Summer alpha content update coming!

Hey everyone!

I’m pleased to announce that we’ll be deploying a pretty big content update this weekend. The update will include:

  • New balance tweaks
  • Three new Prismata units
  • New skins
  • A *ton* of new emotes
  • Some new software features

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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.

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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:

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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):

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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:

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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:

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The top arena runs in Prismata so far…

Quick post, just wanted to dump an interesting stat that Alex and I pulled from our analytics.

Here are the best arena runs from Prismata so far:

[name] [number of medals]

weiseguy  66
Synx  63
KurasuFan  60
Synx  57
silverspawn  57

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Time for a summer BREACH PARTY! 1

Hi everyone!

Tomorrow is the 3-month anniversary of our April Fool’s event, where we added 10 crazy new units to the ladder for a 24-hour period. Well, get ready to call in sick tomorrow, because we’re doing it again. Only better.

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No, this will not be a new skin.

This time, we’re throwing a 24-hour BREACH PARTY on the Prismata ladder, in celebration of the release of 3 new Prismata units with one thing in common—they all help provide ways to execute the unusual Prismata strategy of not buying Walls.

 

At midnight EDT tonight, the BREACH PARTY will begin.

Here’s what we’ll happen:

 

Announcing three new Prismata units:

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Let’s talk COLLECTIBLES! 1

Hello everyone!

Until now, there have been only two types of unlockable content in Prismata: badges—given to our crowdfunding supporters, ambassadors, and tourney winners—and equippable emotes, the tool of choice for congratulating (or BMing) your opponent after a game. However, we’ll soon be massively expanding the availability of unlockable (and collectible!) items in Prismata. Today, I’m going to outline some of our plans.

The eventual plan is to have five different kinds of unlockable collectibles in Prismata:

  1. Skins – equippable alternate art for each Prismata unit
  2. Emotes – both graphical and text-based in-game emotes
  3. Badges – to display status or commemorate outstanding in-game achievements
  4. Avatars – selectable display portraits
  5. ****** – (something secret that we have not announced yet)

Details on each of these are provided below. As usual, none of our plans are completely final, but we’d love to hear your feedback on what we have in mind!

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