nova"? With this item, our totems also cast it when they expire. Very helpful!



Our build is focused on offensive totem combat, but we don't want to create a glass cannon here. So lets pick 2 items that form a good symbiosis: "Cold Warden" (tier 2 helm, craftable) and "Guardian of Aeons" (tier 3 body armor). "Cold Warden" helps spreading the effect of "Chill" with our totems, so more enemies are slowed and weakened. In addition to this, "Guardian of Aeons" provides damage reduction based on the number of enemies cursed by "Chill". Also, both items provide nice healing stats and skill bonuses.



Now it's time for conversion gloves! The item "Thunder Grip" (tier 3 gloves) converts cold and fire damage to storm damage. Since cold, fire and storm are the only possible damage types for a Fury Shaman, all of our damage dealt is now storm damage. This is great, because it's very easy for Fury Shamans to increase storm damage. The drawback, however, is that enemies with very high storm resistance (max. is 95%) can be hard to kill. Luckily, we have a lot "pierce storm" provided by our skills and items. This stat reduces enemies' resistances before dealing damage. So with about 30% pierce storm, enemies with high storm resistance will take some more hits, but they shouldn't be a problem anymore.



For the offhand slot we choose "Elemental Discharge" (tier 2 book, craftable). The item increases storm damage a lot, but reduces all resistances and all non-storm damage dealt. This might be a bad choice for other builds, but it is a really great item for this one. Since we only deal storm damage thanks to "Thunder Grip", we receive a 40% total damage bonus.

Our items are offensive enough, lets take some resistance boosting rings for the jewelry slots. You wonder why we take rare rings instead of epic ones? The answer is simple: there is no epic jewelry (rings, amulets) in ZpellCatz. I talked about that some time ago in an article about itemization.



We pick gems that help us survive (boost all res or single resistances that we're lacking) or ones that directly support our build (storm damage, skill bonuses). I won't describe each gem in detail, but here are some examples of gems that I found useful for this build:



So, with all items and gems equipped, our final builds looks like this:



All important skills are level 10-14 and we've got 260% storm damage. The cooldown of our totem has been reduced from 7 seconds to 3.5 seconds, it deals 5k - 12k damage per shot and it releases a nova (with 50% power) that deals 7k - 18k aoe damage. You don't need damage numbers that high for the normal story content, but there will be challenging late game dungeons in ZpellCatz for those of you who really like to max out every aspect of a build.

But just for the fun of it, lets watch a totem clear a room in one of the later story content dungeons... :-D



I hope you enjoy this build as much as I do. I'll share more builds for other class combinations soon to give you further impressions of how the late game of ZpellCatz could look like.

Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to talk about one of the NPCs in ZpellCatz: The Merchant.

You will find lots of items and Thalers when looting dungeons in ZpellCatz. Most of your equipment will be self found, but when RNG is working against you, there are NPCs to help out.

I talked a lot about the itemization in ZpellCatz in April '21 (a long time ago, but the article still provides correct info). This time, lets focus on the Merchant.

Offer Pages

The Merchant starts with a small selection of items. Then, whenever you finish a main quest relevant task, a new offer page unlocks.



Fixed Items

Most of the equipment items sold are of special quality (fix stats + some bonus stats). The cool thing? The stats and their values are fixed, meaning they are always the same. One of the design pillars of ZpellCatz is "Randomization vs. Reliability". Since most of your looted items are completely random, you have a source of reliably rolled items.



Gems & Sockets

But the Merchant has a lot more to offer than special quality items, if you have saved up some Thalers... One of the more powerful stuff sold are gems and sockets. We'll talk about gems and the Jeweler NPC soon, but some short info here: Gems are quite powerful and you can put them in sockets (that are independent of your items) to receive their bonuses.





Currencies

The Merchant is also the place for changing currencies. You have too much Emerald Dust and Sapphire Dust but you're short on Ruby Dust? Merchants are happy to help you with a cutthroat 3:1 exchange (well, that's how capitalism works, amirite? :-D ).



