Welcome back, Operatives.

The work continues apace, and it's genuinely so exciting to see the player character classes and Devils taking shape before our eyes. We can't wait to share them with you... But we're gonna have to. We know some of you out there are climbing the walls waiting for playtest materials to be released, and all we can say is, "They'll be ready as soon as they're ready." We promise to keep you in the loop.

In the meantime, here's a tasty morsel to whet your appetite.

In a previous update, Operative Slightly mentioned that we'd identified 12 distinct roles that each of the classes would slot into in different ways. But, cagey sod that he is, that was as much as he was willing to divulge at the time.

Well, word's come down from Division HQ that we're now cleared to release a little more of that juicy intel.

So Roles; what are they? Well in a nutshell, each class in the game is tagged with a Role, which is a way to tell at a glance what that class is built to do best. Are your powers and abilities designed to maximise damage output, provide support to your teammates, or to draw fire that others couldn't withstand? Or maybe a combination of these? Your Role will tell you.

Players are never handcuffed to their Role, though. Each class may be built with a Role in mind, but you as a player are free to deviate from them and play however you want. Just think of them as serving suggestions.

They're the kind of thing that is often implicit in game design -- there are probably a lot of character classes or archetypes in games that you may think of as 'support classes', and that's not by accident -- but in NS:DD, we're making those implicit concepts explicit. We think this will be a big help to players that are playing a class for the first time. And for everyone else, having a clear understanding of where each party member's strengths lie will help make the game feel both more tactical and more cinematic.

The Roles are built around three core pillars: Tank, Support, and DPS. These are working titles and are likely to change, but the core concepts will stay the same.

These pillars give rise to 12 distinct Roles: 6 are pure, sitting fully inside one pillar - 6 are mixed, leading with one pillar and borrowing from a second. Mixed Roles carry a two-letter code to tell you which is the main pillar; so a T/S Role is Tank-first with a Support lean, while an S/T Role is Support-first with a Tank lean.

Without going into too much detail at this stage, here's a hand-dandy graphic to give you some hints as to what each role is designed to represent and achieve. Please feel free to speculate wildly.

Right, that's yer lot for this time. If you want to keep up with the day-by-day goings on at Slightly Reckless, join our Discord!

You can chat about your games - past, present and future - share fan theories, speculation and headcanon, and there's even a channel for OC art. That's where Eli posted this adorably spooky sketch of three OCs that's giving 'Devil Division but make it The Beano'.



Until next time, squad.

// Operative Mill and the SRG Information Control Team out.

Greetings, Operatives. I am your substitute Duty Manager, Operative Mill. I’ll be handling updates for the foreseeable future, while Operative Slightly attends to some urgent matters overseas.

What urgent matters? Well, we’ll have to keep that on a strict need-to-know basis for the time being. But I am authorised to tell you that Operative Slightly will be at Tokyo Game Show this year, if any of you fancy finding him and saying hi. Regrettably, files we have at HQ indicate that ’Tokyo Game Show’ is a massively popular video game convention and trade fair, not a hilariously cruel TV show.

Anyway, on with the update!

The pre-order store is now open! Check it out for all NS:DD pre-orders, and spread the word to anyone you know who would love this game but missed out on the crowdfunding campaign. You can also pick up our first game, RŌNIN, and pre-order its upcoming expansion, RŌNIN: Densetsu.

Just to reiterate a point from the last update; add-ons and pre-orders will be charged when you add or order them, while shipping costs will be calculated and charged later, as close to the actual shipment date as possible. This is pretty standard in crowdfunding these days, as international shipping costs remain difficult to predict in advance with any greater accuracy than a magic 8-ball.

After wrapping up our creative meetings on the PC classes, we now have a final outline for each of the classes that will be featured in the Division book, including what powers and techniques they’ll possess.

