Sea of Stars: Dawn of Equinox: A Yearlong Journey in Refinement

Like many different tasks, Sea of Stars began with an impulse — an concept that all of us gathered round as a group, one thing we acquired excited over, and agreed was a worthwhile artistic pursuit. A distinctive taste of a sense, which, given correct therapy in the shape of a online game, ought to compel gamers to take part in this impulse, experiencing and expressing in their very own method what we discovered distinctive and worthwhile about Sea of Stars.

Like every other profession, recreation growth comes with curve balls and selections. Brief of a magic wand to make every little thing occur immediately, we develop into intimate with the notion that manufacturing is a group’s one shot at capturing that preliminary impulse, and that some issues inevitably gained’t go down as deliberate. And so, like every other kind of artwork, there may be an angle the place a recreation isn’t completed, however fairly surrendered.

After 4 years of manufacturing, we had been lucky sufficient to really feel genuinely joyful and content material with what we had managed to seize, and inside the first hours of its launch, it turned clear that the reception to Sea of Stars would far exceed our predictions. Whereas the enjoyment and gratefulness we felt can by no means be overstated, we additionally gathered round a way of accountability in response to this crucial mass of gamers giving us the means to assist ourselves.

Placing collectively this newfound freedom together with hindsight, participant suggestions, and the numerous little tweaks and issues we’d have so liked so as to add to the sport, we scoped out a serious free replace, giving our followers a whole 12 months of full time work from the group to refine Sea of Stars into one thing that resonates much more strongly with the aforementioned impulse, which we now knew so much of folks did (and cared to) interact with.

Wanting to depart no stones unturned, we filed every merchandise below three pillars: sharpening, fight 2.0, and sofa co-op.

The record goes on right here, however the gist of it’s that we revisited all areas of the sport the place we needed to make some sacrifices or exhausting selections on the street to the sport’s preliminary launch. Setting apart the numerous bug fixing and micro changes, the majority of the work was merely to totally understand what was initially envisioned.

You’ll discover issues like a totally new cinematic cutscene to assist a serious story beat, a revamped first hour circulate in which we’re lastly in a position to put off the flashback construction by implementing fight animation units for the child variations of our heroes, permitting us to enter the intro instantly with out sacrificing motion. There are additionally a bunch of new Relics, together with one for speedrunning, and problem presets for these searching for extra (or much less) grit to fight.

We additionally up to date fight to make it what was initially deliberate. This one wasn’t for lack of time or conflicting priorities; we merely ended up choosing a lighter and extra easy expertise. Hindsight and participant suggestions are the MVPs right here; there was certainly an urge for food for fight to be deeper and extra concerned. The primary essential addition right here is “Sticky Combo Factors”, which now stay after battle, providing diverse methods of opening in fight, in addition to sustaining a extra plentiful useful resource pool for enjoying round with the 40+ distinctive abilities and spells on the social gathering’s disposal.

One other notable addition is the idea of “Thriller Locks”. Merely put, any new enemy casting a spell will show Thriller Locks as an alternative of particular harm sorts instantly, creating this gameplay loop round attempting totally different strikes to see what breaks every new spell, together with a brand new “Reveal” perform added to some of the characters’ abilities. Revealing locks completely maps them on a per-enemy/per-spell foundation, one thing which playtests shortly validated in phrases of adjusting problem with out relying solely on harm carried out/obtained, in addition to making certain extra of the bosses particular strikes get to fly.

Concerning three participant sofa co-op, we adopted a easy rule: participant One isn’t particular, everybody can do every little thing. Whereas it was by far essentially the most difficult to implement given the hundreds of use-cases to manually implement or repair, this one merely speaks for itself with controllers in hand.

We couldn’t be happier with the Dawn of Equinox replace. Now it’s time to totally shift deal with the upcoming free DLC Throes of the Watchmaker, which is on observe to be launched in the Spring of 2025.