Info about Vellum: Official game description: **THE WRITE IDEA** ------------------ **Vellum** is a co-op, literary roguelike; harness the class-defining colors, master an inspired spellbook, and influence the growth of your enemy - your imagination is key to saving the books! Team up with pen-pals or dive solo into each mechanically-unique Tome where every page is another step toward rule-breaking power! Dip your quills in quick, dynamic adventures full of synergy, discovery, and the ultimate power fantasy! **IMPROVE YOUR SPELL-ING... WITH COLOR!** ----------------------------------------- Wield colorful, class-defining **Signature Inks** - feed your health with vampiric _Red_, blot out enemies with endless waves of _Blue_, command your Inkling pet with _Green_, and discover the strengths of _Pink_, _Yellow_, _Teal_, and _Orange_! **Author your own playstyle** by mixing together a wide roster of ink-fueled **Spells**; warp in _Planets_ to control an area, lunge forward with sharp _Swords_, clobber distant foes with _Dice_, toss splash-heavy _Potions_, summon inky _Flowers_, _Lanterns_, _Shields_, _Anvils_, _Ravens_, and many more heavy-handed metaphors! Color infuses each Spell from the start - in these books, your creative builds and revolutionary ideas will reach untold heights; **Pages of Power** constantly offer fresh ways to discover, combine, and master the world-making mysteries of ink. Imagination is your superpower. **SAVE THE TOMES FROM THE TEAR-ABLE TORN** ------------------------------------------ Dive deep into the myriad **Tomes**: echoes of familiar tales and fables with unique, run-altering mechanics. Band together with your fellow players to harness thematic, team-wide boons in your fight to preserve these pages. Plot twist - **The Torn** hunger for pages of their own! Play to your strengths by **choosing how your foes evolve**. Save more books from this dynamic foe, apply higher **Binding Challenges** to each journey, and overcome even the toughest obstacles to protect the Illuminated Library. **HOME: FREE TO BE YOUR SHELF** ------------------------------- Home, sweet home! Rest and regroup in **The Illuminated Library** between adventures. Refine your strengths by researching and enhancing the power of your Ink! There's always a cozy place to read - especially when you can **make one** yourself! Explore the Library's secrets, then relax in your personal **Customizable Reading Nook**! **RAID BETWEEN THE LINES** -------------------------- _Deeper evil lies in store,_ _Beyond the page and secret door,_ _A broken realm where magic fades_ _Beware the dreaded **Torn Lord Raids...**_ Table of Contents: ------------------ * **Swift Tales**: Approachable, under 30-minute roguelike runs crafted for quick gameplay sessions for 1-4 players. * **Signature Inks**: Infuse your spells with one of _6 colorful classes_, complete with their own unique upgrades and rewarding challenges! * **Scrolls of Power**: Tear through enemies with over 300 powers for you and your team. All powers can be build-makers, no filler. * **Shaping Your Spellbook**: Wield and combine an imaginative roster of over 20 spells - conjure Sewing Needles, hurl Anchors, sling Playing Cards - then enhance them with limit-breaking augments! * **Torn Pages**: With over 100 enemy upgrades and effects to choose from, only you will decide how your foes evolve throughout the course of battle. * **Personal Reading Nooks**: Show off your style with hundreds of decorations in your customizable corner of the Library! * **The Font**: Invoke unique **Tome**\-themed powers as a team in combination with your individual builds. * **Talented Research**: Enhance the magic of ink between runs to improve your Scribe with customizable talents! * **Brutal Bindings**: Increase your challenge by affixing bindings to your runs. Greater danger brings greater rewards! * **Rotating Book Club**: Join other Scribes in tackling fresh, global challenges! * **Two Raid Realms:** Face the Splice Lord in The Forgery and confront the Raving Lord in The Grey Area! * **Reference Section**: All the high quality literature puns you could ever desire. * **Endless Appendices**: Reached the end? Found the perfect build? Face the Appendices and continue the fight! Release date: 2 May, 2025 Categories: Roguelike, Cooperative Multiplayer, Real-time Combat, Character Progression, Build Crafting, Meta-Progression, House Customization, Endgame Content - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Fun, replayable, content-rich gameplay (weight 0.96): The game is praised for its fun, engaging, and highly replayable gameplay, offering a wealth of content, unique mechanics, and satisfying progression systems. Many reviewers highlight the game's ability to provide long-lasting entertainment, especially when playing with friends, and note the frequent updates and developer support that keep the experience fresh and polished. - Synergistic abilities and perks (weight 0.18): The game features diverse character classes (Signature Inks) with unique playstyles, spells, and abilities that can be modified and combined to create powerful synergies. The perk system significantly alters how abilities function, adding depth and impactful