Castle of Vice - Developer Diary #22 (New Erotic Trait and Changes to Upgrades)

Hello everyone!

I'm sure the title of this post already gives it away, but Update 0.15 won't include any new erotic actions or skills. I've been considering releasing a public alpha demo soon, so I decided to focus this update more on polishing the existing gameplay experience to use the next build as the base for the demo.

The new erotic trait I mentioned in the Developer Diary #20, “Rapturous Recovery,” will be the only new erotic content added in 0.15. Just like previous erotic traits, you will obtain this one through an exploration event, which becomes available after acquiring the previous erotic traits and reaching the Receptive Attitude.

If you are looking forward to more erotic content, please wait for update 0.16. I intend to add A. Penetration and the BJ Ero Skill in that update.

Moving on, let's talk about the changes to permanent upgrades. There are three major changes:

1. The overall cost of permanent upgrades will be reduced.

The reason is that I want you to be able to – or be close to - purchasing a new upgrade every time you are defeated, something that's difficult to do with the current costs unless you already have a good amount of experience with the game.

I also want to make the Fire and Ice Magic upgrades easier to max out, since I'd like you to gain access to the other classes earlier and have more freedom to play the way you want.

2. 'Starting Levels' changed to 'Expeditious Growth'. It will now provide a passive bonus to combat XP, in addition to the extra starting levels it already grants.

This bonus is calculated as a percentage of the XP earned in combat, and the percentage increases with each level of the upgrade.

I'm still working on balancing this percentage, so I can't give you an exact number yet or say how much it will increase with each upgrade level.

3. 'Expeditious Growth' has 5 levels instead of 2.

At level 5, Annelise will start each run at level 8.

For those who don't know, reaching level 8 unlocks access to medium-level skills, and this also applies to skill selections from previous levels. This means that when you start a run at level 8, the skills offered for levels 2, 4, and 6 will already have a chance of being medium-level skills.

Some players have told me that Annelise doesn't feel particularly strong even after purchasing all the upgrades. That's why changes 2 and 3 are focused on helping you become stronger earlier and making Annelise feel powerful enough to justify the investment you've made in upgrading her.

Those are the major changes coming in this update, but there are a few other additions worth mentioning.

First, I've added 6 new illustrations for existing exploration events. The events receiving illustrations are: The Corridor of Laments, The Flickering Shadows, The Hallway Hammer, The Stone Serpent, The Binding Spheres, and The Call of Depravity.

Next, I've added a new enemy to the boss paths called “The Hand of Greed.” I won't share any more details about him for now, as I'd rather let you discover what he does for yourselves.

And last but not least, I've improved how the game detects when your cursor is hovering over icons, which should prevent issues where tooltips fail to appear. I've also added a slight scaling effect to the icons to provide better visual feedback when you interact with them.

That's all for this post! If you have any questions about Update 0.15, please let me know in the comments.

Update 0.15 will be available next Friday, November 6th.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post, and enjoy your weekend!