It has been about 6 months since the last alpha test for Ember Sword concluded. Over the past 3 years, the plucky team at Bright Star Studios has come a long way from their offline Unity-built demo. With some industry veterans running the show, a brand-new engine taking the reins, and an aggressive testing schedule leading the charge, Ember Sword has finally started to take shape with their latest dungeon “The Ultra Deep”. Earlier this week, a small band of journalists were invited to the Bright Star Studios office in Copenhagen to test their mettle against the difficult dungeon ahead of the broader alpha test set to release on the 27th through the 29th of October. As I sat down to have some hands-on time with the game I was excited to find what has changed and how the game has progressed in the past 6 months.
For those unfamiliar with Ember Sword, the game boasts a sandbox fantasy world, with a weapon-based skill system, MOBA-like combat, and a purely player driven economy. It has also adopted the use of blockchain to build a premiere Web3 MMORPG, the likes of which hasn't been seen to this degree before in the Web3 space. I was able to grill the Bright Star team on each of these features, and the multitude of interviews that explain those systems in more detail are on the way. It would be easy to deviate into the variety of systems that Bright Star plans to innovate, but the main purpose of my visit was to garner some hands on time with the Ultra Deep dungeon – so buckle up for some raw impressions.
Delving Into the Deep
Prior to our play test, we were warned that Ultra Deep has been tuned to be challenging. From my previous tests in Ember Sword I was very familiar with the combat system and the subtle challenges to some of the larger enemies like the Steelslice. Despite that familiarity, there have been plenty of changes, which included new skills, changes to movement, and the biggest change was that, for the first time, I would be playing in a group with others. Because of that, I opted to play a support type, which mean that I had to craft a Censer – a flail-like weapon that provides defensive buffs and some modest healing skills. While Ember Sword doesn’t have classes per se, it’s clear that the weapons fall into specific archetypes, and in some ways feel like classes of their own. The Censer, for example, felt like a cleric or paladin class, especially when coupled with heavy armor.
We started the dungeon by crafting our weapons and gear. As I generally identify as a support class, I was ushered to the aforementioned Censer and Heavy Armor combination, while my other teammates utilized other combinations of gear such as the pistols or the sword and shield. We were also told that there was a leaderboard we were going to be competing against, and due to the nature of none of the attending journalists having played the dungeon before, it was going to be an uphill battle to rank against the pantheon of Bright Star Studios' developers that built the dungeon – but our enthusiastic team was willing to try.
One thing that initially stood out for me was that we weren’t introduced to any type of explanation or story related to the dungeon itself. The Ultra Deep is modeled like the inside of a volcano, with lava pools and broken rocks pieced together throughout the level. There are plenty of monsters and a couple difficult bosses lumbering around, but the question did cross my mind as to why we’re in The Ultra Deep to begin with. Bright Star was still working on the cinematics for the story during our visit and they weren’t quite ready ahead of the build, but have since been released, and you can check out the latest cinematic trailer that briefly explains what happened above.
Shauk and Awe
As we began dispatching swaths of enemies, team cohesion, at least for my support role, started to come together. While each player had access to some consumables like health potions, the number of potions you received were limited. You could pick some up throughout the dungeon, but the potions weren’t instanced for each group member, which meant that you had to share whatever potion loot you found. After learning this, I stopped picking up potions altogether, as I could always run away and heal myself, while the others didn’t have that option in a pinch. In retrospect, I probably should have balanced these potions a little better, as some of my best abilities had long cooldowns, and both bosses guarding the dungeon are difficult enough to ensure you’ll make use of your potions.
That’s the first major pillar of Ember Sword’s combat system. Due to the moba-like nature of combat, you have to make very deliberate decisions with your abilities. I learned this the hard way when I was battling the last boss, Shauk. It’s not enough just to know your abilities, but you have to know your enemy as well. Unfortunately for this encounter, I knew neither. That put me in an unusual predicament that few players will probably be in when they encounter Ultra Deep in the live game, but for testing purposes, I really only had one shot at figuring this all out on the fly. That also pinpointed some weaknesses with my weapon choice, such as long cooldowns that, if not planned properly, could spell disaster for the entire team.
As much as I love support classes, the Censer required more than just team awareness and a fast targeting finger to save some teammates. While I did have a couple ranged abilities that let me attack from the safety of the back line, the Censer is, after all, a melee weapon. Game Director Maxim Zimnukhov perched behind me during my session, and encouraged me to get up close to my enemy and take some swings when I was able because the damage was potent. Unfortunately, the frantic nature of some of the battles made it difficult to manage staying within melee range while chasing teammates around to deliver my healing abilities. It’s clear that the playstyle for the Censer is a matter of understanding the flow of combat, and I’ve always been a fan of healers that can balance support and damage at melee range like the Warrior Priest from Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.