Respec

Not satisfied with your allocated skill points? The Merchant has a respec scroll, but it's very, very expensive. So, it is possible to respec, but don't expect to do that oftentimes.



Randomly Rolled Items

Okay everything mentioned so far supports the reliability side of the "Randomization vs. Reliability" design pillar. In contrast, there's one kind of product that's purely random: Buying randomly rolled items.



That's pretty much everything the Merchant has to offer. But there are other important NPCs that we'll look at in the future (Blacksmith & Jeweler). Want to get notified when new articles are released? Join my Discord and wishlist & follow ZpellCatz here on Steam.

Note: All info here is in development content and subject to change.

Hey there. A new version of the Pumpkin Prologue is ready to be played. It's in a good shape now for the upcoming game festival season.

Here are the patch notes for the current version:

"Kick and Start" Update (0.95.2) September '22

*** UI ***
- Quest finished dialogue looks nicer now
- Replaced the discord box with a SimaGames info box
- Small UI bug fixes

*** System ***
- Added resilience to corrupted save files

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Hey there. Spell effects have greatly been improved and there is a new version of the Pumpkin Prologue available to give them a try.
But first, let's check out the updated trailer:

https://www.indiedb.com/games/zpellcatz/videos/pumpkin-prologue-trailer-june-2022

Here are the patch notes for the current version:

"Dark Harvest" Update (0.94.0) June '22
*** General ***
- Improved spell visuals effects
- Mountains now have a slightly different color for each height level
- Improved destructable death animation
- Steam Cloud now correctly works for cross-platform (Windows / Linux)

*** Shaman ***
- Increased "Ice Missiles" shot speed by 50%
- Updated "Ice Missiles" description

*** Pumpkin Prologue ***
- The epic item "Dark Harvest" is now a guaranteed drop (one time only)
- Slightly adjusted the base resistances of Traulicht
- Fixed a bug that occasionally caused a black screen when entering a room

Full Changelog

A guaranteed epic item drop? Yep! The later parts of the prologue needed something interesting, so I decided to add this guaranteed epic. I really like playing around with the totem refresh mechanic. Have a look:



Want to try the new spell visuals, the "Dark Harvest" or the sped up Ice Missiles?
Play the Pumpkin Prologue for free, here on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/ZpellCatz_Pumpkin_Prologue/

Hey there. I polished the spell effects and the environment over the last weeks. Check out the updated trailer and screenshots:

[previewyoutube=gA1Wq5K73mo;full][/previewyoutube]

*** General ***
- Added more epic items
- Friendly rooms are allowed to spawn closer to the dungeon entrance now
- Advanced blacksmith services are now cheaper when the base item is of normal quality
- This change makes normal items worth being picked up in midgame / lategame (e.g. to craft epic items)
- Treasure rooms and boss rooms now drop at least one item of quality special or higher
- Added an option to change cursor speed when playing with a gamepad
- Reworked main menu scene
- Small bug fixes

*** World ***
- Greatly improved water / ocean mesh and added a wave animation
- Wall and doodad meshes have been improved
- Crystal cave (pumpkin prologue) walls now have crystals in them

*** UI ***
- Dialogue box now supports colored text
- Adjusted quest item info icon position
- Added new logo graphic
- Name box of the new game screen is now on top to better work with on screen keyboard (Deck)
- "Box" gamepad layout now has proper button images for "start" and "select"
- Added "Deck" gamepad layout
- Minor UI fixes

*** SAVE STATE ***
- Audio & video settings are now saved locally only
- There is no reason to share these settings between multiple devices (e.g. main PC and Deck)
- Breaking change: Your previous audio & video settings will be overwritten by default values

*** Engine ***
- Game engine update: Unity 2021
- Library updates

Full Changelog

Do you own a Steam Deck? If yes, you should definitively try ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/ZpellCatz_Pumpkin_Prologue/

Hey there, fellow catz! After some technical system adjustments earlier this year, I was able to make some progress with the story of ZpellCatz in the last months. Want to know more? Read on.

