Elementyle

Editor’s Note: This devlog post was delayed significantly. Future devlog updates should be coming on a much better cadence, approximately 2-3 per week. The Earth set is now released and available for testing. As of now all the starter sets + 1 additional piece from the set extension are available to test. Devlog # 003 will go into more detail regarding the upcoming changes.

The last set to be added, and arguably one of the more mechanically difficult to implement, the Earth set is going to be coming to Elementyle in the second half of 2024, likely end of August.

With every new set, a variety of new mechanics follows. For Earth, the new keywords are:

• Transform
• Adapt
• Formation

The core design philosophy behind the Earth set was deliberate shifting of the board state with short but precise moves. Facing a similar but unique positioning challenge to the Wind set, piece placement takes priority over broad and more forgiving moves found in Fire and Water.

Ideally, the final result will be a set that balances several new concepts and mechanics against the existing meta game. With the coming improvements to the back-end server and move engine logic, it will be much easier to identify problematic pieces and correct balance issues more rapidly. When the Water set was under-tuned due to a low-impact, highly conditional set effect activation, it took several months before a rework was made, bringing viability to the Undertow piece.

Below are the current designs for all 5 pieces that have concepts as of now. There is likely an additional piece that will be designed after some testing. The next round of pieces being added were designed with the past few months of testing in mind for all three currently included elements.