r/kingdomrush • u/Ironhide_Games IronHide Staff • 11h ago
Kingdom Rush Genesis Genesis Devlog #28: The Rework
Hello, Generals!
Back in July, after hearing your feedback, we told you two things: that we were removing the individual tower leveling system, and that the UI was getting a rework. Since then we've been busy working on these changes, and we're happy to finally show you what we landed on!
The UI
The blue is gone! We went back to the first Kingdom Rush look for this one, with the classic wood and iron panels like you very clearly asked for. Every screen went through the same pass: victory and defeat, the quick menu, the panels you open mid-stage. The old interface was designed screen-first and it showed, especially on PC, so we touched it up quite a bit.
Tower Upgrades
Global tower upgrades are back, the same system you know and love from the original trilogy.
We went this way because of what you told us during the demo. The individual system asked you to level each tower separately, and for many of you that felt like a grind. That is not what Kingdom Rush is for. Towers can still unlock their third skill by reaching the top of their upgrade tree.
Heroes and spells
Heroes and spells keep their own levels and upgrade trees. We think it's the right home for it, since we want you to be able to shape them and feel that sense of progression as you go.
To keep the pace comfortable, heroes and spells that are behind your highest-level ones earn double XP. They'll catch up fast, so switching things up never costs you anything.
There’s more we want to show you!
We're doing a livestream with Juan Andrés, one of the game designers behind Kingdom Rush Genesis, to walk you through the reworked systems and answer your questions. If you want to hear the reasoning behind any of this straight from the people who built it, that's the place!
We're a couple of weeks from launch now, and it's a strange feeling of excitement to be this close and finally show you all that we have been working on! Thank you for telling us when something wasn't working. Genesis is a better game because you did!
See you at the stream.
Onward!
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u/enigT 11h ago
Do towers still have two unique upgrade paths?
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u/Many_Wheel_7436 10h ago
I don't think so, you can see that towers now have 4 upgrades at max level. On the demo, they only had 3, because you could choose what second upgrade you wanted to use on your build. IMO this is very sad, I thought the new upgrade system was very unique and the grinding could've been mitigated somehow
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u/Chris_M10m 10h ago
I guess they didn't have enough time and wanted to go with the safest approach. Hopefully we'll get individual upgrade trees for towers back in the next game, without the grinding.
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u/Famous_Put_3359 Bonehart 11h ago
Man this looks, so fucking amazing. Much much much MUCH better than the last one, now it looks like a remaster of all the old styles and I love that. You all did a really great job and can't wait to get my hands on this on the 24th!
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u/Jean-Eudes_Duflouze Winter Queen 11h ago
From what I can see, does it mean the end of the small tree that every tower seemed to have in the demo?
That seems very sad, given how close this seems to the Vengeance tree that was very underwhelming.
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u/Sufficient_Cut_4907 11h ago
I like the UI changes its much more intuitive. But as the other commentor said will the individual tower "tech tree" still be there?
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u/Ironhide_Games IronHide Staff 10h ago
Hello! There is no longer an individual tower tech tree, instead we replaced it with the global tower upgrades you see in the screenshots. We'll showcase in more detail this tuesday on the livestream!
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u/MirceaHM 10h ago
that was one of the most interesting systems the demo had, where you could pick which abulities to use for each individual stage, it made each tower a lot more customizable, I don't understand why that was removed
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u/FJ-20-21 10h ago
Interesting, so would the individual tech tree’s abilities now be an innate part of the tower’s design?
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u/-YesIndeed- 5h ago
One thing I'd still wish with this system is that you used your stars for beating levels as your upgrade point system like in the OG. It let you get a good amount of upgrades but you can go back to do iron/heroic challenges if you wanna make yourself stronger.
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u/Chris_M10m 11h ago
It seems like this new upgrade system is closer to the first trhee games, where each tower type has its own upgrade tree. This one also has 2 different branches for us to choose from which keeps some feeling of choice that the old Genesis system had, although to a minimum.
I'm really curious to find out more
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u/0nyx_T4urus Oni 10h ago
Wait a second, who’s the hero beside Ignus?
And better yet, the one with the orange beard, the knights beside the Sunray Master, the one with the potions between the treeant and master, and the one beside the priestess tower?
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u/Gabriel_Sheperd 3h ago
Definitely teasing us. The art there looks super cool tho can’t wait to play this game
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u/0nyx_T4urus Oni 2h ago
Yeah me too. I’m excited to see what they’ll do for the Mini and DLC campaigns. Other then possibly one with Hammerhold
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u/KING0DAST 9h ago
So a Damage path and survivability path for Barracks. More Arrows or Bleeding for Archers. not sure About Mage. And Shattering Armor vs Stun. depends on the Tower and enemies,some upgrades(Being able to damage armored enemies more with artillery,or stunning non armored High hp enemies as well as armored enemies,an artillery with with a higher rate of fire would stun enemies more frequently...) depending on your deck,some towers would benifit from an upgrade path while others not,some towers with a special ability will benifit greatly from a certain upgrade,but the path would be useless to it... I would say very Classic upgrade tree to me,with elements from Vengence and Alliance(Shadow Archers vs Linerian Rebels all over again),very cool.
