Hello everyone!
This demo is a great milestone for us because this is where we start shaping how the gameplay of each playable companion carries their personality and individual style.
We haven’t added completely new spell sets for each of them yet, but the Special Abilities we implemented are the first step towards tailoring the experience around how each character is supposed to fight.
One of the brightest sides of working on this is that it also gives us a playground for what comes next. Once we have characters with their own signature powers and combat styles, we can start developing new types of enemies that follow the same philosophy, with their own abilities and different ways of forcing you to react during combat.
There are still a few known issues. For example, characters sometimes try to vault on top of NPCs’ heads, which can lead to some rather strange situations!
We plan to make yet another release this Saturday to address this issue, improve movement and polish a few other quirks based on your feedback.
So please keep telling us what feels good, what feels strange and, of course, what you manage to break!

Kalyskah is our middle ground between the different combat styles. She uses a one-handed sword and is designed to be flexible enough to pressure enemies, create openings or get herself out of dangerous situations.
Her Special Attack is telekinesis.

Tapping Special Attack pushes enemies away from her, which is useful when she gets surrounded or needs some breathing room.
Holding Special Attack instead pulls enemies towards her, allowing her to bring a target directly into striking distance.

The idea is for Kalyskah to remain the balanced character who can adapt to different situations rather than specialising too heavily in one particular style.

Laver is an elven vampire, Kalyskah’s right-hand man and the fastest vampire in the Karnstein Legion.
His gameplay is about speed, pressure and playing with his prey.
Tapping his Special Attack performs a much longer dash than the normal evasion used by the other characters, and Laver can pass directly through enemies while doing it.
He can also throw his sword. When holding and releasing Special Attack afterwards, Laver moves directly to where his sword landed and immediately attacks.

The sword can even become attached to an enemy, allowing you to throw it into someone, continue fighting unarmed and then suddenly return to your weapon to continue the combo.
The goal is to make Laver feel relentless when played well. While other characters may wait for a safe opening, Laver is encouraged to create his own.

Ilreth is an elf and an artificer. Unlike the vampires and Nemesis, she does not have the same supernatural resilience, so she is deliberately more vulnerable in direct combat.
Because of this, we are designing her as a trapper.
Ilreth prefers controlling the battlefield, keeping enemies at a distance and preparing situations before committing to an attack.
For now, her main tool for doing this is her bombs.

Holding Special Attack after placing a bomb prevents it from exploding until the button is released. This means you can place a bomb, move around the battlefield, lure enemies towards it and choose exactly when you want it to detonate.

We haven’t had time to implement all the artefacts and abilities planned for her yet, but this gives a first glimpse of the direction we want to take with her gameplay.

Nemesis prefers dealing with enemies without getting her hands dirty.
Tapping Special Attack casts a chain lightning spell that can jump between nearby enemies.

Holding Special Attack instead makes her continuously channel lightning into her target. This consumes stamina while allowing her to keep damaging enemies from a distance.

Eventually, Nemesis is supposed to have a whip as her main weapon, but we haven’t had time to animate it yet, so that will probably come much later.
For now, if enemies manage to get close to her, she simply uses her entire body as a weapon, attacking with her hands, tail and wings.
The intention is for Nemesis to control enemies from a distance and punish groups before they have the chance to surround her.

As mentioned in my last post, this demo also features an improved Photo Mode where you can control a few things such as saturation and colours:

This build is still very much a playground for these ideas rather than the finished version of each character.
We want to polish this demo throughout the week and release another build this Saturday with improvements to movement, vaulting and whatever other issues we can address based on your feedback.
After that, these same foundations will help us expand both the playable characters and the enemies they fight.
So try everyone, experiment with their abilities and tell us which character you enjoyed playing the most!