Chapter 1 Progress

The story of ZpellCatz will be told via the mandatory main quests. Finishing main quests or clearing main quest related dungeons will reveal some small parts of the story. In addition to this, NPCs have a personality with a distinct welcome dialogue. So talking to them also gives some info on the Isle of Mana (the island where ZpellCatz is played).



In terms of workload, chapter 1 is clearly the most extensive one. But I managed to write all welcome dialogues and default dialogues of NPCs that exist to this day. In addition to this, the early quests now have proper dialogue and we have the first two cinematics / flashbacks finished. Progress!

Dialogue with Colors

When I was working on chapter 1, I noticed that the dialogues looked a bit dull (visually ^^ ). So, I added colored text functionality to dialogues in order to let the NPCs emphasize certain words.



Now you might wonder why colored text is worth mentioning at all... Well, I already used colored text to slowly reveal the NPCs dialogue over time. The revealed text has the default color while the hidden text has color "invisible".

Example, 4 steps:
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.

So, if we just add a new tag for emphasize color (e.g. ), we might get in trouble. Lets have a look at another example.

Example with emphasize color:
- Hey you! // full text
- Hey you! // start, only one character shown
- Hey you!
- Hey you!
- Hey you!
- Hey <color=green>you! // boom! unparsable text

The solution was to tell the reveal dialogue system how to handle other rich text control characters (e.g. , , ). I won't go into implementation details at this point. If you're interested in the code, please write a comment. :-)

Overworld Overhaul

Although the player will spend most of the time in dungeons while playing ZpellCatz, the overworld is still an important part of the game. As a first step to polish the game for one of the upcoming Steam Next Fests, I overhauled the overworld elements. Have a look.

Hills:



Beach:



Graveyard:



Unity 2021 Upgrade

I started working on ZpellCatz a long time ago. Back then, the scriptable render pipelines (LWRP) used to be slowish, so I decided to use the built-in render pipeline of Unity. I created tons of materials with custom shaders in the meantime, so there's no way back - haha.

With Unity 2021, we finally get shader graph for the built-in render pipeline, yay! I have some very basic understanding of HLSL, but the option to try around different parameters in a GUI will definitively speed up the shader writing process. Lets see if I'm able to enhance the hero spells' visuals in the upcoming weeks.

Steam Deck Polish

My Steam Deck finally arrived. I started up Legends of Pixelia and was surprised that everything works out of the box. When I ran ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue, I noticed a lot of issues. So I spent some time in the last couple of weeks to polish the game for Steam Deck usage. It's nearly finished, you can expect a new version of the Pumpkin Prologue in the upcoming days that runs ultra smooth on the Deck.

That's it for today. Thanks for reading. What do you think about the changes? Are you interested in more hands-on technical stuff like C# code? Leave a comment or join our discord.
Have a nice day!

*** General ***
- Slightly increased base movement, animation and shot speed (115% -> 120%)
- Added more epic items
- The currency "coin" is called "Thaler" from now on
- Small bug fixes

*** Balance ***
- Adjusted Int%, Vit%, Mind%, HP%, Def% and Spo% drop table on special and rare items
- Adjusted soft cap and maximum for various stats
- Slightly adjusted / increased values for most passive skills
- Added more teleporter rooms to large dungeons (e.g. Pumpkin Ruins)

*** UI ***
- Added tooltips to various UI elements
- UI adjustments
- Notification UI is now hidden when talking to NPCs

*** Mechanic Changes ***
- Items can now be sold to the merchant, too

*** New Features ***
- Added a new type of dungeon rooms: "Friendly Rooms"
- Friendly rooms provide some coins and don't spawn enemies

*** Pumpkin Prologue ***
- Parina's quest step "sell item" can now also be completed by selling to the merchant NPC
- Pumpkin Ruins now contain some "Friendly Rooms" to pseudo-decrease dungeon size (without changing the minimap shape)

Full Changelog

Here are some screenshots that show some of the newly added tooltips:

ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue has just been released. Yay!

