What’s Next for Hell Clock?
Hey folks, We’ve been in “heads down, focus on development” mode for a while now, and it is about time for an update! After we shipped all of the promised post-launch features from our Roadmap, we have shifted our efforts 100% to the new upcoming Cursed War expansion and patch 2.0 . While we were originally targeting a Q1 launch, the scope of the expansion ended up, uh, expanding , so we need a bit more time to get it polished and ready. We expect this to be a short delay. In fact, we already have a new date internally that we are committed to, and our publisher Mad Mushroom should announce it officially Soon™. In the meantime, we think it’d be rude to keep you waiting without at least a few spoilers about what’s coming, so buckle up! New Endgame: Endless Nightmares Patch 2.0 will include a full revamp of the campaign Endgame, introducing a new system called “Endless Nightmares” . This is a “mapping” endgame done in the Hell Clock style: you’ll face randomized dungeons in completely new biomes , with 16 tiers of scaling difficulty . Each one of these Nightmare dungeons will have modifiers that will be familiar to ARPG players. The twist is that you’ll be able to choose these modifiers as you play through the dungeons, rogue-lite style. The existing Abyss/Oblivion system (that is, the “replay the campaign” endgame) will still be available for those who enjoy that experience, but we will be removing the temporary “Void” tier. You will be able to play either Abyss/Oblivion or Endless Nightmares, or combine both freely as you progress your character through the endgame. Expect more details and a full breakdown of Endless Nightmares when we officially announce the expansion release date! Improved Ascension Mode The experimental Ascension endgame is undergoing significant improvements for patch 2.0, and it will be officially released out of “Beta” state! First of all, Ascension is getting the fancy new endgame Biomes from Endless Nightmares, so you will have fresh environments and enemies every time you Ascend. No more fighting the Jailer at the Basement on every restart! Also, we have finished implementing all of the nodes of the Penance Tree, so the experience will be much more brutal than before. To counter-balance that, we are making two pivotal changes to this rogue-like gamemode: 1) The very first run on each Ascension was a bit boring and too RNG-based. We are introducing a “starting shop” every time you Ascend so that you can go into your first run with a Blessed Gear and a Unique Relic of your choice (from a randomized pool of options). 2) Ascension attempts were a bit too long, sometimes taking upwards of 1 hour or even 2+ hours if you’re not a blaster. We are rebalancing the difficulty scaling of the mode so that you can progress faster, but also reducing the maximum number of Runs before the Ascension fails. The goal is to keep the same challenge level as before, but have you either succeed or fail faster. We are also currently looking into reducing the time spent on “farming” runs where you are not looking to progress deeper into the dungeons New Skills and Relics The Cursed War expansion, besides a whole new story campaign with new monsters and bosses, will introduce six new active Skills to the game, as well as dozens of new Unique Relics to shake up the meta! While we cannot spoil everything before the official announcement, you folks deserve at least a few sneak peeks, so here it goes: Sneak Peek: Tupã’s Wrath One of the six new Skills coming with the Cursed War expansion is Tupã’s Wrath: a Lightning Spell that spreads bolts of lightning all over the screen, shocking and burning the minions of hell. And it wouldn’t be Hell Clock if there weren’t Uniques that changed the way your new Skills behaved! All of the new Skills have dedicated Uniques, and here’s a preview of one of them: Sneak Peek: Icon of the Sun (Unique Relic) Icon of the Sun gives a disgusting amount of Projectile Amount to the new Tupã’s Wrath - but the projectiles now fire in all directions, turning the Skill into a true screen clearer! Sneak Peek: Infested Cross (Nightmare Relic) Patch 2.0 is introducing a new type of Unique Relic called “Nightmare Relics”, all themed around death and decay. The Infested Cross will make your Old Bell deal massive damage against Bleeding enemies, making a “Bleed Bell” build one of the many new possible archetypes for you to build around. Sneak Peek: Broken Mirror (Uber Unique Relic) We are also introducing dozens of new endgame items to grind for, including a new type of super-rare and super-powerful items called “Uber Uniques”. The Broken Mirror gives you a Shadow bestie that will absolutely destroy your enemies using Repeater, and can be used either to massively increase the damage output of Repeater builds, or to get a “free” Repeater to proc effects or apply debuffs. QoL: Performance and More! Of course there are also quality of life changes coming your way! Most notably, we are making great progress in performance and optimization. Although we believe our game currently has respectable performance in most cases, it is still our weakest point, and there are still some edge cases where you can get consistent freezes or very low frame rates. We are trying to squeeze as much performance as we can out of the Unity engine for Patch 2.0, so expect the game to run better than it ever did before when it drops, including better base framerates We are also putting in some much-requested features. To spoil one of them, we’re finally implementing per-point respec! Gone are the days of having to completely reworking your Constellations or Bell every time you want to make a small adjustment. New Steam Achievements To celebrate all of the new stuff coming into the game, we will also be adding a lot of new Steam achievements. Some of these are of course related to the new story campaign, but we are also adding a lot of endgame challenges. You will notice that these new achievements have already been added as “hidden” on Steam. While you cannot unlock them right now, they will be fully available as soon as Patch 2.0 is live! What’s Paid and What’s Free? The vast majority of content coming with Patch 2.0 - Cursed War will be FREE to everyone who already owns the game. This includes ALL of the new endgame activities and changes (both Endless Nightmares and Ascension), as well as ALL of the quality of life changes and new items. The paid expansion will restrict access only to the new story/campaign content and the 6 new Skills. While we’d very much appreciate it if you could support the continuous development of Hell Clock by purchasing the Expansion, we are making sure that you’re still getting a great experience if you’re not able to do that. We can’t wait for the official expansion announcement, and we hope you’ll join us soon for the party! See you in Hell! ~Mark and the Hell Clock Team