Hey everyone, It's been 48 hours since Hell Clock 1.0 was released, and we are deeply, deeply grateful for the results so far. Your feedback has been very positive, critics have been unanimously praising the game, and it has been the fastest selling game of our careers. Does this mean we get to kick back and enjoy a well-deserved vacation? Quite the opposite! We're more motivated than ever to work and make the game better as fast as possible. We are a very small team but we love this game and are pouring our hearts and souls into it, and we hope that it will show over the coming weeks. We have been trying to read every forum post on Steam and Reddit, every Discord conversation, every review, every video and stream, and trying to figure out how to make this game better for you. Let’s talk about that.

State of the Game

Every major patch in the future will be accompanied by a “State of the Game” blog post such as this one. These will be opportunities for us to check in with the community and see if we are in sync with one another. Are we seeing the same issues? Are we out of touch? You tell us!

Explaining Game Mechanics Better

We have not been doing a perfect job at clearly communicating all of the game mechanics and systems in-game, as we should. Today we have added improved feedback for Relic Upgrades, a new Loading Tips system, and full descriptions in-game for all Ailments and how they work.

But there is still more to do. We have in the pipeline an overhaul of the Blessings of Foundation screen (the Gold upgrades mid-run), making it clear how this system works and how you can manipulate it in your favor.

In the future we plan to also communicate Skill synergies (“Global Buffs”) better, and also offer a “Game Help” feature in-game that serves as a “Manual” of sorts and goes over things such as how Multiplicative/Additive bonuses work, and more advanced concepts as well.

In the meantime, you (yes, you!) have taken matters in your own hands and created a community Wiki for Hell Clock! It is not fully fleshed out yet, but there’s already a lot of stuff, including all of the calculations and RPG stats in the game.

Check it out here: https://hellclock.wiki.gg/

Introducing Vengeance Mode

Our release has attracted a larger audience than we expected, and with it came different types of players and different expectations. While the Demo had a majority of players who were build-tinkerers and PoE-nerds like myself and others in the Hell Clock team, the 1.0 launch attracted players from the Action-Roguelike camp, and our game is failing to meet some of their expectations.

Those of you who have been following us since the Beta in December know what our philosophy is: this is YOUR game, the players. Our vision is clear and we will always follow it, but we will not force you to play the game our way. If we can offer more customization, more accessibility options, mod support, anything to make sure you can have fun the way YOU want to, we will. That’s how “Relaxed Mode” was born, for example.

Players who are not fans of the Exile-like genre (yet!) have been disproportionally affected by our game’s opacity in some systems, and the result of that has been that they are grinding through the same areas again and again, and eventually burning out of the game.

Hell Clock is NOT designed to be a grindy game, and it is bad design to punish players who may be new to the genre with no clear feedback as to what is wrong in their builds.

This is why we are introducing Vengeance Mode. Similarly to Relaxed Mode, this can be turned on or off at any point. If you don’t care that much about all the “min/maxing” and just want to experience the combat, progression and lore of Hell Clock without having to stop and grind for hours on end, this mode was designed for you.

In Vengeance Mode, damage dealt is increased while damage taken is reduced. With every failed run, these effects are increased to make your next run even more powerful. 

Regardless of being an ARPG player or an Action-Roguelike player, you are now a Hell Clock player - this is YOUR game. Use Vengeance Mode. Don’t use it. Turn it on when you feel like the game is dragging. Turn it off when you feel like you want to dig deeper into the build-crafting. The only correct way to play videogames is to have fun.

Most Needed Quality-of-Life

As you have been spending more time with Hell Clock, a few key quality of life features have risen to the very top of our lists. Although these are not part of this 1.0.1 patch, they are high priority and will be implemented as soon as possible:

• A “Search” function for the Stash and Constellations, filtering and highlighting items based on what you are looking for;

• A “Loadout” feature to quickly swap between builds;

• Improved “Banish” options to have more control over your Blessing draws;

• A “Blessed Gear Stash” to facilitate experimenting with builds;

• The ability to Respec your Constellations both in Campaign and in Ascension;

Do you agree with this prioritization? Do you think there’s something more important that should be added before any of these? Please tell us!

State of Ascension Endgame

The game has only been out for 48h and it’s still the middle of the week, so the majority of you haven’t reached Endgame yet, so we are still very much in “observation mode” and listening in to all upcoming feedback. 

