Absolver Production Update

Hi everyone !

As mentioned recently, we wanted to give all of you more information on our roadmap in the coming months, so that you know what to expect, and can send us feedback on it!

First of all, a couple of notes:

Please remember that Sloclap is a small studio (currently 25 people, with 7 programmers working on the game), so even though everybody is 100% focused on Absolver, we simply can’t do everything at once, and some things are going to take a while, so we appreciate your patience!

We want to be as transparent as possible on development, but we also don’t want to make promises we can’t keep, so we’re not going to give precise dates at this stage – as soon as we feel confident enough, you’ll be the first to know!

Finally, our plans for 2018 are not set in stone: we’re still discussing some things internally, and listening to player feedback, so we will keep communicating on these plans as they change.

Upcoming Updates

We are going to push an update in a couple of weeks that will be mostly focused on bugfixes, with some gameplay tweaks, and an AFK functionality which became necessary since the 1.11 update. After this, our next update will be focused more on quality of life features: character appearance change, copy/pasting decks for easier editing, equipment presets to switch between outfits easily, better remapping options (especially for mouse/keyboard players) and more: for instance, two new maps will be added to the 3v3 Overtake game mode.

Schools

Schools will be reworked in a future update. We’ve received plenty of great feedback from players, and had identified a number of issues (for instance, not being able to change your school’s deck after having created it). We don’t want to just fix this single issue though, but rather take the time to improve the system more thoroughly, via emblems, discoverability, rewards… schools are one of the most unique features of our game, and we want to keep building on them.

PvE

PvE content is something that is requested a lot; even though the game has been designed primarily for PvP, it also works really well in PvE, so we want to add more PvE content for everyone to enjoy! This will take a little while however: our objective isn’t to just add a couple of new areas that players will rush through and then never visit again, but really to create an expansive new PvE experience for Absolver, to be played either in solo and co-op, with high replay value, featuring new enemies, new situations, new rewards… We’ll share more information on the design in 2018, after the initial stages of research and development are completed.

PvP

On the other side of the spectrum, the competitive crowd has been asking for a ranked game mode for a while! We’ve worked on some designs on this, but haven’t taken a decision yet regarding the exact form and delivery of the various possible competitive-oriented features. This isn’t as simple as “just add leaderboards” unfortunately, so we won’t commit to anything precise on this front yet. In any case, we need to keep improving our online architecture, from gameplay replication to matchmaking, in order to provide an experience that is as fair as possible, and as balanced as it can be. This will be our first priority. More news on the rest soon!

New Combat Style and Powers

A new combat style will be released next year! We’re still figuring out details regarding the special ability, but one thing is certain, it will add very cool new moves and tactical options to the Combat Deck! New powers are also being designed, and will be prototyped soon, to add more variety to character builds and strategies.

We’ve got more ideas than what is listed above of course: new PvP game modes, a new weapon, a spectator mode… all these things we’d love to add, but as mentioned previously, we can’t tackle everything at the same time, so we can’t really promise anything for certain on these fronts: too many factors come into play for us to commit to other things than the main ones listed above. Your feedback will of course be taken into account as we move forward, so keep posting! More importantly, if you like what we’re doing, please keep spreading the word: we need the community to grow in order to allow us to keep supporting the game in the long term! So don’t hesitate to share content around the game, talk to your friends, write reviews (or change your review if your opinion has changed), and bring in new Prospects to the world of Absolver!

More news soon, and we wish you all the best for the end of 2017!

Sloclap team