But there was no way that I would be able to manage handling DPS and healing out of the gate in a 30-minute encounter with an unfamiliar weapon class. Instead, I opted to focus more on defense and healing, and throw out my ranged attacks when it was safe to do so. During the encounter, our team defeated multiple mobs of monsters, unlocked a few treasure chests, and defeated the mini boss, a large quadruped beast that was easy enough to dispatch as long as you kept your eye on where and who it was targeting. Upon defeating the mini boss we were rewarded with upgrades to our weapons and armor. I’m not sure if I was the only one who encountered this, but a bug prevented me from picking up all of the pieces of armor due to the terrain. I had to venture forward without the upgraded heavy armor piece to complete my new set.
The Final (Boss) Countdown
Finally, we made it to the main boss Shauk after about 15 minutes. The boss has two separate phases, and most of his abilities target a wide area of the battlefield, with cyclones, balls of lightning and a circulating laser field constantly cutting off your routes to flee. Some of the attacks would hit extremely hard, and very few of them allowed you to take more than one hit. We were warned that we should use our potions, but the problem was, the potions wouldn’t replenish once they were used, even if you died and had to restart. That made every subsequent failure much more difficult, because we all started with less consumables than before. Shauk does drop health potions from time to time, but between dodging and attacking, making your way towards potions in the middle of an onslaught is a risk only attempted by the courageous.
On our first try, we were able to get him to his second phase, but our entire team wiped before we could defeat him. Our second attempt didn’t go so well. We then learned that dungeon bosses will randomize their attack patterns. This way, you may be able to determine what abilities they will use, but the order in which they use them will always change. That also meant that some attempts were easier than others, but in the end, after 30 minutes, the closest we were able to get the boss down to was about 20% health before I inevitably made the mistake of rolling off of the edge of the battle arena, into a pit of lava, putting an end to the pipe dream of making it onto the leaderboard.
Part of the problem with my impromptu navigation into the lava covered depths of Ultra Deep had to do with the awkward click-to-move navigation system. Shauk’s battle required precise positioning to dodge and navigate the terrain, but slapping the mouse button to try and move quickly on the fly gave me zero confidence that I could reliably dodge some of the more difficult attacks. Luckily, I was told by Maxim that the next combat build the team plans to roll out should have the updated movement implemented, which will then utilize WASD for movement. This will also open up some more opportunities for quick casting abilities in tandem with moving in a different direction simultaneously.
My next pet peeve was that some of the abilities, while useful, still looked poorly executed. Most notably, a beam ability that the developers lovingly named “The finger of god”, looked especially poor. This ability is a multicolored, rainbow riddled, line of devastation that enemies as well as players can use against each other. It’s such a stark and awkward animation that every time I see it I can’t help but laugh. When I brought this up to Mo Fadl, the Chief Product Officer, he laughed along with me. “It’s just a placeholder animation.” He assured me. He then slyly opened his laptop and showed off some of the updated animations that they intend to implement once they are finalized. It appears that the majority of the abilities players are set to encounter in the upcoming Alpha test of Ultra Deep are placeholder animations, and later tests will reveal far more advanced effects.
Once the playthrough was over and I had some time to reflect on what I played, I was impressed with how far the game has come in only 6 months. During my last test, I wasn’t able to group, none of the content was all that challenging, and the weapons lacked a number of abilities. Now, I’ve been able to test a very early build of a dungeon, and I was able to get an idea of team tactics, and I have to say that I’m hopeful that it only grows, and gets better from here. Clearly, the game is still in a very early stage, with several issues such as the terrain eating my gear, the placeholder animations, the lack of feedback when taking damage, and the click-to-move combat all immediately apparent during the test. But the team isn’t shying away from the criticism of this build of Ember Sword.
Rather, they’ve already pinpointed many of these shortcomings and have already begun implementing ways to fix them. With The Ultra Deep’s current alpha build heading to the greater public on the 27th, I can say that I too will be joining the playtest once again to see if I can finally take Shauk down. I also want to see what the other weapons, such as the staff and dual pistols, have to offer. Bright Star has certainly shown strong core elements to build on with Ember Sword’s The Ultra Deep test. Will you have what it takes to beat it? Head on over to Ember Sword’s official site and sign up to find out.
