Monthly Archives: July 2015


No blog this week… but something else instead!

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to quickly announce that there will be no blog this week.

Instead, head over to n4g.com tomorrow (July 29th) as we will be featured as part of their Indie Game Month! There will be a guest post by me.

Also, some changes to arena rewards will be coming soon! We got some fantastic feedback, so we’ll be making some modifications:

  • More consistent drops after arena runs (less variance).
  • Easy-to-understand rarities that display the level.
  • A better inventory with tooltips showing what everything does, and a replacement of the old decimal point notation for Power Cores.
  • Daily bonuses! Free Power Cores and shards for your first few wins of the day.
  • Updated art.

More info to come!

Also, here are some ninjas! We’ll be adding them soon.



Arena rewards are being rolled out!

Hi everyone!

Just a quick announcement. At 6pm EDT tonight, we’re shutting off the Prismata server. There will be about 30 minutes of downtime while we complete a database migration and update everyone’s accounts.

After this, we’ll be switching on ARENA REWARDS!

 

How it works

We have a completely new system for arena rewards. By completing arena runs, you’ll be rewarded with Power Cores, Power Core Fragments, Omnipower Cores, and Prismatic Shards, which can be used to unlock skins and emotes in THE ARMORY.

(more…)


Defending against Frostbites in Prismata

I haven’t written a true strategy article in a little while, but today I’m going to post a few words on one of the most controversial Prismata units—Frostbite. Though recently nerfed (its buildtime increased from 1 to 2 in the last big set of balance changes), Frostbite remains a formidable unit that must be dealt with very carefully.

The current Frostbite. Looks cute, but it’s a nasty, evil little thing.

Frostbite is certainly a unit worth studying, as it appears in more games than many other units due to Frost Brooder and Endotherm Kit spawning copies of it.

Speaking of Frost Brooder… you may recall that it was temporarily removed in our last balance patch (because we wanted to modify it in a way that required some small tweaks to the Prismata engine and bots). Well, we’re happy to announce the new version:

asdf

The new Frost Brooder! It will go live this week. Its supply is still 4.

The new Frost Brooder is actually 1 gold cheaper than its previous incarnation—its cost has been decreased from 5RR to 4RR. However, it comes with a huge caveat: the Frostbites that it spawns have Lifespan 3, meaning that you only have 3 chances to use them! This makes it much more difficult to store up a huge pile of Frostbites, and presents a ton of really interesting strategic questions, since your Frostbites are now “use-em-or-lose-em”. We had a ton of fun play-testing this one and we think you’ll enjoy it.

Now, onto the main topic of the article (a part of this has appeared on Reddit before, but the post has been somewhat expanded):

(more…)


Thorium Dynamo… the Craziest Prismata Econ Unit

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to make a quick post to talk a little bit about one of the crazier units that we’ve released recently: Thorium Dynamo.

We’re making a change to the unit, which is shown below (its ability will now be much weaker, converting GGG to 3 gold instead of 4). However, I wanted to also give a bit of background on the unit and explained why we designed it in its current state.

New Thorium

A proposed nerf to Thorium Dynamo, which will go live at midnight EDT on Friday. The change, highlighted in pink, is to reduce the gold produced by its ability to 3

Thorium Dynamo is different from most other Prismata units in a lot of ways:

(more…)


Balancing Prismata Openings Through Unit Design – part 4

Hello everyone!

I’m back again today to drone on some more about Prismata openings. Specifically, I’ll be focusing on how the Prismata design team investigates claims of busted Prismata unit combos, and how this has led to the creation of the secret opening book that I mentioned all the way back in part 1.

But first… OBLIGATORY INTERLUDE FOR SKIN SPOILERS! We just got finished with a few skins from our Medieval theme, check them out:

(more…)