ども皆さん!

This will be the first of the monthly development logs I will be posting on the third Sunday of every month, to discuss development updates and design decisions. 

Skill Shifts

To begin, I mentioned in my previous update that this game is inspired from the combat of Darkest Dungeon and afterwards, we are diverging from that after. Darkest Dungeon provides players with a very unique blend of horror and role-playing experience, which is not what my vision for the game is. Instead, I want players to just have fun and think about all the interesting combos they can do in the game. So, with this new feature, it will be our first step in diverging from Darkest Dungeon.

Skill Shift is a feature in the game where characters in the game will, upon meeting certain conditions, gain additional effects to their skills or have the skills change completely!

I think this is a cool feature that will open up a lot of fun possibilities for the players. What better way to introduce Skill Shift feature than to introduce it with Flare?

Designing Flare

Flare has been quite tough to design for. I want to design a kit that stays true to her character but at the same time, references something prominent she has done. Previously, I had Flare using a bow with some sort of radiance-fire power. However, I also felt that it's kind of a cliche to have an elf character wield a bow. Also, Flare didn't do anything related to bow and arrows. So it's back to the drawing board.

I started watching Flare when she was doing a full playthrough of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and I want some of her kit to reference that. Flare also has a fire motif to her character, so it would be a disservice to not include that into her kit.

So how does Skill Shift play into all this? Recently, I polled some of my followers on Twitter to see if they felt that Flare should be a damage dealer or a support, and the results were pretty much even. So, I have decided... Why not both? 

As of now, depending on where Flare is positioned, some of her skills will change completely. If she is positioned at the flank (the last two positions), Flare takes on a more supportive role, while positioning her towards the front (first two positions), Flare becomes a powerful, fiery damage dealer.

I hope players will enjoy this dual-class rendition of Flare in the game! 

Improving UI

I'm slowing trying to improve information display to players. Now, when players mouse over characters, they will be provided with not only the stats of the character, but the unique skills of the character (Hololivers only). While temporary, the unit tooltip displays the speed of the character as well, it was previously left out by mistake.

Future Plans

Moving on. I have gotten a lot of positive reception and constructive feedback from players who had played the pre-alpha. Some even recorded their play through of the game, which is extremely helpful!

From the feedback, I understand that there was serious lack of information surrounding the combat feature and we have been working to improve the UI and displaying of information. 

There is also additional combat and narrative features currently in the works, so do look out for that. 

Closing

I want to thank everyone who has played the pre-alpha and left feedback for the game. And also, I want to thank my wonderful team for volunteering their services for the game. Their work and feedback has been immensely helpful to the development of the game.

Hololive Isekai is a passion project and we are working on this on our own free time. While I appreciate some people's sentiments of wanting to donate money to the project, I am currently not accepting money for now, not until I feel that the project is worthy to be called a game. Until then, I will gladly accept your moral support. 

Thank you for supporting Hololive Isekai.