Hey! We welcome all to a Next Fest stream where the game's team will present an updated demo.

So, jump in, say Hi and let's crawl together!

How could this broken shell of a man, barely able to carry the weight of his own sword, be the Burning Terror which drove me to hide here? He seemed to have Demons of his own, that he struggled to contain... and he was losing.

We’ve made a complete overhaul of Crawlyard's battle encounters. Before, it felt like a hybrid of Vampire Survivors and Loop Hero, but now it’s more like Hadean Tactics. What I mean by that is that each encounter now has its own battle zone, borders and enemies, all happening within the stage of your chosen performance.

Basically, we aimed to arrive at a seamless transition between exploration and skirmish like you'd see in modern JRPGs. Each battle is a pretty much consistent experience and enemies won’t spawn totally randomly (well, there's still a hint of randomness within specific conditions). Here, a fancy gif where I'm using battle brushes to create a zone for the next battle encounter.

Mapping out a death zone in sleepy dorms

So I was talking about randomness, right? Well, our encounters aren’t exactly fixed - each time you visit a stage and engage in one of its battles, there's a tiny invisible counter that goes up by one. The higher the value of that counter is, the more new random enemies we add to this encounter's list, until it reaches a pretty round number like 10 or 100, and then you’ll have such a wide roster of enemies that it might indeed seem random (but not totally random still).

Better yet, each encounter adapts to your class, level and build. Even if you make a Knight build that's really good for dueling single foes, I will make sure that at some point a hoard of lesser enemies with a poison attribute will spawn at once, and you’ll have to improvise, adapt and overcome.
So, no steamrolling dungeons with a meta build, but I promise you WILL have a good time you little munchkin bastards.

I like to have some kind of adaptive randomness. Things need to be spicy and interesting with you guys, because once you figure out a winning strategy you’ll get bored with the game. Making the game adapt to current circumstances is a good way to keep you engaged (and die, a lot, which I like, a lot).

And as much as I would love to just delegate every decision to some randomizing algorithm, I can't deny the pleasure or torturing you guys. Thinking about you suffering in those encounters is a thing that keeps me alive and motivated, which is what you want from your favourite developer.

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Should I talk about the new navigation system in the next devlog? Or about our roguelite progression? Or both? Let me know in the comments or nudge me in Crawlyard Discord[discord.gg].

Anyways, wait for the new demo for Steam Next Fest: October Edition - we will be there.

Until next time, your one and only
Vovun-Bubblegum, game designer.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637560/Crawlyard/