For those who have already reached Ascension, the feedback has been mostly positive, but we already observed a consensus: Ascension runs are dragging out a little too long.

Next week we plan to experiment with a faster Ascension loop, with 5-run chunks instead of 7-run as it stands right now. Drop rates and rewards will be accelerated, so you should experience the same depth of build progression, but it will take 30% less of your time.

We expect upcoming features such as all Constellations, new Unique Relics, Crafting and the endgame-exclusive Biomes/enemies to go a long way towards improving the replayability and enjoyment of Ascension. But in the meantime, please keep the feedback coming, as we’re sure we can make it much more fun together even before all of the extra content is released.

Performance and Technical State

We are aware of performance issues in late game, particularly with some builds that spawn a lot of projectiles and effects. We are working hard on fixing those as fast as possible, and will have more to share soon.

In the meantime, if you are experiencing these performance issues, we recommend you turn off Damage Numbers, since they are bugged and causing significant frame drops in some cases. Also, turning the “Flashing Effects Intensity” slider all the way down can help as well.

Hopefully some of you who are experiencing these issues can gain enough frames by taking these measures to have fun until we are able to fully resolve the problem. We thank you for your patience.

We are also aware of issues with Loading times. We have already fixed one of them, but there is more work to be done and we hope to have more fixes up soon.

For those playing on Steam Deck, some text can be uncomfortably small. This is harder to fix than it seems, as some screens will need a code re-work to allow for text scaling. We don’t have a date estimate yet, but this issue will be fixed.

Update 1.0.1 Patch Notes

Gameplay

• New Feature: Vengeance Mode

  • You can toggle Vengeance Mode ON/OFF at any point;

  • Vengeance mode increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken when activated;

  • Every failed run increases the effect of Vengeance, making Pajeú more powerful;

  • Turning Vengeance Mode off will “save” the accumulated bonuses for when you activate it again, but you won’t accumulate more bonuses if you fail a run with the mode turned off;

• New Loading Tips system added to the Loading screens.

• Added improved tooltip descriptions to all Ailments in the Character screen.

• Reduced the base price of purchasing Stash Tabs from 1000 to 200 Soul Stones.

• We have limited the amount of Summons and Projectiles that enemies can conjure at one time.

• Reduced Ghoul (ranged zombies) projectile damage by 50%;

• Red Portals now provide Shrine Boons of XP and Gold gain for 30 seconds after you enter them. This is a direct buff for Reds and should help with the feeling of "missing out" when you skip some lower floors;

• A lot of players did not realize they could actually Upgrade their Relics! We have created a new Onboarding tutorial that teaches you how to Upgrade Relics. We will continue improving this UI in the future;

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the game time would be slowed down after death, requiring the game to be restarted (shout out to DatModz who we were watching live as this happened, lol)

• Fixed an issue where endgame Ailment Damage rings were showing a bonus number 10 times higher than they should;

• Fixed an issue where the game would freeze before the loading screens in-between runs. This should improve Loading times overall, but we still have more fixes to do to keep improving Loading times.

• Fixed a Localization issue with Turkish users that would display all texts as "TNF:()";

• Fixed an issue where some users with Demo save files could not unlock certain Achievements;

• Fixed an issue where you could not see the Unlock Condition for Blocked Nodes in The Great Bell Skill Tree when using gamepad;

• Fixed an issue where Caupé Constellation was reducing Crit Damage instead of increasing it;

• Fixed an issue where some Act 3 drop tables had a much lower drop chance for Act 1/2 Unique Relics than originally intended;

• Fixed an issue where the Toggle to display numbers on your Life and Health globes was not showing on the Options Menu;

• Fixed an issue where Closed Body would increase Mana Cost instead of Cooldown Time when levelling up the Skill;

• Updated PT-BR Localization wrong Act text;

• Removed HellHud_Page bind from input mapping;

• Fixed an issue where “LevelUp” sound would not be included in volume sliders;

Thank you!

Thanks for supporting our game. Hell Clock is very personal to us, and seeing people from all around the world enjoying something so deeply tied to our history and our culture means a lot to us as Brazilian artists.

It’s been a long and hard road to make 1.0. We’ve been through a lot together over the last few years, and, to be honest, we almost didn’t make it. But we did, and things are looking great right now, and we are grateful.

The fight continues!

Cheers,
~Mark