choices to character progression. - Customizable difficulty and scaling (weight 0.15): The game offers a customizable difficulty system that allows players to adjust the challenge and rewards to their liking. This includes options to modify enemy behavior and scaling, as well as a binding system that adds further complexity and replayability. - Active development and support (weight 0.14): The game receives frequent, high-quality updates from a responsive development team that actively addresses bugs and incorporates community feedback. This ongoing support ensures a stable and polished experience, even during early access. - Appealing art style and audio (weight 0.13): The game features a visually appealing art style and well-executed audio design that contribute to an immersive and engaging experience. The graphics are often described as stylish and beautiful, while the sound effects and music enhance the overall atmosphere. - Solid roguelike experience (weight 0.1): The game is a solid and enjoyable roguelike/roguelite experience with unique elements and a satisfying gameplay loop. Reviewers appreciate the personalized upgrades and the way they change the gameplay. - Similar to Risk of Rain 2 (weight 0.09): The game shares similarities with Risk of Rain 2 in its roguelike gameplay and build customization, but also introduces its own unique elements and themes. Reviewers often compare the game to Risk of Rain 2 as a point of reference, while also noting its distinct identity. - Unique book and writing theme (weight 0.08): The game features a unique and polished theme centered around books, writing, and literature, with clever puns and references incorporated throughout. This theme is consistently applied to the game's world, characters, abilities, and effects, creating a cohesive and immersive experience. - Short and intense runs (weight 0.05): The game features short, intense runs that typically last between 10 and 25 minutes, making it suitable for both long and short play sessions. Each run feels different due to the variety of builds and upgrades available. - Potential for overpowered builds (weight 0.05): The game allows players to create overpowered character builds through strategic combinations of upgrades and abilities. This can lead to a satisfying sense of power and the ability to easily defeat enemies. - Functional co-op mode (weight 0.05): The game includes a fully functional co-op mode that allows players to enjoy the game with friends. The game also offers multiple gameplay styles, including melee, damage-over-time, and ranged combat. Common complaints: - Lacks polish and visual clarity (weight 0.42): The game suffers from a lack of polish, with uninspired visuals, repetitive environments, and poor enemy clarity. Combat feels weak due to a lack of impact, floaty character animations, and enemies that are difficult to distinguish, leading to a frustrating and visually confusing experience. - Game is too easy (weight 0.34): Many reviewers feel the game is too easy, even at higher difficulty settings or with default loadouts. The difficulty scaling feels artificial, relying on increased enemy health rather than more complex mechanics. Some players find the game becomes a slog due to bullet sponge enemies. - Poor build diversity/balance (weight 0.29): Many builds feel unviable, with a limited number of effective classes and skills. Upgrades and inks often feel underwhelming or unbalanced, with some being objectively better than others, restricting player choice and build diversity. - Unbalanced upgrades/difficulty modifiers (weight 0.09): Upgrades feel like gambling, with raw damage being the only stat that matters. Difficulty modifiers vary wildly in balance; some add meaningful changes, while others feel inconsequential. - Multiplayer and performance issues (weight 0.07): Players have reported disconnects, desync issues, and frame rate drops, especially during intense moments or in multiplayer. The game also suffers from optimization issues, even on high-end computers. - Poor map design/variety (weight 0.05): The maps suffer from a lack of variety and can be frustrating to navigate due to tight spaces and obstacles. Some maps are too large or too small, and jump puzzles can be difficult due to the art style and character movement. - Convoluted terminology/UI (weight 0.05): The game's terminology is convoluted due to excessive use of portmanteaus and puns, making mechanic names unintuitive. Some ability/spell descriptions lack clarity and consistency in the amount of detail provided. - Demoralizing prestige system (weight 0.04): The Prestige/Ascension mechanic resets progress with little tangible benefit beyond cosmetics, making it feel demoralizing and like an artificial way to extend playtime. - Early access jank/bugs (weight 0.04): The game is still in early access, so it has some jank and bugs. The rogue-lite pacing feels a little off. - Uncontrollable movement (weight 0.04): Movement can feel uncontrollable with too many abilities active. Excessive forced movement reduces the importance of player skill. - Poor sound design (weight 0.03): Sound design is relatively poor, making the game feel cheap. The single music track during