My name is Rod, and I like to Party

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Bearers is being built for party play from the ground up.

      This wasn’t a decision made to force online play, though we do hope to develop a strong community, whether you’re playing alone or with others. Party play amplifies synergy discovery. A high synergy ceiling broadens the spectrum of possibilities - once realised, this is something that new players can feel without knowing, and experienced players can appreciate through a deeper understanding of the game system. We hope that depth can motivate players to innovate, to discover and break metas, and ultimately continue to remain engaged by what the game system can offer.

      Building on the changes made to the Gustus demo level, development has focused lately on implementing both online and LAN co-op capability. This continues bringing Bearers closer to feature completion, whilst expanding the synergy potential within to further demonstrate one of the games core pillars.

As usual, follow this link to skip the flavour text and get to the most recent key changes and development.

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AB’s Special Sauce

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      From inception, Bearers (or Ability Battle back then), was all about the ability system (woah, totally titular).

The goal - to create depth and flexibility whilst removing typical roadblocks of the genre like the grind, or semi-locked-in choices that require expensive respec. In Bearers, not only should the player be encouraged to experiment with abilities, but the diversity of challenges should eventually necessitate it.

      Whilst the underlying systems are designed to be complex and feature a high skill ceiling, the core abilities should be intuitive and approachable. RPG fans will likely find a familiar foundation in the core game loop, and with a long skill curve, there should be a spot for players of any skill level to jump in comfortably.

      As the party and their ability options expand, so too do the possibilities for creative combinations and outcomes. This depth is designed to give players a sense of meaningful impact; every decision, build and battle contribute to an experience that feels unique to them every time they launch.

      Veteran players should be motivated to experiment with powerful synergies across personal and team builds, while noobies can get lost in the sauce of the sheer variety of options, discovering their own playstyle as they go.

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Ain’t no Party like an S-Club Party

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(the ‘S’ stands for Synergy)

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      RPGs are all about buildcrafting - making decisions on abilities, equipment and attributes to find synergy and maximise effectiveness. Most typically for the genre, this would be focused on a single character, although some titles feature party-based play, which expands buildcrafting to every party member and the party holistically. This empowers the player or party with the opportunity to experiment with combinations and options, diversifying classes and increasing tactical optionality and scale of battles.

There aren’t many titles however, that feature extensive conditional synergy.

Conditional synergy - A skill or ability that can be used, or has higher effectiveness, either in utility or scale, when executed in conjunction with a specific condition. These conditions can be based on proximity, actions or on specific buffs or debuffs.

Some examples…

      To the RPG enjoyers, you might have encountered this kind of strategic synergy in other titles, particularly in turn-based tactical games that have a DnD flavour (see Baldur’s Gate or Divinity). These are good comparisons, however they lean into a slower pace to spotlight tactical depth and decision making. Bearers aims to feature this kind of strategic interplay, whilst adopting a faster and more fluid gameplay experience - combining the satisfaction of executing party-wide synergised battle tactics with real-time combat and movement, creating a climactic and triumphant feel to each encounter.

      A typical party-based RPG favours a static buildcrafter that focuses on one particular role or play style. The diversity comes through the mixture of professions and roles to fill out the party, often focusing on broad utility, with at least one character that can excel in any scenario.

Unlimited Refills

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      Bearers aims to break away from these traditional RPG conventions and offer a highly flexible and almost completely variable buildcrafting system. Instead of locking players into a single build, each character can dual-class and freely adjust their build in safe zones. This empowers the player and party to experiment and find powerful synergies that will be relevant to the upcoming quests or specific enemies.

      Giving this freedom to the player, allows a more diverse and challenging level design as there’s no need to consider a skill floor - if a player or party is struggling, they can simply adjust their builds and try again until they find a way to succeed. Not only does this encourage a greater understanding of the game system, it doesn’t punish players who don’t want to go and find - 🔥 OP BUILDS 😱 - videos on YT, and would rather experience the buildcrafting organically. Removing any respec cost, whether that is time (to start fresh) or in-game currency, should alleviate any choice paralysis and assist with ease of entry.

If variable buildcrafting sounds like a lot of tinkering, don’t panic (!) - changing builds will not be a painful task due to the ease of saving, changing and loading different builds in an instant, as well as future plans to make easily sharing with your friends or the community

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Let’s Party (Tl;dr)

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While pushing toward feature completion remains a major focus, recent development has prioritised a more accurate reflection of the game’s core vision and inspiration - a flexible ability system, deep buildcrafting, and ultimately, synergistic party play. This upcoming update takes a significant step on all fronts, bringing several major features and key functionality into play…

• Both LAN and Online multiplayer are now functional (required playtesting)
• Create and Join sessions
• Create a character of any profession
• Save and load character progress (retaining abilities, equipment and loadout)
• Collect currency when defeating enemies
• Player can now purchase equipment and abilities from Merchants
• Returning to Shrine on party wipe
• Resting at Shrine resets enemies

In addition to the big changes above, the following are some refinements and fixes that will be rolled out in conjunction…

• Purchasing items when player has the exact number of shards (currency) now working
• Primary profession no longer disappearing
• UI improvements in secondary profession window
• Player can now interact with Shrines
• Unarmed combos now working (Monks rejoice)
• Burning condition now functioning correctly

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