[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44126579/6db5c874c72e5599ee7b0454c9ce1478f6f41bae.png[/img] It’s official! Earlier this week, we released our latest trailer for Wizard of Legend 2 during the iii-Initiative Showcase, and we’re so excited to finally be sharing more about the game with you after revealing it way back in May of last year. We felt that this would be a great time to kick off a dev log series leading up to launch, so that everyone in the community can learn more about what we’re conjuring up behind the scenes, and gain some insights from the development team here at Dead Mage. [previewyoutube=Dw__6PIbPO4;full][/previewyoutube] As a team, we quickly fell in love with the fast-paced combat of the first game. We were eager to take on the challenge of bringing this sequel to life, while also ensuring Wizard of Legend’s trademark fluidity remains intact. We knew the responsive controls and quick movement that players have become so familiar with would be of the utmost importance. This motivated the team to find the perfect balance between maintaining and enhancing the gameplay, variety of Arcana, and controls for Wizard of Legend 2. One of the first challenges we encountered was figuring out how to keep things fast, yet under control, considering the vast variety of Arcana available to players. This hurdle was initially a tough one for the team, and Senior Game Designer Javid Najibzadeh shared a few of his thoughts on how we approached it: “We realized that we did need to make the animations much more snappy, making the anticipation animations much shorter - down to even a couple of frames at some points. The entire process of casting an Arcana needed to be faster in order to match the first game’s pace.” [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44126579/e8895be1eb65ccb88df3859d3e4d5e0db4363fe6.gif[/img] Speaking of Arcana, we’ve put in extra time and effort to make sure every spell has a unique feel, to make the gameplay more immersive. To do this, we ensured each one of the over 70 different Arcana have distinct abilities, controls, and nuances that will affect gameplay. This is still an ongoing process that we will continue to revise and work on as the game’s development progresses toward launch. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44126579/e68e9ea5b98ef6566dfe34a95ce6f523c1dbb1f5.gif[/img] One interesting decision we’ve made was to implement a skill that lets players double dash, but only over pits. Javid explains, “We thought it might be a good idea to give players an extra chance of avoiding pits as it sometimes was too grim to fall into pits when you wanted to avoid being hit… At some point we removed it and every tester went almost mad.” [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44126579/b4a1e457acc97a8fd8f2333baee82a755ec1230e.gif[/img] This led to us reworking the skill to become a permanent progression upgrade, which ended up getting a positive response during our internal playtests. However, after further playtesting, we felt the cooldown and other restrictions of dash Arcana made them less predictable, which affected the game’s pacing in a negative way. Due to this, we decided to replace dash Arcana with Relics that grant the same powers. If you’ve never played Wizard of Legend before, Relics are returning items in Wizard of Legend 2 that you can acquire as you progress through the Trials. These items will alter and enhance your abilities, but be careful what you decide to pick up! Some Relics may carry negative effects in addition to their benefits. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44126579/21801248090867ab509076c5e479228fa9561542.jpg[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44126579/a2bd27c9406a3b4dcae92ce74ae52a357ede62f3.jpg[/img] These Relics will appeal to players who loved the dash Arcana from the first game while opening up opportunities for interesting builds. We are excited to reveal even more about Wizard of Legend 2 in the coming weeks, and we’re grateful for all of you who have been sharing your own excitement and interest with us on social media, as well as in our [url=https://discord.gg/P4rGgMr3]Discord server[/url]. So brace yourselves and get ready to engage in fast-paced combat with unique Arcana, encounter familiar and new NPCs, and claim the coveted title of Wizard of Legend! We’ll see you next month, where we’ll be taking a closer look at Arcana design! If there are topics you’d like to see us explore in future dev logs, be sure to let us know by sharing your suggestions with us in Discord.