levels can become repetitive. - Janky controller support (weight 0.02): Controller support is janky, requiring frequent mouse input for menu navigation. Controller navigation issues detract from the experience, especially for those preferring controllers over mouse and keyboard. - Spells need tweaking (weight 0.02): Some spells feel like they need more range or lower costs. Some of the other abilities could use some tweaking. - Poor gold mining mechanic (weight 0.02): The gold mining mechanic forces players to remain stationary, making them vulnerable to attack. Gold mining progress reverts when the player steps away from the vein. - Too frequent updates (weight 0.02): The frequency of updates can feel overwhelming, with almost too much new content being added. Frequent game updates lead to constant requests from a friend to play. - Scarce healing (weight 0.02): Healing is scarce, forcing players to rely on 'meta' inks for survivability. Self-imposed meta-debuffs are negligible and barely noticeable, while enemy buffs have a similar lack of impact. - Buggy events (weight 0.02): Some events are buggy, such as the tower event where players can get stuck, softlocking the run if a player doesn't have a movement ability. Events between stages lack a clear purpose in the main gameplay loop. - Lackluster upgrades (weight 0.02): Mid-run font upgrades are uninteresting due to their limited number. Upgrades feel lackluster and boring. - Repetitive combat (weight 0.02): Combat becomes repetitive. Combat has some rough edges. - Buggy endless mode (weight 0.02): Endless mode is not truly endless due to a graphics/engine bug that causes the game to become a slideshow at high levels, even with a high-end graphics card. The game experienced screen freezing during intense grinding. - Weapons need rebalancing (weight 0.02): Some weapons need rebalancing, such as lance, sword, and whip, as players are forced into picking AOE or spam builds in extreme late game. The lance's charge option should be removed and cooldown slightly increased. - Uninspired gameplay loop (weight 0.02): Core gameplay loop is uninspired, described as holding left click and clicking right click, lacking the build diversity of games like Gunfire Reborn. Not on the level of more well known roguelike juggernauts like Roboquest or Gunfire Reborn - Poor reward scaling (weight 0.02): The game design incentivizes playing many easy levels for short periods over playing fewer hard levels for longer periods due to reward scaling. The game discourages endless runs and playing difficult levels early on because rewards are progressively unlocked. - Multiplayer focused (weight 0.02): Higher-level content seems tailored to multiplayer, making many builds less viable for solo players attempting ascension 5 or higher. Builds are far more forgiving when playing in multiplayer. - Uninspired design (weight 0.02): Enemy design is uninspired. Map and arena designs are uninspired. Gameplay feedback: - Tomes and Bindings system (weight 0.17): The game features a unique system of 'Tomes' and 'Bindings' that influence gameplay and difficulty. Players choose 'Tomes' to determine the theme and mechanics of each run, while 'Bindings' act as a difficulty ramping system with unlockable perks and enemy evolutions. This system adds replayability and strategic choices. - Balanced, fun, and challenging (weight 0.05): The game offers a balanced experience with solid controls and a fun, challenging binding system. It's easy to pick up but requires strategic power stacking to master, especially in later stages. The gameplay loop provides good variety. - Unique roguelike gameplay blend (weight 0.05): The game blends roguelike elements with a unique gameplay style, often described as a "3D reverse bullethell." While reminiscent of games like Risk of Rain 2, it introduces its own distinct mechanics and feel within the genre. - Strategic mana and ink system (weight 0.04): The game uses a mana system with three bars, including a special 'ink' bar that triggers unique effects. The ink color mechanic adds strategic depth, influencing damage output or map clearing speed. Mana regenerates from the bottom up, affecting ability usage. - Structured run progression (weight 0.03): A typical run consists of multiple arenas followed by a breather section. Combat chapters may offer side quests for additional traits. Each run consists of a fixed number of arenas. - Challenging boss encounters (weight 0.02): Bosses appear at the end of each 'Book', providing a significant challenge to the player. The final arena always culminates in a boss fight, testing the player's build and skills. - Shield and HP system (weight 0.02): The game incorporates a shield and HP system, where shields regenerate after a period without damage. HP, however, does not regenerate passively and requires specific traits or abilities for recovery. - Lobby buffing characters (weight 0.01): The game includes lobby buffing characters, drawing a parallel to similar mechanics found in games like Hades I/II. These characters likely provide persistent upgrades or bonuses outside of individual runs. - Floaty, unusual gameplay feel (weight 0.01): The gameplay has a floaty and unusual