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Hey Brigadiers! You sent us a ton of great questions about The Spell Brigade: 1.0, development, lore, the team, and what’s coming after 1.0… Thanks a lot for that! We answered some of the most popular ones in the video and many more in an additional text file. All the details are below. ▶️ Watch the Q&A video: [here] ✍️ You can find the full list of questions and answers in text form below. 📚 Additional questions and answers: [here] 1. What inspired you to make The Spell Brigade? For those who knew us before The Spell Brigade, we were previously working on a VR game called GAZZLERS. That project ended up being stuck in development for almost three years, and it taught us a pretty important lesson: we wanted to ship games faster and get players involved much earlier in the process. Early Access felt like the perfect way to do that. Around that time, we were all playing a lot of games like Vampire Survivors and Soulstone Survivors, and we were very hyped for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. We really felt that space had a lot of potential, especially for co-op. GAZZLERS was originally designed as a co-op game too, and as a team we’ve always loved chaotic co-op experiences like Magicka, Helldivers, and Overcooked. Back then, though, we simply didn’t have the resources or experience to fully pull that off. With The Spell Brigade, we saw an opportunity to finally commit to that idea. If we wanted to become a studio known for fun, chaotic co-op games, this was the moment to do it. Magicka in particular was a big influence for us – we loved the fantasy of incredibly powerful wizards who are also a bit clumsy and derpy, often causing as much trouble for each other as for the enemies. We started by making some quick prototypes, shared a trailer and a demo on Steam to get early feedback, and from there the project really took off. We’ve been working on the game non-stop ever since! 2. How big is the team working on The Spell Brigade? The team consists of 8 people. Because we’re so small, we often wear different hats, but the core setup is 1 game designer, 3 programmers, 2 artists, 1 QA, and 1 marketing person. [UPD: one more person just joined!] Since the game is growing, we’ve started working with a number of external partners: some helping us with localization, supporting our marketing efforts, and more. 3. When is 1.0 coming, and what can you tease about it? 1.0 is coming soon! We're working on an awesome trailer to announce the 1.0 date which will be released in the near future. We will share more stuff then, so please stay tuned! 4. Is 1.0 the biggest update so far, and if so, by how much? With the amount of quality of life improvements, content, new and redesigned features, and overall development behind it - 1.0 is our biggest update so far. It has some new enemies, a third boss, another wizard and spell, and a bunch of redesigned systems like the enchantments and elements. We are also adding a lot more late-game content, so if you've maxed out your Wizard Rank there will be some cool stuff there as well! There's many small improvements and rebalancing going on, and the UX is also being improved. Oh and there's also some new social features being added which will make the co-op more engaging. 5. Are there plans to add new music to the game? We're currently working with both a composer and a sound designer to bring a new soundtrack and new sound effects to the 1.0. They're very talented and well known in the industry so we hope you'll be as excited about it as we are. 6. Are you adding any new Elements for 1.0? Will there be a Water Element? We won't be adding any new elements, but we are improving the ones that are already in the game, making each elemental combo feel more unique. We have discussed a water element in the past, but it was raising some conflicts with the design, especially with the already existing ice element, so we won't be adding that. 7. Will there be any updates to meta progression? Yes, we are redesigning a lot of the progression regarding wizards, spells and enchantments and some more new stuff. We're also adding some late game features for hardcore players, but we're not gonna spoil any of that yet. 8. Are you planning to add text chat or voice chat? We are adding some new features for communication in 1.0. We're going to keep text chat and voice chat out of the game for now though as this raises some new scenarios and legalities. Maybe in the future. 9. Do you plan to release a big balance patch for 1.0? There's lots of balancing done for 1.0, both for our new/redesigned progression systems and our enemies, spells, etc. It’s definitely a challenging task, as opinions vary on which spells or upgrades are too strong or not strong enough. It’s a complex puzzle with many pieces that all need to fit together, and we’re doing our best to make it work. 10. Any plans for a lobby browser to make matchmaking easier? No browser specifically, but we do have some improvements planned for the matchmaking like sharing of Lobby Codes. 11. Are you planning to introduce new Covenants? Yes! Quite a few actually, but we can't reveal which ones. All we can say is that they are tied to a new type of player progression. 12. Will you add a wizard for each spell, so we can pick any starting spell? This is actually one of the most requested features so it's definitely coming and we've devised a system that will allow you to start a run with every kind of spell we have. 13. What modes are you planning to add, and will Endless mode get any updates or reworks? Endless mode is undergoing some rebalancing for 1.0. As for new modes, we're adding quite a few new modifiers, but more details on that later. 