Eternal Strands is a chaotic physics-based action RPG, and the team is committed to regularly updating it, listening to fans but not giving in to their requests, in an effort to stay true to their style. All of the changes, which you can find below, will be live in March.
First up, combat has been tweaked to be more responsive. Enemy reactions have been improved to add more dynamism, while some abilities now cause even larger reactions that “interrupt enemy attacks.” The VFX for player hits have also been “tweaked to make them more noticeable.”
Yellow Brick has also “removed the penalty for falling deaths” to prevent players from being punished by falling deaths that are “completely out of [their] control.” Yellow Brick is a bit defensive about this. “When you add a magical movement system to a physics-based game set in a high-verticality world with giant enemies, it creates a lot of chaos,” the studio writes, adding that “that’s what we want it to be.”
The team also defended the movement system.
Eternal Strands writers’ take on movement
“We’ve heard your feedback that Brynn’s movements in the game feel ‘slippery,'” Yellow Brick writes. “Some of you have commented that her walking/running feels a bit too much like ‘skating,’ and that the lack of precision can be frustrating at times.”
“A lot of this is intentional and attributable to the way a 100% physics-based sandbox game like Eternal Strands is designed to work,” the studio says. “As an object that reacts to the physics around it, just like any other object in the world, its weight and inertia have an impact on its movement.” As a result, Brynn “may take a while” to accelerate or decelerate, and her movement “may not be as snappy or responsive as in games that rely solely on character animations.” For example, in games, changing direction usually feels instantaneous, but it’s not realistic because your inertia prevents you from turning around quickly if you’re running. But video games are not realistic, typically.
“Based on your feedback, we took a closer look at changes that could impact the precision of movement,” Yellow Brick writes, adding that they “actually identified and made some subtle but noticeable changes.” These include improving Brynn’s minimum acceleration and making her change direction “faster.”
Here’s our review of Eternal Strands.
