We wanted to share with everyone what's going on in GS, because the last time we shared this was a loooong time ago, and we are very much still actively working!

We've gotten a lot of feedback from you guys, and there are many things we plan to improve and get right. Hence, to keep you up to date, I wanted to present, specifically, what the GS team has in mind right now.

Artstyle, UI and Effects

This is one of the things that was the most controversial in the whole demo. On one hand - pretty pixel art, but on the other - inconsistent art style, as well as an absolute lack of emphasis through colour scheme and separation of what is important and what's not. UI and Combat were the most problematic - lots of bright graphics and a disorienting arrangement of elements.

First of all, in the new version, there will be an improved colour scheme and colour coding of all screens - they will be much more pleasing to the eye and it will be easier to see what things are important and what aren't. We're aiming, first of all, for a good UX of using the interface in this game, and to make it less "eye-sorey", especially with a lot of things happening/appearing on the screen. 

In addition, we have improved the visual effects in the UI, the layout of tooltips, and some markings that will be important to the player. We are currently working on improving the graphics of, among other things, the status effects, to make them more similar in style to the game overall, and we hope that these changes will appear with the new UI and background for the combat.

Exploration

This is one of the things we got the most requests for - it's boring, doesn't add anything, and some people even got vertigo from the quick "jumps" of the camera when moving between tiles. This is our main priority, and it's what the new version will change the most. We want it not only to be more enjoyable to play, but, above all, to bring more risks and opportunities to players.

As there will be a lot of changes to it, we will describe them in a separate devlog, once we have cool tidbits to show and tell :>

Refining 

While exploration is the most important change in the new version, it is by no means the only one. Refining also needs more love - because we definitely didn't want this mechanic to be seen as "combine the same two materials twice".

1. Scaling materials
   The first thing everyone did when playing this game for the first time was to try to create weapons from starter materials only to get the message "You can't do that!". While previously we thought this was an interesting way to draw the player into the refining mechanics, in practice it came out to be just boring and unnecessary.
   In the new version, materials will have 4 tiers instead of 3. Tiers 1-3 will have a scalable modifier (e.g. +25/50/75% crit damage), and tier 4 will include a unique modifier (in this case - critical hits instantly kill hit units). Getting a unique modifier will be more difficult than simply combining materials several times, thus they will become much more valuable! 
2. Catalysts
   In addition to the usual materials from monsters, we have also added Catalysts - unique materials that change another material as you refine them together. For example, the Exalted Catalyst instantly raises a material to a unique tier. We wanted to add some spice to this mechanic, especially since these changes are quite small, and we hope they will translate very well into gameplay

While we work hard on the new version, be sure to check out 0.0.15 with a lot of important bugfixes and changes.