14. Are there plans to support modding? We are looking into Steam Workshop and mod support, and we hope to have more news on that later! 15. Will the game’s price change after 1.0? Yes, we’re planning to update the price. The Spell Brigade has been in Early Access for over a year, and we’re very grateful to everyone who supported us during that time. Early Access allowed us to grow the game, deliver 13 updates and improve the game. The store price for 1.0 will reflect the content and polish, but we’ll announce the price change in advance. If you already own the game, you won’t need to pay again – your copy will automatically update to 1.0. We’ll also have a 1.0 launch discount. 16. What's planned for the game in the future? While we’re not ready to announce the exact content of our post-1.0 updates, rest assured that we have a LOT of ideas left to add wizards, spells, enemies, realms, objectives, bosses, outfits and more. That said, it’s not our plan to turn The Spell Brigade into a live service, it simply isn’t built that way, so eventually we’ll shift our focus toward a new game. 17. Are there plans for a macOS version of the game? We’re currently focused on 1.0 on PC and bringing the game to more storefronts as well as porting it to consoles. After that, if there’s enough demand for it, we will look into it. 18. Can we expect official merch, like posters or other goodies? We’re cooking up something to be released around 1.0, but we’d appreciate it if you let us know what you’d like to see for The Spell Brigade merch besides posters. You can always reach out to us on our Discord or social networks and share your ideas. 19. Any plans for more outfits for the wizards? Yes! We will be releasing new skins, for both new and old wizards, and both as free content and DLC packs. 20. Are you planning to show more combat stats on the tab screen, like cast speed, damage, and other modifiers? It's planned, but it's one of the lower priority features, so can't say for certain if/when it would be implemented. 21. Are you planning to rework spell Augmentations? We still have some pending designs for Augmentations for most spells, though our focus for 1.0 lies on other things like player progression, new enemies and balancing. But after that, we might have another look! 22. Who’s the next wizard? It’s a secret! But maybe we'll drop some hints on our Discord. 23. How did you plan and run development sprints for the game? We work in one-week sprints and use a priority system to plan each upcoming sprint. The hardest part is aligning the work across different departments that depend on each other. 24. Will there be a main storyline or more lore introduced? We don’t see much opportunity to introduce a storyline in the game itself, but we’d be happy to unravel a bit of lore now. The Brigade and the monsters have been fighting for quite some time. The wizards will accept missions in any realm for gold, and kill the monsters with their magic. The monsters are attracted to their magic, meaning anywhere they fight, will merely attract more of them. Whether the wizards lack the capacity to notice this, or they simply don't care because they keep making bank, is up to you to decide. 25. Why are the wizards fighting monsters? Where do all the monsters come from? Are they invading or are the wizards the invaders? The Brigade was formed by a group of unconventional wizards that shared the idea that they are the only ones that can defend the realms from evil (for some gold of course). The monsters' origins are unknown. Unbeknownst to the wizards, the monsters are attracted to their magic, and will invade any realm that contains traces of it. Every time the wizards win a battle, the realm will attract more monsters, so they have been in conflict for quite some time. But there's plenty of gold to be made, and the Brigade keeps growing, so really there's no desire to stop on either side. 26. What are the creatures called? Would you consider adding some kind of journal? They're called… monsters. A journal would be awesome and we have considered it, but there are simply other things that we want to implement first. So hopefully one day! 27. Is the Wizard King ever going to get a special ability, since he’s the king of wizards? That's the thing. He calls himself the Wizard King but is he even a legitimate king? His powerset is not THAT impressive, so he might just be full of it. 28. Why is Kavin nicknamed “Why is he looking at me like that?” Because he does look at you like that doesn't he 👀 29. Do you have any unreleased or scrapped wizard concepts, or spell ideas you never shipped? We might actually still add some of these ideas, so we can't spill too much. But we're not running out of ideas for wizards anytime soon. We still have a design for the Wizard Queen, a witch that is more stealth based, a stone-based mage… As for spells, there's about 6 or 7 prototypes for new ones currently. Whether those will make it into the game we can't say for sure. 30. How did you come up with the different wizards? That's mostly the work of our 3D artist Pieter! We always start out with a spell and general direction of what we want the wizard to play like. Once that is decided, we let Pieter go crazy. Then Gianluca helps out with the animations and writing. Phew, that was a lot of text! We hope you enjoyed our Q&A and got even more excited about 1.0. Stay tuned for more news! BOLT BLASTER OUT