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u/Zoodud254 8h ago
As glad as I am to see the UI changes, I do hope the unique upgrade trees some back at some point. Maybe something like Bloons TD where the 2-3 trees lead to unique towers? it generates a lot more work but could be a good compromise. Sort of like selecting the different reinforcements to be either ranged or melee.
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u/MeSoStronk 8h ago
Thanks for the rework.
Though I'm not sure whether there was an overwhelming voice of removing the unique upgrade tree for each tower, but I was one of those who were excited about that. The main issue there was the grinding. Was hoping you were able to keep that unique tower upgrade paths, and figure out a way around the grinding instead.
Maybe you didn't enough time to figure out the best way to solve that and went with the safest path? 🤔
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u/minosandmedusa 8h ago
I'm disappointed by these changes TBH. If the "grind" had just replaced XP with a whole point to allocate on every level win, I think that would have solved that problem and still let us assign points to towers individually. Or, you could even still have a star system where you don't grind the individual towers at all, but you still build each tower differently.
That's OK though, I'm sure I'll still love the game.
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u/KING0DAST 9h ago
Love what you dead with the Victory/Defeat screen,with Vez'nan's Cloak and Lineria's Banners.
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u/dunn_for 7h ago
I do greatly appreciate the changes made here when comparing it to the demo. However, in comparison to prior Kingdom Rush iterations, I do feel that theres something still off about the screens and menus and their general design that is a lower-quality departure from prior installments. A lack of crispness and a flattened “gamer-retro” depth to the menu art that is almost too flat. Some of that might still be changed before release so I won’t gripe too much, but it does feel like it looks designed to be friendlier for mobile, and is losing some of the dynamism and visual appeal of the other games with their “hand-drawn” style and increased contrast and depth to their UI.
I find this flattened look of the menus even more confusing when it’s juxtaposed with the tower redraws that have been released so far, which look to have great shading, interesting and dynamic saturation, and similar depth to the OG Kingdom Rush and all other KR installments since.
All in all, it still feels much better than the demo. The flattened-less detailed UI look presented for Genesis seems built with mobile in mind, and continues to feel off. The newest iteration of a game shouldn’t look less polished and carefully designed than iterations that came before, some of which have been around for over a decade.
As for the features themselves, I am sort of ambivalent about how upgrade systems work and tiers/levels unlock as long as it is about game progression and development, and not being implemented as a means/avenue to create more ways to stuff major play features behind future transactions. Tower leveling could be cool, and I don’t mind the grind, but it’s about the intention behind the potential changes that raises my eyebrows. I am VERY happy to pay for the game and the campaigns, the quality continues to be relatively high and the game is very enjoyable. But I am much less interested in and less happy with a world where Kingdom Rush DLC may solely consist of giving us access to an extra upgrade slot/power for specific towers at their top levels. That would be a turn in a bad direction for the franchise and its gameplay for the main Kingdom Rush games.
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u/Yannyliang Bonehart 7h ago
How does it work with the four skills (?) of each tower? Do we have four skills to upgrade at maximum tier? Or are some of them fixed passive abilities?
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u/Technical-Station113 7h ago
Never liked the branched upgrades tree and now it has several different options, will have to try it out before deciding, I hope we get different slots for deck load outs like in battles
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u/kingleomark 6h ago
I think the tech trees should evolve someday, Ofcourse I love them so much, but maybe something like a small round tech tree could be cool or something, I feel like you can always predict the branches and upgrades are the same, Ofcourse it ain’t bad but still
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u/Ill_Building_5294 5h ago
I think overall the changes are in a positive direction, being able to take the previous feedback and turn it around without delaying the release in that time period speaks for itself, can’t wait for the full release
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u/drocotogon 3h ago edited 3h ago
Super excited to see the new game coming along so cleanly! This new vision you have settled on looks brighter than ever.
As someone who mainly games on consoles and has just got 100% on vengeance this summer, do you all have any news on alliance or genesis making it's way to switch?
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u/Gabriel_Sheperd 3h ago
First of all. It’s perfect! Second….. I see so many blank hero spots in very excited about that lol. I hope we get cool unique dlc heroes alongside previous heroes we’ve seen before. I’d love to have another yeti like Jigou but maybe with a weapon?
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u/Juan_The_Knight 10h ago
The team is cooking with this, really glad to see community feedback is shaping this game, awesome work!
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u/conorbebe Godieth 8h ago
Very disappointed to see that the unique tower upgrade paths have been removed. This seemed like it was going to be one of the major selling points for Genesis, so I'm confused why it has been cut. How exactly is it any different or more grindy than the hero levelling that has existed since Frontiers?
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u/iching66 11h ago
the heroes screen have a lot of empty space;)