Next up comes the detail work: nailing down all the precise wording of each class’s features and abilities, and getting the balance right between them all. We want beginners to have all the options and support they need to just jump right in and create the anime protagonist of their dreams. At the same time, we want to make sure savvy players can feel rewarded for cunning character builds, without leaving any glaring, game-breaking exploits in there. It’s a tricky balancing act, but rest assured; we have top men on the job.

Next on the docket, we have more creative meetings booked in to go over Devils, the main antagonists you’ll be fighting and the raison d’être for the Division itself. The central concept of ‘beings created from the fears and negative emotions of humanity’ gives us licence to go absolutely hog wild, frankly. This will be fun.

We won’t be tilting our hand too much this early in the game. But if you want to join in on the speculation, we have a channel on our Discord called Devil Dossier, where members can discuss their fan theories, pitches and homebrew about which Devils will be stalking the streets of Tokyo. And without giving too much away, some of the guesses already on there are correct…

And speaking of the Discord, we already mentioned in the last update that we’d be posting OC art from the lovely folks over on our Discord. If you want to showcase your OC art, head on over to the Art channel there and share away. This month we have this creature sketch from the very talented Myco. They also dropped some awesome music in the same Art channel recently, so go check that out!

 

See you next month.

Hey Operatives. Busy month. Let's get into it.

We've now wrapped the creative meetings for all the classes, Contractor aside, and we can say with confidence that we know what this game is going to be. Every class has a direction. The Hybrid sessions got heated at points, genuinely heated, but we pushed through and came out the other side with something we're all excited about.

Across all the classes we've identified 12 roles that each class draws upon in different ways. We're not going into detail on those yet as they'll make a lot more sense once we start releasing actual materials, but they're the backbone of how the classes will feel distinct from each other at the table.

Now that the creative direction is locked we can start designing abilities and doing real game design work in earnest. Once I've had four to eight weeks with the material I should have a much clearer sense of when we'll be ready to release things for public playtesting. We'll keep you posted.

The best part of wrapping these meetings was the feeling in the room at the end. Everyone walked out on the same page about what Night Shift: Devil Division is and where it's going. 

The smoke test has gone out, so a select few of you will have already seen your surveys land in your inbox. No issues so far, which means the rest of the surveys are going out today. Keep an eye on your email!

Any add-ons or pre-orders will be charged when you add or order them, exactly like a traditional pre-order.

Shipping is a separate charge and will be collected later, as close to the actual shipment date as possible. International shipping is, as everyone is aware, an ongoing chaos situation and what looks fine today can look very different tomorrow. Charging shipping as late as possible means you get the most accurate costs and we don't end up absorbing unexpected differences down the line. This is standard practice in crowdfunding at this point and nothing out of the ordinary, but we'd rather explain it clearly than have anyone surprised.

Any questions on the pledge manager, hit us in the Discord.

We're starting a thing where we'll be posting OC Art from the lovely folks over on our Discord. Here's this months by fish.

See you next month.

// Operative Slightly and the SRG Pilots out.

Welcome to the first of our monthly post-campaign updates. We said we'd go quiet for four to six weeks, we managed about thirty seconds, and then everything sped right back up again. Classic.

So, what have we actually been up to?

We've kicked off a series of creative meetings covering the classes and the first few have been genuinely great. The format is simple: everyone gets pizza, everyone says what cool things they think players should be able to do, and somehow a game gets designed. It's a good system.

We've got a solid sense of direction for both the NDOs and XOs coming out of those early sessions. Next up we'll be covering Baselines and Hybrids, with the Contractor following once we've got the Devils outlined, since that class is built around what's captured and we need to know what's being captured first.

More detail on specific class directions as things solidify. 

We're tinkering away on it steadily and the current plan is to have it open for pre-orders and add-ons by the end of July. We've got a lot done on it already so it may well be done sooner than that just depends how long it takes for our logistics partners to review everything.

More updates to come as the months go on. Hop in the Discord if you want the more day-to-day stuff in between these.

// Slightly and The SRG Pizza Creatives, out.