Play for free on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/

If you're unsure of what to expect, here are some more screenshots:









Have fun playing!

Hey there, fellow catz! A lot has happened in the past few months and I made some nice progress with ZpellCatz. Lets have a look.

[h2]Pumpkin Prologue[/h2]
In case you missed the announcement, ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue will be released next week (Oct 14, 17:00 CEST). It's a free singleplayer campaign with a story set preceding the events of the main game.



As you can imagine, creating a prologue with its own overworld, dungeons and story required most of the working time since June, but I'm super happy with the result. :-)

[h2]Input System[/h2]
I finished working on the input system that we already covered in our last DevRecap.
There is an article available here ( https://www.indiedb.com/games/zpellcatz/features/how-to-control-a-cat ) for further info.



[h2]New Cover Art[/h2]
A very talented freelancer created the new cover art for ZpellCatz. In my opinion he did a really great job here. What do you think? Check it out:



[h2]Music & Sound Design[/h2]
In order to be able to release the Pumpkin Prologue, ZpellCatz needed sound and music.

- Composed songs: "Main Menu", "Overworld", "Village", "Temple Ruins", "Boss"
- Lots of sound effects for combat, UI, etc



[h2]Quality of Life Improvements[/h2]
Some of my former gamedev colleagues tested the early builds of the Pumpkin Prologue and allowed me to watch silently (big thanks to Ingo, Alex, Robi & Daniel). This way, we found lots of hard-to-use features and design flaws. Here are some of the things that worked a lot better after small adjustments:

- Bags now show what kind of item you just collected
- Items in the inventory now follow the mouse to reduce confusion
- Teleporters are now animated to indicate that they are no usual floor plate
- Enemy stat balance (yes the first testers had to play in "developer hard"... :-D )
- Input polishing





[h2]Backend Server[/h2]
We now have a backend server that we can use for highscores, speedrunning times and of course to detect further design / balance issues. Be assured, that we don't collect any personal data.

That's it for today. Thanks for reading. If you want to receive development update more regularly, feel free to join our discord.
Have a nice day!

Hey there. Today I want to announce ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue.

It's a free singleplayer campaign with a story set preceding the events of the main game.

[previewyoutube=pA9RPkhvnwE;full][/previewyoutube]

You are a young Shaman Cat on its travels that arrives in a mysterious village. It's autumn. Pumpkins are ready for harvest - and so are the souls of the villagers! This is the prologue of ZpellCatz, a magical Action RPG set in a colorful fantasy world.

ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue will be released on October 14, 2021.
It's available for Windows and Linux.

You can download it for free on the store page (click).

Hey there, fellow catz! The end of May is soon, so lets recap the development progress of April and May 2021.
:-)

[h3]Items[/h3]
- Played around with item stats, drop chances for epic items, etc
- Added new epic items
- Wrote an article about the itemization in ZpellCatz ( https://www.indiedb.com/games/zpellcatz/features/zpellcatz-itemization )

[h3]Visuals, Special Effects[/h3]
- Added teleport effect for cat heroes and enemies
- Greatly improved "Frailty" spell effect


- Added a longer death effect animation for cat heroes and bosses (normal enemies die a lot quicker)


[h3]Input System (work in progress)[/h3]
- Upgraded the underlying input system to the "new" Unity Input
- Added gamepad control for ingame and menu
- Added joystick control for ingame and menu
- Added an options menu screen
- Started implementing an input rebind system (WIP)

I'll write an article with more info about the input system in ZpellCatz soon. ^^

That's it for today. My plan is to write a DevRecap every 2 or 3 months from now on. If you want to receive development update more regularly, feel free to join our discord.
Have a wonderful weekend!