Explore Upcoming Improvements and New Creatures
Snail Games development continues for their new fantasy survival game, Dark and Light, and is slated for an Early Access launch later this year. Originally scheduled to launch in 2016, Snail delayed the Early Access launch to dedicate extra time to polish various game systems such as models, textures, animations and cleaned up bugs to make the launch a smoother and more enjoyable experience for players. The team has made great strides during this time adding significant content and optimizing Dark and Light with faster load times and increased performance on low to mid-end PC’s.
Snail games is offering a sneak peek at a few of the improvements that the Snail development team has made to Dark and Light, including new creatures and a brand new HUD/UI. Players interested in exploring and uncovering Dark and Light’s world, spoiler-free, may want to avoid scrolling further.
What’s New?
HUD Overview
Important HUD elements have been emphasized and repositioned, giving players more information without sacrificing screen space.
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Additional details around the HUD:
- Health: Health now has its own large, unique bar to separate it from other stats so players have an easier time understanding how they’re performing in a fight.
- Temperature: The size of the temperature gauge has been increased and interesting visual effects have been added when players enter extreme temperature regions.
- Buffs/Debuffs: There are roughly 20 buffs and debuffs that can affect health regeneration, movement speed, temperature, x-ray vision, and more. Each status effect now has a larger, clearer icon, and the buff bar has been repositioned for visual clarity.
- Quest Tracker: Quests are one of the most unique aspects that Dark and Light brings to the Survival game genre. Snail has completely redesigned the quest system to allow for multiple active quests that range from simple tutorials, to high-level achievements with various rewards. Players interested in Dark and Light’s lore will enjoy the dialogue and Easter eggs uncovered by completing quests.
- Experience: The experience bar and skill tree experience have been given their own spot on the HUD for improved visual clarity.
Character Stats, Backpack, and Crafting
In Dark and Light, your character’s stats, inventory, and crafting interface are all located in one simple screen, accessed by pressing the letter ’I’ on your keyboard.
On the left side of the interface, you’ll see your character’s stats and equipment, as well as the experience required to reach the next level selected title, which is displayed to other players along with your name.
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Your backpack sits in the center of the screen and items can be sorted according to type, or folders can be created to store particular groups of items and keep them organized. Hovering over an item will display a helpful tooltip, giving you information on item durability, stats, and time until perishable items decay. You can drag any weapon, tool, or consumable item onto your character’s ‘hotbar’ or secondary ‘hotbar’ for quick access.
Crafting recipes (Schemas) are located on the right side of the screen. Like the backpack, Schemas can be organized according to type for easy access. Crafting is a simple process: Click a Schema to see what ingredients it requires and then click the “Craft Item” button. Some Schemas will require the use of a particular kind of Workbench in order to craft them.
Unlocking Schemas
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In Dark and Light, you’ll unlock new Schemas by leveling up your character and completing tasks related to a particular skill node. To unlock additional magic staff Schemas that will allow your character to cast more powerful spells, you must gather specific resources and craft low-level staffs first. Tasks required to level up each skill node change and become more difficult as players increase the node’s rank. Each node requires a level of dedication in order to max out its rank.
Elementals
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On top of quality of life adjustments, Snail has revealed a number of new creatures that they’ve added to flesh out Dark and Light’s unique fantasy ecosystem. Elementals and Imps are rare, powerful creatures that inhabit specific biomes around Dark and Light’s massive 100 square kilometer world. Players that are strong enough to fight these creatures can harvest them for powerful magical cores, that can be used to craft high-level magic or summon tamed Elementals/Imps.
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Tamed Elementals are entirely combat-focused, helping you deal elemental magic damage to targets. This opens up a whole new aspect of strategy in the game, as players must consider their offensive and defensive options carefully to counter elemental damage.
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Tamed Imps are more focused on utility than combat, but they’ll still throw a punch or two when needed. Fire Imps function as mobile campfires, providing light and cooked food that they store in their bodies. Water Imps can hydrate players if they’re far from a water source, and Ice Imps can freeze and preserve any perishable items they’re carrying. These are just some of the many new play mechanics gamers will get to experience at Early Access launch.
Dark and Light is scheduled to launch in Early Access in 2017.
Additional information on Dark and Light can be found on the game’s official
Facebook, Twitter, and Steam News pages.
