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Hello everybody! It's been a year since we have started working on Sil-More and we are releasing a new update 0.9.5.
It's a big one and it has lots of changes both technical and gameplay where we have touched or redone most of og Sil mechanics. Our idea behind this one was to give you that feeling of being in the Enemies darkest dungeon alone, almost without hope and support.
New dungeon generation system.
We started with the level generation mechanics. It always seemed to me that SilQ is a little bit predictable, you always know where secret doors should be, you remember most of the vaults, etc.
So, we have designed a partition based system, where map (which is much bigger now, and also square) is divided into partitions with different generation styles. To make it even more varied, we add new generation types, representing caves, chasms, labyrinths, linear corridors, etc. Rooms and vaults were changed a lot as well. Our docking system can combine them in multiple ways.
Everything together makes the map diverse and unpredictable.
Now, all this diversiform should also mean something in terms of gameplay. Every partition style has its use. In some you can find gems, in other – weapons or armour and so on. It means that with enough experience you can target things that you currently need and try to find them. They can also have specific enemies and unique mechanics.
New items generation and drop system.
Then, the og drop system was directly tied to depth and rarities, meaning that you can find really good items early. One of the examples is Dagger of Cuivienen that specifically drops early and never drops late. To be honest, we didn’t like that, because it led to things like finding the best start for your build, etc, making a game less immersive than it should be. You start the game, you don’t even have a bow, but you already have a dagger from the lake far away that gives you massive bonuses.
Another issue is that you can find really unique things just lying around. I remember that playthrough when I found Angrist just lying on the floor in a simple room. For me, again, it breaks immersion.
So, to fix those we have devised a drop system that is tied to the smithing difficulty. And drop pool contains all items that you can smith without artifice. In that we wanted to even out loot and craft. The probability of getting an item depends on the depth, throw, and its difficulty, and then is chosen by rarity from the winning pool.
To increase the number of items we split affixes (called egos in the game) into prefixes and suffixes. So now you can get not just a Longsword of Gondolin, but Balanced Longsword of Gondolin, combining both benefits from those egos.
And while talking about Gondolin, it always seemed strange, that such powerful items are just piled in the dungeon, and nobody cares, but we almost don’t have any real orc craft. To mitigate that we divided the spawn pool into evil, neutral and noble items.
Now you can find evil “orcish” items lying around everywhere, but noble items are rare, due to them being restricted in normal spawn places. Even further we went with artefacts, those being either in chests, dragon piles or unique monster drops. So now you should have that wow effect while opening the chests and looking for dragons to try to rob them.
To fill the floor with evil gear we have added lots of orcs items. And they are not just a filler, they all have their uses, though with drawbacks. Most probably your first gear will be orcish.
New artefacts and reworked old.
Then, in our goal of providing variety to the player, we handcrafted multiple new lore-friendly artefacts, rebalance every existing artefact for all of them to have a use case, or specific niche and not being outclassed by ordinary, though powerful items straightaway.
After all that work to increase diversity, we decided to remove predictability from identification system. Now, all items start unidentified, not just specials. You always see their stats of course, but you don’t know if it has ego, or not. You must have enough perception for it, or skills, that helps (enchantment now gives a bonus, not identifies straightaway), or just use a gem of understanding. Previously, even if you don’t have an enchantment ability, you could guess what the item is most of the item, and avoid those curses, now, you have to risk, if you want to survive. This provides that atmosphere of loneliness and impossibility of the task.
Smithing also got some love, with addition of new metal – star iron, alloy and repair mechanics.
Mini quests
To be able to navigate through the maze we created a skeleton notes mechanic. Sometimes, when searching skeletons, you get hints to important locations and distances to them. It transforms experience from wandering to getting mini quests of searching things you are looking for in the moment, be it stairs, a forge or a labyrinth.
Another mini quests we have are reworked thrall quests. Now rewards are more meaningful, you can have an item repaired, uncursed or get an artefact identified (for the future).
All together it makes experience more immersive and closer to the feeling we want to deliver to the player.
Music and sound.
And speaking about feelings, visuals are important, but sound is still crucial to construct an atmosphere of a game. So, we have added multiple sound effects for combat, movement and dungeon.
But that’s not all, we have 2 real musical tracks!
Main theme was specifically composed by sinefabula for Sil-More. It resembles Doom of Mandos, Noldor struggles and a glimmer of hope from the Light of Valinor.
Ambient track was kindly gifted to us by West Wind. And it fills the dungeon with thick dangerous atmosphere that will not allow you to relax.
Blitz mode
Some people didn’t like the metaprogression idea, and though we disagree with, we still want them to experience our work, so we decided to create a Blitz mode. In it you can easily jump into the game without any meta mechanics. You can do all random, you get add curses for more challenge, or blessings to make it easier. This mode is generally unlocked after you finish the game, but you can always unlock it manually from the settings.
Android, Steam Deck and future mobile support.
It was always our goal to run the game on mobile platforms. And that is why we chose to refactor the old code to use SDL3. It’s still not over, and we currently fully redoing the terminal logic to be able to use modern interface without troubles. But we already have first Android release and IOS will get there soon as well.
It was not only a technical challenge but also big UX/UI design work. We decided to reduce minimal terminal size from 80x23 to 50 to 20. We redone most of the menus to look good on different screens. Long like on smartphones, or 4:3 like on android handhelds. Our next step is portrait mode, but it’ll be in the next release.
Another useful addition is to support gamepads natively. Now, we don’t need special Steam Deck releases, and you don’t need any keyboard juggle, it just works.
And it just works on your phone as well, because we added touch pane with controls.
So, jump into Sil-More on any device you own!
There are also multiple bugfixes, balance changes and smaller features, which I haven’t mentioned. It’s up to you to find them!
