The magic-wielding battle royale Spellbreak enlisted a whole new group of vowbreakers with its full release earlier this month, and developer Proletariat is now starting to talk about what’s in store for the game in the coming days, weeks, and months. In the first Spellbreak roadmap, the developer goes over some of the high-level goals for the future of the game, including additional story content to come via the Chapters updates, beginning with the Prologue, and soon after, Chapter 1.
When you first start Spellbreak, the tutorial introduces you to Avira Emberdane, who welcomes you to the vowbreakers, people who wield magic as battlemages. That story will continue in the Prologue as she helps you “further hone your skills as a battlemage, and earn some tasty cosmetics along the way.” This prologue will kick off the Chapters system and get the game ready for the next major update, Chapter 1. It seems like Spellbreak’s Chapter system is similar to other games’ Seasons of content, but with its own unique twist.
Prologue will also bring Clash, a 9v9 team deathmatch mode, allowing players to enjoy Spellbreak’s combat mechanics without risk of death ending the game. A “Holloween” event will add unique cosmetics to the store just in time for the spooky season, and new talents and consumable will further change up gameplay.
After Prologue comes Chapter 1, which Proletariat says “is going to kick the story off in earnest.” Here players will be fully introduced to the Order of the Vowbreakers and tasked with researching the Spellstorm to try to end it. My guess is it doesn’t succeed, or there wouldn’t be much more of a story to tell. How these narrative tasks fit into the battle royale gameplay remains to be seen. “As for the rest of Chapter 1, we’ll have more info for you soon!”
Proletariat says Prologue and Chapter 1 are “mid-term” roadmap goals, targeted for between 1-3 months out. Prologue seems like it will be out next month at some point, with Chapter 1 likely to follow shortly after later this year, but the developers aren’t offering specific dates just yet.
In the short-term, before Prologue even releases, the developer is focused on getting Patch 1.1 out. This will include post-launch bug fixes, quality of life enhancements and tuning, and a few other small updates to help polish the release version of the game. It will also include two new runes: Shadowstep and Chronomaster. Shadowstep lets players become invisible briefly while doing a quick dash to move away, and Chronomaster rewinds time on your health, armor, and physical position to when you first activated it. Seems like there’s a little influence from Overwatch’s Tracer here! Patch 1.1 and the new runes should be out in under a month.
Long term, beyond 3 months out and the release of the Chapter 1 update, Proletariat has some broad ideas for where they want to go, but also warns these things are all subject to change. Ultimately, they want to bring new Gauntlets, Classes, and Runes to the game to further change up gameplay. They are looking into ranked and competitive modes for Spellbreak. Limited time modes are also being mulled over, a common feature in other battle royales like Call of Duty Warzone that can help change the pace of the game every few weeks. In addition to the Chapters updates, these experimental modes should help offer an injection of content and things to do to keep players interested over time, one of the few points of criticism in our review. Finally, they want to add Guilds at some point, a community-based feature similar to clans with shared goals that groups of players can work towards together.
In the very short-term, the team has a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) coming up on r/games on Friday, September 18th at 5pm EDT. This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that the team is working on, but it at least gives a high-level overview of where Proletariat is headed with Spellbreak in the coming months. Specific update patch notes will be available as each of the respective updates roll out, and we can look forward to Spellbreak Patch 1.1 soon.
What do you think of the Spellbreak roadmap? Is there anything else you want to see them add or work on? What questions would you ask the team in the AMA? I want to know what plans the team has for next-gen, beyond just leaning on backwards compatibility. Will Spellbreak get PS5 enhancements? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
[Source: Proletariat]