feel, which may differ from player expectations. This could refer to movement, combat, or overall game feel. - Scrolls and books theme (weight 0.01): The game's abilities and classes are thematically designed around scrolls and books, contributing to the overall aesthetic and lore. Performance notes: - Good performance and stability (weight 0.12): The game generally runs smoothly and loads quickly, with players reporting stability and few bugs encountered. Many players have noted the game is well-optimized, even on older hardware. This contributes to a positive player experience. Recommendations: - Strongly recommend; great potential (weight 0.66): The game is highly recommended, especially for fans of the roguelike genre, with many reviewers praising its fun gameplay, potential, and the developers' dedication. Some suggest it's worth the price, even in early access, and encourage supporting the developers. Many believe it has the potential to become a genre hit. - Anticipating future updates/content (weight 0.12): Reviewers are enthusiastic about future updates, expressing interest in seeing the game's content expand and improvements made. They plan to monitor the game's development and hope for continued support from the developers. Some reviewers would gladly pay for DLC to support ongoing development. - Compared to Risk of Rain (weight 0.06): The game is being compared to Risk of Rain 2 and Gunfire Reborn, with some reviewers suggesting it scratches a similar itch. However, some note that Risk of Rain 2 is a better game in the genre, and those expecting a direct clone may be disappointed. If you enjoy games like Roboquest or Gunfire Reborn, this might be for you. - Concerns about price/performance (weight 0.05): Some reviewers express concerns about the game's current state, citing issues such as high GPU strain and a feeling that the price is too high for the content offered. One reviewer is refunding the game and cannot recommend it in its current state. If the core gameplay loop remains unchanged, it is not recommended. - Wait for full release (weight 0.05): Several reviewers suggest waiting for the full release before playing, indicating that the game needs more development time to address its issues. One reviewer suggests waiting a year for further development. - Enjoyable solo/multiplayer (weight 0.03): Some reviewers recommend playing with friends for an enhanced experience, while others suggest that solo play is also enjoyable. The game is fun in both solo and multiplayer. - Lack of Chinese language (weight 0.02): One reviewer notes that it may be difficult for players in China to find friends willing to play the game in English. Another reviewer hopes for a future update that includes a Chinese language option. - Fast scaling roguelike (weight 0.01): The game is highly recommended for players who like fast scaling in roguelikes. Other player notes: - Active development in Early Access (weight 0.07): The game is in early access, with active updates and new content being added. The developers are actively working on the game, and the game already feels complete to some players. Players are looking forward to future updates. - Daily/weekly missions and achievements (weight 0.02): The game includes daily/weekly missions and achievements for each ink type. This provides players with regular goals and rewards, encouraging continued engagement. - Cohesive theme enhances immersion (weight 0.02): The game uses naming conventions and a cohesive literary theme with references to create an immersive experience. This attention to detail enhances the game's atmosphere and world. - English only, Asian servers (weight 0.02): The game is currently only available in English, but offers Asian servers for multiplayer connectivity. This may limit accessibility for some players but provides a good experience for those in Asia. - Reviews may be outdated (weight 0.02): Some reviews may be outdated due to ongoing updates. This means that the game is constantly evolving, and feedback may no longer be relevant. - Active community, involved developers (weight 0.02): The game has an active community with involved developers. The developers communicate and read feedback on Discord, showing a commitment to community engagement. - World-building through narrated scrolls (weight 0.01): The game features unspoken world-building elements found in scrolls throughout the missions. These scrolls are narrated by multiple characters with unique dialogues, adding depth to the game's lore. - Book/skill recommendations with bonuses (weight 0.01): Each round, the game recommends a book and a player skill, offering bonus rewards for using them. This mechanic encourages players to experiment with different strategies and abilities. - Short, well-paced runs (weight 0.01): Each run lasts 5-15 minutes, with pacing and storytelling that doesn't impede the run. This makes the game easily accessible for short play sessions. - Random character setup option (weight 0.01): The game provides a random option for the entire character setup, including appearance. This feature allows players to quickly create unique characters and adds an element of surprise to each playthrough. Emotions: No emotions}