Anyway, I hope you will play, and like it!
It's a big one and it has lots of changes both technical and gameplay where we have touched or redone most of og Sil mechanics. Our idea behind this one was to give you that feeling of being in the Enemies darkest dungeon alone, almost without hope and support.
New dungeon generation system.
We started with the level generation mechanics. It always seemed to me that SilQ is a little bit predictable, you always know where secret doors should be, you remember most of the vaults, etc.
So, we have designed a partition based system, where map (which is much bigger now, and also square) is divided into partitions with different generation styles. To make it even more varied, we add new generation types, representing caves, chasms, labyrinths, linear corridors, etc. Rooms and vaults were changed a lot as well. Our docking system can combine them in multiple ways.
Everything together makes the map diverse and unpredictable.
Now, all this diversiform should also mean something in terms of gameplay. Every partition style has its use. In some you can find gems, in other – weapons or armour and so on. It means that with enough experience you can target things that you currently need and try to find them. They can also have specific enemies and unique mechanics.
New items generation and drop system.
Then, the og drop system was directly tied to depth and rarities, meaning that you can find really good items early. One of the examples is Dagger of Cuivienen that specifically drops early and never drops late. To be honest, we didn’t like that, because it led to things like finding the best start for your build, etc, making a game less immersive than it should be. You start the game, you don’t even have a bow, but you already have a dagger from the lake far away that gives you massive bonuses.
Another issue is that you can find really unique things just lying around. I remember that playthrough when I found Angrist just lying on the floor in a simple room. For me, again, it breaks immersion.
So, to fix those we have devised a drop system that is tied to the smithing difficulty. And drop pool contains all items that you can smith without artifice. In that we wanted to even out loot and craft. The probability of getting an item depends on the depth, throw, and its difficulty, and then is chosen by rarity from the winning pool.
To increase the number of items we split affixes (called egos in the game) into prefixes and suffixes. So now you can get not just a Longsword of Gondolin, but Balanced Longsword of Gondolin, combining both benefits from those egos.
And while talking about Gondolin, it always seemed strange, that such powerful items are just piled in the dungeon, and nobody cares, but we almost don’t have any real orc craft. To mitigate that we divided the spawn pool into evil, neutral and noble items.
Now you can find evil “orcish” items lying around everywhere, but noble items are rare, due to them being restricted in normal spawn places. Even further we went with artefacts, those being either in chests, dragon piles or unique monster drops. So now you should have that wow effect while opening the chests and looking for dragons to try to rob them.
To fill the floor with evil gear we have added lots of orcs items. And they are not just a filler, they all have their uses, though with drawbacks. Most probably your first gear will be orcish.
New artefacts and reworked old.
Then, in our goal of providing variety to the player, we handcrafted multiple new lore-friendly artefacts, rebalance every existing artefact for all of them to have a use case, or specific niche and not being outclassed by ordinary, though powerful items straightaway.
After all that work to increase diversity, we decided to remove predictability from identification system. Now, all items start unidentified, not just specials. You always see their stats of course, but you don’t know if it has ego, or not. You must have enough perception for it, or skills, that helps (enchantment now gives a bonus, not identifies straightaway), or just use a gem of understanding. Previously, even if you don’t have an enchantment ability, you could guess what the item is most of the item, and avoid those curses, now, you have to risk, if you want to survive. This provides that atmosphere of loneliness and impossibility of the task.
Smithing also got some love, with addition of new metal – star iron, alloy and repair mechanics.
Mini quests
To be able to navigate through the maze we created a skeleton notes mechanic. Sometimes, when searching skeletons, you get hints to important locations and distances to them. It transforms experience from wandering to getting mini quests of searching things you are looking for in the moment, be it stairs, a forge or a labyrinth.
Another mini quests we have are reworked thrall quests. Now rewards are more meaningful, you can have an item repaired, uncursed or get an artefact identified (for the future).
All together it makes experience more immersive and closer to the feeling we want to deliver to the player.
Music and sound.
And speaking about feelings, visuals are important, but sound is still crucial to construct an atmosphere of a game. So, we have added multiple sound effects for combat, movement and dungeon.
But that’s not all, we have 2 real musical tracks!
Main theme was specifically composed by sinefabula for Sil-More. It resembles Doom of Mandos, Noldor struggles and a glimmer of hope from the Light of Valinor.
Ambient track was kindly gifted to us by West Wind. And it fills the dungeon with thick dangerous atmosphere that will not allow you to relax.
Blitz mode
Some people didn’t like the metaprogression idea, and though we disagree with, we still want them to experience our work, so we decided to create a Blitz mode. In it you can easily jump into the game without any meta mechanics. You can do all random, you get add curses for more challenge, or blessings to make it easier. This mode is generally unlocked after you finish the game, but you can always unlock it manually from the settings.
Android, Steam Deck and future mobile support.
It was always our goal to run the game on mobile platforms. And that is why we chose to refactor the old code to use SDL3. It’s still not over, and we currently fully redoing the terminal logic to be able to use modern interface without troubles. But we already have first Android release and IOS will get there soon as well.
It was not only a technical challenge but also big UX/UI design work. We decided to reduce minimal terminal size from 80x23 to 50 to 20. We redone most of the menus to look good on different screens. Long like on smartphones, or 4:3 like on android handhelds. Our next step is portrait mode, but it’ll be in the next release.
Another useful addition is to support gamepads natively. Now, we don’t need special Steam Deck releases, and you don’t need any keyboard juggle, it just works.
And it just works on your phone as well, because we added touch pane with controls.
So, jump into Sil-More on any device you own!
There are also multiple bugfixes, balance changes and smaller features, which I haven’t mentioned. It’s up to you to find them!
Anyway, I hope you will play, and like it!
