Reception devlog · Feature

70 things we cut

October 19, 2026 · BellHop Studios

Building Reception meant cutting about 70 features in eleven weeks. Here are the ones worth telling, grouped by what they were about. Most came in two waves: 31 August, when the prototype became a product, and the week after testers arrived.

Movement and maps

• Water as a wall became walkable water at two ticks a move.
• Static enemy tiles became roaming monster groups that merge and promote, because monsters should hunt.
• Three fixed exits became parties leaving through each other's spawn points, once several parties shared one map.
• The exit tether and dead-end memory became shortest-path routing. The tether pointed the wrong way about 38% of the time.
• Dungeons that closed when cleared became repeatable dungeons with rooms rolled by depth, for replay value.

Combat

• The SPD stat was replaced by LUK, with turn order by coin toss and position. Speed did nothing in the turn system.
• Instant wins on contact became real turn-based combat.
• Monster groups as one body became individual monsters, each with its own HP, tier and turn.
• Monsters healing fully after a win now carry their damage into the next fight.
• Flavour-only ability cards became cards that state exact numbers, because some cards promised effects the game didn't have.
• Damage on Light Tap and Radiant Wave became heals, because the starter party couldn't answer poison.

Gear

• The 13 original gear items became 40 tiered items. 12 of the 13 did nothing in combat.
• Defeat stripping all gear became losing only gear found in the run.
• Gear locked by class became Light, Medium and Heavy armour weights, with class locks kept only at SSR.
• 24 pieces of starter gear went entirely. Every piece must now be found, because bare Commons cleared the first dungeon 90% of the time anyway.
• Gear on party seats moved onto the heroes, because a hero taken out of a party was stripped.
• Gear HP refilling every fight now stays spent for the whole run.

Running the guild

• Run speed controls (1x, 2x, 4x) are gone permanently, and a test forbids bringing them back. Parties share floors, so time is a balance quantity.
• One-tap "Send Party again" became the full three-screen dispatch every time, so each run is chosen fresh.
• "Runs left" counters and fatigue warnings that blocked nothing were removed. Players understood fatigue without them.
• Position 1 always leading became a leader you choose.
• "Copy to Party N" was removed because it doubled heroes: one hero, one party.
• 24-hour fatigue recovery became 8 hours, with a live countdown.
• Easy, Medium and Hard assignments became monster tokens: trophies worth stealing.

Screens and style

• The victory fanfare became silence on a win.
• Developer readouts in the player view moved behind an admin switch. A new player would have seen a debug console.
• The text logotype became the painted hanging sign.
• Em dashes in game text became full stops, commas, colons and middle dots, as house style.
• The Party Save button became autosave.
• Hero sprites and walk cycles became portraits only.
• Run music over every menu now plays only while watching a run. Menus will get their own tracks.
• A 9-pixel green upgrade marker became a yellow "!", after a tester never noticed the old one.
• Photoreal placeholder portraits became our own anime portraits. Wrong style.

Economy

• "The cash shelf never sells power" gave way to Sena selling Writs of Hire, as a second way to get them.
• A Writ for every two runs became a daily Writ, plus Arena first clears and Sena's shelf.
• 4 treasure per pack slot became 1, so leaving treasure behind is a real choice.
• Save import and export for players became developer-only, because nothing earned may sit on the player's computer.

Some of these went back and forth before they settled. Those are in Seven decisions we changed our minds on.